DICKENS IN GERMANY
Heinz Reinhold
Charles Dickens's personal relations with
Germany were very limited. He had seen a
small part of the country when he travelled
up the Rhine to Switzerland in 1846,
together with his wife, his sister-in-law,
six children - the youngest being only
seven months old - several servants, and a
dog. A journey, which seems to have been
quite pleasant, but otherwise not very
eventful. A description he gives of the city
of Worms is typical of his style: He spe
aks of 'some brave old churches shut up
and so hemmed in and overgrown with
vineyards that they look as if they were
turning into leaves and grapes'.
Dickens could not speak German, neither
could he read it. But he seems to have
been convinced that it was useful for
young people to learn it. He sends his
eldest son Charley to Leipzig in order - as
he writes in a letter - 'to become well
acquainted with that language - now most
essential in such a walk of life as he will
probably tread'. Later on he will send his
younger son Frank to Hamburg for the
same reason.
Whenever Dickens met Germans - as
occasionally during his journey up the
Rhine or at a dinner party in London they
had - as the well known actor Emil De-
vrient for instance - to speak to him in
English. The same applied to his corres
pondence with Germans - with publishers,
for instance, or with translators or with
editors of encyclopaedias.
It does not seem that Dickens knew much
about German intellectual life. It is true
that he possessed translations of some of
our classical writers, but whether he ever
read them is doubtful. He does not seem
to have been much interested when Long
fellow came to see him and talked to him
about the German poets Herder and Freili-
grath.
No wonder that hardly any traces of Ger
many and the Germans appear in his work.
When William IV dismissed the Melbour
ne ministry Dickens wrote a political satire
'which,' as he pretended, was 'translated
from the German by Boz'.
In The Seven Poor Travellers somebody
speaks of 'one German, the most intelli
gent man he ever met in his life' - but we
should not forget that it is Our Bore who
says so. The Uncommercial Traveller sees
'a few shadowy Germans in immense fur
coats and boots' on The Calais Night Mail
and in Martin Chuzzlewit, at Todgers's,
we come across 'one gentleman, who tra
velled in the perfumery line' and 'exhibi
ted an interesting nick-nack, in the way of
a remarkable cake of shaping soap which
he had lately met with in Germany. Count
Smorltork in Pickwick is, of course, a
caricature of the German Count Piickler of
Muskau, and his introduction as 'the fa
mous foreigner - gathering materials for
his great work on England' is an allusion
to the German writer's Briefe eines Ver-
storhenenwhich related to his tour of the
British Isles and had appeared in the be
ginning of the thirties. Not quite so harm
less seems a remark in Household Words
of 1851 where Germany is enumerated
among those countries where 'there are
tyrants and oppressors watchful to find
freedom weak that they may strike, and
backed by great armies.' Other allusions to
Germany and the Germans are more or
less negligible.
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