Charles Dickens had several grandchildren, but Mary Angela, nicknamed “Mekitty,” was the eldest. Her father was Charles “Charley” Dickens, Junior, and her mother was Elizabeth “Bessie” Matilda Moule Dickens (née Evans), the daughter of Charles Dickens’ former book publisher, Frederick Mullett Evans. It is a wonder that Mekitty came to be such an important part of her grandfather’s life, because when his son Charley married Bessie, Charles Dickens didn’t even attend their wedding. Fortunately, after Mekitty was born, he reconciled with the family, and they became frequent guests at Dickens’ country home in Kent, Gad’s Hill Place.
On October 31, 1868, when the book, A Tale of Two Hittys begins, Mekitty would have been six years old. She was born on Halloween in 1862, and she died on February 7, 1948, which was the 136th anniversary of her grandfather’s birth.
Mary Angela became a writer like her grandfather, although nowhere near as famous. Most of her writings were published in the periodical, All the Year Round, which her grandfather had established, and which her father, Charley Dickens, edited from 1869 onwards. After his death in 1870, Charles Dickens bequeathed his rights to All the Year Round to Charley, who kept the magazine going for many years, until ill health caused him to cease publishing in 1895, a year before his death.
Growing up, Mary Angela was surrounded by a household of siblings. She had six younger sisters and one younger brother. The girls were Ethel, Sydney, Gertrude, Beatrice, Cecil and Evelyn, and the only boy was Charles Walter Dickens. They lived in London until Charley bought Gad’s Hill Place after his father died, and then Mekitty’s family moved there. It must have been an idyllic place to grow up, surrounded by farmer’s fields and the Kentish hills, with the moors and river Medway in the distance. After a time, Charley got tired of constantly commuting by train to the office of All the Year Round in London, so the family moved back to town.
Most of the photos of Mekitty at a young age are rather blurry and indistinct. I believe this to be a photo of her with her mother, “Bessie” Dickens. Since she was born in October, 1862, it is likely that this photo was taken some time in 1863. Bessie’s outfit is lovely, and the elaborate embroidery is typical of the mid-1860s era.
Here is an image I found on Wikipedia. The original photo was published in an article by Mary Angela Dickens called, “A Child’s Memories of Gad’s Hill,” from The Strand Magazine, Vol. XIII, February 1887, pp. 69-74. In the article, the photo is credited to Mason & Co., Old Bond Street. You can read the magazine article on archive.org. Wouldn’t it be fun to know the name of the picture book she is reading?
Since none of the photos of young Mekitty are of high quality, I decided to use Photoshop to “reverse age” a portrait of her, painted by Mekitty’s aunt, and Charles Dickens’ youngest daughter, Kate (or Katey) Dickens Collins Perugini. Kate’s first husband was Charles Collins, but after he died, she married an artist named Carlo Perugini. Kate Perugini was quite an accomplished portrait painter, and she attained membership in the British Society of Lady Artists.
You can see the results of my retouching in the header for this post. The image on the left of six-year-old Mekitty which I altered is next to the original painting by Kate Perugini. Her honey-brown hair is pulled back from the forehead in a popular style of the time, sometimes called the “Alice” hairstyle, à la Alice in Wonderland (first published in 1865). She wears a square-necked frock, a common style for the 1860s. I think she would have been quite a charming child.
From what I have read about Charles Dickens, he was obsessed with neatness in appearance, and I suspect that he could have been passed this tendency on to his children and/or grandchildren. If you look at the photo in the header image from 1900, Mary Angela is wearing a turn-of-the-century women’s shirtwaist with a stiff collar and bow tie. Her hair is styled in the popular “Gibson Girl” manner. She looks very prim and proper to me, which makes me think she inherited the “neatness” gene from her grandfather. The original version of this photo of Mary Angela Dickens from Wikipedia was quite grainy, so I used the magic of Photoshop to add color and detail.
I wish I knew more about Mary Angela’s personal life. The research I intend to do for my book includes hunting up as many of her published articles and books as I can find online, to see if I can glean any insights into her personality. Not that A Tale of Two Hittys will be in any way a biography, but I would like to stay true to her spirit with the character of Mekitty. If any readers of this blog have more information about Mary Angela Dickens, feel free to contact me.
