1812-1870
[Sidenote: Forster’s _Life of Dickens_.]
“Very different was his face in those days from that which photography
has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness
first attracted you, and then a candour and openness of expression
which made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very
good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostrils,
eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humour
and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with
sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and
the air and carriage of it was extremely spirited. The hair so scant
and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant
abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a
vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first
recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted
on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and
practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several
feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books,
and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and
motion flashed from every part of it. _It was as if made of steel_, was
said of it, four or five years after the time to which I am referring,
by a most original and delicate observer, the late Mrs. Carlyle. ‘What
a face is his to meet in a drawing-room!’ wrote Leigh Hunt to me, the
morning after I had made them known to each other. ‘It has the life
and soul in it of fifty human beings.’ In such sayings are expressed
not alone the restless and resistless vivacity and force of which I
have spoken, but that also which lay beneath them of steadiness and
hard endurance.”--1838.
[Sidenote: J. T. Fields’s _Yesterdays with Authors_.]
“How well I recall the bleak winter evening in 1842 when I first saw
the handsome, glowing face of the young man who was even then famous
over half the globe! He came bounding into the Tremont House, fresh
from the steamer that had brought him to our shores, and his cheery
voice rang through the hall, as he gave a quick glance at the new
scenes opening upon him in a strange land on first arriving at a
Transatlantic hotel. ‘Here we are!’ he shouted, as the lights burst
upon the merry party just entering the house, and several gentlemen
came forward to meet him. Ah, how happy and buoyant he was then! Young,
handsome, almost worshipped for his genius, belted round by such
troops of friends as rarely ever man had, coming to a new country to
make new conquests of fame and honor,--surely it was a sight long to
be remembered and never wholly to be forgotten. The splendour of his
endowments and the personal interest he had won to himself called forth
all the enthusiasm of old and young America, and I am glad to have
been among the first to welcome his arrival. You ask me what was his
appearance as he ran, or rather flew, up the steps of the hotel, and
sprang into the hall? He seemed all on fire with curiosity, and alive
as I never saw mortal before. From top to toe every fibre of his body
was unrestrained and alert. What vigor, what keenness, what freshness
of spirit, possessed him! He laughed all over, and did not care who
heard him! He seemed like the Emperor of Cheerfulness on a cruise of
pleasure, determined to conquer a realm or two of fun every hour of his
overflowing existence. That night impressed itself on my memory for all
time, so far as I am concerned with things sublunary. It was Dickens,
the true ‘Boz,’ in flesh and blood, who stood before us at last, and
with my companions, three or four lads of my own age, I determined to
sit up late that night.”--1842.
[Sidenote: The Cowden Clarkes’ _Recollections of writers_.]
“Charles Dickens had that acute perception of the comic side of things
which causes irrepressible brimming of the eyes; and what eyes his
were! Large, dark blue, exquisitely shaped, fringed with magnificently
long and thick lashes--they now swam in liquid, limpid suffusion,
when tears started into them from a sense of humour or a sense of
pathos, and now darted quick flashes of fire when some generous
indignation at injustice, or some high-wrought feeling of admiration at
magnanimity, or some sudden emotion of interest and excitement touched
him. Swift-glancing, appreciative, rapidly observant, truly superb
orbits they were, worthy of the other features in his manly, handsome
face. The mouth was singularly mobile, full-lipped, well-shaped,
and expressive; sensitive, nay restless, in its susceptibility to
impression that swayed him, or sentiment that moved him. He, who
saw into apparently slightest trifles that were fraught to his
perception with deeper significance; he, who beheld human nature with
insight almost superhuman, and who revered good and abhorred evil
with intensity, showed instantaneously by his expressive countenance
the kind of idea that possessed him. This made his conversation
enthralling, his acting first-rate, and his reading superlative.”