The Hoax about when Dostoevsky met Dickens: Why did people believe it?

For some years, serious people believed the hoax that Dostoevsky and Dickens had had a chance encounter in which, Dostoevsky was said to have later reported, Dickens had confided that “There were two people in him, he told me: one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite. From the one who feels the opposite I make my evil characters, from the one who feels as a man ought to feel I try to live my life. ‘Only two people?’ I [Dostoevsky] asked.” (For a discussion of the hoax, per se, see Eric Naiman’s “When Dickens met Dostoevsky” in The Times Literary Supplement of 10 April 2013.)

Dostoevsky’s alleged punch line—“Only two people?“—is funny, because, in response to Dickens’s confession of having multiple personality, Dostoevsky, rather than expressing surprise, implies that writers like they are would certainly have more than just two personalities.

People believed the hoax, because they agree with this blog, at least subconsciously.