Later Years
In Melbourne on 22 June 1888 Alfred married again, his new wife, Emily Riley (1863–1913), being 17 years his junior. The marriage was not a happy one, and there were no children. Severely hit financially when depression hit Victoria in the early 1890s, Alfred began to tour Australia giving lectures about his father's life and work. From 1910 he gave the lectures in Europe and America, in that year returning to Great Britain for the first time since 1865. He became the Vice President of the Dickens Fellowship.
While touring America in 1912 as a guest of honour during the Dickens Centennial celebrations, Dickens was taken ill at noon while strolling in the lobby of his hotel, the Astor Hotel in New York. Taking to his bed, he slept for a while and then awoke and dictated a letter to one of his daughters in Australia explaining that his sudden illness had required him to cancel one of his speaking engagements. He died at 5.15 p.m. in his suite at the Astor Hotel of acute indigestion after a few hours illness.
He was buried in Trinity Church Cemetery in Manhattan on 14 April 1912 in a plot donated by the Trinity Corporation after his sister, Kate Perugini, had been contacted in London concerning the funeral arrangements. It had originally been thought that his body would be returned to England for burial. The funeral was attended by members of the American Dickens League, the Dickens Centenary Committee and other groups. In 1935 a permanent headstone of Barre, Vermont granite was placed at the grave, the funds for which were collected by the children of the Church School of the Chapel of the Intercession. The lettering on the headstone is believed to be the same as that on Charles Dickens's grave in Westminster Abbey in London.
His brother, Henry Fielding Dickens, wrote of him "He had been quite a stranger to the family from the time he went to Australia. He left two daughters, who came over to this country some years ago, and remain great favourites with all of us."
Every year at Christmas the congregation from the Episcopal Church across the street process to Dickens's grave, with the children carrying a lit candle. Gathering around the grave, the congregation sing several Christmas carols, led by the church choir. The tradition continues to this day.
His name appears with those of his nine siblings on the monument next to his mother's grave in Highgate Cemetery in London.
Read more about this topic: Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“It would astonish if not amuse, the older citizens of your County who twelve years ago knew me a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flat boat—at ten dollars per month to learn that I have been put down here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“But to wish is first to think,
And to think is to be dumb,
And barren of a word to drop
That to a milder shore might come
And, years ahead, erect a crop.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)