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diff --git a/22362-h/22362-h.htm b/22362-h/22362-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fcbf6c --- /dev/null +++ b/22362-h/22362-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7343 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Lane.], by G. K. Chesterton. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + a {text-decoration:none; color:blue;} + a:visited {color:gray;} + body {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%;} + h1,h2,h3 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + h3 {margin:0 auto 0 auto;} + hr {width:65%; margin:2em auto 2em auto; clear:both; text-align:center;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + img {border: 1px solid black;} + ins.corr {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin dotted gray;} + p {margin-top:.75em; text-align:justify; margin-bottom:.75em; text-indent:1.5em;} + p.noin {text-indent:0;} + table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + ul.off {list-style-type:none;} + .b {font-weight:bold;} + .bl {border-left:solid 2px;} + .blurb {padding:1em 1em 1em 1em; margin:auto 20% auto 20%; border:2px ridge gray; font-family:sans-serif; font-size:80%;} + .c {text-align:center;} + .caption {font-weight:bold; font-size:75%;} + .figcenter {margin:auto; text-align:center;} + .i {font-style:italic;} + .pagenum {position:absolute; left:95%; font-style:normal; font-size:smaller; text-align:right; text-indent:0;} + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align:left;} + .poem br {display:none;} + .poem .stanza {margin:1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display:block; margin-left:0em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display:block; margin-left:2em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display:block; margin-left:4em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .poem span.i8 {display:block; margin-left:8em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .ralign {position:absolute; right:20%; text-align:right;} + .sc {font-variant: small-caps;} + .sf30 {font-size:30%;} + .sf50 {font-size:50%;} + .sf75 {font-size:75%;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works +of Charles Dickens, by G. K. Chesterton + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + +Release Date: August 20, 2007 [EBook #22362] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKENS *** + + + + +Produced by Sigal Alon, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;"><a name="CD1840" id="CD1840"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1840.jpg" width="365" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, Circa 1840<br /> +From an oil painting by R. J. Lane.</span></div> + +<h1 class='sc'>APPRECIATIONS AND CRITICISMS of the works of CHARLES DICKENS<br /> + +<span class='sf30'>BY</span><br /> + +<span class='sf50'>G. K. CHESTERTON</span></h1> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 93px;"> +<img src="images/illus-logo.png" width="93" height="150" alt="" title="" /></div> + +<p class='c noin'><span class='sf75'>1911</span><br /> +<span class='sc'>London: J. M. DENT & SONS, Ltd.<br /> +New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO.</span></p> + +<p class='c i noin'>All rights reserved</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></p> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + +<ul class='off'><li>CHAPTER <span class="ralign">PAGE</span></li></ul> + +<ol style='list-style-type:upper-roman'> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">Introduction</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_vii">vii</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#SKETCHES">Sketches by Boz</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#PICKWICK">Pickwick Papers</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#NICHOLAS">Nicholas Nickleby</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#OLIVER">Oliver Twist</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_38">38</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CURIOSITY">Old Curiosity Shop</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#BARNABY">Barnaby Rudge</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#AMERICAN">American Notes</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#ITALY">Pictures from Italy</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_87">87</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CHUZZLEWIT">Martin Chuzzlewit</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CHRISTMAS_BOOKS">Christmas Books</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#DOMBEY">Dombey and Son</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_114">114</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#COPPERFIELD">David Copperfield</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CHRISTMAS_STORIES">Christmas Stories</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#BLEAK">Bleak House</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#HISTORY">Child’s History of England</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#HARD_TIMES">Hard Times</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#DORRIT">Little Dorrit</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#TWO_CITIES">A Tale of Two Cities</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#EXPECTATIONS">Great Expectations</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_197">197</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#MUTUAL">Our Mutual Friend</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#DROOD">Edwin Drood</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#HUMPHREY">Master Humphrey’s Clock</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></span></li> +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#REPRINTED">Reprinted Pieces</a></span> <span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></span></li></ol> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></p> +<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + +<ul class='off'><li><span class="ralign sf50">PAGE</span><br /></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1840">Charles Dickens, Circa 1840</a></span> <span class="ralign"><i>Frontispiece</i></span> +<ul class='off'><li>From an oil painting by R. J. Lane.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1842">Charles Dickens, 1842</a></span> <span class="ralign">76</span> +<ul class='off'><li>From a bust by H. Dexter, executed during Dickens’s first +visit to America.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1844">Charles Dickens, 1844</a></span> <span class="ralign">90</span> +<ul class='off'><li>From a miniature by Margaret Gillies.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1849">Charles Dickens, 1849</a></span> <span class="ralign">130</span> +<ul class='off'><li>From a daguerreotype by Mayall.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1858">Charles Dickens, 1858</a></span> <span class="ralign">184</span> +<ul class='off'><li>From a black and white drawing by Baughiet.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1859">Charles Dickens, 1859</a></span> <span class="ralign">188</span> +<ul class='off'><li>From an oil painting by W. P. Frith, R.A.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1860">Charles Dickens, Circa 1860</a></span> <span class="ralign">198</span> +<ul class='off'><li>Photograph by J. & C. Watkins.</li></ul></li> + +<li><span class="sc"><a href="#CD1868">Charles Dickens, 1868</a></span> <span class="ralign">218</span> +<ul class='off'><li>From a photograph by Gurney.</li></ul></li></ul> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></p> +<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2> + +<p>These papers were originally published as prefaces to the separate books +of Dickens in one of the most extensive of those cheap libraries of the +classics which are one of the real improvements of recent times. Thus +they were harmless, being diluted by, or rather drowned in Dickens. My +scrap of theory was a mere dry biscuit to be taken with the grand tawny +port of great English comedy; and by most people it was not taken at +all—like the biscuit. Nevertheless the essays were not in intention so +aimless as they appear in fact. I had a general notion of what needed +saying about Dickens to the new generation, though probably I did not +say it. I will make another attempt to do so in this prologue, and, +possibly fail again.</p> + +<p>There was a painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we +watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading from the modern +world. We have watched a little longer, and with great relief we begin +to realise that it is the modern world that is fading. All that universe +of ranks and respectabilities in comparison with which Dickens was +called a caricaturist, all that Victorian universe in which he seemed +vulgar—all that is itself breaking up like a cloudland. And only the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span> +caricatures of Dickens remain like things carved in stone. This, of +course, is an old story in the case of a man reproached with any excess +of the poetic. Again and again when the man of visions was pinned by the +sly dog who knows the world,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“The man recovered of the bite,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dog it was that died.”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To call Thackeray a cynic, which means a sly dog, was indeed absurd; but +it is fair to say that in comparison with Dickens he felt himself a man +of the world. Nevertheless, that world of which he was a man is coming +to an end before our eyes; its aristocracy has grown corrupt, its middle +class insecure, and things that he never thought of are walking about +the drawing-rooms of both. Thackeray has described for ever the +Anglo-Indian Colonel; but what on earth would he have done with an +Australian Colonel? What can it matter whether Dickens’s clerks +talked cockney now that half the duchesses talk American? What would +Thackeray have made of an age in which a man in the position of Lord Kew +may actually be the born brother of Mr. Moss of Wardour Street? Nor does +this apply merely to Thackeray, but to all those Victorians who prided +themselves on the realism or sobriety of their descriptions; it applies +to Anthony Trollope and, as much as any one, to George Eliot. For we +have not only survived that present which Thackeray described: we have +even survived that future to which George Eliot looked forward. It is no +longer adequate to say that Dickens did not understand that old world of +gentility, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span> +of parliamentary politeness and the balance of the +constitution. That world is rapidly ceasing to understand itself. It is +vain to repeat the complaint of the old Quarterly Reviewers, that +Dickens had not enjoyed a university education. What would the old +Quarterly Reviewers themselves have thought of the Rhodes Scholarships? +It is useless to repeat the old tag that Dickens could not describe a +gentleman. A gentleman in our time has become something quite +indescribable.</p> + +<p>Now the interesting fact is this: That Dickens, whom so many considered +to be at the best a vulgar enthusiast, saw the coming change in our +society much more soberly and scientifically than did his better +educated and more pretentious contemporaries. I give but one example out +of many. Thackeray was a good Victorian radical, who seems to have gone +to his grave quite contented with the early Victorian radical +theory—the theory which Macaulay preached with unparalleled luminosity +and completeness; the theory that true progress goes on so steadily +through human history, that while reaction is indefensible, revolution +is unnecessary. Thackeray seems to have been quite content to think that +the world would grow more and more liberal in the limited sense; that +Free Trade would get freer; that ballot boxes would grow more and more +secret; that at last (as some satirist of Liberalism puts it) every man +would have two votes instead of one. There is no trace in Thackeray of +the slightest consciousness that progress could ever change its +direction. There is in Dickens. The whole of <i>Hard Times</i> is the +expression of just such a realisation. It is not true to say that +Dickens was a Socialist, but it is not absurd <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> +to say so. And it would be simply absurd to say it of any of the great +Individualist novelists of the Victorian time. Dickens saw far enough +ahead to know that the time was coming when the people would be +imploring the State to save them from mere freedom, as from some +frightful foreign oppressor. He felt the society changing; and Thackeray +never did.</p> + +<p>As talking about Socialism and Individualism is one of the greatest +bores ever endured among men, I will take another instance to illustrate +my meaning, even though the instance be a queer and even a delicate one. +Even if the reader does not agree with my deduction, I ask his attention +to the fact itself, which I think a curiosity of literature. In the last +important work of Dickens, that excellent book <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, +there is an odd thing about which I cannot make up my mind; I do not +know whether it is unconscious observation or fiendish irony. But it is +this. In <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is an old patriarch named Aaron, who is a +saintly Jew made to do the dirty work of an abominable Christian usurer. +In an artistic sense I think the patriarch Aaron as much of a humbug as +the patriarch Casby. In a moral sense there is no doubt at all that +Dickens introduced the Jew with a philanthropic idea of doing justice to +Judaism, which he was told he had affronted by the great gargoyle of +Fagin. If this was his motive, it was morally a most worthy one. But it +is certainly unfortunate for the Hebrew cause that the bad Jew should be +so very much more convincing than the good one. Old Aaron is not an +exaggeration of Jewish virtues; he is simply not Jewish, because he is +not human. There is nothing about him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span> +that in any way suggests the nobler sort of Jew, such a man as Spinoza +or Mr. Zangwill. He is simply a public apology, and like most public +apologies, he is very stiff and not very convincing.</p> + +<p>So far so good. Now we come to the funny part. To describe the high +visionary and mystic Jew like Spinoza or Zangwill is a great and +delicate task in which even Dickens might have failed. But most of us +know something of the make and manners of the low Jew, who is generally +the successful one. Most of us know the Jew who calls himself De +Valancourt. Now to any one who knows a low Jew by sight or hearing, the +story called <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is literally full of Jews. Like all +Dickens’s best characters they are vivid; we know them. And we +know them to be Hebrew. Mr. Veneering, the Man from Nowhere, dark, +sphinx-like, smiling, with black curling hair, and a taste in florid +vulgar furniture—of what stock was he? Mr. Lammle, with “too much +nose in his face, too much ginger in his whiskers, too much sparkle in +his studs and manners”—of what blood was he? Mr. Lammle’s +friends, coarse and thick-lipped, with fingers so covered with rings +that they could hardly hold their gold pencils—do they remind us of +anybody? Mr. Fledgeby, with his little ugly eyes and social flashiness +and craven bodily servility—might not some fanatic like M. Drumont make +interesting conjectures about him? The particular types that people hate +in Jewry, the types that are the shame of all good Jews, absolutely run +riot in this book, which is supposed to contain an apology to them. It +looks at first sight as if Dickens’s apology were one hideous +sneer. It looks as if he put <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span> +in one good Jew whom nobody could believe in, and then balanced him +with ten bad Jews whom nobody could fail to recognise. It seems as if he +had avenged himself for the doubt about Fagin by introducing five or six +Fagins—triumphant Fagins, fashionable Fagins, Fagins who had +changed their names. The impeccable old Aaron stands up in the middle of +this ironic carnival with a peculiar solemnity and silliness. He looks +like one particularly stupid Englishman pretending to be a Jew, amidst +all that crowd of clever Jews who are pretending to be Englishmen.</p> + +<p>But this notion of a sneer is not admissible. Dickens was far too frank +and generous a writer to employ such an elaborate plot of silence. His +satire was always intended to attack, never to entrap; moreover, he was +far too vain a man not to wish the crowd to see all his jokes. Vanity is +more divine than pride, because it is more democratic than pride. Third, +and most important, Dickens was a good Liberal, and would have been +horrified at the notion of making so venomous a vendetta against one +race or creed. Nevertheless the fact is there, as I say, if only as a +curiosity of literature. I defy any man to read through <i>Our Mutual +Friend</i> after hearing this suggestion, and to get out of his head the +conviction that Lammle is the wrong kind of Jew. The explanation lies, I +think, in this, that Dickens was so wonderfully sensitive to that change +that has come over our society, that he noticed the type of the oriental +and cosmopolitan financier without even knowing that it was oriental or +cosmopolitan. He had, in fact, fallen a victim to a very simple fallacy +affecting this problem. Somebody said, with great wit and truth, that +treason <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span> +cannot prosper, because when it prospers it cannot be called treason. +The same argument soothed all possible Anti-Semitism in men like +Dickens. Jews cannot be sneaks and snobs, because when they are sneaks +and snobs they do not admit that they are Jews.</p> + +<p>I have taken this case of the growth of the cosmopolitan financier, +because it is not so stale in discussion as its parallel, the growth of +Socialism. But as regards Dickens, the same criticism applies to both. +Dickens knew that Socialism was coming, though he did not know its name. +Similarly, Dickens knew that the South African millionaire was coming, +though he did not know the millionaire’s name. Nobody does. His +was not a type of mind to disentangle either the abstract truths +touching the Socialist, nor the highly personal truth about the +millionaire. He was a man of impressions; he has never been equalled in +the art of conveying what a man looks like at first sight—and he simply +felt the two things as atmospheric facts. He felt that the mercantile +power was oppressive, past all bearing by Christian men; and he felt +that this power was no longer wholly in the hands even of heavy English +merchants like Podsnap. It was largely in the hands of a feverish and +unfamiliar type, like Lammle and Veneering. The fact that he felt these +things is almost more impressive because he did not understand them.</p> + +<p>Now for this reason Dickens must definitely be considered in the light +of the changes which his soul foresaw. Thackeray has become classical; +but Dickens has done more: he has remained modern. The grand +retrospective spirit of Thackeray is by its nature +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span> +attached to places and times; he belongs to Queen Victoria as much as +Addison belongs to Queen Anne, and it is not only Queen Anne who is +dead. But Dickens, in a dark prophetic kind of way, belongs to the +developments. He belongs to the times since his death when Hard Times +grew harder, and when Veneering became not only a Member of Parliament, +but a Cabinet Minister; the times when the very soul and spirit of +Fledgeby carried war into Africa. Dickens can be criticised as a +contemporary of Bernard Shaw or Anatole France or C. F. G. Masterman. In +talking of him one need no longer talk merely of the Manchester School +or Puseyism or the Charge of the Light Brigade; his name comes to the +tongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or +County Council Steam Boats or Guilds of Play. He can be considered under +new lights, some larger and some meaner than his own; and it is a very +rough effort so to consider him which is the excuse of these pages. Of +the essays in this book I desire to say as little as possible; I will +discuss any other subject in preference with a readiness which reaches +to avidity. But I may very curtly apply the explanation used above to +the cases of two or three of them. Thus in the article on <i>David +Copperfield</i> I have done far less than justice to that fine book +considered in its relation to eternal literature; but I have dwelt at +some length upon a particular element in it which has grown enormous in +England after Dickens’s death. Thus again, in introducing the +<i>Sketches by Boz</i> I have felt chiefly that I am introducing them to a +new generation insufficiently in sympathy with such palpable and +unsophisticated fun. A Board School education, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span> +evolved since Dickens’s day, has given to our people a queer and +inadequate sort of refinement, one which prevents them from enjoying the +raw jests of the <i>Sketches by Boz</i>, but leaves them easily open to that +slight but poisonous sentimentalism which I note amid all the merits of +David Copperfield. In the same way I shall speak of <i>Little Dorrit</i>, +with reference to a school of pessimistic fiction which did not exist +when it was written, of <i>Hard Times</i> in the light of the most modern +crises of economics, and of <i>The Child’s History of England</i> in +the light of the most matured authority of history. In short, these +criticisms are an intrinsically ephemeral comment from one generation +upon work that will delight many more. Dickens was a very great man, and +there are many ways of testing and stating the fact. But one permissible +way is to say this, that he was an ignorant man, ill-read in the past, +and often confused about the present. Yet he remains great and true, and +even essentially reliable, if we suppose him to have known not only all +that went before his lifetime, but also all that was to come after.</p> + +<p>From this vanishing of the Victorian compromise (I might say the +Victorian illusion) there begins to emerge a menacing and even monstrous +thing—we may begin again to behold the English people. If that strange +dawn ever comes, it will be the final vindication of Dickens. It will be +proved that he is hardly even a caricaturist; that he is something very +like a realist. Those comic monstrosities which the critics found +incredible will be found to be the immense majority of the citizens of +this country. We shall find that Sweedlepipe cuts our hair and +Pumblechook sells <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span> +our cereals; that Sam Weller blacks our boots and +Tony Weller drives our omnibus. For the exaggerated notion of the +exaggerations of Dickens (as was admirably pointed out by my old friend +and enemy Mr. Blatchford in a <i>Clarion</i> review) is very largely due to +our mixing with only one social class, whose conventions are very +strict, and to whose affectations we are accustomed. In cabmen, in +cobblers, in charwomen, individuality is often pushed to the edge of +insanity. But as long as the Thackerayan platform of gentility stood +firm all this was, comparatively speaking, concealed. For the English, +of all nations, have the most uniform upper class and the most varied +democracy. In France it is the peasants who are solid to uniformity; it +is the marquises who are a little mad. But in England, while good form +restrains and levels the universities and the army, the poor people are +the most motley and amusing creatures in the world, full of humorous +affections and prejudices and twists of irony. Frenchmen tend to be +alike, because they are all soldiers; Prussians because they are all +something else, probably policemen; even Americans are all something, +though it is not easy to say what it is; it goes with hawk-like eyes and +an irrational eagerness. Perhaps it is savages. But two English cabmen +will be as grotesquely different as Mr. Weller and Mr. Wegg. Nor is it +true to say that I see this variety because it is in my own people. For +I do not see the same degree of variety in my own class or in the class +above it; there is more superficial resemblance between two Kensington +doctors or two Highland dukes. No; the democracy is really composed of +Dickens characters, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span> +for the simple reason that Dickens was himself one of the democracy.</p> + +<p>There remains one thing to be added to this attempt to exhibit Dickens +in the growing and changing lights of our time. God forbid that any one +(especially any Dickensian) should dilute or discourage the great +efforts towards social improvement. But I wish that social reformers +would more often remember that they are imposing their rules not on dots +and numbers, but on Bob Sawyer and Tim Linkinwater, on Mrs. Lirriper and +Dr. Marigold. I wish Mr. Sidney Webb would shut his eyes until he <i>sees</i> +Sam Weller.</p> + +<p>A great many circumstances have led to the neglect in literature of +these exuberant types which do actually exist in the ruder classes of +society. Perhaps the principal cause is that since Dickens’s time +the study of the poor has ceased to be an art and become a sort of sham +science. Dickens took the poor individually: all modern writing tends to +take them collectively. It is said that the modern realist produces a +photograph rather than a picture. But this is an inadequate objection. +The real trouble with the realist is not that he produces a photograph, +but that he produces a composite photograph. It is like all composite +photographs, blurred; like all composite photographs, hideous; and like +all composite photographs, unlike anything or anybody. The new +sociological novels, which attempt to describe the abstract type of the +working-classes, sin in practice against the first canon of literature, +true when all others are subject to exception. Literature must always be +a pointing out of what is interesting in life; but these books are +duller than the life they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span> +represent. Even supposing that Dickens did exaggerate the degree to +which one man differs from another—that was at least an +exaggeration upon the side of literature; it was better than a mere +attempt to reduce what is actually vivid and unmistakable to what is in +comparison colourless or unnoticeable. Even the creditable and necessary +efforts of our time in certain matters of social reform have discouraged +the old distinctive Dickens treatment. People are so anxious to do +something for the poor man that they have a sort of subconscious desire +to think that there is only one kind of man to do it for. Thus while the +old accounts were sometimes too steep and crazy, the new became too +sweeping and flat. People write about the problem of drink, for +instance, as if it were one problem. Dickens could have told them that +there is the abyss between heaven and hell between the incongruous +excesses of Mr. Pickwick and the fatalistic soaking of Mr. Wickfield. He +could have shown that there was nothing in common between the brandy and +water of Bob Sawyer and the rum and water of Mr. Stiggins. People talk +of imprudent marriages among the poor, as if it were all one question. +Dickens could have told them that it is one thing to marry without much +money, like Stephen Blackpool, and quite another to marry without the +smallest intention of ever trying to get any, like Harold Skimpole. +People talk about husbands in the working-classes being kind or brutal +to their wives, as if that was the one permanent problem and no other +possibility need be considered. Dickens could have told them that there +was the case (the by no means uncommon case) of the husband of Mrs. +Gargery as well as of the wife <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span> +of Mr. Quilp. In short, Dickens saw the problem of the poor not as a +dead and definite business, but as a living and very complex one. In +some ways he would be called much more conservative than the modern +sociologists, in some ways much more revolutionary.</p> + +<h3>LITTLE DORRIT</h3> + +<p>In the time of the decline and death of Dickens, and even more strongly +after it, there arose a school of criticism which substantially +maintained that a man wrote better when he was ill. It was some such +sentiment as this that made Mr. George Gissing, that able writer, come +near to contending that <i>Little Dorrit</i> is Dickens’s best book. It +was the principle of his philosophy to maintain (I know not why) that a +man was more likely to perceive the truth when in low spirits than when +in high spirits.</p> + +<h3>REPRINTED PIECES</h3> + +<p>The three articles on Sunday of which I speak are almost the last +expression of an articulate sort in English literature of the ancient +and existing morality of the English people. It is always asserted that +Puritanism came in with the seventeenth century and thoroughly soaked +and absorbed the English. We are now, it is constantly said, an +incurably Puritanic people. Personally, I have my doubts about this. I +shall not refuse to admit to the Puritans that they conquered and +crushed the English people; but I do not think that they ever +transformed it. My doubt <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span> +is chiefly derived from three historical facts. First, that England was +never so richly and recognisably English as in the Shakespearian age +before the Puritan had appeared. Second, that ever since he did appear +there has been a long unbroken line of brilliant and typical Englishmen +who belonged to the Shakespearian and not the Puritanic tradition; +Dryden, Johnson, Wilkes, Fox, Nelson, were hardly Puritans. And third, +that the real rise of a new, cold, and illiberal morality in these +matters seems to me to have occurred in the time of Queen Victoria, and +not of Queen Elizabeth. All things considered, it is likely that future +historians will say that the Puritans first really triumphed in the +twentieth century, and that Dickens was the last cry of Merry England.</p> + +<p>And about these additional, miscellaneous, and even inferior works of +Dickens there is, moreover, another use and fascination which all +Dickensians will understand; which, after a manner, is not for the +profane. All who love Dickens have a strange sense that he is really +inexhaustible. It is this fantastic infinity that divides him even from +the strongest and healthiest romantic artists of a later day—from +Stevenson, for example. I have read <i>Treasure Island</i> twenty times; +nevertheless I know it. But I do not really feel as if I knew all +<i>Pickwick</i>; I have not so much read it twenty times as read in it a +million times; and it almost seemed as if I always read something new. +We of the true faith look at each other and understand; yes, our master +was a magician. I believe the books are alive; I believe that leaves +still grow in them, as leaves grow on the trees. I believe that this +fairy library flourishes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</a></span> +and increases like a fairy forest: but the world is listening to us, +and we will put our hand upon our mouth.</p> + +<h3>OUR MUTUAL FRIEND</h3> + +<p>One thing at least seems certain. Dickens may or may not have been +socialist in his tendencies; one might quote on the affirmative side his +satire against Mr. Podsnap, who thought Centralisation +“un-English”; one might quote in reply the fact that he +satirised quite as unmercifully state and municipal officials of the +most modern type. But there is one condition of affairs which Dickens +would certainly have detested and denounced, and that is the condition +in which we actually stand to-day. At this moment it is vain to discuss +whether socialism will be a selling of men’s liberty for bread. +The men have already sold the liberty; only they have not yet got the +bread. A most incessant and exacting interference with the poor is +already in operation; they are already ruled like slaves, only they are +not fed like slaves. The children are forcibly provided with a school; +only they are not provided with a house. Officials give the most +detailed domestic directions about the fireguard; only they do not give +the fireguard. Officials bring round the most stringent directions about +the milk; only they do not bring round the milk. The situation is +perhaps the most humorous in the whole history of oppression. We force +the nigger to dig; but as a concession to him we do not give him a +spade. We compel Sambo to cook; but we consult his dignity so far as to +refuse him a fire.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</a></span> +This state of things at least cannot conceivably endure. We must either +give the workers more property and liberty, or we must feed them +properly as we work them properly. If we insist on sending the menu into +them, they will naturally send the bill into us. This may possibly +result (it is not my purpose here to prove that it will) in the drilling +of the English people into hordes of humanely herded serfs; and this +again may mean the fading from our consciousness of all those elves and +giants, monsters and fantastics whom we are faintly beginning to feel +and remember in the land. If this be so, the work of Dickens may be +considered as a great vision—a vision, as Swinburne said, between a +sleep and a sleep. It can be said that between the grey past of +territorial depression and the grey future of economic routine the +strange clouds lifted, and we beheld the land of the living.