English
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
Tiny Tim and Bob Cratchit, 1934
Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, December 15, 1934
Oil on canvas
Private Collection
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
This all goes back before I was nine because I moved out of New York when I was nine. But even then, my father in the evenings used to read us Dickens. I don’t remember he ever read us anything but Dickens, Charles Dickens, and this went on until … Oh, I must have been 15 or 16, I guess, when I went to art school. He always read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Dombey and Sons, all of Dickens.
This, I think, had a real influence on my life. I remember down in New York, this was before I was nine, in the evening we’d go in the dining room after supper, and we’d sit around the table, and I’d do my homework. After we got the homework done, my father would get out the Dickens and I’d listen and then I would draw pictures of them somewhere. I think they’re lost now, but I did pictures of Mr. Pickwick and Oliver Twist. They were pretty crude, but even then I was trying to illustrate these things and I remember how impressed and how saddened I was with the sad parts of Dicken’s. I remember the Tale of Two Cities, and, oh, all of those things. They had a very deep impression on me.
I remember some friends of my mother’s and father’s, their age, one day said that they thought it was an awful thing to read Dickens to such young children, I mean, because of the things that happens in Dickens, but my mother and father, they stoutly defended the idea and I’m sure never did mean any harm. But I remember how I [inaudible] with Little Dorritt and The Old Curiosity Shop, and I wasn’t critical at all. I just enjoyed it and I really loved those evenings when my father would read us Dickens.