One of the world’s greatest writers on childhood was not
a great father to his own 10 children, Robert Gottlieb’s new history
reveals.
Dickens was the great wizard of
family life, a tireless demon who seemed to work full-time at organizing
private theatricals and picnics. He gave all his children
nicknames—his favorite daughter, Kate, was called Lucifer Box, because
her “temper would flare up” like a “lucifer” or safety match. But
Dickens was also forever in a hurry. He was good with babies and his
children were never afraid to interrupt him; Thomas Mann’s offspring, in
contrast, trembled before the inviolable door of his study. Dickens
grew distant once they reached adolescence, though, and insisted on
settling the futures of his seven sons while they were still in their
teens. He wanted them off his hands, wanted them to pay their own way,
as he had, and complained that had “brought up the largest family ever
known with the smallest disposition to do anything for themselves.”
The
phrasing turns them into characters, like something out of one of his
own novels, and in fact his oldest son once wrote that “the children of
his brain were much more real to him at times than we were.” 
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