</p> + +<p>Lastly, Dickens is even astonishingly right about Eugene Wrayburne. So +far from reproaching him with not understanding a gentleman, the critic +will be astonished at the accuracy with which he has really observed the +worth and the weakness of the aristocrat. He is quite right when he +suggests that such a man has intelligence enough to despise the +invitations which he has not the energy to refuse. He is quite right +when he makes Eugene (like Mr. Balfour) constantly right in argument +even when he is obviously wrong in fact. Dickens is quite right when he +describes Eugene as capable of cultivating a sort of secondary and false +industry about anything that is not profitable; or pursuing with passion +anything that is not his business. He is quite right in making Eugene +honestly appreciative <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</a></span> +of essential goodness—in other people. He is quite right in +making him really good at the graceful combination of satire and +sentiment, both perfectly sincere. He is also right in indicating that +the only cure for this intellectual condition is a violent blow on the +head.</p> + +<h3>DAVID COPPERFIELD</h3> + +<p>The real achievement of the earlier part of <i>David Copperfield</i> lies in +a certain impression of the little Copperfield living in a land of +giants. It is at once Gargantuan in its fancy and grossly vivid in its +facts; like Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag when he describes +mountainous hands and faces filling the sky, bristles as big as hedges, +or moles as big as molehills. To him parents and guardians are not +Olympians (as in Mr. Kenneth Grahame’s clever book), mysterious +and dignified, dwelling upon a cloudy hill. Rather they are all the more +visible for being large. They come all the closer because they are +colossal. Their queer features and weaknesses stand out large in a sort +of gigantic domesticity, like the hairs and freckles of a +Brobdingnagian. We feel the sombre Murdstone coming upon the house like +a tall storm striding through the sky. We watch every pucker of +Peggotty’s peasant face in its moods of flinty prejudice or +whimsical hesitation. We look up and feel that Aunt Betsey in her garden +gloves was really terrible—especially her garden gloves. But one cannot +avoid the impression that as the boy grows larger these figures grow +smaller, and are not perhaps so completely satisfactory.</p> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</a></p> + +<h3>CHRISTMAS BOOKS</h3> + +<p>And there is doubtless a certain poetic unity and irony in gathering +together three or four of the crudest and most cocksure of the modern +theorists, with their shrill voices and metallic virtues, under the +fulness and the sonorous sanity of Christian bells. But the figures +satirised in <i>The Chimes</i> cross each other’s path and spoil each +other in some degree. The main purpose of the book was a protest against +that impudent and hard-hearted utilitarianism which arranges the people +only in rows of men or even in rows of figures. It is a flaming +denunciation of that strange mathematical morality which was twisted +often unfairly out of Bentham and Mill: a morality by which each citizen +must regard himself as a fraction, and a very vulgar fraction. Though +the particular form of this insolent patronage has changed, this revolt +and rebuke is still of value, and may be wholesome for those who are +teaching the poor to be provident. Doubtless it is a good idea to be +provident, in the sense that Providence is provident, but that should +mean being kind, and certainly not merely being cold.</p> + +<p><i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>, though popular, I think, with many sections +of the great army of Dickensians, cannot be spoken of in any such +abstract or serious terms. It is a brief domestic glimpse; it is an +interior. It must be remembered that Dickens was fond of interiors as +such; he was like a romantic tramp who should go from window to window +looking in at the parlours. He had that solid, indescribable delight in +the mere solidity and neatness of funny little humanity in its funny +little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</a></span> +houses, like doll’s houses. To him every house was a box, a +Christmas box, in which a dancing human doll was tied up in bricks and +slates instead of string and brown paper. He went from one gleaming +window to another, looking in at the lamp-lit parlours. Thus he stood +for a little while looking in at this cosy if commonplace interior of +the carrier and his wife; but he did not stand there very long. He was +on his way to quainter towns and villages. Already the plants were +sprouting upon the balcony of Miss Tox; and the great wind was rising +that flung Mr. Pecksniff against his own front door.</p> + +<h3>TALE OF TWO CITIES</h3> + +<p>It was well for him, at any rate, that the people rose in France. It was +well for him, at any rate, that the guillotine was set up in the Place +de la Concorde. Unconsciously, but not accidentally, Dickens was here +working out the whole true comparison between swift revolutionism in +Paris and slow evolutionism in London. Sidney Carton is one of those +sublime ascetics whose head offends them, and who cut it off. For him at +least it was better that the blood should flow in Paris than that the +wine should flow any longer in London. And if I say that even now the +guillotine might be the best cure for many a London lawyer, I ask you to +believe that I am not merely flippant. But you will not believe it.</p> + +<h3>BARNABY RUDGE</h3> + +<p>It may be said that there is no comparison between +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</a></span> +that explosive opening of the intellect in Paris and an antiquated +madman leading a knot of provincial Protestants. The Man of the Hill, +says Victor Hugo somewhere, fights for an idea; the Man of the Forest +for a prejudice. Nevertheless it remains true that the enemies of the +red cap long attempted to represent it as a sham decoration in the style +of Sim Tappertit. Long after the revolutionists had shown more than the +qualities of men, it was common among lords and lacqueys to attribute to +them the stagey and piratical pretentiousness of urchins. The kings +called Napoleon’s pistol a toy pistol even while it was holding up +their coach and mastering their money or their lives; they called his +sword a stage sword even while they ran away from it. Something of the +same senile inconsistency can be found in an English and American habit +common until recently: that of painting the South Americans at once as +ruffians wading in carnage, and also as poltroons playing at war. They +blame them first for the cruelty of having a fight; and then for the +weakness of having a sham fight. Such, however, since the French +Revolution and before it, has been the fatuous attitude of certain +Anglo-Saxons towards the whole revolutionary tradition. Sim Tappertit +was a sort of answer to everything; and the young men were mocked as +’prentices long after they were masters. The rising fortune of the +South American republics to-day is symbolical and even menacing of many +things; and it may be that the romance of riot will not be so much +extinguished as extended; and nearer home we may have boys being boys +again, and in London the cry of “clubs.”</p> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</a></p> + +<h3>THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER</h3> + +<p><i>The Uncommercial Traveller</i> is a collection of Dickens’s memories +rather than of his literary purposes; but it is due to him to say that +memory is often more startling in him than prophecy in anybody else. +They have the character which belongs to all his vivid incidental +writing: that they attach themselves always to some text which is a fact +rather than an idea. He was one of those sons of Eve who are fonder of +the Tree of Life than of the Tree of Knowledge—even of the knowledge of +good and of evil. He was in this profoundest sense a realist. Critics +have talked of an artist with his eye on the object. Dickens as an +essayist always had his eye on an object before he had the faintest +notion of a subject. All these works of his can best be considered as +letters; they are notes of personal travel, scribbles in a diary about +this or that that really happened. But Dickens was one of the few men +who have the two talents that are the whole of literature—and have them +both together. First, he could make a thing happen over again; and +second, he could make it happen better. He can be called exaggerative; +but mere exaggeration conveys nothing of his typical talent. Mere +whirlwinds of words, mere melodramas of earth and heaven do not affect +us as Dickens affects us, because they are exaggerations of nothing. If +asked for an exaggeration of something, their inventors would be +entirely dumb. They would not know how to exaggerate a broom-stick; for +the life of them they could not exaggerate a tenpenny nail. Dickens +always began with the nail or the broom-stick. He always +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</a></span> +began with a fact even when he was most fanciful; and even when he drew +the long bow he was careful to hit the white.</p> + +<p>This riotous realism of Dickens has its disadvantage—a disadvantage +that comes out more clearly in these casual sketches than in his +constructed romances. One grave defect in his greatness is that he was +altogether too indifferent to theories. On large matters he went right +by the very largeness of his mind; but in small matters he suffered from +the lack of any logical test and ready reckoner. Hence his comment upon +the details of civilisation or reform are sometimes apt to be jerky and +jarring, and even grossly inconsistent. So long as a thing was heroic +enough to admire, Dickens admired it; whenever it was absurd enough to +laugh at he laughed at it: so far he was on sure ground. But about all +the small human projects that lie between the extremes of the sublime +and the ridiculous, his criticism was apt to have an accidental quality. +As Matthew Arnold said of the remarks of the Young Man from the Country +about the perambulator, they are felt not to be at the heart of the +situation. On a great many occasions the Uncommercial Traveller seems, +like other hasty travellers, to be criticising elements and institutions +which he has quite inadequately understood; and once or twice the +Uncommercial Traveller might almost as well be a Commercial Traveller +for all he knows of the countryside.</p> + +<p>An instance of what I mean may be found in the amusing article about the +nightmares of the nursery. Superficially read it might almost be taken +to mean that Dickens disapproved of ghost stories—disapproved +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</a></span> +of that old and genial horror which nurses can hardly supply fast +enough for the children who want it. Dickens, one would have thought, +should have been the last man in the world to object to horrible +stories, having himself written some of the most horrible that exist in +the world. The author of the Madman’s Manuscript, of the disease +of Monk and the death of Krook, cannot be considered fastidious in the +matter of revolting realism or of revolting mysticism. If artistic +horror is to be kept from the young, it is at least as necessary to keep +little boys from reading <i>Pickwick</i> or <i>Bleak House</i> as to refrain from +telling them the story of Captain Murderer or the terrible tale of +Chips. If there was something appalling in the rhyme of Chips and pips +and ships, it was nothing compared to that infernal refrain of +“Mudstains, bloodstains” which Dickens himself, in one of +his highest moments of hellish art, put into <i>Oliver Twist</i>.</p> + +<p>I take this one instance of the excellent article called +“Nurse’s Stories” because it is quite typical of all +the rest. Dickens (accused of superficiality by those who cannot grasp +that there is foam upon deep seas) was really deep about human beings; +that is, he was original and creative about them. But about ideas he did +tend to be a little superficial. He judged them by whether they hit him, +and not by what they were trying to hit. Thus in this book the great +wizard of the Christmas ghosts seems almost the enemy of ghost stories; +thus the almost melodramatic moralist who created Ralph Nickleby and +Jonas Chuzzlewit cannot see the point in original sin; thus the great +denouncer of official oppression in England may be +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[xxx]</a></span> +found far too +indulgent to the basest aspects of the modern police. His theories were +less important than his creations, because he was a man of genius. But +he himself thought his theories the more important, because he was a +man.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></p> +<h2><a name="SKETCHES" id="SKETCHES"></a>SKETCHES BY BOZ</h2> + +<p>The greatest mystery about almost any great writer is why he was ever +allowed to write at all. The first efforts of eminent men are always +imitations; and very often they are bad imitations. The only question is +whether the publisher had (as his name would seem to imply) some +subconscious connection or sympathy with the public, and thus felt +instinctively the presence of something that might ultimately tell; or +whether the choice was merely a matter of chance and one Dickens was +chosen and another Dickens left. The fact is almost unquestionable: most +authors made their reputation by bad books and afterwards supported it +by good ones. This is in some degree true even in the case of Dickens. +The public continued to call him “Boz” long after the public +had forgotten the <i>Sketches by Boz</i>. Numberless writers of the time +speak of “Boz” as having written <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> and +“Boz” as having written <i>David Copperfield</i>. Yet if they had +gone back to the original book signed “Boz” they might even +have felt that it was vulgar and flippant. This is indeed the chief +tragedy of publishers: that they may easily refuse at the same moment +the wrong manuscript and the right man. It is easy to see of Dickens now +that he was the right man; but a man might have been very well excused +if he had not realised <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> +that the <i>Sketches</i> was the right book. Dickens, I say, is a case for +this primary query: whether there was in the first work any clear sign +of his higher creative spirit. But Dickens is much less a case for this +query than almost all the other great men of his period. The very +earliest works of Thackeray are much more unimpressive than those of +Dickens. Nay, they are much more vulgar than those of Dickens. And worst +of all, they are much more numerous than those of Dickens. Thackeray +came much nearer to being the ordinary literary failure than Dickens +ever came. Read some of the earliest criticisms of Mr. Yellowplush or +Michael Angelo Titmarsh and you will realise that at the very beginning +there was more potential clumsiness and silliness in Thackeray than +there ever was in Dickens. Nevertheless there was some potential +clumsiness and silliness in Dickens; and what there is of it appears +here and there in the admirable <i>Sketches by Boz</i>.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we may put the matter this way: this is the only one of +Dickens’s works of which it is ordinarily necessary to know the +date. To a close and delicate comprehension it is indeed very important +that <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> was written at the beginning of Dickens’s +life, and <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> towards the end of it. Nevertheless +anybody could understand or enjoy these books, whenever they were +written. If <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> was written in the Latin of the Dark +Ages we should still want it translated. If we thought that <i>Nicholas +Nickleby</i> would not be written until thirty years hence we should all +wait for it eagerly. The general impression produced by Dickens’s +work is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> +same as that produced by miraculous visions; it is the destruction of +time. Thomas Aquinas said that there was no time in the sight of God; +however this may be, there was no time in the sight of Dickens. As a +general rule Dickens can be read in any order; not only in any order of +books, but even in any order of chapters. In an average Dickens book +every part is so amusing and alive that you can read the parts +backwards; you can read the quarrel first and then the cause of the +quarrel; you can fall in love with a woman in the tenth chapter and then +turn back to the first chapter to find out who she is. This is not +chaos; it is eternity. It means merely that Dickens instinctively felt +all his figures to be immortal souls who existed whether he wrote of +them or not, and whether the reader read of them or not. There is a +peculiar quality as of celestial pre-existence about the Dickens +characters. Not only did they exist before we heard of them, they +existed also before Dickens heard of them. As a rule this unchangeable +air in Dickens deprives any discussion about date of its point. But as I +have said, this is the one Dickens work of which the date <i>is</i> +essential. It is really an important part of the criticism of this book +to say that it is his first book. Certain elements of clumsiness, of +obviousness, of evident blunder, actually require the chronological +explanation. It is biographically important that this is his first book, +almost exactly in the same way that it is biographically important that +<i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i> was his last book. Change or no change, +<i>Edwin Drood</i> has this plain point of a last story about it: that it is +not finished. But if the last book is unfinished, the first book is more +unfinished still.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +The <i>Sketches</i> divide themselves, of course, into two broad classes. One +half consists of sketches that are truly and in the strict sense +sketches. That is, they are things that have no story and in their +outline none of the character of creation; they are merely facts from +the street or the tavern or the town hall, noted down as they occurred +by an intelligence of quite exceptional vivacity. The second class +consists of purely creative things: farces, romances, stories in any +case with a non-natural perfection, or a poetical justice, to round them +off. One class is admirably represented, for instance, by the sketch +describing the Charity Dinner, the other by such a story as that of +<i>Horatio Sparkins</i>. These things were almost certainly written by +Dickens at very various periods of his youth; and early as the harvest +is, no doubt it is a harvest and had ripened during a reasonably long +time. Nevertheless it is with these two types of narrative that the +young Charles Dickens first enters English literature; he enters it with +a number of journalistic notes of such things as he has seen happen in +streets or offices, and with a number of short stories which err on the +side of the extravagant and even the superficial. Journalism had not +then, indeed, sunk to the low level which it has since reached. His +sketches of dirty London would not have been dirty enough for the modern +Imperialist press. Still these first efforts of his are journalism, and +sometimes vulgar journalism. It was as a journalist that he attacked the +world, as a journalist that he conquered it.</p> + +<p>The biographical circumstances will not, of course, be forgotten. The +life of Dickens had been a curious one. Brought up in a family just poor +enough to be painfully <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +conscious of its prosperity and its respectability, he had been +suddenly flung by a financial calamity into a social condition far below +his own. For men on that exact edge of the educated class such a +transition is really tragic. A duke may become a navvy for a joke, but a +clerk cannot become a navvy for a joke. Dickens’s parents went to +a debtors’ prison; Dickens himself went to a far more unpleasant +place. The debtors’ prison had about it at least that element of +amiable compromise and kindly decay which belonged (and belongs still) +to all the official institutions of England. But Dickens was doomed to +see the very blackest aspect of nineteenth-century England, something +far blacker than any mere bad government. He went not to a prison but to +a factory. In the musty traditionalism of the Marshalsea old John +Dickens could easily remain optimistic. In the ferocious efficiency of +the modern factory young Charles Dickens narrowly escaped being a +pessimist. He did escape this danger; finally he even escaped the +factory itself. His next step in life was, if possible, even more +eccentric. He was sent to school; he was sent off like an innocent +little boy in Eton collars to learn the rudiments of Latin grammar, +without any reference to the fact that he had already taken his part in +the horrible competition and actuality of the age of manufactures. It +was like giving a sacked bank manager a satchel and sending him to a +dame’s school. Nor was the third stage of this career unconnected +with the oddity of the others. On leaving the school he was made a clerk +in a lawyer’s office, as if henceforward this child of ridiculous +changes was to settle down into a silent assistant for a quiet +solicitor. It was exactly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +at this moment that his fundamental rebellion began to seethe; it +seethed more against the quiet finality of his legal occupation than it +had seethed against the squalor and slavery of his days of poverty. +There must have been in his mind, I think, a dim feeling: “Did all +my dark crises mean only this; was I crucified only that I might become +a solicitor’s clerk?” Whatever be the truth about this +conjecture there can be no question about the facts themselves. It was +about this time that he began to burst and bubble over, to insist upon +his own intellect, to claim a career. It was about this time that he put +together a loose pile of papers, satires on institutions, pictures of +private persons, fairy tales of the vulgarity of his world, odds and +ends such as come out of the facility and the fierce vanity of youth. It +was about this time at any rate that he decided to publish them, and +gave them the name of <i>Sketches by Boz</i>.</p> + +<p>They must, I think, be read in the light of this youthful explosion. In +some psychological sense he had really been wronged. But he had only +become conscious of his wrongs as his wrongs had been gradually righted. +Similarly, it has often been found that a man who can patiently endure +penal servitude through a judicial blunder will nevertheless, when once +his cause is well asserted, quarrel about the amount of compensation or +complain of small slights in his professional existence. These are the +marks of the first literary action of Dickens. It has in it all the +peculiar hardness of youth; a hardness which in those who have in any +way been unfairly treated reaches even to impudence. It is a terrible +thing for any man to find out that his elders <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +are wrong. And this almost unkindly courage of youth must partly be +held responsible for the smartness of Dickens, that almost offensive +smartness which in these earlier books of his sometimes irritates us +like the showy gibes in the tall talk of a school-boy. These first pages +bear witness both to the energy of his genius and also to its +unenlightenment; he seems more ignorant and more cocksure than so great +a man should be. Dickens was never stupid, but he was sometimes silly; +and he is occasionally silly here.</p> + +<p>All this must be said to prepare the more fastidious modern for these +papers, if he has never read them before. But when all this has been +said there remains in them exactly what always remains in Dickens when +you have taken away everything that can be taken away by the most +fastidious modern who ever dissected his grandmother. There remains that +<i>primum mobile</i> of which all the mystics have spoken: energy, the power +to create. I will not call it “the will to live,” for that +is a priggish phrase of German professors. Even German professors, I +suppose, have the will to live. But Dickens had exactly what German +professors have not: he had the power to live. And indeed it is most +valuable to have these early specimens of the Dickens work if only +because they are specimens of his spirit apart from his matured +intelligence. It is well to be able to realise that contact with the +Dickens world is almost like a physical contact; it is like stepping +suddenly into the hot smells of a greenhouse, or into the bleak smell of +the sea. We know that we are there. Let any one read, for instance, one +of the foolish but amusing farces in Dickens’s first volume. Let +him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +read, for instance, such a story as that of <i>Horatio Sparkins</i> or that +of <i>The Tuggses at Ramsgate</i>. He will not find very much of that verbal +felicity or fantastic irony that Dickens afterwards developed; the +incidents are upon the plain lines of the stock comedy of the day: +sharpers who entrap simpletons, spinsters who angle for husbands, youths +who try to look Byronic and only look foolish. Yet there is something in +these stories which there is not in the ordinary stock comedies of that +day: an indefinable flavour of emphasis and richness, a hint as of +infinity of fun. Doubtless, for instance, a million comic writers of +that epoch had made game of the dark, romantic young man who pretended +to abysses of philosophy and despair. And it is not easy to say exactly +why we feel that the few metaphysical remarks of Mr. Horatio Sparkins +are in some way really much funnier than any of those old stock jokes. +It is in a certain quality of deep enjoyment in the writer as well as +the reader; as if the few words written had been dipped in dark nonsense +and were, as it were, reeking with derision. “Because if Effect be +the result of Cause and Cause be the Precursor of Effect,” said +Mr. Horatio Sparkins, “I apprehend that you are wrong.” +Nobody can get at the real secret of sentences like that; sentences +which were afterwards strewed with reckless liberality over the +conversation of Dick Swiveller or Mr. Mantalini, Sim Tappertit or Mr. +Pecksniff. Though the joke seems most superficial one has only to read +it a certain number of times to see that it is most subtle. The joke +does not lie in Mr. Sparkins merely using long words, any more than the +joke lies merely in Mr. Swiveller drinking, or in Mr. Mantalini +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +deceiving his wife. It is something in the arrangement of the words; +something in a last inspired turn of absurdity given to a sentence. In +spite of everything Horatio Sparkins is funny. We cannot tell why he is +funny. When we know why he is funny we shall know why Dickens is great.</p> + +<p>Standing as we do here upon the threshold, as it were, of the work of +Dickens, it may be well perhaps to state this truth as being, after all, +the most important one. This first work had, as I have said, the faults +of first work and the special faults that arose from its author’s +accidental history; he was deprived of education, and therefore it was +in some ways uneducated; he was confronted with the folly and failure of +his natural superiors and guardians, and therefore it was in some ways +pert and insolent. Nevertheless the main fact about the work is worth +stating here for any reader who should follow the chronological order +and read the <i>Sketches by Boz</i> before embarking on the stormy and +splendid sea of <i>Pickwick</i>. For the sea of <i>Pickwick</i>, though splendid, +does make some people seasick. The great point to be emphasised at such +an initiation is this: that people, especially refined people, are not +to judge of Dickens by what they would call the coarseness or +commonplaceness of his subject. It is quite true that his jokes are +often on the same <i>subjects</i> as the jokes in a halfpenny comic paper. +Only they happen to be good jokes. He does make jokes about drunkenness, +jokes about mothers-in-law, jokes about henpecked husbands, jokes (which +is much more really unpardonable) about spinsters, jokes about physical +cowardice, jokes about fatness, jokes about sitting down on one’s +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +hat. He does make fun of all these things; and the reason is not very +far to seek. He makes fun of all these things because all these things, +or nearly all of them, are really very funny. But a large number of +those who might otherwise read and enjoy Dickens are undoubtedly +“put off” (as the phrase goes) by the fact that he seems to +be echoing a poor kind of claptrap in his choice of incidents and +images. Partly, of course, he suffers from the very fact of his success; +his play with these topics was so good that every one else has played +with them increasingly since; he may indeed have copied the old jokes, +but he certainly renewed them. For instance, “Ally Sloper” +was certainly copied from Wilkins Micawber. To this day you may see (in +the front page of that fine periodical) the bald head and the high shirt +collar that betray the high original from which “Ally +Sloper” is derived. But exactly because “Sloper” was +stolen from Micawber, for that very reason the new generation feels as +if Micawber were stolen from “Sloper.” Many modern readers +feel as if Dickens were copying the comic papers, whereas in truth the +comic papers are still copying Dickens.</p> + +<p>Dickens showed himself to be an original man by always accepting old and +established topics. There is no clearer sign of the absence of +originality among modern poets than their disposition to find new +themes. Really original poets write poems about the spring. They are +always fresh, just as the spring is always fresh. Men wholly without +originality write poems about torture, or new religions, of some +perversion of obscenity, hoping that the mere sting of the subject may +speak for them. But we do not sufficiently realise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +that what is true of the classic ode is also true of the classic joke. +A true poet writes about the spring being beautiful because (after a +thousand springs) the spring really is beautiful. In the same way the +true humourist writes about a man sitting down on his hat, because the +act of sitting down on one’s hat (however often and however +admirably performed) really is extremely funny. We must not dismiss a +new poet because his poem is called <i>To a Skylark</i>; nor must we dismiss +a humourist because his new farce is called <i>My Mother-in-law</i>. He may +really have splendid and inspiring things to say upon an eternal +problem. The whole question is whether he has.</p> + +<p>Now this is exactly where Dickens, and the possible mistake about +Dickens, both come in. Numbers of sensitive ladies, numbers of simple +æsthetes, have had a vague shrinking from that element in Dickens which +begins vaguely in <i>The Tuggses at Ramsgate</i> and culminates in +<i>Pickwick</i>. They have a vague shrinking from the mere subject matter; +from the mere fact that so much of the fun is about drinking or +fighting, or falling down, or eloping with old ladies. It is to these +that the first appeal must be made upon the threshold of Dickens +criticism. Let them really read the thing and really see whether the +humour is the gross and half-witted jeering which they imagine it to be. +It is exactly here that the whole genius of Dickens is concerned. His +subjects are indeed stock subjects; like the skylark of Shelley, or the +autumn of Keats. But all the more because they are stock subjects the +reader realises what a magician is at work. The notion of a clumsy +fellow who falls off his horse is indeed a stock <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +and stale subject. But Mr. Winkle is not a stock and stale subject. Nor +is his horse a stock and stale subject; it is as immortal as the horses +of Achilles. The notion of a fat old gentleman proud of his legs might +easily be vulgar. But Mr. Pickwick proud of his legs is not vulgar; +somehow we feel that they were legs to be proud of. And it is exactly +this that we must look for in these <i>Sketches</i>. We must not leap to any +cheap fancy that they are low farces. Rather we must see that they are +not low farces; and see that nobody but Dickens could have prevented +them from being so.