What do Bah Humbug, Uriah Heap, and flummox, have in common?

The same thing that the words, boredom, butterfingers, Devil-may-care, the creeps, sawbones, abuzz, and doormat have in common.

And the Jeopardy answer is: Who is Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens made up the words, Bah Humbug, Uriah Heap, and flummox. The others were existing words that Dickens popularized.

Charles Dickens is one of the most celebrated authors of all time. Few among us haven’t read or seen on stage or film,  A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and/or A Tale of Two Cities.  Unlike many other writers, Dickens was famous in his own time, and his influence on Victorian society was profound. Despite his fame, he was a humble man whose early life was marked by poverty and hardship. He never forgot the struggles of the working class and later used his celebrity to advocate for social change.

Neither did Dickens take himself too seriously. Three statues have been created in his image since his death, but Dickens himself requested in his will that no public monuments be erected in his honor as he preferred to be remembered through his work.

Photo: Dickens with Turk. Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons

That, he is. Dogs often had significant roles in the writings of Dickens who used them as extensions of their owners, or as symbols of societal issues.  However much we hated Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist,  his attempts to drown his Bull Terrier, Bull’s-eye, made us hate him even more.  And then there was Boxer, the dog from The Cricket on the Hearth, and the spaniel, Jip, from David Copperfield.

There were more.

Charles Dickens revealed his grasp of a dog’s love, devotion, and individual quirks borne of an understanding gained through personal experience. He wrote the following in “A Christmas Carol:”

“Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!'” 

There is a legend floating around that Dickens owned a Havanese named Tim, but we’ve not found definitive proof of this, let alone that the dog had a connection to the character, Tiny Tim.

What is known with more certainty is that Dickens owned several dogs, including two Newfoundlands, a Mastiff named, “Turk” who showed up in some of Dickens’ writings including, “The Mortals in the House,” and a Pomeranian named, “Mrs Bouncer.” The Pom was actually given to his daughter, Mamie, but she was still a significant part of Dickens’ home life known for her lively personality and interactions with the larger dogs in the family. Dickens’ Saint Bernard,  “Linda,” was famous for giving her owner a warm welcome each and every time he came home. Indeed, when Dickens returned to England from America in 1868,  he wrote to his publisher, James Fields: “Linda was greatly excited, weeping profusely, and throwing herself on her back that she might caress my foot with her great fore-paws.” It was Fields who described Charles Dickens’ home as having “quite a colony of dogs,”

Dickens’ interest in dogs was essential to his creative process. It’s said that he often kept images of dogs near his writing desk which hints that his dogs were not just companion pets, but inspirations that symbolized themes of loyalty, devotion,