It might seem curious enough that Francis J. (Frank) Dickens, son of England’s most-acclaimed Victorian-era writer, Charles Dickens, was buried nearly 120 years ago in a cemetery in the heart of Midwestern farm country.
“People want to know the story behind it when they learn he’s here, that’s for sure,” said Todd Slater, manager of Riverside Cemetery — a hilly resting spot with a commanding view of the Mississippi River. “I mean, really: The son’s in Moline and the dad’s in Westminster Abbey. My golly, what’s that about?”
As it turns out, there are — like something from his father’s novels — two tales about Francis Dickens’ life before arriving here.
The most publicized in these parts is that of his danger-filled career in Canadian law enforcement, a period in which he faced some of the most combative Indians to roam North American plains. He won medals, received promotions and attended important treaty signings.
But there is also a story of failure in which Dickens, penniless after squandering his inheritance, went further into debt on a desperate Chicago visit. In ill health and as a last resort, he came to Moline simply to capitalize on the family name as a lecturer.
“The entire Dickens family was one of the most dysfunctional in literature and that’s fact,” said Sidney P. Moss, retired English professor at Southern Illinois University and co-author of the book “Charles Dickens & His Chicago Relatives.” “No one would even know about Frank if he hadn’t been Dickens’ son. That happens a lot in second generations.”
The 42-year-old Dickens came to Moline in 1886 as the guest of A.W. Jamieson, a local physician he met earlier that year in Canada, and he died a few days later on June 11 of an apparent heart attack. Dickens was set to lecture on life as a police officer in Canada’s western territories, where he was a member of what became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Three years ago this September, in an event Slater said probably was the most attention lavished on Dickens since his death, five Royal Canadian Mounted Police dedicated a new headstone next to the original, weather-beaten marker. “We take care of our own,” Inspector Daun Miller told the Moline Dispatch at the time.
The ceremony was dignified and respectful. In addition to Mounties, it included bagpipers, buglers, Dickens Fellowship members from as far away as New York, elected officials and Canadian clergyman David J. Carter, author of a book about the honoree.
Francis Jeffrey Dickens was the fifth of 10 children for Charles Dickens and his wife, Catherine. He was born in London in 1844, three weeks after the great success of his father’s “A Christmas Carol.”
The famous writer nicknamed his son “Chickenstalker,” a name that would appear in a later Christmas book, “The Chimes.” He is also referred to as the “`Christmas Carol’ baby.”
If there is evidence Frank Dickens failed to live up to expectations, it would be that his original marker and funeral expenses in Moline got paid by local citizens taking up a collection. His parents were dead and surviving siblings, informed of his passing, told Jamieson to bury their brother — a lifelong bachelor — where he died.
Dickens’ grave is not far from that of John Deere’s, the town’s most famous citizen, who died only three weeks earlier in 1886. But the Englishman’s final resting spot is in the cemetery’s old pauper section and, according to Slater, no interest in upkeep ever was shown by anyone in the family tree.
“Every once in a while I’ll get a call from someone in the Dickens Society or the Dickens Fellowship [separate groups] who’ll say they’re going to be in the area and they want the location,” he said. “Those people can be fanatical, but they’re all that seem interested. People around here don’t know much about him except for his Canada years.”
Carter, author of “Inspector F.J. Dickens of the North-West Mounted Police,” said Dickens was penniless and awaiting word on a pension from the Canadian government when he arrived in Moline, where he hoped to make a name for himself on the U.S. lecture circuit. This would’ve been a challenge: Dickens had a lifelong stutter and his law enforcement discharge papers described him as “quite deaf.”
By then, Carter said, he had failed at becoming a doctor, lost a job on his father’s own magazine, served an undistinguished stint in India’s Bengal Mounted Police and, after his father died in 1870, blew his inheritance. He used family influence to get a sub-inspector’s post in Canada’s then North-West Mounted Police, where he spent 12 years.
He fought in skirmishes with Indians in Canada and encountered Sitting Bull — peacefully — following the great Sioux chief’s victory at Little Big Horn. He was in a Mountie party that captured Chief Big Bear, a fugitive.
Some scholars say Dickens was an alcoholic, like other family members, but Carter says there is nothing in his military record to show drunkenness. This doesn’t jibe with a Chicago Tribune account of a stop he made in the Windy City en route from Canada to Moline.
In this story, Dickens was said to have worked his way east after his discharge by partying away $5,000 he received selling land awarded by the Canadian government. When he arrived in Chicago, his drinking (alcohol was called “Fleet Street microbes” in the article) and gambling left him broke.
He sponged off old military buddies in Chicago, it was reported, and made one final push: He took $200 for his watch, a family heirloom, and tried the gambling tables to parlay enough money for a return to London. He failed, then decided to go to Moline and take advantage of Jamieson’s hospitality.
Moss said there are no other accounts of a Dickens stop in Chicago, but he did have relatives there to contact. He pointed out there was considerable anti-Dickens sentiment in the U.S. in the 1800s, especially in Chicago and in the Tribune.
“They were very upset for years over his father not coming to Chicago on his American visits,” Moss said, “and, in general, a lot of Americans didn’t like the way he portrayed them when he toured. Sometimes a reporter would take one little thing no else knew and make it into a big story. We’ll probably never know.”
In Riverside Cemetery, two stones now mark Frank Dickens’ grave since the Canadian police added their memorial. Both note he was the son of Charles Dickens, but the only hint of an unfulfilled life may be the inscription on the original marker:
“Take ye heed, watch and pray for ye know not when the time is.”
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mconklin@tribune.com