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></p> +<h2><a name="PICKWICK" id="PICKWICK"></a>PICKWICK PAPERS</h2> + +<p>There are those who deny with enthusiasm the existence of a God and are +happy in a hobby which they call the Mistakes of Moses. I have not +studied their labours in detail, but it seems that the chief mistake of +Moses was that he neglected to write the Pentateuch. The lesser errors, +apparently, were not made by Moses, but by another person equally +unknown. These controversialists cover the very widest field, and their +attacks upon Scripture are varied to the point of wildness. They range +from the proposition that the unexpurgated Bible is almost as unfit for +an American girls’ school as is an unexpurgated Shakespeare; they +descend to the proposition that kissing the Book is almost as +hygienically dangerous as kissing the babies of the poor. A superficial +critic might well imagine that there was not one single sentence left of +the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures which this school had not marked with +some ingenious and uneducated comment. But there is one passage at least +upon which they have never pounced, at least to my knowledge; and in +pointing it out to them I feel that I am, or ought to be, providing +material for quite a multitude of Hyde Park orations. I mean that +singular arrangement in the mystical account <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +of the Creation by which light is created first and all the luminous +bodies afterwards. One could not imagine a process more open to the +elephantine logic of the Bible-smasher than this: that the sun should be +created after the sunlight. The conception that lies at the back of the +phrase is indeed profoundly antagonistic to much of the modern point of +view. To many modern people it would sound like saying that foliage +existed before the first leaf; it would sound like saying that childhood +existed before a baby was born. The idea is, as I have said, alien to +most modern thought, and like many other ideas which are alien to most +modern thought, it is a very subtle and a very sound idea. Whatever be +the meaning of the passage in the actual primeval poem, there is a very +real metaphysical meaning in the idea that light existed before the sun +and stars. It is not barbaric; it is rather Platonic. The idea existed +before any of the machinery which made manifest the idea. Justice +existed when there was no need of judges, and mercy existed before any +man was oppressed.</p> + +<p>However this may be in the matter of religion and philosophy, it can be +said with little exaggeration that this truth is the very key of +literature. The whole difference between construction and creation is +exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is +constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the +mother can love the unborn child. In creative art the essence of a book +exists before the book or before even the details or main features of +the book; the author enjoys it and lives in it with a kind of prophetic +rapture. He wishes to write a comic <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +story before he has thought of a single comic incident. He desires to +write a sad story before he has thought of anything sad. He knows the +atmosphere before he knows anything. There is a low priggish maxim +sometimes uttered by men so frivolous as to take humour +seriously—a maxim that a man should not laugh at his own jokes. +But the great artist not only laughs at his own jokes; he laughs at his +own jokes before he has made them. In the case of a man really humorous +we can see humour in his eye before he has thought of any amusing words +at all. So the creative writer laughs at his comedy before he creates +it, and he has tears for his tragedy before he knows what it is. When +the symbols and the fulfilling facts do come to him, they come generally +in a manner very fragmentary and inverted, mostly in irrational glimpses +of crisis or consummation. The last page comes before the first; before +his romance has begun, he knows that it has ended well. He sees the +wedding before the wooing; he sees the death before the duel. But most +of all he sees the colour and character of the whole story prior to any +possible events in it. This is the real argument for art and style, only +that the artists and the stylists have not the sense to use it. In one +very real sense style is far more important than either character or +narrative. For a man knows what style of book he wants to write when he +knows nothing else about it.</p> + +<p><i>Pickwick</i> is in Dickens’s career the mere mass of light before +the creation of sun or moon. It is the splendid, shapeless substance of +which all his stars were ultimately made. You might split up <i>Pickwick</i> +into innumerable novels as you could split up that primeval <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +light into innumerable solar systems. The <i>Pickwick Papers</i> constitute +first and foremost a kind of wild promise, a pre-natal vision of all the +children of Dickens. He had not yet settled down into the plain, +professional habit of picking out a plot and characters, of attending to +one thing at a time, of writing a separate, sensible novel and sending +it off to his publishers. He is still in the youthful whirl of the kind +of world that he would like to create. He has not yet really settled +what story he will write, but only what sort of story he will write. He +tries to tell ten stories at once; he pours into the pot all the chaotic +fancies and crude experiences of his boyhood; he sticks in irrelevant +short stories shamelessly, as into a scrap-book; he adopts designs and +abandons them, begins episodes and leaves them unfinished; but from the +first page to the last there is a nameless and elemental +ecstasy—that of the man who is doing the kind of thing that he can +do. Dickens, like every other honest and effective writer, came at last +to some degree of care and self-restraint. He learned how to make his +<i>dramatis personæ</i> assist his drama; he learned how to write +stories which were full of rambling and perversity, but which were +stories. But before he wrote a single real story, he had a kind of +vision. It was a vision of the Dickens world—a maze of white +roads, a map full of fantastic towns, thundering coaches, clamorous +market-places, uproarious inns, strange and swaggering figures. That +vision was <i>Pickwick</i>.</p> + +<p>It must be remembered that this is true even in connection with the +man’s contemporaneous biography. Apart from anything else about +it, <i>Pickwick</i> was his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +first great chance. It was a big commission given in some sense to an +untried man, that he might show what he could do. It was in a strict +sense a sample. And just as a sample of leather can be only a piece of +leather, or a sample of coal a lump of coal, so this book may most +properly be regarded as simply a lump of Dickens. He was anxious to show +all that was in him. He was more concerned to prove that he could write +well than to prove that he could write this particular book well. And he +did prove this, at any rate. No one ever sent such a sample as the +sample of Dickens. His roll of leather blocked up the street; his lump +of coal set the Thames on fire.</p> + +<p>The book originated in the suggestion of a publisher; as many more good +books have done than the arrogance of the man of letters is commonly +inclined to admit. Very much is said in our time about Apollo and +Admetus, and the impossibility of asking genius to work within +prescribed limits or assist an alien design. But after all, as a matter +of fact, some of the greatest geniuses have done it, from Shakespeare +botching up bad comedies and dramatising bad novels down to Dickens +writing a masterpiece as the mere framework for a Mr. Seymour’s +sketches. Nor is the true explanation irrelevant to the spirit and power +of Dickens. Very delicate, slender, and <i>bizarre</i> talents are indeed +incapable of being used for an outside purpose, whether of public good +or of private gain. But about very great and rich talent there goes a +certain disdainful generosity which can turn its hand to anything. Minor +poets cannot write to order; but very great poets can write to order. +The larger the man’s mind, the wider <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +his scope of vision, the more likely it will be that anything suggested +to him will seem significant and promising; the more he has a grasp of +everything the more ready he will be to write anything. It is very hard +(if that is the question) to throw a brick at a man and ask him to write +an epic; but the more he is a great man the more able he will be to +write about the brick. It is very unjust (if that is all) to point to a +hoarding of Colman’s mustard and demand a flood of philosophical +eloquence; but the greater the man is the more likely he will be to give +it to you. So it was proved, not for the first time, in this great +experiment of the early employment of Dickens. Messrs. Chapman and Hall +came to him with a scheme for a string of sporting stories to serve as +the context, and one might almost say the excuse, for a string of +sketches by Seymour, the sporting artist. Dickens made some +modifications in the plan, but he adopted its main feature; and its main +feature was Mr. Winkle. To think of what Mr. Winkle might have been in +the hands of a dull <i>farceur</i>, and then to think of what he is, is to +experience the feeling that Dickens made a man out of rags and refuse. +Dickens was to work splendidly and successfully in many fields, and to +send forth many brilliant books and brave figures. He was destined to +have the applause of continents like a statesman, and to dictate to his +publishers like a despot; but perhaps he never worked again so supremely +well as here, where he worked in chains. It may well be questioned +whether his one hack book is not his masterpiece.</p> + +<p>Of course it is true that as he went on his independence increased, and +he kicked quite free of the influences <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +that had suggested his story. So Shakespeare declared his independence +of the original chronicle of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, eliminating +altogether (with some wisdom) another uncle called Wiglerus. At the +start the Nimrod Club of Chapman and Hall may have even had equal +chances with the Pickwick Club of young Mr. Dickens; but the Pickwick +Club became something much better than any publisher had dared to dream +of. Some of the old links were indeed severed by accident or extraneous +trouble; Seymour, for whose sake the whole had perhaps been planned, +blew his brains out before he had drawn ten pictures. But such things +were trifles compared to <i>Pickwick</i> itself. It mattered little now +whether Seymour blew his brains out, so long as Charles Dickens blew his +brains in. The work became systematically and progressively more +powerful and masterly. Many critics have commented on the somewhat +discordant and inartistic change between the earlier part of <i>Pickwick</i> +and the later; they have pointed out, not without good sense, that the +character of Mr. Pickwick changes from that of a silly buffoon to that +of a solid merchant. But the case, if these critics had noticed it, is +much stronger in the minor characters of the great company. Mr. Winkle, +who has been an idiot (even, perhaps, as Mr. Pickwick says, “an +impostor”), suddenly becomes a romantic and even reckless lover, +scaling a forbidden wall and planning a bold elopement. Mr. Snodgrass, +who has behaved in a ridiculous manner in all serious positions, +suddenly finds himself in a ridiculous position—that of a +gentleman surprised in a secret love affair—and behaves in a +manner perfectly manly, serious, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +and honourable. Mr. Tupman alone has no serious emotional development, +and for this reason it is, presumably, that we hear less and less of Mr. +Tupman towards the end of the book. Dickens has by this time got into a +thoroughly serious mood—a mood expressed indeed by extravagant +incidents, but none the less serious for that; and into this Winkle and +Snodgrass, in the character of romantic lovers, could be made to fit. +Mr. Tupman had to be left out of the love affairs; therefore Mr. Tupman +is left out of the book.</p> + +<p>Much of the change was due to the entrance of the greatest character in +the story. It may seem strange at the first glance to say that Sam +Weller helped to make the story serious. Nevertheless, this is strictly +true. The introduction of Sam Weller had, to begin with, some merely +accidental and superficial effects. When Samuel Weller had appeared, +Samuel Pickwick was no longer the chief farcical character. Weller +became the joker and Pickwick in some sense the butt of his jokes. Thus +it was obvious that the more simple, solemn, and really respectable this +butt could be made the better. Mr. Pickwick had been the figure capering +before the footlights. But with the advent of Sam, Mr. Pickwick had +become a sort of black background and had to behave as such. But this +explanation, though true as far as it goes, is a mean and unsatisfactory +one, leaving the great elements unexplained. For a much deeper and more +righteous reason Sam Weller introduces the more serious tone of +Pickwick. He introduces it because he introduces something which it was +the chief business of Dickens to preach throughout his life—something +which he never preached so well as when he preached +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +it unconsciously. Sam Weller introduces the English people.</p> + +<p>Sam Weller is the great symbol in English literature of the populace +peculiar to England. His incessant stream of sane nonsense is a +wonderful achievement of Dickens: but it is no great falsification of +the incessant stream of sane nonsense as it really exists among the +English poor. The English poor live in an atmosphere of humour; they +think in humour. Irony is the very air that they breathe. A joke comes +suddenly from time to time into the head of a politician or a gentleman, +and then as a rule he makes the most of it; but when a serious word +comes into the mind of a coster it is almost as startling as a joke. The +word “chaff” was, I suppose, originally applied to badinage +to express its barren and unsustaining character; but to the English +poor chaff is as sustaining as grain. The phrase that leaps to their +lips is the ironical phrase. I remember once being driven in a hansom +cab down a street that turned out to be a <i>cul de sac</i>, and brought us +bang up against a wall. The driver and I simultaneously said something. +But I said: “This’ll never do!” and he said: +“This is all right!” Even in the act of pulling back his +horse’s nose from a brick wall, that confirmed satirist thought in +terms of his highly-trained and traditional satire; while I, belonging +to a duller and simpler class, expressed my feelings in words as +innocent and literal as those of a rustic or a child.</p> + +<p>This eternal output of divine derision has never been so truly typified +as by the character of Sam; he is a grotesque fountain which gushes the +living waters <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +for ever. Dickens is accused of exaggeration and he is often guilty of +exaggeration; but here he does not exaggerate: he merely symbolises and +sublimates like any other great artist. Sam Weller does not exaggerate +the wit of the London street arab one atom more than Colonel Newcome, +let us say, exaggerates the stateliness of an ordinary soldier and +gentleman, or than Mr. Collins exaggerates the fatuity of a certain kind +of country clergyman. And this breath from the boisterous brotherhood of +the poor lent a special seriousness and smell of reality to the whole +story. The unconscious follies of Winkle and Tupman are blown away like +leaves before the solid and conscious folly of Sam Weller. Moreover, the +relations between Pickwick and his servant Sam are in some ways new and +valuable in literature. Many comic writers had described the clever +rascal and his ridiculous dupe; but here, in a fresh and very human +atmosphere, we have a clever servant who was not a rascal and +<ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'a dupe and who was'.">a dupe who was</ins> +not ridiculous. Sam Weller stands in some ways for a cheerful knowledge +of the world; Mr. Pickwick stands for a still more cheerful ignorance of +the world. And Dickens responded to a profound human sentiment (the +sentiment that has made saints and the sanctity of children) when he +made the gentler and less-travelled type—the type which moderates +and controls. Knowledge and innocence are both excellent things, and +they are both very funny. But it is right that knowledge should be the +servant and innocence the master.</p> + +<p>The sincerity of this study of Sam Weller has produced one particular +effect in the book which I wonder <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +that critics of Dickens have never noticed or discussed. Because it has +no Dickens “pathos,” certain parts of it are truly pathetic. +Dickens, realising rightly that the whole tone of the book was fun, felt +that he ought to keep out of it any great experiments in sadness and +keep within limits those that he put in. He used this restraint in order +not to spoil the humour; but (if he had known himself better) he might +well have used it in order not to spoil the pathos. This is the one book +in which Dickens was, as it were, forced to trample down his tender +feelings; and for that very reason it is the one book where all the +tenderness there is is quite unquestionably true. An admirable example +of what I mean may be found in the scene in which Sam Weller goes down +to see his bereaved father after the death of his step-mother. The most +loyal admirer of Dickens can hardly prevent himself from giving a slight +shudder when he thinks of what Dickens might have made of that scene in +some of his more expansive and maudlin moments. For all I know old Mrs. +Weller might have asked what the wild waves were saying; and for all I +know old Mr. Weller might have told her. As it is, Dickens, being forced +to keep the tale taut and humorous, gives a picture of humble respect +and decency which is manly, dignified, and really sad. There is no +attempt made by these simple and honest men, the father and son, to +pretend that the dead woman was anything greatly other than she was; +their respect is for death, and for the human weakness and mystery which +it must finally cover. Old Tony Weller does not tell his shrewish wife +that she is already a white-winged <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +angel; he speaks to her with an admirable good nature and good sense:</p> + +<blockquote><p>“‘Susan,’ I says, ‘you’ve been a wery +good vife to me altogether: keep a good heart, my dear, and +you’ll live to see me punch that ’ere Stiggins’s +’ead yet.’ She smiled at this, Samivel ... but she died +arter all.”</p></blockquote> + +<p>That is perhaps the first and the last time that Dickens ever touched +the extreme dignity of pathos. He is restraining his compassion, and +afterwards he let it go. Now laughter is a thing that can be let go; +laughter has in it a quality of liberty. But sorrow has in it by its +very nature a quality of confinement; pathos by its very nature fights +with itself. Humour is expansive; it bursts outwards; the fact is +attested by the common expression, “holding one’s +sides.” But sorrow is not expansive; and it was afterwards the +mistake of Dickens that he tried to make it expansive. It is the one +great weakness of Dickens as a great writer, that he did try to make +that sudden sadness, that abrupt pity, which we call pathos, a thing +quite obvious, infectious, public, as if it were journalism or the +measles. It is pleasant to think that in this supreme masterpiece, done +in the dawn of his career, there is not even this faint fleck upon the +sun of his just splendour. Pickwick will always be remembered as the +great example of everything that made Dickens great; of the solemn +conviviality of great friendships, of the erratic adventures of old +English roads, of the hospitality of old English inns, of the great +fundamental kindliness and honour of old English manners. First of all, +however, it will always be remembered for its laughter, or, if you will, +for its folly. A good joke is the one ultimate and sacred thing which +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +cannot be criticised. Our relations with a good joke are direct and +even divine relations. We speak of “seeing” a joke just as +we speak of “seeing” a ghost or a vision. If we have seen +it, it is futile to argue with us; and we have seen the vision of +<i>Pickwick</i>. <i>Pickwick</i> may be the top of Dickens’s humour; I think +upon the whole it is. But the broad humour of <i>Pickwick</i> he broadened +over many wonderful kingdoms; the narrow pathos of <i>Pickwick</i> he never +found again.</p> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="NICHOLAS" id="NICHOLAS"></a>NICHOLAS NICKLEBY</h2> + +<p>Romance is perhaps the highest point of human expression, except indeed +religion, to which it is closely allied. Romance resembles religion +especially in this, that it is not only a simplification but a +shortening of existence. Both romance and religion see everything as it +were foreshortened; they see everything in an abrupt and fantastic +perspective, coming to an apex. It is the whole essence of perspective +that it comes to a point. Similarly, religion comes to a point—to the +point. Thus religion is always insisting on the shortness of human life. +But it does not insist on the shortness of human life as the pessimists +insist on it. Pessimism insists on the shortness of human life in order +to show that life is valueless. Religion insists on the shortness of +human life in order to show that life is frightfully valuable—is almost +horribly valuable. Pessimism says that life is so short that it gives +nobody a chance; religion says that life is so short that it gives +everybody his final chance. In the first case the word brevity means +futility; in the second case, opportunity. But the case is even stronger +than this. Religion shortens everything. Religion shortens even +eternity. Where science, submitting to the false standard of time, sees +evolution, which is slow, religion sees creation, which is sudden. +Philosophically speaking, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +process is neither slow nor quick since we have nothing to compare it +with. Religion prefers to think of it as quick. For religion the flowers +shoot up suddenly like rockets. For religion the mountains are lifted up +suddenly like waves. Those who quote that fine passage which says that +in God’s sight a thousand years are as yesterday that is passed as +a watch in the night, do not realise the full force of the meaning. To +God a thousand years are not only a watch but an exciting watch. For God +time goes at a gallop, as it does to a man reading a good tale.</p> + +<p>All this is, in a humble manner, true for romance. Romance is a +shortening and sharpening of the human difficulty. Where you and I have +to vote against a man, or write (rather feebly) against a man, or sign +illegible petitions against a man, romance does for him what we should +really like to see done. It knocks him down; it shortens the slow +process of historical justice. All romances consist of three characters. +Other characters may be introduced; but those other characters are +certainly mere scenery as far as the romance is concerned. They are +bushes that wave rather excitedly; they are posts that stand up with a +certain pride; they are correctly painted rocks that frown very +correctly; but they are all landscape—they are all a background. In +every pure romance there are three living and moving characters. For the +sake of argument they may be called St. George and the Dragon and the +Princess. In every romance there must be the twin elements of loving and +fighting. In every romance there must be the three characters: there +must be the Princess, who is a thing to be loved; there must +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +be the Dragon, who is a thing to be fought; and there must be St. +George, who is a thing that both loves and fights. There have been many +symptoms of cynicism and decay in our modern civilisation. But of all +the signs of modern feebleness, of lack of grasp on morals as they +actually must be, there has been none quite so silly or so dangerous as +this: that the philosophers of to-day have started to divide loving from +fighting and to put them into opposite camps. There could be no worse +sign than that a man, even Nietzsche, can be found to say that we should +go in for fighting instead of loving. There can be no worse sign than +that a man, even Tolstoi, can be found to tell us that we should go in +for loving instead of fighting. The two things imply each other; they +implied each other in the old romance and in the old religion, which +were the two permanent things of humanity. You cannot love a thing +without wanting to fight for it. You cannot fight without something to +fight for. To love a thing without wishing to fight for it is not love +at all; it is lust. It may be an airy, philosophical, and disinterested +lust; it may be, so to speak, a virgin lust; but it is lust, because it +is wholly self-indulgent and invites no attack. On the other hand, +fighting for a thing without loving it is not even fighting; it can only +be called a kind of horse-play that is occasionally fatal. Wherever +human nature is human and unspoilt by any special sophistry, there +exists this natural kinship between war and wooing, and that natural +kinship is called romance. It comes upon a man especially in the great +hour of youth; and every man who has ever been young at all has felt, if +only for a moment, this ultimate and poetic paradox. He +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +knows that loving the world is the same thing as fighting the world. It +was at the very moment when he offered to like everybody he also offered +to hit everybody. To almost every man that can be called a man this +especial moment of the romantic culmination has come. In the first +resort the man wished to live a romance. In the second resort, in the +last and worst resort, he was content to write one.</p> + +<p>Now there is a certain moment when this element enters independently +into the life of Dickens. There is a particular time when we can see him +suddenly realise that he wants to write a romance and nothing else. In +reading his letters, in appreciating his character, this point emerges +clearly enough. He was full of the afterglow of his marriage; he was +still young and psychologically ignorant; above all, he was now, really +for the first time, sure that he was going to be at least some kind of +success. There is, I repeat, a certain point at which one feels that +Dickens will either begin to write romances or go off on something +different altogether. This crucial point in his life is marked by +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>.</p> + +<p>It must be remembered that before this issue of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> his +work, successful as it was, had not been such as to dedicate him +seriously or irrevocably to the writing of novels. He had already +written three books; and at least two of them are classed among the +novels under his name. But if we look at the actual origin and formation +of these books we see that they came from another source and were really +designed upon another plan. The three books were, of course, the +<i>Sketches by Boz</i>, <i>the Pickwick Papers</i>, and <i>Oliver Twist</i>. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +It is, I suppose, sufficiently well understood that the <i>Sketches by +Boz</i> are, as their name implies, only sketches. But surely it is quite +equally clear that the <i>Pickwick Papers</i> are, as their name implies, +merely papers. Nor is the case at all different in spirit and essence +when we come to <i>Oliver Twist</i>. There is indeed a sort of romance in +<i>Oliver Twist</i>, but it is such an uncommonly bad one that it can hardly +be regarded as greatly interrupting the previous process; and if the +reader chooses to pay very little attention to it, he cannot pay less +attention to it than the author did. But in fact the case lies far +deeper. <i>Oliver Twist</i> is so much apart from the ordinary track of +Dickens, it is so gloomy, it is so much all in one atmosphere, that it +can best be considered as an exception or a solitary excursus in his +work. Perhaps it can best be considered as the extension of one of his +old sketches, of some sketch that happened to be about a visit to a +workhouse or a gaol. In the <i>Sketches by Boz</i> he might well have visited +a workhouse where he saw Bumble; in the <i>Sketches by Boz</i> he might well +have visited a prison where he saw Fagin. We are still in the realm of +sketches and sketchiness. <i>The Pickwick Papers</i> may be called an +extension of one of his bright sketches. <i>Oliver Twist</i> may be called an +extension of one of his gloomy ones.</p> + +<p>Had he continued along this line all his books might very well have been +note-books. It would be very easy to split up all his subsequent books +into scraps and episodes, such as those which make up the <i>Sketches by +Boz</i>. It would be easy enough for Dickens, instead of publishing +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, to have published a book of sketches, one of which +was called “A Yorkshire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +School,” another called “A Provincial Theatre,” and +another called “Sir Mulberry Hawk or High Life Revealed,” +another called “Mrs. Nickleby or a Lady’s Monologue.” +It would have been very easy to have thrown over the rather chaotic plan +of the <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>. He might have merely written short stories +called “The Glorious Apollos,” “Mrs. Quilp’s +Tea-Party,” “Mrs. Jarley’s Waxwork,” “The +Little Servant,” and “The Death of a Dwarf.” <i>Martin +Chuzzlewit</i> might have been twenty stories instead of one story. <i>Dombey +and Son</i> might have been twenty stories instead of one story. We might +have lost all Dickens’s novels; we might have lost altogether +Dickens the novelist. We might have lost that steady love of a seminal +and growing romance which grew on him steadily as the years advanced, +and which gave us towards the end some of his greatest triumphs. All his +books might have been <i>Sketches by Boz</i>. But he did turn away from this, +and the turning-point is <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>.</p> + +<p>Everything has a supreme moment and is crucial; that is where our +friends the evolutionists go wrong. I suppose that there is an instant +of midsummer as there is an instant of midnight. If in the same way +there is a supreme point of spring, <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> is the supreme +point of Dickens’s spring. I do not mean that it is the best book +that he wrote in his youth. <i>Pickwick</i> is a better book. I do not mean +that it contains more striking characters than any of the other books in +his youth. The <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i> contains at least two more striking +characters. But I mean that this book coincided with his resolution to +be a great novelist and his final belief that he could be one. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +Henceforward his books are novels, very commonly bad novels. Previously +they have not really been novels at all. There are many indications of +the change I mean. Here is one, for instance, which is more or less +final. <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> is Dickens’s first romantic novel +because it is his first novel with a proper and dignified romantic hero; +which means, of course, a somewhat chivalrous young donkey. The hero of +<i>Pickwick</i> is an old man. The hero of <i>Oliver Twist</i> is a child. Even +after <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> this non-romantic custom continued. The <i>Old +Curiosity Shop</i> has no hero in particular. The hero of <i>Barnaby Rudge</i> +is a lunatic. But Nicholas Nickleby is a proper, formal, and ceremonial +hero. He has no psychology; he has not even any particular character; +but he is made deliberately a hero—young, poor, brave, unimpeachable, +and ultimately triumphant. He is, in short, the hero. Mr. Vincent +Crummles had a colossal intellect; and I always have a fancy that under +all his pomposity he saw things more keenly than he allowed others to +see. The moment he saw Nicholas Nickleby, almost in rags and limping +along the high road, he engaged him (you will remember) as first walking +gentleman. He was right. Nobody could possibly be more of a first +walking gentleman than Nicholas Nickleby was. He was the first walking +gentleman before he went on to the boards of Mr. Vincent +Crummles’s theatre, and he remained the first walking gentleman +after he had come off.