On Literary Crushes

This week’s post is pretty silly, and I apologize for it in advance, but it’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while. As a young teenager, when my contemporaries were salivating over pictures of Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy torn from issues of Tiger Beat, I kept my fantasy love life to myself–and for very good reason. Of course, what’s not to like about either Bobby or David when you’re a fourteen-year-old girl in the 1970s? They held my passing interest: they were good for a few daydreams, certainly. But my real crush during my teenage years was someone I couldn’t tell anyone about: Charles Dickens.

Yes, I know. That’s incredibly weird. And, really, who would  find this guy hot?

There’s something about that beard that’s distinctly off-putting, right? It looks like a box jellyfish mated with a piece of steel wool and the result crawled onto a man’s chin to die. But take a look at Dickens’s eyes. They seem vulnerable, staring at the camera in an honest and inquisitive gaze. At the same time, there’s something about them that denotes pain and weariness as well. It’s an interesting photograph of a man who peopled an entire world with his creations. In fact, you can see many of those creations in this famous picture that payed homage  to  Dickens’s  imagination:

This large painting–a water color entitled “Dickens’s Dream”–was painted by Robert William Buss and left unfinished at the time of the painter’s death. It now hangs in  the Charles Dickens Museum in London. It’s a fascinating portrait of the famous writer, daydreaming with all of his characters swarming around him in his study. This is the Dickens we all think of when we’re reading Bleak House and Dombey and Son.

However, this is not the Dickens I yearned after. My youthful crush was the young Dickens, the brilliant fellow who produced Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist. That young man looked something like this:

Pretty nice-looking guy, right? Huge eyes, a nicely formed mouth–and that hair! Here’s another nice picture of my teen crush, this one by Dickens’s friend, artist Daniel Maclise:

For a number of reasons, I fell for this guy–hard enough to make me remember him when I was in graduate school and switch my focus from Comparative Literature (pardonez-moi, Mme Alcover; je suis desolée!) to English Literature, with an emphasis on Victorian novels.

And how do I feel these days about Charles Dickens, now that I’m not young any more? He’s no longer my hero; these days I realize he was by no means perfect, not as a husband, nor as a father, nor even as a novelist. But I love Dickens all the same. It’s true that he’s not the guy I thought he was. But then again, neither were David Cassidy or Bobby Sherman.

I’m wondering if this matter of literary crushes is as uncommon as I think it is, or if there are other people out there who may have had a similar experience. Please send in a comment, if so.

And now, I’ll end by pointing out that the actor and writer Harry Lloyd, who played Viserys Targaryen in the Game of Thrones television series, is actually the great-great-great grandson of Charles Dickens. Take a look below and see if you detect a resemblance to his famous ancestor.