Among the Christmas presents I got this year was the Charles Dickens biography by Clare Tomlin. I’ve read the excellent biography by Peter Ackroyd as well as many of his books of course. It is his 200th birthday in February and the BBC have been having a bit of a Dickens feast over christmas. For me as a fan of his writing this Dickensian orgy is wonderful. But reading about him as a man is more than a little bit problematic. His genius lies, not just in his fantastic characterisations or wonderful turns of phrase but in his superhuman work ethic. Reading about his work life leaves me uncomfortably breathless at times. Occasionally I get asked by friends if I am still writing music. “Well” I say, “You know how it is, you get home after a day in the office and by the time you have cooked and eaten your dinner it is 10pm – too late to really start something”. And then in bed as I read how Dickens came home at 1:3o am from reporting on a debate in the House of Commons to start work on Sketches by Boz and work through the night, I feel like a lazy indolent slob for staying in my warm bed!
This internal pressure, or lack of it is what prompts us to make resolutions in the last dying moments of the year. It is hard to imagine Charles Dickens ever coming home and saying “you know what, I am just going to have a nice night in and read the paper”. Of all his gifts it is that energy that I most covert.
I have to accept that I, along with almost everyone else don’t have and will never have that sort of energy. And If Charles (We must be on first name terms by now after all the time we have spent together) looks out of Clare Tomlin’s book reproachfully, I can only thank him for the reproach.