</p> + +<p>Now this romantic method involves a certain element of climax which to +us appears crudity. Nicholas Nickleby, for instance, wanders through the +world; he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +takes a situation as assistant to a Yorkshire schoolmaster; he sees an +act of tyranny of which he strongly disapproves; he cries out +“Stop!” in a voice that makes the rafters ring; he thrashes +the schoolmaster within an inch of his life; he throws the schoolmaster +away like an old cigar, and he goes away. The modern intellect is +positively prostrated and flattened by this rapid and romantic way of +righting wrongs. If a modern philanthropist came to Dotheboys Hall I +fear he would not employ the simple, sacred, and truly Christian +solution of beating Mr. Squeers with a stick. I fancy he would petition +the Government to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into Mr. +Squeers. I think he would every now and then write letters to newspapers +reminding people that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, +there was a Royal Commission to inquire into Mr. Squeers. I agree that +he might even go the length of calling a crowded meeting in St. +James’s Hall on the subject of the best policy with regard to Mr. +Squeers. At this meeting some very heated and daring speakers might even +go the length of alluding sternly to Mr. Squeers. Occasionally even +hoarse voices from the back of the hall might ask (in vain) what was +going to be done with Mr. Squeers. The Royal Commission would report +about three years afterwards and would say that many things had happened +which were certainly most regrettable; that Mr. Squeers was the victim +of a bad system; that Mrs. Squeers was also the victim of a bad system; +but that the man who sold Squeers his cane had really acted with great +indiscretion and ought to be spoken to kindly. Something like this would +be what, after four <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +years, the Royal Commission would have said; but it would not matter in +the least what the Royal Commission had said, for by that time the +philanthropists would be off on a new tack and the world would have +forgotten all about Dotheboys Hall and everything connected with it. By +that time the philanthropists would be petitioning Parliament for +another Royal Commission; perhaps a Royal Commission to inquire into +whether Mr. Mantalini was extravagant with his wife’s money; +perhaps a commission to inquire into whether Mr. Vincent Crummles kept +the Infant Phenomenon short by means of gin.</p> + +<p>If we wish to understand the spirit and the period of <i>Nicholas +Nickleby</i> we must endeavour to comprehend and to appreciate the old more +decisive remedies, or, if we prefer to put it so, the old more desperate +remedies. Our fathers had a plain sort of pity; if you will, a gross and +coarse pity. They had their own sort of sentimentalism. They were quite +willing to weep over Smike. But it certainly never occurred to them to +weep over Squeers. Even those who opposed the French war opposed it +exactly in the same way as their enemies opposed the French soldiers. +They fought with fighting. Charles Fox was full of horror at the +bitterness and the useless bloodshed; but if any one had insulted him +over the matter, he would have gone out and shot him in a duel as coolly +as any of his contemporaries. All their interference was heroic +interference. All their legislation was heroic legislation. All their +remedies were heroic remedies. No doubt they were often narrow and often +visionary. No doubt they often looked at a political formula when they +should have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +looked at an elemental fact. No doubt they were pedantic in some of +their principles and clumsy in some of their solutions. No doubt, in +short, they were all very wrong; and no doubt we are the people, and +wisdom shall die with us. But when they saw something which in their +eyes, such as they were, really violated their morality, such as it was, +then they did not cry “Investigate!” They did not cry +“Educate!” They did not cry “Improve!” They did +not cry “Evolve!” Like Nicholas Nickleby they cried +“Stop!” And it did stop.</p> + +<p>This is the first mark of the purely romantic method: the swiftness and +simplicity with which St. George kills the dragon. The second mark of it +is exhibited here as one of the weaknesses of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>. I +mean the tendency in the purely romantic story to regard the heroine +merely as something to be won; to regard the princess solely as +something to be saved from the dragon. The father of Madeline Bray is +really a very respectable dragon. His selfishness is suggested with much +more psychological tact and truth than that of any other of the villains +that Dickens described about this time. But his daughter is merely the +young woman with whom Nicholas is in love. We do not care a rap about +Madeline Bray. Personally I should have preferred Cecilia Bobster. Here +is one real point where the Victorian romance falls below the +Elizabethan romantic drama. Shakespeare always made his heroines heroic +as well as his heroes.</p> + +<p>In Dickens’s actual literary career it is this romantic quality in +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> that is most important. It is his first definite +attempt to write a young and chivalrous <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +novel. In this sense the comic characters and the comic scenes are +secondary; and indeed the comic characters and the comic scenes, +admirable as they are, could never be considered as in themselves +superior to such characters and such scenes in many of the other books. +But in themselves how unforgettable they are. Mr. Crummles and the whole +of his theatrical business is an admirable case of that first and most +splendid quality in Dickens—I mean the art of making something +which in life we call pompous and dull, becoming in literature pompous +and delightful. I have remarked before that nearly every one of the +amusing characters of Dickens is in reality a great fool. But I might go +further. Almost every one of his amusing characters is in reality a +great bore. The very people that we fly to in Dickens are the very +people that we fly from in life. And there is more in Crummles than the +mere entertainment of his solemnity and his tedium. The enormous +seriousness with which he takes his art is always an exact touch in +regard to the unsuccessful artist. If an artist is successful, +everything then depends upon a dilemma of his moral character. If he is +a mean artist success will make him a society man. If he is a +magnanimous artist, success will make him an ordinary man. But only as +long as he is unsuccessful will he be an unfathomable and serious +artist, like Mr. Crummles. Dickens was always particularly good at +expressing thus the treasures that belong to those who do not succeed in +this world. There are vast prospects and splendid songs in the point of +view of the typically unsuccessful man; if all the used-up actors and +spoilt journalists and broken clerks could give a chorus, it +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +would be a wonderful chorus in praise of the world. But these +unsuccessful men commonly cannot even speak. Dickens is the voice of +them, and a very ringing voice; because he was perhaps the only one of +these unsuccessful men that was ever successful.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></p> +<h2><a name="OLIVER" id="OLIVER"></a>OLIVER TWIST</h2> + +<p>In considering Dickens, as we almost always must consider him, as a man +of rich originality, we may possibly miss the forces from which he drew +even his original energy. It is not well for man to be alone. We, in the +modern world, are ready enough to admit that when it is applied to some +problem of monasticism or of an ecstatic life. But we will not admit +that our modern artistic claim to absolute originality is really a claim +to absolute unsociability; a claim to absolute loneliness. The anarchist +is at least as solitary as the ascetic. And the men of very vivid vigour +in literature, the men such as Dickens, have generally displayed a large +sociability towards the society of letters, always expressed in the +happy pursuit of pre-existent themes, sometimes expressed, as in the +case of Molière or Sterne, in downright plagiarism. For even theft is a +confession of our dependence on society. In Dickens, however, this +element of the original foundations on which he worked is quite +especially difficult to determine. This is partly due to the fact that +for the present reading public he is practically the only one of his +long line that is read at all. He sums up Smollett and Goldsmith, but he +also destroys them. This one giant, being closest to us, cuts off from +our view even the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +giants that begat him. But much more is this difficulty due to the fact +that Dickens mixed up with the old material, materials so subtly modern, +so made of the French Revolution, that the whole is transformed. If we +want the best example of this, the best example is <i>Oliver Twist</i>.</p> + +<p>Relatively to the other works of Dickens <i>Oliver Twist</i> is not of great +value, but it is of great importance. Some parts of it are so crude and +of so clumsy a melodrama, that one is almost tempted to say that Dickens +would have been greater without it. But even if he had been greater +without it he would still have been incomplete without it. With the +exception of some gorgeous passages, both of humour and horror, the +interest of the book lies not so much in its revelation of +Dickens’s literary genius as in its revelation of those moral, +personal, and political instincts which were the make-up of his +character and the permanent support of that literary genius. It is by +far the most depressing of all his books; it is in some ways the most +irritating; yet its ugliness gives the last touch of honesty to all that +spontaneous and splendid output. Without this one discordant note all +his merriment might have seemed like levity.</p> + +<p>Dickens had just appeared upon the stage and set the whole world +laughing with his first great story <i>Pickwick</i>. <i>Oliver Twist</i> was his +encore. It was the second opportunity given to him by those who had +rolled about with laughter over Tupman and Jingle, Weller and Dowler. +Under such circumstances a stagey reciter will sometimes take care to +give a pathetic piece after his humorous one; and with all his many +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +moral merits, there was much that was stagey about Dickens. But this +explanation alone is altogether inadequate and unworthy. There was in +Dickens this other kind of energy, horrible, uncanny, barbaric, capable +in another age of coarseness, greedy for the emblems of established +ugliness, the coffin, the gibbet, the bones, the bloody knife. Dickens +liked these things and he was all the more of a man for liking them; +especially he was all the more of a boy. We can all recall with pleasure +the fact that Miss Petowker (afterwards Mrs. Lillyvick) was in the habit +of reciting a poem called “The Blood Drinker’s +Burial.” I cannot express my regret that the words of this poem +are not given; for Dickens would have been quite as capable of writing +“The Blood Drinker’s Burial” as Miss Petowker was of +reciting it. This strain existed in Dickens alongside of his happy +laughter; both were allied to the same robust romance. Here as elsewhere +Dickens is close to all the permanent human things. He is close to +religion, which has never allowed the thousand devils on its churches to +stop the dancing of its bells. He is allied to the people, to the real +poor, who love nothing so much as to take a cheerful glass and to talk +about funerals. The extremes of his gloom and gaiety are the mark of +religion and democracy; they mark him off from the moderate happiness of +philosophers, and from that stoicism which is the virtue and the creed +of aristocrats. There is nothing odd in the fact that the same man who +conceived the humane hospitalities of Pickwick should also have imagined +the inhuman laughter of Fagin’s den. They are both genuine and +they are both exaggerated. And the whole human <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +tradition has tied up together in a strange knot these strands of +festivity and fear. It is over the cups of Christmas Eve that men have +always competed in telling ghost stories.</p> + +<p>This first element was present in Dickens, and it is very powerfully +present in <i>Oliver Twist</i>. It had not been present with sufficient +consistency or continuity in <i>Pickwick</i> to make it remain on the +reader’s memory at all, for the tale of “Gabriel +Grubb” is grotesque rather than horrible, and the two gloomy +stories of the “Madman” and the “Queer Client” +are so utterly irrelevant to the tale, that even if the reader remember +them he probably does not remember that they occur in <i>Pickwick</i>. +Critics have complained of Shakespeare and others for putting comic +episodes into a tragedy. It required a man with the courage and +coarseness of Dickens actually to put tragic episodes into a farce. But +they are not caught up into the story at all. In <i>Oliver Twist</i>, +however, the thing broke out with an almost brutal inspiration, and +those who had fallen in love with Dickens for his generous buffoonery +may very likely have been startled at receiving such very different fare +at the next helping. When you have bought a man’s book because you +like his writing about Mr. Wardle’s punch-bowl and Mr. +Winkle’s skates, it may very well be surprising to open it and +read about the sickening thuds that beat out the life of Nancy, or that +mysterious villain whose face was blasted with disease.</p> + +<p>As a nightmare, the work is really admirable. Characters which are not +very clearly conceived as regards their own psychology are yet, at +certain moments, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +managed so as to shake to its foundations our own psychology. Bill +Sikes is not exactly a real man, but for all that he is a real murderer. +Nancy is not really impressive as a living woman; but (as the phrase +goes) she makes a lovely corpse. Something quite childish and eternal in +us, something which is shocked with the mere simplicity of death, +quivers when we read of those repeated blows or see Sikes cursing the +tell-tale cur who will follow his bloody foot-prints. And this strange, +sublime, vulgar melodrama, which is melodrama and yet is painfully real, +reaches its hideous height in that fine scene of the death of Sikes, the +besieged house, the boy screaming within, the crowd screaming without, +the murderer turned almost a maniac and dragging his victim uselessly up +and down the room, the escape over the roof, the rope swiftly running +taut, and death sudden, startling and symbolic; a man hanged. There is +in this and similar scenes something of the quality of Hogarth and many +other English moralists of the early eighteenth century. It is not easy +to define this Hogarthian quality in words, beyond saying that it is a +sort of alphabetical realism, like the cruel candour of children. But it +has about it these two special principles which separate it from all +that we call realism in our time. First, that with us a moral story +means a story about moral people; with them a moral story meant more +often a story about immoral people. Second, that with us realism is +always associated with some subtle view of morals; with them realism was +always associated with some simple view of morals. The end of Bill Sikes +exactly in the way that the law would have killed him—this is a +Hogarthian incident; it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +carries on that tradition of startling and shocking platitude.</p> + +<p>All this element in the book was a sincere thing in the author, but none +the less it came from old soils, from the graveyard and the gallows, and +the lane where the ghost walked. Dickens was always attracted to such +things, and (as Forster says with inimitable simplicity) “but for +his strong sense might have fallen into the follies of +spiritualism.” As a matter of fact, like most of the men of strong +sense in his tradition, Dickens was left with a half belief in spirits +which became in practice a belief in bad spirits. The great disadvantage +of those who have too much strong sense to believe in supernaturalism is +that they keep last the low and little forms of the supernatural, such +as omens, curses, spectres, and retributions, but find a high and happy +supernaturalism quite incredible. Thus the Puritans denied the +sacraments, but went on burning witches. This shadow does rest, to some +extent, upon the rational English writers like Dickens; supernaturalism +was dying, but its ugliest roots died last. Dickens would have found it +easier to believe in a ghost than in a vision of the Virgin with angels. +There, for good or evil, however, was the root of the old <i>diablerie</i> in +Dickens, and there it is in <i>Oliver Twist</i>. But this was only the first +of the new Dickens elements, which must have surprised those Dickensians +who eagerly bought his second book. The second of the new Dickens +elements is equally indisputable and separate. It swelled afterwards to +enormous proportions in Dickens’s work; but it really has its rise +here. Again, as in the case of the element of <i>diablerie</i>, it would be +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +possible to make technical exceptions in favour of <i>Pickwick</i>. Just as +there were quite inappropriate scraps of the gruesome element in +<i>Pickwick</i>, so there are quite inappropriate allusions to this other +topic in <i>Pickwick</i>. But nobody by merely reading <i>Pickwick</i> would even +remember this topic; no one by merely reading <i>Pickwick</i> would know what +this topic is; this third great subject of Dickens; this second great +subject of the Dickens of <i>Oliver Twist</i>.</p> + +<p>This subject is social oppression. It is surely fair to say that no one +could have gathered from <i>Pickwick</i> how this question boiled in the +blood of the author of <i>Pickwick</i>. There are, indeed, passages, +particularly in connection with Mr. Pickwick in the debtor’s +prison, which prove to us, looking back on a whole public career, that +Dickens had been from the beginning bitter and inquisitive about the +problem of our civilisation. No one could have imagined at the time that +this bitterness ran in an unbroken river under all the surges of that +superb gaiety and exuberance. With <i>Oliver Twist</i> this sterner side of +Dickens was suddenly revealed. For the very first pages of <i>Oliver +Twist</i> are stern even when they are funny. They amuse, but they cannot +be enjoyed, as can the passages about the follies of Mr. Snodgrass or +the humiliations of Mr. Winkle. The difference between the old easy +humour and this new harsh humour is a difference not of degree but of +kind. Dickens makes game of Mr. Bumble because he wants to kill Mr. +Bumble; he made game of Mr. Winkle because he wanted him to live for +ever. Dickens has taken the sword in hand; against what is he declaring +war?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +It is just here that the greatness of Dickens comes in; it is just here +that the difference lies between the pedant and the poet. Dickens enters +the social and political war, and the first stroke he deals is not only +significant but even startling. Fully to see this we must appreciate the +national situation. It was an age of reform, and even of radical reform; +the world was full of radicals and reformers; but only too many of them +took the line of attacking everything and anything that was opposed to +some particular theory among the many political theories that possessed +the end of the eighteenth century. Some had so much perfected the +perfect theory of republicanism that they almost lay awake at night +because Queen Victoria had a crown on her head. Others were so certain +that mankind had hitherto been merely strangled in the bonds of the +State that they saw truth only in the destruction of tariffs or of +by-laws. The greater part of that generation held that clearness, +economy, and a hard common-sense, would soon destroy the errors that had +been erected by the superstitions and sentimentalities of the past. In +pursuance of this idea many of the new men of the new century, quite +confident that they were invigorating the new age, sought to destroy the +old sentimental clericalism, the old sentimental feudalism, the +old-world belief in priests, the old-world belief in patrons, and among +other things the old-world belief in beggars. They sought among other +things to clear away the old visionary kindliness on the subject of +vagrants. Hence those reformers enacted not only a new reform bill but +also a new poor law. In creating many other modern things they created +the modern <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +workhouse, and when Dickens came out to fight it was the first thing +that he broke with his battle-axe.</p> + +<p>This is where Dickens’s social revolt is of more value than mere +politics and avoids the vulgarity of the novel with a purpose. His +revolt is not a revolt of the commercialist against the feudalist, of +the Nonconformist against the Churchman, of the Free-trader against the +Protectionist, of the Liberal against the Tory. If he were among us now +his revolt would not be the revolt of the Socialist against the +Individualist, or of the Anarchist against the Socialist. His revolt was +simply and solely the eternal revolt; it was the revolt of the weak +against the strong. He did not dislike this or that argument for +oppression; he disliked oppression. He disliked a certain look on the +face of a man when he looks down on another man. And that look on the +face is, indeed, the only thing in the world that we have really to +fight between here and the fires of Hell. That which pedants of that +time and this time would have called the sentimentalism of Dickens was +really simply the detached sanity of Dickens. He cared nothing for the +fugitive explanations of the Constitutional Conservatives; he cared +nothing for the fugitive explanations of the Manchester School. He would +have cared quite as little for the fugitive explanations of the Fabian +Society or of the modern scientific Socialist. He saw that under many +forms there was one fact, the tyranny of man over man; and he struck at +it when he saw it, whether it was old or new. When he found that footmen +and rustics were too much afraid of Sir Leicester Dedlock, he attacked +Sir Leicester Dedlock; he did not care whether Sir Leicester Dedlock +said he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +attacking England or whether Mr. Rouncewell, the Ironmaster, said he +was attacking an effete oligarchy. In that case he pleased Mr. +Rouncewell, the Iron-master, and displeased Sir Leicester Dedlock, the +Aristocrat. But when he found that Mr. Rouncewell’s workmen were +much too frightened of Mr. Rouncewell, then he displeased Mr. Rouncewell +in turn; he displeased Mr. Rouncewell very much by calling him Mr. +Bounderby. When he imagined himself to be fighting old laws he gave a +sort of vague and general approval to new laws. But when he came to the +new laws they had a bad time. When Dickens found that after a hundred +economic arguments and granting a hundred economic considerations, the +fact remained that paupers in modern workhouses were much too afraid of +the beadle, just as vassals in ancient castles were much too afraid of +the Dedlocks, then he struck suddenly and at once. This is what makes +the opening chapters of <i>Oliver Twist</i> so curious and important. The +very fact of Dickens’s distance from, and independence of, the +elaborate financial arguments of his time, makes more definite and +dazzling his sudden assertion that he sees the old human tyranny in +front of him as plain as the sun at noon-day. Dickens attacks the modern +workhouse with a sort of inspired simplicity as of a boy in a fairy tale +who had wandered about, sword in hand, looking for ogres and who had +found an indisputable ogre. All the other people of his time are +attacking things because they are bad economics or because they are bad +politics, or because they are bad science; he alone is attacking things +because they are bad. All the others are Radicals with a large R; he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +alone is radical with a small one. He encounters evil with that +beautiful surprise which, as it is the beginning of all real pleasure, +is also the beginning of all righteous indignation. He enters the +workhouse just as Oliver Twist enters it, as a little child.</p> + +<p>This is the real power and pathos of that celebrated passage in the book +which has passed into a proverb; but which has not lost its terrible +humour even in being hackneyed. I mean, of course, the everlasting +quotation about Oliver Twist asking for more. The real poignancy that +there is in this idea is a very good study in that strong school of +social criticism which Dickens represented. A modern realist describing +the dreary workhouse would have made all the children utterly crushed, +not daring to speak at all, not expecting anything, not hoping anything, +past all possibility of affording even an ironical contrast or a protest +of despair. A modern, in short, would have made all the boys in the +workhouse pathetic by making them all pessimists. But Oliver Twist is +not pathetic because he is a pessimist. Oliver Twist is pathetic because +he is an optimist. The whole tragedy of that incident is in the fact +that he does expect the universe to be kind to him, that he does believe +that he is living in a just world. He comes before the Guardians as the +ragged peasants of the French Revolution came before the Kings and +Parliaments of Europe. That is to say, he comes, indeed, with gloomy +experiences, but he comes with a happy philosophy. He knows that there +are wrongs of man to be reviled; but he believes also that there are +rights of man to be demanded. It has often been remarked as a singular +fact that the French <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +poor, who stand in historic tradition as typical of all the desperate +men who have dragged down tyranny, were, as a matter of fact, by no +means worse off than the poor of many other European countries before +the Revolution. The truth is that the French were tragic because they +were better off. The others had known the sorrowful experiences; but +they alone had known the splendid expectation and the original claims. +It was just here that Dickens was so true a child of them and of that +happy theory so bitterly applied. They were the one oppressed people +that simply asked for justice; they were the one Parish Boy who +innocently asked for more.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></p> +<h2><a name="CURIOSITY" id="CURIOSITY"></a>OLD CURIOSITY SHOP</h2> + +<p>Nothing is important except the fate of the soul; and literature is only +redeemed from an utter triviality, surpassing that of naughts and +crosses, by the fact that it describes not the world around us or the +things on the retina of the eye or the enormous irrelevancy of +encyclopædias, but some condition to which the human spirit can come. +All good writers express the state of their souls, even (as occurs in +some cases of very good writers) if it is a state of damnation. The +first thing that has to be realised about Dickens is this ultimate +spiritual condition of the man, which lay behind all his creations. This +Dickens state of mind is difficult to pick out in words as are all +elementary states of mind; they cannot be described, not because they +are too subtle for words, but because they are too simple for words. +Perhaps the nearest approach to a statement of it would be this: that +Dickens expresses an eager anticipation of everything that will happen +in the motley affairs of men; he looks at the quiet crowd waiting for it +to be picturesque and to play the fool; he expects everything; he is +torn with a happy hunger. Thackeray is always looking back to yesterday; +Dickens is always looking forward to to-morrow. Both are profoundly +humorous, for there is a humour of the morning and a humour of the +evening; but the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +guesses at what it will get, at all the grotesqueness and variety which +a day may bring forth; the second looks back on what the day has been +and sees even its solemnities as slightly ironical. Nothing can be too +extravagant for the laughter that looks forward; and nothing can be too +dignified for the laughter that looks back. It is an idle but obvious +thing, which many must have noticed, that we often find in the title of +one of an author’s books what might very well stand for a general +description of all of them. Thus all Spenser’s works might be +called <i>A Hymn to Heavenly Beauty</i>; or all Mr. Bernard Shaw’s +bound books might be called <i>You Never Can Tell</i>. In the same way the +whole substance and spirit of Thackeray might be gathered under the +general title <i>Vanity Fair</i>. In the same way too the whole substance and +spirit of Dickens might be gathered under the general title <i>Great +Expectations</i>.</p> + +<p>In a recent criticism on this position I saw it remarked that all this +is reading into Dickens something that he did not mean; and I have been +told that it would have greatly surprised Dickens to be informed that he +“went down the broad road of the Revolution.” Of course it +would. Criticism does not exist to say about authors the things that +they knew themselves. It exists to say the things about them which they +did not know themselves. If a critic says that the <i>Iliad</i> has a pagan +rather than a Christian pity, or that it is full of pictures made by one +epithet, of course he does not mean that Homer could have said that. If +Homer could have said that the critic would leave Homer to say it. The +function of criticism, if it has a legitimate function at all, can only +be one function—that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +of dealing with the subconscious part of the author’s mind which +only the critic can express, and not with the conscious part of the +author’s mind, which the author himself can express. Either +criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else +criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have +made him jump out of his boots.</p> + +<p>Doubtless the name in this case <i>Great Expectations</i> is an empty +coincidence; and indeed it is not in the books of the later Dickens +period (the period of <i>Great Expectations</i>) that we should look for the +best examples of this sanguine and expectant spirit which is the +essential of the man’s genius. There are plenty of good examples +of it especially in the earlier works. But even in the earlier works +there is no example of it more striking or more satisfactory than <i>The +Old Curiosity Shop</i>. It is particularly noticeable in the fact that its +opening and original framework express the idea of a random experience, +a thing come across in the street; a single face in the crowd, followed +until it tells its story. Though the thing ends in a novel it begins in +a sketch; it begins as one of the <i>Sketches by Boz</i>. There is something +unconsciously artistic in the very clumsiness of this opening. Master +Humphrey starts to keep a scrap-book of all his adventures, and he finds +that he can fill the whole scrap-book with the sequels and developments +of one adventure; he goes out to notice everybody and he finds himself +busily and variedly occupied only in watching somebody. In this there is +a very profound truth about the true excitement and inexhaustible poetry +of life. The truth is not so much that eternity is full of souls as that +one soul can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +fill eternity. In strict art there is something quite lame and +lumbering about the way in which the benevolent old story-teller starts +to tell many stories and then drops away altogether, while one of his +stories takes his place. But in a larger art, his collision with Little +Nell and his complete eclipse by her personality and narrative have a +real significance. They suggest the random richness of such meetings, +and their uncalculated results. It makes the whole book a sort of +splendid accident.</p> + +<p>It is not true, as is commonly said, that the Dickens pathos as pathos +is bad. It is not true, as is still more commonly said, that the whole +business about Little Nell is bad. The case is more complex than that. +Yet complex as it is it admits of one sufficiently clear distinction. +Those who have written about the death of Little Nell, have generally +noticed the crudities of the character itself; the little girl’s +unnatural and staring innocence, her constrained and awkward piety. But +they have nearly all of them entirely failed to notice that there is in +the death of Little Nell one quite definite and really artistic idea. It +is not an artistic idea that a little child should die rhetorically on +the stage like Paul Dombey; and Little Nell does not die rhetorically +upon the stage like Paul Dombey. But it is an artistic idea that all the +good powers and personalities in the story should set out in pursuit of +one insignificant child, to repair an injustice to her, should track her +from town to town over England with all the resources of wealth, +intelligence, and travel, and should all—arrive too late. All the good +fairies and all the kind magicians, all the just kings and all the +gallant <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +princes, with chariots and flying dragons and armies and navies go +after one little child who had strayed into a wood, and find her dead. +That is the conception which Dickens’s artistic instinct was +really aiming at when he finally condemned Little Nell to death, after +keeping her, so to speak, so long with the rope round her neck. The +death of Little Nell is open certainly to the particular denial which +its enemies make about it. The death of Little Nell is not pathetic. It +is perhaps tragic; it is in reality ironic. Here is a very good case of +the injustice to Dickens on his purely literary side. It is not that I +say that Dickens achieved what he designed; it is that the critics will +not see what the design was. They go on talking of the death of Little +Nell as if it were a mere example of maudlin description like the death +of Little Paul. As a fact it is not described at all; so it cannot be +objectionable. It is not the death of Little Nell, but the life of +Little Nell, that I object to.</p> + +<p>In this, in the actual picture of her personality, if you can call it a +personality, Dickens did fall into some of his facile vices. The real +objection to much of his pathos belongs really to another part of his +character. It is connected with his vanity, his voracity for all kinds +of praise, his restive experimentalism and even perhaps his envy. He +strained himself to achieve pathos. His humour was inspiration; but his +pathos was ambition. His laughter was lonely; he would have laughed on a +desert island. But his grief was gregarious. He liked to move great +masses of men, to melt them into tenderness, to play on the people as a +great pianist plays on them; to make them mad or sad. His pathos +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +was to him a way of showing his power; and for that reason it was +really powerless. He could not help making people laugh; but he tried to +make them cry. We come in this novel, as we often do come in his novels, +upon hard lumps of unreality, upon a phrase that suddenly sickens. That +is always due to his conscious despotism over the delicate feelings; +that is always due to his love of fame as distinct from his love of fun. +But it is not true that all Dickens’s pathos is like this; it is +not even true that all the passages about Little Nell are like this; +there are two strands almost everywhere and they can be differentiated +as the sincere and the deliberate. There is a great difference between +Dickens thinking about the tears of his characters and Dickens thinking +about the tears of his audience.</p> + +<p>When all this is allowed, however, and the exaggerated contempt for the +Dickens pathos is properly corrected, the broad fact remains: that to +pass from the solemn characters in this book to the comic characters in +this book, is to be like some Ulysses who should pass suddenly from the +land of shadows to the mountain of the gods. Little Nell has her own +position in careful and reasonable criticism: even that wobbling old +ass, her grandfather, has his position in it; perhaps even the +dissipated Fred (whom long acquaintance with Mr. Dick Swiveller has not +made any less dismal in his dissipation) has a place in it also. But +when we come to Swiveller and Sampson Brass and Quilp and Mrs. Jarley, +then Fred and Nell and the grandfather simply do not exist. There are no +such people in the story. The real hero and heroine of <i>The Old +Curiosity Shop</i> are of course Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +It is significant in a sense that these two sane, strong, living, and +lovable human beings are the only two, or almost the only two, people in +the story who do not run after Little Nell. They have something better +to do than to go on that shadowy chase after that cheerless phantom. +They have to build up between them a true romance; perhaps the one true +romance in the whole of Dickens. Dick Swiveller really has all the +half-heroic characteristics which make a man respected by a woman and +which are the male contribution to virtue. He is brave, magnanimous, +sincere about himself, amusing, absurdly hopeful; above all, he is both +strong and weak. On the other hand the Marchioness really has all the +characteristics, the entirely heroic characteristics which make a woman +respected by a man. She is female: that is, she is at once incurably +candid and incurably loyal, she is full of terrible common-sense, she +expects little pleasure for herself and yet she can enjoy bursts of it; +above all, she is physically timid and yet she can face anything. All +this solid rocky romanticism is really implied in the speech and action +of these two characters and can be felt behind them all the time. +Because they are the two most absurd people in the book they are also +the most vivid, human, and imaginable. There are two really fine love +affairs in Dickens; and I almost think only two. One is the happy +courtship of Swiveller and the Marchioness; the other is the tragic +courtship of Toots and Florence Dombey. When Dick Swiveller wakes up in +bed and sees the Marchioness playing cribbage he thinks that he and she +are a prince and princess in a fairy tale. He thinks right.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +I speak thus seriously of such characters with a deliberate purpose; for +the frivolous characters of Dickens are taken much too frivolously. It +has been quite insufficiently pointed out that all the serious moral +ideas that Dickens did contrive to express he expressed altogether +through this fantastic medium, in such figures as Swiveller and the +little servant. The warmest upholder of Dickens would not go to the +solemn or sentimental passages for anything fresh or suggestive in faith +or philosophy. No one would pretend that the death of little Dombey +(with its “What are the wild waves saying?”) told us +anything new or real about death. A good Christian dying, one would +imagine, not only would not know what the wild waves were saying, but +would not care. No one would pretend that the repentance of old Paul +Dombey throws any light on the +<ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'pyschology'.">psychology</ins> +or philosophy of repentance. No doubt old Dombey, white-haired and +amiable, was a great improvement on old Dombey brown-haired and +unpleasant. But in his case the softening of the heart seems to bear too +close a resemblance to softening of the brain. Whether these serious +passages are as bad as the critical people or as good as the sentimental +people find them, at least they do not convey anything in the way of an +illuminating glimpse or a bold suggestion about men’s moral +nature. The serious figures do not tell one anything about the human +soul. The comic figures do. Take anything almost at random out of these +admirable speeches of Dick Swiveller. Notice, for instance, how +exquisitely Dickens has caught a certain very deep and delicate quality +at the bottom of this idle kind of man. I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +mean that odd impersonal sort of intellectual justice, by which the +frivolous fellow sees things as they are and even himself as he is; and +is above irritation. Mr. Swiveller, you remember, asks the Marchioness +whether the Brass family ever talk about him; she nods her head with +vivacity. “‘Complimentary?’ inquired Mr. Swiveller. +The motion of the little servant’s head altered.... ‘But she +says,’ continued the little servant, ‘that you ain’t +to be trusted.’ ‘Well, do you know, Marchioness,’ said +Mr. Swiveller thoughtfully, ‘many people, not exactly professional +people, but tradesmen, have had the same idea. The excellent citizen +from whom I ordered this beer inclines strongly to that +opinion.’”</p> + +<p>This philosophical freedom from all resentment, this strange love of +truth which seems actually to come through carelessness, is a very real +piece of spiritual observation. Even among liars there are two classes, +one immeasurably better than another. The honest liar is the man who +tells the truth about his old lies; who says on Wednesday, “I told +a magnificent lie on Monday.” He keeps the truth in circulation; +no one version of things stagnates in him and becomes an evil secret. He +does not have to live with old lies; a horrible domesticity. Mr. +Swiveller may mislead the waiter about whether he has the money to pay; +but he does not mislead his friend, and he does not mislead himself on +the point. He is quite as well aware as any one can be of the +accumulating falsity of the position of a gentleman who by his various +debts has closed up all the streets into the Strand except one, and who +is going to close that to-night with a pair of gloves. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +He shuts up the street with a pair of gloves, but he does not shut up +his mind with a secret. The traffic of truth is still kept open through +his soul.</p> + +<p>It is exactly in these absurd characters, then, that we can find a mass +of psychological and ethical suggestion. This cannot be found in the +serious characters except indeed in some of the later experiments: there +is a little of such psychological and ethical suggestion in figures like +Gridley, like Jasper, like Bradley Headstone. But in these earlier books +at least, such as <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>, the grave or moral figures +throw no light upon morals. I should maintain this generalisation even +in the presence of that apparent exception <i>The Christmas Carol</i> with +its trio of didactic ghosts. Charity is certainly splendid, at once a +luxury and a necessity; but Dickens is not most effective when he is +preaching charity seriously; he is most effective when he is preaching +it uproariously; when he is preaching it by means of massive +personalities and vivid scenes. One might say that he is best not when +he is preaching his human love, but when he is practising it. In his +grave pages he tells us to love men; but in his wild pages he creates +men whom we can love. By his solemnity he commands us to love our +neighbours. By his caricature he makes us love them.</p> + +<p>There is an odd literary question which I wonder is not put more often +in literature. How far can an author tell a truth without seeing it +himself? Perhaps an actual example will express my meaning. I was once +talking to a highly intelligent lady about Thackeray’s <i>Newcomes</i>. +We were speaking of the character of Mrs. Mackenzie, the Campaigner, and +in the middle <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +of the conversation the lady leaned across to me and said in a low, +hoarse, but emphatic voice, “She drank. Thackeray didn’t +know it; but she drank.” And it is really astonishing what a shaft +of white light this sheds on the Campaigner, on her terrible +temperament, on her agonised abusiveness and her almost more agonised +urbanity, on her clamour which is nevertheless not open or explicable, +on her temper which is not so much bad temper as insatiable, +bloodthirsty, man-eating temper. How far can a writer thus indicate by +accident a truth of which he is himself ignorant? If truth is a plan or +pattern of things that really are, or in other words, if truth truly +exists outside ourselves, or in other words, if truth exists at all, it +must be often possible for a writer to uncover a corner of it which he +happens not to understand, but which his reader does happen to +understand. The author sees only two lines; the reader sees where they +meet and what is the angle. The author sees only an arc or fragment of a +curve; the reader sees the size of the circle. The last thing to say +about Dickens, and especially about books like <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>, +is that they are full of these unconscious truths. The careless reader +may miss them. The careless author almost certainly did miss them. But +from them can be gathered an impression of real truth to life which is +for the grave critics of Dickens an almost unknown benefit, buried +treasure. Here for instance is one of them out of <i>The Old Curiosity +Shop</i>. I mean the passage in which (by a blazing stroke of genius) the +dashing Mr. Chuckster, one of the Glorious Apollos of whom Mr. Swiveller +was the Perpetual Grand, is made to entertain a hatred bordering upon +frenzy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +for the stolid, patient, respectful, and laborious Kit. Now in the +formal plan of the story Mr. Chuckster is a fool, and Kit is almost a +hero; at least he is a noble boy. Yet unconsciously Dickens made the +idiot Chuckster say something profoundly suggestive on the subject. In +speaking of Kit Mr. Chuckster makes use of these two remarkable phrases; +that Kit is “meek” and that he is “a snob.” Now +Kit is really a very fresh and manly picture of a boy, firm, sane, +chivalrous, reasonable, full of those three great Roman virtues which +Mr. Belloc has so often celebrated, <i>virtus</i> and <i>verecundia</i> and +<i>pietas</i>. He is a sympathetic but still a straightforward study of the +best type of that most respectable of all human classes, the respectable +poor. All this is true; all that Dickens utters in praise of Kit is +true; nevertheless the awful words of Chuckster remain written on the +eternal skies. Kit is meek and Kit is a snob. His natural dignity does +include and is partly marred by that instinctive subservience to the +employing class which has been the comfortable weakness of the whole +English democracy, which has prevented their making any revolution for +the last two hundred years. Kit would not serve any wicked man for +money, but he would serve any moderately good man and the money would +give a certain dignity and decisiveness to the goodness. All this is the +English popular evil which goes along with the English popular virtues +of geniality, of homeliness, tolerance and strong humour, hope and an +enormous appetite for a hand-to-mouth happiness. The scene in which Kit +takes his family to the theatre is a monument of the massive qualities +of old English enjoyment. If what we want is Merry England, our +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +antiquarians ought not to revive the Maypole or the Morris Dancers; +they ought to revive Astley’s and Sadler’s Wells and the old +solemn Circus and the old stupid Pantomime, and all the sawdust and all +the oranges. Of all this strength and joy in the poor, Kit is a splendid +and final symbol. But amid all his masculine and English virtue, he has +this weak touch of meekness, or acceptance of the powers that be. It is +a sound touch; it is a real truth about Kit. But Dickens did not know +it. Mr. Chuckster did.</p> + +<p>Dickens’s stories taken as a whole have more artistic unity than +appears at the first glance. It is the immediate impulse of a modern +critic to dismiss them as mere disorderly scrap-books with very +brilliant scraps. But this is not quite so true as it looks. In one of +Dickens’s novels there is generally no particular unity of +construction; but there is often a considerable unity of sentiment and +atmosphere. Things are irrelevant, but not somehow inappropriate. The +whole book is written carelessly; but the whole book is generally +written in one mood. To take a rude parallel from the other arts, we may +say that there is not much unity of form, but there is much unity of +colour. In most of the novels this can be seen. <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, as +I have remarked, is full of a certain freshness, a certain light and +open-air curiosity, which irradiates from the image of the young man +swinging along the Yorkshire roads in the sun. Hence the comic +characters with whom he falls in are comic characters in the same key; +they are a band of strolling players, charlatans and poseurs, but too +humane to be called humbugs. In the same way, the central story of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +<i>Oliver Twist</i> is sombre; and hence even its comic character is almost +sombre; at least he is too ugly to be merely amusing. Mr. Bumble is in +some ways a terrible grotesque; his apoplectic visage recalls the +“fire-red Cherubimme’s face,” which added such horror +to the height and stature of Chaucer’s Sompnour. In both these +cases even the riotous and absurd characters are a little touched with +the tint of the whole story. But this neglected merit of Dickens can +certainly be seen best in <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>.</p> + +<p>The curiosity shop itself was a lumber of grotesque and sinister things, +outlandish weapons, twisted and diabolic decorations. The comic +characters in the book are all like images bought in an old curiosity +shop. Quilp might be a gargoyle. He might be some sort of devilish +door-knocker, dropped down and crawling about the pavement. The same +applies to the sinister and really terrifying stiffness of Sally Brass. +She is like some old staring figure cut out of wood. Sampson Brass, her +brother, again is a grotesque in the same rather inhuman manner; he is +especially himself when he comes in with the green shade over his eye. +About all this group of bad figures in <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i> there is +a sort of <i>diablerie</i>. There is also within this atmosphere an +extraordinary energy of irony and laughter. The scene in which Sampson +Brass draws up the description of Quilp, supposing him to be dead, +reaches a point of fiendish fun. “We will not say very bandy, Mrs. +Jiniwin,” he says of his friend’s legs, “we will +confine ourselves to bandy. He is gone, my friends, where his legs would +never be called in question.” They go on to the discussion of his +nose, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +Mrs. Jiniwin inclines to the view that it is flat. “Aquiline, you +hag! Aquiline,” cries Mr. Quilp, pushing in his head and striking +his nose with his fist. There is nothing better in the whole brutal +exuberance of the character than that gesture with which Quilp punches +his own face with his own fist. It is indeed a perfect symbol; for Quilp +is always fighting himself for want of anybody else. He is energy, and +energy by itself is always suicidal; he is that primordial energy which +tears and which destroys itself.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></p> +<h2><a name="BARNABY" id="BARNABY"></a>BARNABY RUDGE</h2> + +<p><i>Barnaby Rudge</i> was written by Dickens in the spring and first flowing +tide of his popularity; it came immediately after <i>The Old Curiosity +Shop</i>, and only a short time after <i>Pickwick</i>. Dickens was one of those +rare but often very sincere men in whom the high moment of success +almost coincides with the high moment of youth. The calls upon him at +this time were insistent and overwhelming; this necessarily happens at a +certain stage of a successful writer’s career. He was just +successful enough to invite offers and not successful enough to reject +them. At the beginning of his career he could throw himself into +<i>Pickwick</i> because there was nothing else to throw himself into. At the +end of his life he could throw himself into <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, +because he refused to throw himself into anything else. But there was an +intervening period, early in his life, when there was almost too much +work for his imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his +housekeeping. To this period <i>Barnaby Rudge</i> belongs. And it is a +curious tribute to the quite curious greatness of Dickens that in this +period of youthful strain we do not feel the strain but feel only the +youth. His own amazing wish to write equalled or outstripped even his +readers’ amazing wish to read. Working too hard did not cure him +of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +his abstract love of work. Unreasonable publishers asked him to write +ten novels at once; but he wanted to write twenty novels at once. All +this period is strangely full of his own sense at once of fertility and +of futility; he did work which no one else could have done, and yet he +could not be certain as yet that he was anybody.</p> + +<p><i>Barnaby Rudge</i> marks this epoch because it marks the fact that he is +still confused about what kind of person he is going to be. He has +already struck the note of the normal romance in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>; he +has already created some of his highest comic characters in <i>Pickwick</i> +and <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>, but here he betrays the fact that it is +still a question what ultimate guide he shall follow. <i>Barnaby Rudge</i> is +a romantic, historical novel. Its design reminds us of Scott; some parts +of its fulfilment remind us, alas! of Harrison Ainsworth. It is a very +fine romantic historical novel; Scott would have been proud of it. But +it is still so far different from the general work of Dickens that it is +permissible to wonder how far Dickens was proud of it. The book, +effective as it is, is almost entirely devoted to dealings with a +certain artistic element, which (in its mere isolation) Dickens did not +commonly affect; an element which many men of infinitely less genius +have often seemed to affect more successfully; I mean the element of the +picturesque.</p> + +<p>It is the custom in many quarters to speak somewhat sneeringly of that +element which is broadly called the picturesque. It is always felt to be +an inferior, a vulgar, and even an artificial form of art. Yet two +things may be remarked about it. The first is that, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +with few exceptions, the greatest literary artists have been not only +particularly clever at the picturesque, but particularly fond of it. +Shakespeare, for instance, delighted in certain merely pictorial +contrasts which are quite distinct from, even when they are akin to, the +spiritual view involved. For instance, there is admirable satire in the +idea of Touchstone teaching worldly wisdom and worldly honour to the +woodland yokels. There is excellent philosophy in the idea of the fool +being the representative of civilisation in the forest. But quite apart +from this deeper meaning in the incident, the mere figure of the jester, +in his bright motley and his cap and bells, against the green background +of the forest and the rude forms of the shepherds, is a strong example +of the purely picturesque. There is excellent tragic irony in the +confrontation of the melancholy philosopher among the tombs with the +cheerful digger of the graves. It sums up the essential point, that dead +bodies can be comic; it is only dead souls that can be tragic. But quite +apart from such irony, the mere picture of the grotesque gravedigger, +the black-clad prince, and the skull is a picture in the strongest sense +picturesque. Caliban and the two shipwrecked drunkards are an admirable +symbol; but they are also an admirable scene. Bottom, with the +ass’s head, sitting in a ring of elves, is excellent moving +comedy, but also excellent still life. Falstaff with his huge body, +Bardolph with his burning nose, are masterpieces of the pen; but they +would be fine sketches even for the pencil. King Lear, in the storm, is +a landscape as well as a character study. There is something decorative +even about the insistence on the swarthiness <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +of Othello, or the deformity of Richard III. Shakespeare’s work +is much more than picturesque; but it is picturesque. And the same which +is said here of him by way of example is largely true of the highest +class of literature. Dante’s <i>Divine Comedy</i> is supremely +important as a philosophy; but it is important merely as a panorama. +Spenser’s <i>Faery Queen</i> pleases us as an allegory; but it would +please us even as a wall-paper. Stronger still is the case of Chaucer +who loved the pure picturesque, which always includes something of what +we commonly call the ugly. The huge stature and startling scarlet face +of the Sompnour is in just the same spirit as Shakespeare’s skulls +and motley; the same spirit gave Chaucer’s miller bagpipes, and +clad his doctor in crimson. It is the spirit which, while making many +other things, loves to make a picture.</p> + +<p>Now the second thing to be remarked in apology for the picturesque is, +that the very thing which makes it seem trivial ought really to make it +seem important; I mean the fact that it consists necessarily of +contrasts. It brings together types that stand out from their +background, but are abruptly different from each other, like the clown +among the fairies or the fool in the forest. And his audacious +reconciliation is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme seriousness. A +man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels or lambs +with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one +mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man +who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus must have some serious +view of the universe. The man who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +should write a dialogue between two early Christians might be a mere +writer of dialogues. But a man who should write a dialogue between an +early Christian and the Missing Link would have to be a philosopher. The +more widely different the types talked of, the more serious and +universal must be the philosophy which talks of them. The mark of the +light and thoughtless writer is the harmony of his subject matter; the +mark of the thoughtful writer is its apparent diversity. The most +flippant lyric poet might write a pretty poem about lambs; but it +requires something bolder and graver than a poet, it requires an +ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lying down with the lamb.</p> + +<p>Dickens, at any rate, strongly supports this conception: that great +literary men as such do not despise the purely pictorial. No man’s +works have so much the quality of illustrating themselves. Few +men’s works have been more thoroughly and eagerly illustrated; few +men’s works can it have been better fun to illustrate. As a rule +this fascinating quality in the mere fantastic figures of the tale was +inseparable from their farcical quality in the tale. Stiggins’s +red nose is distinctly connected with the fact that he is a member of +the Ebenezer Temperance Association; Quilp is little, because a little +of him goes a long way. Mr. Carker smiles and smiles and is a villain; +Mr. Chadband is fat because in his case to be fat is to be hated. The +story is immeasurably more important than the picture; it is not mere +indulgence in the picturesque. Generally it is an intellectual love of +the comic; not a pure love of the grotesque.</p> + +<p>But in one book Dickens suddenly confesses that he +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +likes the grotesque even without the comic. In one case he makes clear +that he enjoys pure pictures with a pure love of the picturesque. That +place is <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>. There had indeed been hints of it in many +episodes in his books; notably, for example, in that fine scene of the +death of Quilp—a scene in which the dwarf remains fantastic long +after he has ceased to be in any way funny. Still, the dwarf was meant +to be funny. Humour of a horrible kind, but still humour, is the purpose +of Quilp’s existence and position in the book. Laughter is the +object of all his oddities. But laughter is not the object of Barnaby +Rudge’s oddities. His idiot costume and his ugly raven are used +for the purpose of the pure grotesque; solely to make a certain kind of +Gothic sketch.</p> + +<p>It is commonly this love of pictures that drives men back upon the +historical novel. But it is very typical of Dickens’s living +interest in his own time, that though he wrote two historical novels +they were neither of them of very ancient history. They were both, +indeed, of very recent history; only they were those parts of recent +history which were specially picturesque. I do not think that this was +due to any mere consciousness on his part that he knew no history. +Undoubtedly he knew no history; and he may or may not have been +conscious of the fact. But the consciousness did not prevent him from +writing a <i>History of England</i>. Nor did it prevent him from interlarding +all or any of his works with tales of the pictorial past, such as the +tale of the broken swords in <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>, or the +indefensibly delightful nightmare of the lady in the stage-coach, which +helps to soften the amiable end <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +of Pickwick. Neither, worst of all, did it prevent him from dogmatising +anywhere and everywhere about the past, of which he knew nothing; it did +not prevent him from telling the bells to tell Trotty Veck that the +Middle Ages were a failure, nor from solemnly declaring that the best +thing that the mediæval monks ever did was to create the mean and +snobbish quietude of a modern cathedral city. No, it was not historical +reverence that held him back from dealing with the remote past; but +rather something much better—a living interest in the living +century in which he was born. He would have thought himself quite +intellectually capable of writing a novel about the Council of Trent or +the First Crusade. He would have thought himself quite equal to +analysing the psychology of Abelard or giving a bright, satiric sketch +of St. Augustine. It must frankly be confessed that it was not a sense +of his own unworthiness that held him back; I fear it was rather a sense +of St. Augustine’s unworthiness. He could not see the point of any +history before the first slow swell of the French Revolution. He could +understand the revolutions of the eighteenth century; all the other +revolutions of history (so many and so splendid) were unmeaning to him. +But the revolutions of the eighteenth century he did understand; and to +them therefore he went back, as all historical novelists go back, in +search of the picturesque. And from this fact an important result +follows.</p> + +<p>The result that follows is this: that his only two historical novels are +both tales of revolutions—of eighteenth-century revolutions. These two +eighteenth-century revolutions may seem to differ, and perhaps +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +do differ in everything except in being revolutions and of the +eighteenth century. The French Revolution, which is the theme of <i>A Tale +of Two Cities</i>, was a revolt in favour of all that is now called +enlightenment and liberation. The great Gordon Riot, which is the theme +of <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, was a revolt in favour of something which would now +be called mere ignorant and obscurantist Protestantism. Nevertheless +both belonged more typically to the age out of which Dickens +came—the great sceptical and yet creative eighteenth century of +Europe. Whether the mob rose on the right side or the wrong they both +belonged to the time in which a mob could rise, in which a mob could +conquer. No growth of intellectual science or of moral cowardice had +made it impossible to fight in the streets, whether for the republic or +for the Bible. If we wish to know what was the real link, existing +actually in ultimate truth, existing unconsciously in Dickens’s +mind, which connected the Gordon Riots with the French Revolution, the +link may be defined though not with any great adequacy. The nearest and +truest way of stating it is that neither of the two could possibly +happen in Fleet Street to-morrow evening.</p> + +<p>Another point of resemblance between the two books might be found in the +fact that they both contain the sketch of the same kind of +eighteenth-century aristocrat, if indeed that kind of aristocrat really +existed in the eighteenth century. The diabolical dandy with the rapier +and the sneer is at any rate a necessity of all normal plays and +romances; hence Mr. Chester has a right to exist in this romance, and +Foulon a right to exist in a page of history almost as cloudy and +disputable <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +as a romance. What Dickens and other romancers do probably omit from +the picture of the eighteenth-century oligarch is probably his +liberality. It must never be forgotten that even when he was a despot in +practice he was generally a liberal in theory. Dickens and romancers +make the pre-revolution tyrant a sincere believer in tyranny; generally +he was not. He was a sceptic about everything, even about his own +position. The romantic Foulon says of the people, “Let them eat +grass,” with bitter and deliberate contempt. The real Foulon (if +he ever said it at all) probably said it as a sort of dreary joke +because he couldn’t think of any other way out of the problem. +<ins class="corr" title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'Similiarly'.">Similarly</ins> +Mr. Chester, a cynic as he is, believes seriously in the beauty of being +a gentleman; a real man of that type probably disbelieved in that as in +everything else. Dickens was too bracing, one may say too bouncing +himself to understand the psychology of fatigue in a protected and +leisured class. He could understand a tyrant like Quilp, a tyrant who is +on his throne because he has climbed up into it, like a monkey. He could +not understand a tyrant who is on his throne because he is too weary to +get out of it. The old aristocrats were in a dead way quite +good-natured. They were even humanitarians; which perhaps accounts for +the extent to which they roused against themselves the healthy hatred of +humanity. But they were tired humanitarians; tired with doing nothing. +Figures like that of Mr. Chester, therefore, fail somewhat to give the +true sense of something hopeless and helpless which led men to despair +of the upper class. He has a boyish pleasure in play-acting; he has an +interest in life; being <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +a villain is his hobby. But the true man of that type had found all +hobbies fail him. He had wearied of himself as he had wearied of a +hundred women. He was graceful and could not even admire himself in the +glass. He was witty and could not even laugh at his own jokes. Dickens +could never understand tedium.</p> + +<p>There is no mark more strange and perhaps sinister of the interesting +and not very sane condition of our modern literature, than the fact that +tedium has been admirably described in it. Our best modern writers are +never so exciting as they are about dulness. Mr. Rudyard Kipling is +never so powerful as when he is painting yawning deserts, aching +silences, sleepless nights, or infernal isolation. The excitement in one +of the stories of Mr. Henry James becomes tense, thrilling, and almost +intolerable in all the half hours during which nothing whatever is said +or done. We are entering again into the mind, into the real mind of +Foulon and Mr. Chester. We begin to understand the deep despair of those +tyrants whom our fathers pulled down. But Dickens could never have +understood that despair; it was not in his soul. And it is an +interesting coincidence that here, in this book of <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, +there is a character meant to be wholly grotesque, who, nevertheless, +expresses much of that element in Dickens which prevented him from being +a true interpreter of the tired and sceptical aristocrat.</p> + +<p>Sim Tappertit is a fool, but a perfectly honourable fool. It requires +some sincerity to pose. Posing means that one has not dried up in +oneself all the youthful and innocent vanities with the slow paralysis +of mere pride. Posing means that one is still fresh <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +enough to enjoy the good opinion of one’s fellows. On the other +hand, the true cynic has not enough truth in him to attempt affectation; +he has never even seen the truth, far less tried to imitate it. Now we +might very well take the type of Mr. Chester on the one hand, and of Sim +Tappertit on the other, as marking the issue, the conflict, and the +victory which really ushered in the nineteenth century. Dickens was very +like Sim Tappertit. The Liberal Revolution was very like a Sim Tappertit +revolution. It was vulgar, it was overdone, it was absurd, but it was +alive. Dickens was vulgar, was absurd, overdid everything, but he was +alive. The aristocrats were perfectly correct, but quite dead; dead long +before they were guillotined. The classics and critics who lamented that +Dickens was no gentleman were quite right, but quite dead. The +revolution thought itself rational; but so did Sim Tappertit. It was +really a huge revolt of romanticism against a reason which had grown +sick even of itself. Sim Tappertit rose against Mr. Chester; and, thank +God! he put his foot upon his neck.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 399px;"><a name="CD1842" id="CD1842"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1842.jpg" width="399" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, 1842<br /> +From a bust by H. Dexter, executed during Dickens’s first visit to America.</span> +</div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></p> +<h2><a name="AMERICAN" id="AMERICAN"></a>AMERICAN NOTES</h2> + +<p><i>American Notes</i> was written soon after Dickens had returned from his +first visit to America. That visit had, of course, been a great epoch in +his life; but how much of an epoch men did not truly realise until, some +time after, in the middle of a quiet story about Salisbury and a +ridiculous architect, his feelings flamed out and flared up to the stars +in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. The <i>American Notes</i> are, however, interesting, +because in them he betrays his feelings when he does not know that he is +betraying them. Dickens’s first visit to America was, from his own +point of view, and at the beginning, a happy and festive experiment. It +is very characteristic of him that he went among the Americans, enjoyed +them, even admired them, and then had a quarrel with them. Nothing was +ever so unmistakable as his good-will, except his ill-will; and they +were never far apart. And this was not, as some bloodless moderns have +sneeringly insinuated, a mere repetition of the proximity between the +benevolent stage and the quarrelsome stage of drink. It was a piece of +pure optimism; he believed so readily that men were going to be good to +him that an injury to him was something more than an injury: it was a +shock. What was the exact nature of the American shock must, however, be +more carefully stated.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +The famous quarrel between Dickens and America, which finds its most +elaborate expression in <i>American Notes</i>, though its most brilliant +expression in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, is an incident about which a great +deal remains to be said. But the thing which most specially remains to +be said is this. This old Anglo-American quarrel was much more +fundamentally friendly than most Anglo-American alliances. In +Dickens’s day each nation understood the other enough to argue. In +our time neither nation understands itself even enough to quarrel. There +was an English tradition, from Fox and eighteenth-century England; there +was an American tradition from Franklin and eighteenth-century America; +and they were still close enough together to discuss their differences +with acrimony, perhaps, but with certain fundamental understandings. The +eighteenth-century belief in a liberal civilisation was still a dogma; +for dogma is the only thing that makes argument or reasoning possible. +America, under all its swagger, did still really believe that Europe was +its fountain and its mother, because Europe was more fully civilised. +Dickens, under all his disgust, did still believe that America was in +advance of Europe, because it was more democratic. It was an age, in +short, in which the word “progress” could still be used +reasonably; because the whole world looked to one way of escape and +there was only one kind of progress under discussion. Now, of course, +“progress” is a useless word; for progress takes for granted +an already defined direction; and it is exactly about the direction that +we disagree. Do not let us therefore be misled into any mistaken +optimism or special self-congratulation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +upon what many people would call the improved relations between England +and America. The relations are improved because America has finally +become a foreign country. And with foreign countries all sane men take +care to exchange a certain consideration and courtesy. But even as late +as the time of Dickens’s first visit to the United States, we +English still felt America as a colony; an insolent, offensive, and even +unintelligible colony sometimes, but still a colony; a part of our +civilisation, a limb of our life. And America itself, as I have said, +under all its bounce and independence, really regarded us as a mother +country. This being the case it was possible for us to quarrel, like +kinsmen. Now we only bow and smile, like strangers.</p> + +<p>This tone, as a sort of family responsibility, can be felt quite +specially all through the satires or suggestions of these <i>American +Notes</i>. Dickens is cross with America because he is worried about +America; as if he were its father. He explores its industrial, legal, +and educational arrangements like a mother looking at the housekeeping +of a married son; he makes suggestions with a certain acidity; he takes +a strange pleasure in being pessimistic. He advises them to take note of +how much better certain things are done in England. All this is very +different from Dickens’s characteristic way of dealing with a +foreign country. In countries really foreign, such as France, +Switzerland, and Italy, he had two attitudes, neither of them in the +least worried or paternal. When he found a thing in Europe which he did +not understand, such as the Roman Catholic Church, he simply called it +an old-world superstition, and sat looking at it like a moonlit +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +ruin. When he found something that he did understand, such as luncheon +baskets, he burst into carols of praise over the superior sense in our +civilisation and good management to Continental methods. An example of +the first attitude may be found in one of his letters, in which he +describes the backwardness and idleness of Catholics who would not build +a Birmingham in Italy. He seems quite unconscious of the obvious truth, +that the backwardness of Catholics was simply the refusal of Bob +Cratchit to enter the house of Gradgrind. An example of the second +attitude can be found in the purple patches of fun in <i>Mugby Junction</i>; +in which the English waitress denounces the profligate French habit of +providing new bread and clean food for people travelling by rail. The +point is, however, that in neither case has he the air of one suggesting +improvements or sharing a problem with the people engaged on it. He does +not go carefully with a notebook through Jesuit schools nor offer +friendly suggestions to the governors of Parisian prisons. Or if he +does, it is in a different spirit; it is in the spirit of an ordinary +tourist being shown over the Coliseum or the Pyramids. But he visited +America in the spirit of a Government inspector dealing with something +it was his duty to inspect. This is never felt either in his praise or +blame of Continental countries. When he did not leave a foreign country +to decay like a dead dog, he merely watched it at play like a kitten. +France he mistook for a kitten. Italy he mistook for a dead dog.</p> + +<p>But with America he could feel—and fear. There he could hate, because +he could love. There he could feel <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +not the past alone nor the present, but the future also; and, like all +brave men, when he saw the future he was a little afraid of it. For of +all tests by which the good citizen and strong reformer can be +distinguished from the vague faddist or the inhuman sceptic, I know no +better test than this—that the unreal reformer sees in front of +him one certain future, the future of his fad; while the real reformer +sees before him ten or twenty futures among which his country must +choose, and may, in some dreadful hour, choose the wrong one. The true +patriot is always doubtful of victory; because he knows that he is +dealing with a living thing; a thing with free will. To be certain of +free will is to be uncertain of success.</p> + +<p>The subject matter of the real difference of opinion between Dickens and +the public of America can only be understood if it is thus treated as a +dispute between brothers about the destiny of a common heritage. The +point at issue might be stated like this. Dickens, on his side, did not +in his heart doubt for a moment that England would eventually follow +America along the road towards real political equality and purely +republican institutions. He lived, it must be remembered, before the +revival of aristocracy, which has since overwhelmed us—the revival of +aristocracy worked through popular science and commercial dictatorship, +and which has nowhere been more manifest than in America itself. He knew +nothing of this; in his heart he conceded to the Yankees that not only +was their revolution right but would ultimately be completed everywhere. +But on the other hand, his whole point against the American experiment +was this—that if it ignored certain ancient<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +English contributions it would go to pieces for lack of them. Of these +the first was good manners and the second individual +liberty—liberty, that is, to speak and write against the trend of +the majority. In these things he was much more serious and much more +sensible than it is the fashion to think he was; he was indeed one of +the most serious and sensible critics England ever had of current and +present problems, though his criticism is useless to the point of +nonentity about all things remote from him in style of civilisation or +in time. His point about good manners is really important. All his +grumblings through this book of <i>American Notes</i>, all his shrieking +satire in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> are expressions of a grave and reasonable +fear he had touching the future of democracy. And remember again what +has been already remarked—instinctively he paid America the +compliment of looking at her as the future of democracy.</p> + +<p>The mistake which he attacked still exists. I cannot imagine why it is +that social equality is somehow supposed to mean social familiarity. Why +should equality mean that all men are equally rude? Should it not rather +mean that all men are equally polite? Might it not quite reasonably mean +that all men should be equally ceremonious and stately and pontifical? +What is there specially Equalitarian, for instance, in calling your +political friends and even your political enemies by their Christian +names in public? There is something very futile in the way in which +certain Socialist leaders call each other Tom, Dick, and Harry; +especially when Tom is accusing Harry of having basely imposed upon the +well-known imbecility of Dick. There is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> +something quite undemocratic in all men calling each other by the +special and affectionate term “comrade”; especially when +they say it with a sneer and smart inquiry about the funds. Democracy +would be quite satisfied if every man called every other man +“sir.” Democracy would have no conceivable reason to +complain if every man called every other man “your +excellency” or “your holiness” or “brother of +the sun and moon.” The only democratic essential is that it should +be a term of dignity and that it should be given to all. To abolish all +terms of dignity is no more specially democratic than the Roman +emperor’s wish to cut off everybody’s head at once was +specially democratic. That involved equality certainly, but it was +lacking in respect.</p> + +<p>Dickens saw America as markedly the seat of this danger. He saw that +there was a perilous possibility that republican ideals might be allied +to a social anarchy good neither for them nor for any other ideals. +Republican simplicity, which is difficult, might be quickly turned into +Bohemian brutality, which is easy. Cincinnatus, instead of putting his +hand to the plough, might put his feet on the tablecloth, and an +impression prevail that it was all a part of the same rugged equality +and freedom. Insolence might become a tradition. Bad manners might have +all the sanctity of good manners. “There you are!” cries +Martin Chuzzlewit indignantly, when the American has befouled the +butter. “A man deliberately makes a hog of himself and <i>that</i> is +an Institution.” But the thread of thought which we must always +keep in hand in this matter is that he would not thus have worried about +the degradation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +of republican simplicity into general rudeness if he had not from first +to last instinctively felt that America held human democracy in her +hand, to exalt it or to let it fall. In one of his gloomier moments he +wrote down his fear that the greatest blow ever struck at liberty would +be struck by America in the failure of her mission upon the earth.</p> + +<p>This brings us to the other ground of his alarm—the matter of liberty +of speech. Here also he was much more reasonable and philosophic than +has commonly been realised. The truth is that the lurid individualism of +Carlyle has, with its violent colours, “killed” the tones of +most criticism of his time; and just as we can often see a scheme of +decoration better if we cover some flaming picture, so you can judge +nineteenth-century England much better if you leave Carlyle out. He is +important to moderns because he led that return to Toryism which has +been the chief feature of modernity, but his judgments were often not +only spiritually false, but really quite superficial. Dickens understood +the danger of democracy far better than Carlyle; just as he understood +the merits of democracy far better than Carlyle. And of this fact we can +produce one plain evidence in the matter of which we speak. Carlyle, in +his general dislike of the revolutionary movement, lumped liberty and +democracy together and said that the chief objection to democracy was +that it involved the excess and misuse of liberty; he called democracy +“anarchy or no-rule.” Dickens, with far more philosophical +insight and spiritual delicacy, saw that the real danger of democracy is +that it tends to the very opposite of anarchy; even to the very opposite +of liberty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +He lamented in America the freedom of manners. But he lamented even +more the absence of freedom of opinion. “I believe there is no +country on the face of the earth,” he says, “where there is +less freedom of opinion on any subject in reference to which there is a +broad difference of opinion than in this. There! I write the words with +reluctance, disappointment, and sorrow; but I believe it from the bottom +of my soul. The notion that I, a man alone by myself in America, should +venture to suggest to the Americans that there was one point on which +they were neither just to their own countrymen nor to us, actually +struck the boldest dumb! Washington Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant, +Halleck, Dana, Washington Allston—every man who writes in this +country is devoted to the question, and not one of them <i>dares</i> to raise +his voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. The wonder is +that a breathing man can be found with temerity enough to suggest to the +Americans the possibility of their having done wrong. I wish you could +have seen the faces that I saw down both sides of the table at Hartford +when I began to talk about Scott. I wish you could have heard how I gave +it out. My blood so boiled when I thought of the monstrous injustice +that I felt as if I were twelve feet high when I thrust it down their +throats.” Dickens knew no history, but he had all history behind +him in feeling that a pure democracy does tend, when it goes wrong, to +be too traditional and absolute. The truth is indeed a singular example +of the unfair attack upon democracy in our own time. Everybody can +repeat the platitude that the mob can be the greatest of all tyrants. +But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> +few realise or remember the corresponding truth which goes along with +it—that the mob is the only permanent and unassailable high +priest. Democracy drives its traditions too hard; but democracy is the +only thing that keeps any traditions. An aristocracy must always be +going after some new thing. The severity of democracy is far more of a +virtue than its liberty. The decorum of a democracy is far more of a +danger than its lawlessness. Dickens discovered this in his great +quarrels about the copyright, when a whole nation acted on a small point +of opinion as if it were going to lynch him. But, fortunately for the +purpose of this argument, there is no need to go back to the forties for +such a case. Another great literary man has of late visited America; and +it is possible that Maxim Gorky may be in a position to state how far +democracy is likely to err on the side of mere liberty and laxity. He +may have found, like Dickens, some freedom of manners; he did not find +much freedom of morals.</p> + +<p>Along with such American criticism should really go his very +characteristic summary of the question of the Red Indian. It marks the +combination between the mental narrowness and the moral justice of the +old Liberal. Dickens can see nothing in the Red Indian except that he is +barbaric, retrograde, bellicose, uncleanly, and superstitious—in short, +that he is not a member of the special civilisation of Birmingham or +Brighton. It is curious to note the contrast between the cheery, nay +Cockney, contempt with which Dickens speaks of the American Indian and +that chivalrous and pathetic essay in which Washington Irving celebrates +the virtues of the vanishing race. Between Washington<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +Irving and his friend Charles Dickens there was always indeed this +ironical comedy of inversion. It is amusing that the Englishman should +have been the pushing and even pert modernist, and the American the +stately antiquarian and lover of lost causes. But while a man of more +mellow sympathies may well dislike Dickens’s dislike of savages, +and even disdain his disdain, he ought to sharply remind himself of the +admirable ethical fairness and equity which meet with that restricted +outlook. In the very act of describing Red Indians as devils who, like +so much dirt, it would pay us to sweep away, he pauses to deny +emphatically that we have any right to sweep them away. We have no right +to wrong the man, he means to say, even if he himself be a kind of +wrong. Here we strike the ringing iron of the old conscience and sense +of honour which marked the best men of his party and of his epoch. This +rigid and even reluctant justice towers, at any rate, far above modern +views of savages, above the sentimentalism of the mere humanitarian and +the far weaker sentimentalism that pleads for brutality and a race war. +Dickens was at least more of a man than the brutalitarian who claims to +wrong people because they are nasty, or the humanitarian who cannot be +just to them without pretending that they are nice.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></p> +<h2><a name="ITALY" id="ITALY"></a>PICTURES FROM ITALY</h2> + +<p>The <i>Pictures from Italy</i> are excellent in themselves and excellent as a +foil to the <i>American Notes</i>. Here we have none of that air of giving a +decision like a judge or sending in a report like an inspector; here we +have only glimpses, light and even fantastic glimpses, of a world that +is really alien to Dickens. It is so alien that he can almost entirely +enjoy it. For no man can entirely enjoy that which he loves; contentment +is always unpatriotic. The difference can indeed be put with approximate +perfection in one phrase. In Italy he was on a holiday; in America he +was on a tour. But indeed Dickens himself has quite sufficiently +conveyed the difference in the two phrases that he did actually use for +the titles of the two books. Dickens often told unconscious truths, +especially in small matters. The <i>American Notes</i> really are notes, like +the notes of a student or a professional witness. The <i>Pictures from +Italy</i> are only pictures from Italy, like the miscellaneous pictures +that all tourists bring from Italy.</p> + +<p>To take another and perhaps closer figure of speech, almost all +Dickens’s works such as these may best be regarded as private +letters addressed to the public. His private correspondence was quite as +brilliant as his public works; and many of his public works are almost +as formless and casual as his private correspondence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +If he had been struck insensible for a year, I really think that his +friends and family could have brought out one of his best books by +themselves if they had happened to keep his letters. The homogeneity of +his public and private work was indeed strange in many ways. On the one +hand, there was little that was pompously and unmistakably public in the +publications; on the other hand, there was very little that was private +in the private letters. His hilarity had almost a kind of hardness about +it; no man’s letters, I should think, ever needed less expurgation +on the ground of weakness or undue confession. The main part, and +certainly the best part, of such a book as <i>Pictures from Italy</i> can +certainly be criticised best as part of that perpetual torrent of +entertaining autobiography which he flung at his children as if they +were his readers and his readers as if they were his children. There are +some brilliant patches of sense and nonsense in this book; but there is +always something accidental in them; as if they might have occurred +somewhere else. Perhaps the most attractive of them is the incomparable +description of the Italian Marionette Theatre in which they acted a play +about the death of Napoleon in St. Helena. The description is better +than that of Codlin and Short’s Punch and Judy, and almost as good +as that of Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works. Indeed the humour is similar; +for Punch is supposed to be funny, but Napoleon (as Mrs. Jarley said +when asked if her show was funnier than Punch) was not funny at all. The +idea of a really tragic scene being enacted between tiny wooden dolls +with large heads is delightfully dealt with by Dickens. We can almost +imagine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +the scene in which the wooden Napoleon haughtily rebukes his wooden +jailor for calling him General Bonaparte—“Sir Hudson Low, +call me not thus; I am Napoleon, Emperor of the French.” There is +also something singularly gratifying about the scene of Napoleon’s +death, in which he lay in bed with his little wooden hands outside the +counterpane and the doctor (who was hung on wires too short) +“delivered medical opinions in the air.” It may seem +flippant to dwell on such flippancies in connection with a book which +contains many romantic descriptions and many moral generalisations which +Dickens probably valued highly. But it is not for such things that he is +valued. In all his writings, from his most reasoned and sustained novel +to his maddest private note, it is always this obstreperous instinct for +farce which stands out as his in the highest sense. His wisdom is at the +best talent, his foolishness is genius. Just that exuberant levity which +we associate with a moment we associate in his case with immortality. It +is said of certain old masonry that the mortar was so hard that it has +survived the stones. So if Dickens could revisit the thing he built, he +would be surprised to see all the work he thought solid and responsible +wasted almost utterly away, but the shortest frivolities and the most +momentary jokes remaining like colossal rocks for ever.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;"><a name="CD1844" id="CD1844"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1844.jpg" width="372" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, 1844 From a miniature by Margaret +Gillies.</span></div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></p> + +<h2><a name="CHUZZLEWIT" id="CHUZZLEWIT"></a>MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT</h2> + +<p>There is a certain quality or element which broods over the whole of +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> to which it is difficult for either friends or foes +to put a name. I think the reader who enjoys Dickens’s other books +has an impression that it is a kind of melancholy. There are grotesque +figures of the most gorgeous kind; there are scenes that are farcical +even by the standard of the farcical license of Dickens; there is humour +both of the heaviest and of the lightest kind; there are two great comic +personalities who run like a rich vein through the whole story, +Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp; there is one blinding patch of brilliancy, the +satire on American cant; there is Todgers’s boarding-house; there +is Bailey; there is Mr. Mould, the incomparable undertaker. But yet in +spite of everything, in spite even of the undertaker, the book is sad. +No one I think ever went to it in that mixed mood of a tired tenderness +and a readiness to believe and laugh in which most of Dickens’s +novels are most enjoyed. We go for a particular novel to Dickens as we +go for a particular inn. We go to the sign of the Pickwick Papers. We go +to the sign of the Rudge and Raven. We go to the sign of the Old +Curiosities. We go to the sign of the Two Cities. We go to each or all +of them according to what kind of hospitality and what kind of happiness +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +we require. But it is always some kind of hospitality and some kind +of happiness that we require. And as in the case of inns we also +remember that while there was shelter in all and food in all and some +kind of fire and some kind of wine in all, yet one has left upon us an +indescribable and unaccountable memory of mortality and decay, of +dreariness in the rooms and even of tastelessness in the banquet. So any +one who has enjoyed the stories of Dickens as they should be enjoyed has +a nameless feeling that this one story is sad and almost sodden. Dickens +himself had this feeling, though his breezy vanity forbade him to +express it in so many words. In spite of Pecksniff, in spite of Mrs. +Gamp, in spite of the yet greater Bailey, the story went lumberingly and +even lifelessly; he found the sales falling off; he fancied his +popularity waning, and by a sudden impulse most inartistic and yet most +artistic, he dragged in the episode of Martin’s visit to America, +which is the blazing jewel and the sudden redemption of the book. He +wrote it at an uneasy and unhappy period of his life; when he had ceased +wandering in America, but could not cease wandering altogether; when he +had lost his original routine of work which was violent but regular, and +had not yet settled down to the full enjoyment of his success and his +later years. He poured into this book genius that might make the +mountains laugh, invention that juggled with the stars. But the book was +sad; and he knew it.</p> + +<p>The just reason for this is really interesting. Yet it is one that is +not easy to state without guarding one’s self on the one side or +the other against great misunderstandings; and these stipulations or +preliminary <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +allowances must in such a case as this of necessity be made first. +Dickens was among other things a satirist, a pure satirist. I have never +been able to understand why this title is always specially and sacredly +reserved for Thackeray. Thackeray was a novelist; in the strict and +narrow sense at any rate, Thackeray was a far greater novelist than +Dickens. But Dickens certainly was the satirist. The essence of satire +is that it perceives some absurdity inherent in the logic of some +position, and that it draws that absurdity out and isolates it, so that +all can see it. Thus for instance when Dickens says, “Lord Coodle +would go out; Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn’t come in; and there being +no people to speak of in England except Coodle and Doodle the country +has been without a Government”; when Dickens says this he suddenly +pounces on and plucks out the one inherent absurdity in the English +party system which is hidden behind all its paraphernalia of Parliaments +and Statutes, elections and ballot papers. When all the dignity and all +the patriotism and all the public interest of the English constitutional +party conflict have been fully allowed for, there does remain the bold, +bleak question which Dickens in substance asks, “Suppose I want +somebody else who is neither Coodle nor Doodle.” This is the great +quality called satire; it is a kind of taunting reasonableness; and it +is inseparable from a certain insane logic which is often called +exaggeration. Dickens was more of a satirist than Thackeray for this +simple reason: that Thackeray carried a man’s principles as far as +that man carried them; Dickens carried a man’s principles as far +as a man’s principles would go. Dickens in short (as +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +people put it) exaggerated the man and his principles; that is to say +he emphasised them. Dickens drew a man’s absurdity out of him; +Thackeray left a man’s absurdity in him. Of this last fact we can +take any example we like; take for instance the comparison between the +city man as treated by Thackeray in the most satiric of his novels, with +the city man as treated by Dickens in one of the mildest and maturest of +his. Compare the character of old Mr. Osborne in <i>Vanity Fair</i> with the +character of Mr. Podsnap in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>. In the case of Mr. +Osborne there is nothing except the solid blocking in of a brutal dull +convincing character. <i>Vanity Fair</i> is not a satire on the City except +in so far as it happens to be true. <i>Vanity Fair</i> is not a satire on the +City, in short, except in so far as the City is a satire on the City. +But Mr. Podsnap is a pure satire; he is an extracting out of the City +man of those purely intellectual qualities which happen to make that +kind of City man a particularly exasperating fool. One might almost say +that Mr. Podsnap is all Mr. Osborne’s opinions separated from Mr. +Osborne and turned into a character. In short the satirist is more +purely philosophical than the novelist. The novelist may be only an +observer; the satirist must be a thinker. He must be a thinker, he must +be a philosophical thinker for this simple reason; that he exercises his +philosophical thought in deciding what part of his subject he is to +satirise. You may have the dullest possible intelligence and be a +portrait painter; but a man must have a serious intellect in order to be +a caricaturist. He has to select what thing he will caricature. True +satire is always of this intellectual <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +kind; true satire is always, so to speak, a variation or fantasia upon +the air of pure logic. The satirist is the man who carries men’s +enthusiasm further than they carry it themselves. He outstrips the most +extravagant fanatic. He is years ahead of the most audacious prophet. He +sees where men’s detached intellect will eventually lead them, and +he tells them the name of the place—which is generally hell.</p> + +<p>Now of this detached and rational use of satire there is one great +example in this book. Even <i>Gulliver’s Travels</i> is hardly more +reasonable than Martin Chuzzlewit’s travels in the incredible land +of the Americans. Before considering the humour of this description in +its more exhaustive and liberal aspects, it may be first remarked that +in this American part of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, Dickens quite specially +sharpens up his own more controversial and political intelligence. There +are more things here than anywhere else in Dickens that partake of the +nature of pamphleteering, of positive challenge, of sudden repartee, of +pugnacious and exasperating query, in a word of everything that belongs +to the pure art of controversy as distinct not only from the pure art of +fiction but even also from the pure art of satire. I am inclined to +think (to put the matter not only shortly but clumsily) that Dickens was +never in all his life so strictly clever as he is in the American part +of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. There are places where he was more inspired, +almost in the sense of being intoxicated, as, for instance, in the +Micawber feasts of <i>David Copperfield</i>; there are places where he wrote +more carefully and cunningly, as, for instance, in the mystery of <i>The +Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>; there are places where <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +he wrote very much more humanly, more close to the ground and to +growing things, as in the whole of that admirable book <i>Great +Expectations</i>. But I do not think that his mere abstract acuteness and +rapidity of thought were ever exercised with such startling exactitude +as they are in this place in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. It is to be noted, for +instance, that his American experience had actually worked him up to a +heat and habit of argument. A slave-owner in the Southern States tells +Dickens that slave-owners do not ill-treat their slaves, that it is not +to the interest of slave-owners to ill-treat their slaves. Dickens +flashes back that it is not to the interest of a man to get drunk, but +he does get drunk. This pugnacious atmosphere of parry and riposte must +first of all be allowed for and understood in all the satiric excursus +of Martin in America. Dickens is arguing all the time; and, to do him +justice, arguing very well. These chapters are full not merely of +exuberant satire on America in the sense that Dotheboys Hall or Mr. +Bumble’s Workhouse are exuberant satires on England. They are full +also of sharp argument with America as if the man who wrote expected +retort and was prepared with rejoinder. The rest of the book, like the +rest of Dickens’s books, possesses humour. This part of the book, +like hardly any of Dickens’s books, possesses wit. The republican +gentleman who receives Martin on landing is horrified on hearing an +English servant speak of the employer as “the master.” +“There are no masters in America,” says the gentleman. +“All owners are they?” says Martin. This sort of verbal +promptitude is out of the ordinary scope of Dickens; but we find it +frequently <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +in this particular part of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. Martin himself is +constantly breaking out into a controversial lucidity, which is +elsewhere not at all a part of his character. When they talk to him +about the institutions of America he asks sarcastically whether bowie +knives and swordsticks and revolvers are the institutions of America. +All this (if I may summarise) is expressive of one main fact. Being a +satirist means being a philosopher. Dickens was not always very +philosophical; but he had this permanent quality of the philosopher +about him, that he always remembered people by their opinions. Elijah +Pogram was to him the man who said that “his boastful answer to +the tyrant and the despot was that his bright home was the land of the +settin’ sun.” Mr. Scadder and Mr. Jefferson Brick were to +him the men who said (in cooperation) that “the libation of +freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood.” And in these chapters +more than anywhere else he falls into the extreme habit of satire, that +of treating people as if there were nothing about them except their +opinions. It is therefore difficult to accept these pages as pages in a +novel, splendid as they are considered as pages in a parody. I do not +dispute that men have said and do say that “the libation of +freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood,” that “their +bright homes are the land of the settin’ sun,” that +“they taunt that lion,” that “alone they dare +him,” or “that softly sleeps the calm ideal in the +whispering chambers of imagination.” I have read too much American +journalism to deny that any of these sentences and any of these opinions +may at some time or other have been uttered. I do not deny +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +that there are such opinions. But I do deny that there are such people. +Elijah Pogram had some other business in life besides defending +defaulting postmasters; he must have been a son or a father or a husband +or at least (admirable thought) a lover. Mr. Chollop had some moments in +his existence when he was not threatening his fellow-creatures with his +sword-stick and his revolver. Of all this human side of such American +types Dickens does not really give any hint at all. He does not suggest +that the bully Chollop had even such coarse good-humour as bullies +almost always have. He does not suggest that the humbug Elijah Pogram +had even as much greasy amiability as humbugs almost invariably have. He +is not studying them as human beings, even as bad human beings; he is +studying them as conceptions, as points of view, as symbols of a state +of mind with which he is in violent disagreement. To put it roughly, he +is not describing characters, he is satirising fads. To put it more +exactly, he is not describing characters; he is persecuting heresies. +There is one thing really to be said against his American satire; it is +a serious thing to be said: it is an argument, and it is true. This can +be said of Martin’s wanderings in America, that from the time he +lands in America to the time he sets sail from it he never meets a +living man. He has travelled in the land of Laputa. All the people he +has met have been absurd opinions walking about. The whole art of +Dickens in such passages as these consisted in one thing. It consisted +in finding an opinion that had not a leg to stand on, and then giving it +two legs to stand on.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +So much may be allowed; it may be admitted that Dickens is in this sense +the great satirist, in that he can imagine absurd opinions walking by +themselves about the street. It may be admitted that Thackeray would not +have allowed an absurd opinion to walk about the street without at least +tying a man on to it for the sake of safety. But while this first truth +may be evident, the second truth which is the complement of it may +easily be forgotten. On the one hand there was no man who could so much +enjoy mere intellectual satire apart from humanity as Dickens. On the +other hand there was no man who, with another and more turbulent part of +his nature, demanded humanity, and demanded its supremacy over +intellect, more than Dickens. To put it shortly: there never was a man +so much fitted for saying that everything was wrong; and there never was +a man who was so desirous of saying that everything was right. Thus, +when he met men with whom he violently disagreed, he described them as +devils or lunatics; he could not bear to describe them as men. If they +could not think with him on essentials he could not stand the idea that +they were human souls; he cast them out; he forgot them; and if he could +not forget them he caricatured them. He was too emotional to regard them +as anything but enemies, if they were not friends. He was too humane not +to hate them. Charles Lamb said with his inimitable sleek pungency that +he could read all the books there were; he excluded books that obviously +were not books, as cookery books, chessboards bound so as to look like +books, and all the works of modern historians and philosophers. One +might say in much the same <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +style that Dickens loved all the men in the world; that is he loved all +the men whom he was able to recognise as men; the rest he turned into +griffins and chimeras without any serious semblance to humanity. Even in +his books he never hates a human being. If he wishes to hate him he +adopts the simple expedient of making him an inhuman being. Now of these +two strands almost the whole of Dickens is made up; they are not only +different strands, they are even antagonistic strands. I mean that the +whole of Dickens is made up of the strand of satire and the strand of +sentimentalism; and the strand of satire is quite unnecessarily +merciless and hostile, and the strand of sentimentalism is quite +unnecessarily humanitarian and even maudlin. On the proper interweaving +of these two things depends the great part of Dickens’s success in +a novel. And by the consideration of them we can probably best arrive at +the solution of the particular emotional enigma of the novel called +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>.</p> + +<p><i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> is, I think, vaguely unsatisfactory to the reader, +vaguely sad and heavy even to the reader who loves Dickens, because in +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> more than anywhere else in Dickens’s works, +more even than in <i>Oliver Twist</i>, there is a predominance of the harsh +and hostile sort of humour over the hilarious and the humane. It is +absurd to lay down any such little rules for the testing of literature. +But this may be broadly said and yet with confidence: that Dickens is +always at his best when he is laughing at the people whom he really +admires. He is at his most humorous in writing of Mr. Pickwick, who +represents passive virtue. He is at his most humorous in writing of Mr. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +Sam Weller, who represents active virtue. He is never so funny as when +he is speaking of people in whom fun itself is a virtue, like the poor +people in the Fleet or the Marshalsea. And in the stories that had +immediately preceded <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> he had consistently concerned +himself in the majority of cases with the study of such genial and +honourable eccentrics; if they are lunatics they are amiable lunatics. +In the last important novel before <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, +the hero himself is an amiable lunatic. In the novel before that, <i>The +Old Curiosity Shop</i>, the two comic figures, Dick Swiveller and the +Marchioness, are not only the most really entertaining, but also the +most really sympathetic characters in the book. Before that came <i>Oliver +Twist</i> (which is, I have said, an exception), and before that +<i>Pickwick</i>, where the hero is, as Mr. Weller says, “an angel in +gaiters.” Hitherto, then, on the whole, the central Dickens +character had been the man who gave to the poor many things, gold and +wine and feasting and good advice; but among other things gave them a +good laugh at himself. The jolly old English merchant of the Pickwick +type was popular on both counts. People liked to see him throw his money +in the gutter. They also liked to see him throw himself there +occasionally. In both acts they recognised a common quality of virtue.</p> + +<p>Now I think it is certainly the disadvantage of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> that +none of its absurd characters are thus sympathetic. There are in the +book two celebrated characters who are both especially exuberant and +amusing even for Dickens, and who are both especially heartless and +abominable even for Dickens—I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +mean of course Mr. Pecksniff on the one hand and Mrs. Gamp on the +other. The humour of both of them is gigantesque. Nobody will ever +forget the first time he read the words “Now I should be very glad +to see Mrs. Todgers’s idea of a wooden leg.” It is like +remembering first love: there is still some sort of ancient sweetness +and sting. I am afraid that, in spite of many criticisms to the +contrary, I am still unable to take Mr. Pecksniff’s hypocrisy +seriously. He does not seem to me so much a hypocrite as a rhetorician; +he reminds me of Serjeant Buzfuz. A very capable critic, Mr. Noyes, said +that I was wrong when I suggested in another place that Dickens must +have loved Pecksniff. Mr. Noyes thinks it clear that Dickens hated +Pecksniff. I cannot believe it. Hatred does indeed linger round its +object as much as love; but not in that way. Dickens is always making +Pecksniff say things which have a wild poetical truth about them. Hatred +allows no such outbursts of original innocence. But however that may be +the broad fact remains—Dickens may or may not have loved Pecksniff +comically, but he did not love him seriously; he did not respect him as +he certainly respected Sam Weller. The same of course is true of Mrs. +Gamp. To any one who appreciates her unctuous and sumptuous conversation +it is difficult indeed not to feel that it would be almost better to be +killed by Mrs. Gamp than to be saved by a better nurse. But the fact +remains. In this book Dickens has not allowed us to love the most absurd +people seriously, and absurd people ought to be loved seriously. +Pecksniff has to be amusing all the time; the instant he ceases to be +laughable he becomes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +detestable. Pickwick can take his ease at his inn; he can be leisurely, +he can be spacious; he can fall into moods of gravity and even of +dulness; he is not bound to be always funny or to forfeit the +reader’s concern, for he is a good man, and therefore even his +dulness is beautiful, just as is the dulness of the animal. We can leave +Pickwick a little while by the fire to think; for the thoughts of +Pickwick, even if they were to go slowly, would be full of all the +things that all men care for—old friends and old inns and memory +and the goodness of God. But we dare not leave Pecksniff alone for a +moment. We dare not leave him thinking by the fire, for the thoughts of +Pecksniff would be too frightful.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></p> +<h2><a name="CHRISTMAS_BOOKS" id="CHRISTMAS_BOOKS"></a>CHRISTMAS BOOKS</h2> + +<p>The mystery of Christmas is in a manner identical with the mystery of +Dickens. If ever we adequately explain the one we may adequately explain +the other. And indeed, in the treatment of the two, the chronological or +historical order must in some degree be remembered. Before we come to +the question of what Dickens did for Christmas we must consider the +question of what Christmas did for Dickens. How did it happen that this +bustling, nineteenth-century man, full of the almost cock-sure +common-sense of the utilitarian and liberal epoch, came to associate his +name chiefly in literary history with the perpetuation of a half pagan +and half Catholic festival which he would certainly have called an +antiquity and might easily have called a superstition? Christmas has +indeed been celebrated before in English literature; but it had, in the +most noticeable cases, been celebrated in connection with that kind of +feudalism with which Dickens would have severed his connection with an +ignorant and even excessive scorn. Sir Roger de Coverley kept Christmas; +but it was a feudal Christmas. Sir Walter Scott sang in praise of +Christmas; but it was a feudal Christmas. And Dickens was not only +indifferent to the dignity of the old country gentleman or to the genial +archæology of Scott; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +he was even harshly and insolently hostile to it. If Dickens had lived +in the neighbourhood of Sir Roger de Coverley he would undoubtedly, like +Tom Touchy, have been always “having the law of him.” If +Dickens had stumbled in among the old armour and quaint folios of +Scott’s study he would certainly have read his brother novelist a +lesson in no measured terms about the futility of thus fumbling in the +dust-bins of old oppression and error. So far from Dickens being one of +those who like a thing because it is old, he was one of those cruder +kind of reformers, in theory at least, who actually dislike a thing +because it is old. He was not merely the more righteous kind of Radical +who tries to uproot abuses; he was partly also that more suicidal kind +of Radical who tries to uproot himself. In theory at any rate, he had no +adequate conception of the importance of human tradition; in his time it +had been twisted and falsified into the form of an opposition to +democracy. In truth, of course, tradition is the most democratic of all +things, for tradition is merely a democracy of the dead as well as the +living. But Dickens and his special group or generation had no grasp of +this permanent position; they had been called to a special war for the +righting of special wrongs. In so far as such an institution as +Christmas was old, Dickens would even have tended to despise it. He +could never have put the matter to himself in the correct way—that +while there are some things whose antiquity does prove that they are +dying, there are some other things whose antiquity only proves that they +cannot die. If some Radical contemporary and friend of Dickens had +happened to say to him that in defending <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span> +the mince-pies and the mummeries of Christmas he was defending a piece +of barbaric and brutal ritualism, doomed to disappear in the light of +reason along with the Boy-Bishop and the Lord of Misrule, I am not sure +that Dickens (though he was one of the readiest and most rapid masters +of reply in history) would have found it very easy upon his own +principles to answer. It was by a great ancestral instinct that he +defended Christmas; by that sacred sub-consciousness which is called +tradition, which some have called a dead thing, but which is really a +thing far more living than the intellect. There is a dark kinship and +brotherhood of all mankind which is much too deep to be called heredity +or to be in any way explained in scientific formulæ; blood is +thicker than water and is especially very much thicker than water on the +brain. But this unconscious and even automatic quality in +Dickens’s defence of the Christmas feast, this fact that his +defence might almost be called animal rather than mental, though in +proper language it should be called merely virile; all this brings us +back to the fact that we must begin with the atmosphere of the subject +itself. We must not ask Dickens what Christmas is, for with all his heat +and eloquence he does not know. Rather we must ask Christmas what +Dickens is—ask how this strange child of Christmas came to be born +out of due time.</p> + +<p>Dickens devoted his genius in a somewhat special sense to the +description of happiness. No other literary man of his eminence has made +this central human aim so specially his subject matter. Happiness is a +mystery—generally a momentary mystery—which seldom stops long enough +to submit itself to artistic observation, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +and which, even when it is habitual, has something about it which +renders artistic description almost impossible. There are twenty tiny +minor poets who can describe fairly impressively an eternity of agony; +there are very few even of the eternal poets who can describe ten +minutes of satisfaction. Nevertheless, mankind being half divine is +always in love with the impossible, and numberless attempts have been +made from the beginning of human literature to describe a real state of +felicity. Upon the whole, I think, the most successful have been the +most frankly physical and symbolic; the flowers of Eden or the jewels of +the New Jerusalem. Many writers, for instance, have called the gold and +chrysolite of the Holy City a vulgar lump of jewellery. But when these +critics themselves attempt to describe their conceptions of future +happiness, it is always some priggish nonsense about +“planes,” about “cycles of fulfilment,” or +“spirals of spiritual evolution.” Now a cycle is just as +much a physical metaphor as a flower of Eden; a spiral is just as much a +physical metaphor as a precious stone. But, after all, a garden is a +beautiful thing; whereas this is by no means necessarily true of a +cycle, as can be seen in the case of a bicycle. A jewel, after all, is a +beautiful thing; but this is not necessarily so of a spiral, as can be +seen in the case of a corkscrew. Nothing is gained by dropping the old +material metaphors, which did hint at heavenly beauty, and adopting +other material metaphors which do not even give a hint of earthly +beauty. This modern or spiral method of describing indescribable +happiness may, I think, be dismissed. Then there has been another method +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +which has been adopted by many men of a very real poetical genius. It +was the method of the old pastoral poets like Theocritus. It was in +another way that adopted by the elegance and piety of Spenser. It was +certainly expressed in the pictures of Watteau; and it had a very +sympathetic and even manly expression in modern England in the +decorative poetry of William Morris. These men of genius, from +Theocritus to Morris, occupied themselves in endeavouring to describe +happiness as a state of certain human beings, the atmosphere of a +commonwealth, the enduring climate of certain cities or islands. They +poured forth treasures of the truest kind of imagination upon describing +the happy lives and landscapes of Utopia or Atlantis or the Earthly +Paradise. They traced with the most tender accuracy the tracery of its +fruit-trees or the glimmering garments of its women; they used every +ingenuity of colour or intricate shape to suggest its infinite delight. +And what they succeeded in suggesting was always its infinite +melancholy. William Morris described the Earthly Paradise in such a way +that the only strong emotional note left on the mind was the feeling of +how homeless his travellers felt in that alien Elysium; and the reader +sympathised with them, feeling that he would prefer not only Elizabethan +England but even twentieth-century Camberwell to such a land of shining +shadows. Thus literature has almost always failed in endeavouring to +describe happiness as a state. Human tradition, human custom and +folk-lore (though far more true and reliable than literature as a rule) +have not often succeeded in giving quite the correct symbols for a real +atmosphere of <i>camaraderie</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +and joy. But here and there the note has been struck with the sudden +vibration of the <i>vox humana</i>. In human tradition it has been struck +chiefly in the old celebrations of Christmas. In literature it has been +struck chiefly in Dickens’s Christmas tales.</p> + +<p>In the historic celebration of Christmas as it remains from Catholic +times in certain northern countries (and it is to be remembered that in +Catholic times the northern countries were, if possible, more Catholic +than anybody else), there are three qualities which explain, I think, +its hold upon the human sense of happiness, especially in such men as +Dickens. There are three notes of Christmas, so to speak, which are also +notes of happiness, and which the pagans and the Utopians forget. If we +state what they are in the case of Christmas, it will be quite +sufficiently obvious how important they are in the case of Dickens.</p> + +<p>The first quality is what may be called the dramatic quality. The +happiness is not a state; it is a crisis. All the old customs +surrounding the celebration of the birth of Christ are made by human +instinct so as to insist and re-insist upon this crucial quality. +Everything is so arranged that the whole household may feel, if +possible, as a household does when a child is actually being born in it. +The thing is a vigil and a vigil with a definite limit. People sit up at +night until they hear the bells ring. Or they try to sleep at night in +order to see their presents the next morning. Everywhere there is a +limitation, a restraint; at one moment the door is shut, at the moment +after it is opened. The hour has come or it has not come; the parcels +are undone or they are not undone; there is no evolution of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +Christmas presents. This sharp and theatrical quality in pleasure, +which human instinct and the mother wit of the world has wisely put into +the popular celebrations of Christmas, is also a quality which is +essential in such romantic literature as Dickens wrote. In romantic +literature the hero and heroine must indeed be happy, but they must also +be unexpectedly happy. This is the first connecting link between +literature and the old religious feast; this is the first connecting +link between Dickens and Christmas.</p> + +<p>The second element to be found in all such festivity and all such +romance is the element which is represented as well as it could be +represented by the mere fact that Christmas occurs in the winter. It is +the element not merely of contrast, but actually of antagonism. It +preserves everything that was best in the merely primitive or pagan view +of such ceremonies or such banquets. If we are carousing, at least we +are warriors carousing. We hang above us, as it were, the shields and +battle-axes with which we must do battle with the giants of the snow and +hail. All comfort must be based on discomfort. Man chooses when he +wishes to be most joyful the very moment when the whole material +universe is most sad. It is this contradiction and mystical defiance +which gives a quality of manliness and reality to the old winter feasts +which is not characteristic of the sunny felicities of the Earthly +Paradise. And this curious element has been carried out even in all the +trivial jokes and tasks that have always surrounded such occasions as +these. The object of the jovial customs was not to make everything +artificially easy: on the contrary, it was rather to make everything +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +artificially difficult. Idealism is not only expressed by shooting an +arrow at the stars; the fundamental principle of idealism is also +expressed by putting a leg of mutton at the top of a greasy pole. There +is in all such observances a quality which can be called only the +quality of divine obstruction. For instance, in the game of snapdragon +(that admirable occupation) the conception is that raisins taste much +nicer if they are brands saved from the burning. About all Christmas +things there is something a little nobler, if only nobler in form and +theory, than mere comfort; even holly is prickly. It is not hard to see +the connection of this kind of historic instinct with a romantic writer +like Dickens. The healthy novelist must always play snapdragon with his +principal characters; he must always be snatching the hero and heroine +like raisins out of the fire.</p> + +<p>The third great Christmas element is the element of the grotesque. The +grotesque is the natural expression of joy; and all the Utopias and new +Edens of the poets fail to give a real impression of enjoyment, very +largely because they leave out the grotesque. A man in most modern +Utopias cannot really be happy; he is too dignified. A man in +Morris’s Earthly Paradise cannot really be enjoying himself; he is +too decorative. When real human beings have real delights they tend to +express them entirely in grotesques—I might almost say entirely in +goblins. On Christmas Eve one may talk about ghosts so long as they are +turnip ghosts. But one would not be allowed (I hope, in any decent +family) to talk on Christmas Eve about astral bodies. The boar’s +head of old Yule-time was as grotesque as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +the donkey’s head of Bottom the Weaver. But there is only one set +of goblins quite wild enough to express the wild goodwill of Christmas. +Those goblins are the characters of Dickens.</p> + +<p>Arcadian poets and Arcadian painters have striven to express happiness +by means of beautiful figures. Dickens understood that happiness is best +expressed by ugly figures. In beauty, perhaps, there is something allied +to sadness; certainly there is something akin to joy in the grotesque, +nay, in the uncouth. There is something mysteriously associated with +happiness not only in the corpulence of Falstaff and the corpulence of +Tony Weller, but even in the red nose of Bardolph or the red nose of Mr. +Stiggins. A thing of beauty is an inspiration for ever—a matter of +meditation for ever. It is rather a thing of ugliness that is strictly a +joy for ever.</p> + +<p>All Dickens’s books are Christmas books. But this is still truest +of his two or three famous Yuletide tales—The <i>Christmas Carol</i> and +<i>The Chimes</i> and <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>. Of these <i>The Christmas +Carol</i> is beyond comparison the best as well as the most popular. +Indeed, Dickens is in so profound and spiritual a sense a popular author +that in his case, unlike most others, it can generally be said that the +best work is the most popular. It is for <i>Pickwick</i> that he is best +known; and upon the whole it is for Pickwick that he is best worth +knowing. In any case this superiority of <i>The Christmas Carol</i> makes it +convenient for us to take it as an example of the generalisations +already made. If we study the very real atmosphere of rejoicing and of +riotous charity in <i>The Christmas Carol</i> we shall find +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +that all the three marks I have mentioned are unmistakably visible. +<i>The Christmas Carol</i> is a happy story first, because it describes an +abrupt and dramatic change. It is not only the story of a conversion, +but of a sudden conversion; as sudden as the conversion of a man at a +Salvation Army meeting. Popular religion is quite right in insisting on +the fact of a crisis in most things. It is true that the man at the +Salvation Army meeting would probably be converted from the punch bowl; +whereas Scrooge was converted to it. That only means that Scrooge and +Dickens represented a higher and more historic Christianity.</p> + +<p>Again, <i>The Christmas Carol</i> owes much of its hilarity to our second +source—the fact of its being a tale of winter and of a very wintry +winter. There is much about comfort in the story; yet the comfort is +never enervating: it is saved from that by a tingle of something bitter +and bracing in the weather. Lastly, the story exemplifies throughout the +power of the third principle—the kinship between gaiety and the +grotesque. Everybody is happy because nobody is dignified. We have a +feeling somehow that Scrooge looked even uglier when he was kind than he +had looked when he was cruel. The turkey that Scrooge bought was so fat, +says Dickens, that it could never have stood upright. That top-heavy and +monstrous bird is a good symbol of the top-heavy happiness of the +stories.</p> + +<p>It is less profitable to criticise the other two tales in detail because +they represent variations on the theme in two directions; and variations +that were not, upon the whole, improvements. <i>The Chimes</i> is a monument +of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +Dickens’s honourable quality of pugnacity. He could not admire +anything, even peace, without wanting to be warlike about it. That was +all as it should be.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></p> +<h2><a name="DOMBEY" id="DOMBEY"></a>DOMBEY AND SON</h2> + +<p>In Dickens’s literary life <i>Dombey and Son</i> represents a break so +important as to necessitate our casting back to a summary and a +generalisation. In order fully to understand what this break is, we must +say something of the previous character of Dickens’s novels, and +even something of the general character of novels in themselves. How +essential this is we shall see shortly.</p> + +<p>It must first be remembered that the novel is the most typical of modern +forms. It is typical of modern forms especially in this, that it is +essentially formless. All the ancient modes or structures of literature +were definite and severe. Any one composing them had to abide by their +rules; they were what their name implied. Thus a tragedy might be a bad +tragedy, but it was always a tragedy. Thus an epic might be a bad epic, +but it was always an epic. Now in the sense in which there is such a +thing as an epic, in that sense there is no such thing as a novel. We +call any long fictitious narrative in prose a novel, just as we call any +short piece of prose without any narrative an essay. Both these forms +are really quite formless, and both of them are really quite new. The +difference between a good epic by Mr. John Milton and a bad epic by Mr. +John Smith was simply the difference between the same thing done +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +well and the same thing done badly. But it was not (for instance) like +the difference between <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i> and <i>The Time Machine</i>. If we +class Richardson’s book with Mr. Wells’s book it is really +only for convenience; if we say that they are both novels we shall +certainly be puzzled in that case to say what on earth a novel is. But +the note of our age, both for good and evil, is a highly poetical and +largely illogical faith in liberty. Liberty is not a negation or a piece +of nonsense, as the cheap reactionaries say; it is a belief in variety +and growth. But it is a purely poetic and even a merely romantic belief. +The nineteenth century was an age of romance as certainly as the Middle +Ages was an age of reason. Mediævals liked to have everything +defined and defensible; the modern world prefers to run some risks for +the sake of spontaneity and diversity. Consequently the modern world is +full of a phenomenon peculiar to itself—I mean the spectacle of +small or originally small things swollen to enormous size and power. The +modern world is like a world in which toadstools should be as big as +trees, and insects should walk about in the sun as large as elephants. +Thus, for instance, the shopkeeper, almost an unimportant figure in +carefully ordered states, has in our time become the millionaire, and +has more power than ten kings. Thus again a practical knowledge of +nature, of the habits of animals or the properties of fire and water, +was in the old ordered state either an almost servile labour or a sort +of joke; it was left to old women and gamekeepers and boys who went +birds’-nesting. In our time this commonplace daily knowledge has +swollen into the enormous miracle of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +physical size, weighing the stars and talking under the sea. In short, +our age is a sort of splendid jungle in which some of the most towering +weeds and blossoms have come from the smallest seed.</p> + +<p>And this is, generally speaking, the explanation of the novel. The novel +is not so much the filling up of an artistic plan, however new or +fantastic. It is a thing that has grown from some germ of suggestion, +and has often turned out much larger than the author intended. And this, +lastly, is the final result of these facts, that the critic can +generally trace in a novel what was the original artistic type or shape +of thought from which the whole matter started, and he will generally +find that this is different in every case. In one novel he will find +that the first impulse is a character. In another novel he will find +that the first impulse is a landscape, the atmosphere of some special +countryside. In another novel he will find that the first impulse is the +last chapter. Or it may be a thrust with sword or dagger, it may be a +theology, it may be a song. Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book +are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written. +Some of our enterprising editors who set their readers to hunt for +banknotes and missing ladies might start a competition for finding those +words in every novel. But whether or no this is possible, there is no +doubt that the principle in question is of great importance in the case +of Dickens, and especially in the case of <i>Dombey and Son</i>.</p> + +<p>In all the Dickens novels can be seen, so to speak, the original thing +that they were before they were novels. The same may be observed, for +the matter of that, in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +the great novels of most of the great modern novelists. For example, +Sir Walter Scott wrote poetical romances before he wrote prose romances. +Hence it follows that, with all their much greater merit, his novels may +still be described as poetical romances in prose. While adding a new and +powerful element of popular humours and observation, Scott still retains +a certain purely poetical right—a right to make his heroes and +outlaws and great kings speak at the great moments with a rhetoric so +rhythmical that it partakes of the nature of song, the same quite +metrical rhetoric which is used in the metrical speeches of Marmion or +Roderick Dhu. In the same way, although <i>Don Quixote</i> is a modern novel +in its irony and subtlety, we can see that it comes from the old long +romances of chivalry. In the same way, although <i>Clarissa</i> is a modern +novel in its intimacy and actuality, we can see that it comes from the +old polite letter-writing and polite essays of the period of the +<i>Spectator</i>. Any one can see that Scott formed in <i>The Lay of the Last +Minstrel</i> the style that he applied again and again afterwards, like the +reappearances of a star taking leave of the stage. All his other +romances were positively last appearances of the positively last +Minstrel. Any one can see that Thackeray formed in fragmentary satires +like <i>The Book of Snobs</i> or <i>The Yellowplush Papers</i> the style, the +rather fragmentary style, in which he was to write <i>Vanity Fair</i>. In +most modern cases, in short (until very lately, at any rate), the novel +is an enormous outgrowth from something that was not a novel. And in +Dickens this is very important. All his novels are outgrowths of the +original notion of taking notes, splendid and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +inspired notes, of what happens in the street. Those in the modern +world who cannot reconcile themselves to his method—those who feel +that there is about his books something intolerably clumsy or +superficial—have either no natural taste for strong literature at +all, or else have fallen into their error by too persistently regarding +Dickens as a modern novelist and expecting all his books to be modern +novels. Dickens did not know at what exact point he really turned into a +novelist. Nor do we. Dickens did not know, in his deepest soul, whether +he ever really did turn into a novelist. Nor do we. The novel being a +modern product is one of the few things to which we really can apply +that disgusting method of thought—the method of evolution. But +even in evolution there are great gaps, there are great breaks, there +are great crises. I have said that the first of these breaks in Dickens +may be placed at the point when he wrote <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>. This was +his first serious decision to be a novelist in any sense at all, to be +anything except a maker of momentary farces. The second break, and that +a far more important break, is in <i>Dombey and Son</i>. This marks his final +resolution to be a novelist and nothing else, to be a serious +constructor of fiction in the serious sense. Before <i>Dombey and Son</i> +even his pathos had been really frivolous. After <i>Dombey and Son</i> even +his absurdity was intentional and grave.</p> + +<p>In case this transition is not understood, one or two tests may be taken +at random. The episodes in <i>Dombey and Son</i>, the episodes in <i>David +Copperfield</i>, which came after it, are no longer episodes merely stuck +into the middle of the story without any connection <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +with it, like most of the episodes in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, or most of +the episodes even in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. Take, for instance, by way of +a mere coincidence, the fact that three schools for boys are described +successively in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, in <i>Dombey and Son</i>, and in <i>David +Copperfield</i>. But the difference is enormous. Dotheboys Hall does not +exist to tell us anything about Nicholas Nickleby. Rather Nicholas +Nickleby exists entirely in order to tell us about Dotheboys Hall. It +does not in any way affect his history or psychology; he enters Mr. +Squeers’s school and leaves Mr. Squeers’s school with the +same character, or rather absence of character. It is a mere episode, +existing for itself. But when little Paul Dombey goes to an +old-fashioned but kindly school, it is in a very different sense and for +a very different reason from that for which Nicholas Nickleby goes to an +old-fashioned and cruel school. The sending of little Paul to Dr. +Blimber’s is a real part of the history of little Paul, such as it +is. Dickens deliberately invents all that elderly pedantry in order to +show up Paul’s childishness. Dickens deliberately invents all that +rather heavy kindness in order to show up Paul’s predestination +and tragedy. Dotheboys Hall is not meant to show up anything except +Dotheboys Hall. But although Dickens doubtless enjoyed Dr. Blimber quite +as much as Mr. Squeers, it remains true that Dr. Blimber is really a +very good foil to Paul; whereas Squeers is not a foil to Nicholas; +Nicholas is merely a lame excuse for Squeers. The change can be seen +continued in the school, or rather the two schools, to which David +Copperfield goes. The whole idea of David Copperfield’s life +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +is that he had the dregs of life before the wine of it. He knew the +worst of the world before he knew the best of it. His childhood at Dr. +Strong’s is a second childhood. Now for this purpose the two +schools are perfectly well adapted. Mr. Creakle’s school is not +only, like Mr. Squeers’s school, a bad school, it is a bad +influence upon David Copperfield. Dr. Strong’s school is not only +a good school, it is a good influence upon David Copperfield. I have +taken this case of the schools as a case casual but concrete. The same, +however, can be seen in any of the groups or incidents of the novels on +both sides of the boundary. Mr. Crummles’s theatrical company is +only a society that Nicholas happens to fall into. America is only a +place to which Martin Chuzzlewit happens to go. These things are +isolated sketches, and nothing else. Even Todgers’s boarding-house +is only a place where Mr. Pecksniff can be delightfully hypocritical. It +is not a place which throws any new light on Mr. Pecksniff’s +hypocrisy. But the case is different with that more subtle hypocrite in +<i>Dombey and Son</i>—I mean Major Bagstock. Dickens does mean it as a +deliberate light on Mr. Dombey’s character that he basks with a +fatuous calm in the blazing sun of Major Bagstock’s tropical and +offensive flattery. Here, then, is the essence of the change. He not +only wishes to write a novel; this he did as early as <i>Nicholas +Nickleby</i>. He wishes to have as little as possible in the novel that +does not really assist it as a novel. Previously he had asked with the +assistance of what incidents could his hero wander farther and farther +from the pathway. Now he has really begun to ask with the assistance of +what <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +incidents his hero can get nearer and nearer to the goal.</p> + +<p>The change made Dickens a greater novelist. I am not sure that it made +him a greater man. One good character by Dickens requires all eternity +to stretch its legs in; and the characters in his later books are always +being tripped up by some tiresome nonsense about the story. For +instance, in <i>Dombey and Son</i>, Mrs. Skewton is really very funny. But +nobody with a love of the real smell of Dickens would compare her for a +moment, for instance, with Mrs. Nickleby. And the reason of Mrs. +Skewton’s inferiority is simply this, that she has something to do +in the plot; she has to entrap or assist to entrap Mr. Dombey into +marrying Edith. Mrs. Nickleby, on the other hand, has nothing at all to +do in the story, except to get in everybody’s way. The consequence +is that we complain not of her for getting in everyone’s way, but +of everyone for getting in hers. What are suns and stars, what are times +and seasons, what is the mere universe, that it should presume to +interrupt Mrs. Nickleby? Mrs. Skewton (though supposed, of course, to be +a much viler sort of woman) has something of the same quality of +splendid and startling irrelevancy. In her also there is the same +feeling of wild threads hung from world to world like the webs of +gigantic spiders; of things connected that seem to have no connection +save by this one adventurous filament of frail and daring folly. Nothing +could be better than Mrs. Skewton when she finds herself, after +convolutions of speech, somehow on the subject of Henry VIII., and +pauses to mention with approval “his dear little peepy eyes and +his benevolent chin.”<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +Nothing could be better than her attempt at Mahomedan resignation when +she feels almost inclined to say “that there is no +What’s-his-name but Thingummy, and What-you-may-call-it is his +prophet!” But she has not so much time as Mrs. Nickleby to say +these good things; also she has not sufficient human virtue to say them +constantly. She is always intent upon her worldly plans, among other +things upon the worldly plan of assisting Charles Dickens to get a story +finished. She is always “advancing her shrivelled ear” to +listen to what Dombey is saying to Edith. Worldliness is the most solemn +thing in the world; it is far more solemn than other-worldliness. Mrs. +Nickleby can afford to ramble as a child does in a field, or as a child +does to laugh at nothing, for she is like a child, innocent. It is only +the good who can afford to be frivolous.</p> + +<p>Broadly speaking, what is said here of Mrs. Skewton applies to the great +part of <i>Dombey and Son</i>, even to the comic part of it. It shows an +advance in art and unity; it does not show an advance in genius and +creation. In some cases, in fact, I cannot help feeling that it shows a +falling off. It may be a personal idiosyncrasy, but there is only one +comic character really prominent in Dickens, upon whom Dickens has +really lavished the wealth of his invention, and who does not amuse me +at all, and that character is Captain Cuttle. But three great exceptions +must be made to any such disparagement of <i>Dombey and Son</i>. They are all +three of that royal order in Dickens’s creation which can no more +be described or criticised than strong wine. The first is Major +Bagstock, the second is Cousin Feenix, the third is Toots. In Bagstock +Dickens has blasted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +for ever that type which pretends to be sincere by the simple operation +of being explosively obvious. He tells about a quarter of the truth, and +then poses as truthful because a quarter of the truth is much simpler +than the whole of it. He is the kind of man who goes about with posers +for Bishops or for Socialists, with plain questions to which he wants a +plain answer. His questions are plain only in the same sense that he +himself is plain—in the sense of being uncommonly ugly. He is the +man who always bursts with satisfaction because he can call a spade a +spade, as if there were any kind of logical or philosophical use in +merely saying the same word twice over. He is the man who wants things +down in black and white, as if black and white were the only two +colours; as if blue and green and red and gold were not facts of the +universe. He is too selfish to tell the truth and too impatient even to +hear it. He cannot endure the truth, because it is subtle. This man is +almost always like Bagstock—a sycophant and a toad-eater. A man is +not any the less a toad-eater because he eats his toads with a huge +appetite and gobbles them up, as Bagstock did his breakfast, with the +eyes starting out of his purple face. He flatters brutally. He cringes +with a swagger. And men of the world like Dombey are always taken in by +him, because men of the world are probably the simplest of all the +children of Adam.</p> + +<p>Cousin Feenix again is an exquisite suggestion, with his rickety +chivalry and rambling compliments. It was about the period of <i>Dombey +and Son</i> that Dickens began to be taken up by good society. (One can use +only vulgar terms for an essentially vulgar process.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> +And his sketches of the man of good family in the books of this period +show that he had had glimpses of what that singular world is like. The +aristocrats in his earliest books are simply dragons and griffins for +his heroes to fight with—monsters like Sir Mulberry Hawk or Lord +Verisopht. They are merely created upon the old principle, that your +scoundrel must be polite and powerful—a very sound principle. The +villain must be not only a villain, but a tyrant. The giant must be +larger than Jack. But in the books of the Dombey period we have many +shrewd glimpses of the queer realities of English aristocracy. Of these +Cousin Feenix is one of the best. Cousin Feenix is a much better sketch +of the essentially decent and chivalrous aristocrat than Sir Leicester +Dedlock. Both of the men are, if you will, fools, as both are honourable +gentlemen. But if one may attempt a classification among fools, Sir +Leicester Dedlock is a stupid fool, while Cousin Feenix is a silly +fool—which is much better. The difference is that the silly fool +has a folly which is always on the borderland of wit, and even of +wisdom; his wandering wits come often upon undiscovered truths. The +stupid fool is as consistent and as homogeneous as wood; he is as +invincible as the ancestral darkness. Cousin Feenix is a good sketch of +the sort of well-bred old ass who is so fundamentally genuine that he is +always saying very true things by accident. His whole tone also, though +exaggerated like everything in Dickens, is very true to the bewildered +good nature which marks English aristocratic life. The statement that +Dickens could not describe a gentleman is, like most popular +animadversions against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +Dickens, so very thin and one-sided a truth as to be for serious +purposes a falsehood. When people say that Dickens could not describe a +gentleman, what they mean is this, and so far what they mean is true. +They mean that Dickens could not describe a gentleman as gentlemen feel +a gentleman. They mean that he could not take that atmosphere easily, +accept it as the normal atmosphere, or describe that world from the +inside. This is true. In Dickens’s time there was such a thing as +the English people, and Dickens belonged to it. Because there is no such +thing as an English people now, almost all literary men drift towards +what is called Society; almost all literary men either are gentlemen or +pretend to be. Hence, as I say, when we talk of describing a gentleman, +we always mean describing a gentleman from the point of view of one who +either belongs to, or is interested in perpetuating, that type. Dickens +did not describe gentlemen in the way that gentlemen describe gentlemen. +He described them in the way in which he described waiters, or railway +guards, or men drawing with chalk on the pavement. He described them, in +short (and this we may freely concede), from the outside, as he +described any other oddity or special trade. But when it comes to saying +that he did not describe them well, then that is quite another matter, +and that I should emphatically deny. The things that are really odd +about the English upper class he saw with startling promptitude and +penetration, and if the English upper class does not see these odd +things in itself, it is not because they are not there, but because we +are all blind to our own oddities; it is for the same reason that tramps +do not feel dirty, or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +that niggers do not feel black. I have often heard a dear old English +oligarch say that Dickens could not describe a gentleman, while every +note of his own voice and turn of his own hand recalled Sir Leicester +Dedlock. I have often been told by some old buck that Dickens could not +describe a gentleman, and been told so in the shaky voice and with all +the vague allusiveness of Cousin Feenix.</p> + +<p>Cousin Feenix has really many of the main points of the class that +governs England. Take, for an instance, his hazy notion that he is in a +world where everybody knows everybody; whenever he mentions a man, it is +a man “with whom my friend Dombey is no doubt acquainted.” +That pierces to the very helpless soul of aristocracy. Take again the +stupendous gravity with which he leads up to a joke. That is the very +soul of the House of Commons and the Cabinet, of the high-class English +politics, where a joke is always enjoyed solemnly. Take his insistence +upon the technique of Parliament, his regrets for the time when the +rules of debate were perhaps better observed than they are now. Take +that wonderful mixture in him (which is the real human virtue of our +aristocracy) of a fair amount of personal modesty with an innocent +assumption of rank. Of a man who saw all these genteel foibles so +clearly it is absurd merely to say without further explanation that he +could not describe a gentleman. Let us confine ourselves to saying that +he did not describe a gentleman as gentlemen like to be described.</p> + +<p>Lastly, there is the admirable study of Toots, who may be considered as +being in some ways the masterpiece <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +of Dickens. Nowhere else did Dickens express with such astonishing +insight and truth his main contention, which is that to be good and +idiotic is not a poor fate, but, on the contrary, an experience of +primeval innocence, which wonders at all things. Dickens did not know, +anymore than any great man ever knows, what was the particular thing +that he had to preach. He did not know it; he only preached it. But the +particular thing that he had to preach was this: That humility is the +only possible basis of enjoyment; that if one has no other way of being +humble except being poor, then it is better to be poor, and to enjoy; +that if one has no other way of being humble except being imbecile, then +it is better to be imbecile, and to enjoy. That is the deep unconscious +truth in the character of Toots—that all his externals are flashy +and false; all his internals unconscious, obscure, and true. He wears +loud clothes, and he is silent inside them. His shirts and waistcoats +are covered with bright spots of pink and purple, while his soul is +always covered with the sacred shame. He always gets all the outside +things of life wrong, and all the inside things right. He always admires +the right Christian people, and gives them the wrong Christian names. +Dimly connecting Captain Cuttle with the shop of Mr. Solomon Gills, he +always addresses the astonished mariner as “Captain Gills.” +He turns Mr. Walter Gay, by a most improving transformation, into +“Lieutenant Walters.” But he always knows which people upon +his own principles to admire. He forgets who they are, but he remembers +what they are. With the clear eyes of humility he perceives the whole +world as it is.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +He respects the Game Chicken for being strong, as even the Game Chicken +ought to be respected for being strong. He respects Florence for being +good, as even Florence ought to be respected for being good. And he has +no doubt about which he admires most; he prefers goodness to strength, +as do all masculine men. It is through the eyes of such characters as +Toots that Dickens really sees the whole of his tales. For even if one +calls him a half-wit, it still makes a difference that he keeps the +right half of his wits. When we think of the unclean and craven spirit +in which Toots might be treated in a psychological novel of to-day; how +he might walk with a mooncalf face, and a brain of bestial darkness, the +soul rises in real homage to Dickens for showing how much simple +gratitude and happiness can remain in the lopped roots of the most +simplified intelligence. If scientists must treat a man as a dog, it +need not be always as a mad dog. They might grant him, like Toots, a +little of the dog’s loyalty and the dog’s reward.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 401px;"><a name="CD1849" id="CD1849"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1849.jpg" width="401" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, 1849<br /> +From a daguerreotype by Mayall.</span></div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></p> + +<h2><a name="COPPERFIELD" id="COPPERFIELD"></a>DAVID COPPERFIELD</h2> + +<p>In this book Dickens is really trying to write a new kind of book, and +the enterprise is almost as chivalrous as a cavalry charge. He is making +a romantic attempt to be realistic. That is almost the definition of +<i>David Copperfield</i>. In his last book, <i>Dombey and Son</i>, we see a +certain maturity and even a certain mild exhaustion in his earlier +farcical method. He never failed to have fine things in any of his +books, and Toots is a very fine thing. Still, I could never find Captain +Cuttle and Mr. Sol Gills very funny, and the whole Wooden Midshipman +seems to me very wooden. In <i>David Copperfield</i> he suddenly unseals a +new torrent of truth, the truth out of his own life. The impulse of the +thing is autobiography; he is trying to tell all the absurd things that +have happened to himself, and not the least absurd thing is himself. Yet +though it is Dickens’s ablest and clearest book, there is in it a +falling away of a somewhat singular kind.</p> + +<p>Generally speaking there was astonishingly little of fatigue in +Dickens’s books. He sometimes wrote bad work; he sometimes wrote +even unimportant work; but he wrote hardly a line which is not full of +his own fierce vitality and fancy. If he is dull it is hardly ever +because he cannot think of anything; it is because, by some silly +excitement or momentary lapse of judgment, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +he has thought of something that was not worth thinking of. If his joke +is feeble, it is as an impromptu joke at an uproarious dinner-table may +be feeble; it is no indication of any lack of vitality. The joke is +feeble, but it is not a sign of feebleness. Broadly speaking, this is +true of Dickens. If his writing is not amusing us, at least it is +amusing him. Even when he is tiring he is not tired.</p> + +<p>But in the case of <i>David Copperfield</i> there is a real reason for noting +an air of fatigue. For although this is the best of all Dickens’s +books, it constantly disappoints the critical and intelligent reader. +The reason is that Dickens began it under his sudden emotional impulse +of telling the whole truth about himself and gradually allowed the whole +truth to be more and more diluted, until towards the end of the book we +are back in the old pedantic and decorative art of Dickens, an art which +we justly admired in its own place and on its own terms, but which we +resent when we feel it gradually returning through a tale pitched +originally in a more practical and piercing key. Here, I say, is the one +real example of the fatigue of Dickens. He begins his story in a new +style and then slips back into an old one. The earlier part is in his +later manner. The later part is in his earlier manner.</p> + +<p>There are many marks of something weak and shadowy in the end of <i>David +Copperfield</i>. Here, for instance, is one of them which is not without +its bearing on many tendencies of modern England. Why did Dickens at the +end of this book give way to that typically English optimism about +emigration? He seems to think that he can cure the souls of a whole +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +cartload, or rather boatload, of his characters by sending them all +to the Colonies. Peggotty is a desolate and insulted parent whose house +has been desecrated and his pride laid low; therefore let him go to +Australia. Emily is a woman whose heart is broken and whose honour is +blasted; but she will be quite happy if she goes to Australia. Mr. +Micawber is a man whose soul cannot be made to understand the tyranny of +time or the limits of human hope; but he will understand all these +things if he goes to Australia. For it must be noted that Dickens does +not use this emigration merely as a mode of exit. He does not send these +characters away on a ship merely as a symbol suggesting that they pass +wholly out of his hearer’s life. He does definitely suggest that +Australia is a sort of island Valley of Avalon, where the soul may heal +it of its grievous wound. It is seriously suggested that Peggotty finds +peace in Australia. It is really indicated that Emily regains her +dignity in Australia. It is positively explained of Mr. Micawber not +that he was happy in Australia (for he would be that anywhere), but that +he was definitely prosperous and practically successful in Australia; +and that he would certainly be nowhere. Colonising is not talked of +merely as a coarse, economic expedient for going to a new market. It is +really offered as something that will cure the hopeless tragedy of +Peggotty; as something that will cure the still more hopeless comedy of +Micawber.</p> + +<p>I will not dwell here on the subsequent adventures of this very +sentimental and extremely English illusion. It would be an exaggeration +to say that Dickens in this matter is something of a forerunner of much +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +modern imperialism. His political views were such that he would have +regarded modern imperialism with horror and contempt. Nevertheless there +is here something of that hazy sentimentalism which makes some +Imperialists prefer to talk of the fringe of the empire of which they +know nothing, rather than of the heart of the empire which they know is +diseased. It is said that in the twilight and decline of Rome, close to +the dark ages, the people in Gaul believed that Britain was a land of +ghosts (perhaps it was foggy), and that the dead were ferried across to +it from the northern coast of France. If (as is not entirely impossible) +our own century appears to future ages as a time of temporary decay and +twilight, it may be said that there was attached to England a blessed +island called Australia to which the souls of the socially dead were +ferried across to remain in bliss for ever.</p> + +<p>This element which is represented by the colonial optimism at the end of +<i>David Copperfield</i> is a moral element. The truth is that there is +something a little mean about this sort of optimism. I do not like the +notion of David Copperfield sitting down comfortably to his tea-table +with Agnes, having got rid of all the inconvenient or distressing +characters of the story by sending them to the other side of the world. +The whole thing has too much about it of the selfishness of a family +which sends a scapegrace to the Colonies to starve with its blessing. +There is too much in the whole thing of that element which was satirised +by an ironic interpretation of the epitaph “Peace, perfect peace, +with loved ones far away.” We should have thought more of David +Copperfield (and also of Charles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +Dickens) if he had endeavoured for the rest of his life, by +conversation and comfort, to bind up the wounds of his old friends from +the seaside. We should have thought more of David Copperfield (and also +of Charles Dickens) if he had faced the possibility of going on till his +dying day lending money to Mr. Wilkins Micawber. We should have thought +more of David Copperfield (and also of Charles Dickens) if he had not +looked upon the marriage with Dora merely as a flirtation, an episode +which he survived and ought to survive. And yet the truth is that there +is nowhere in fiction where we feel so keenly the primary human instinct +and principle that a marriage is a marriage and irrevocable, that such +things do leave a wound and also a bond as in this case of David’s +short connection with his silly little wife. When all is said and done, +when Dickens has done his best and his worst, when he has +sentimentalised for pages and tried to tie up everything in the pink +tape of optimism, the fact, in the psychology of the reader, still +remains. The reader does still feel that David’s marriage to Dora +was a real marriage; and that his marriage to Agnes was nothing, a +middle-aged compromise, a taking of the second best, a sort of +spiritualised and sublimated marriage of convenience. For all the +readers of Dickens Dora is thoroughly avenged. The modern world (intent +on anarchy in everything, even in Government) refuses to perceive the +permanent element of tragic constancy which inheres in all passion, and +which is the origin of marriage. Marriage rests upon the fact that you +cannot have your cake and eat it; that you cannot lose your heart and +have it. But, as I have said, there is perhaps no place +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> +in literature where we feel more vividly the sense of this monogamous +instinct in man than in David Copperfield. A man is monogamous even if +he is only monogamous for a month; love is eternal even if it is only +eternal for a month. It always leaves behind it the sense of something +broken and betrayed.</p> + +<p>But I have mentioned Dora in this connection only because she +illustrates the same fact which Micawber illustrates; the fact that +there is at the end of this book too much tendency to bless people and +get rid of them. Micawber is a nuisance. Dickens the despot condemns him +to exile. Dora is a nuisance. Dickens the despot condemns her to death. +But it is the whole business of Dickens in the world to express the fact +that such people are the spice and interest of life. It is the whole +point of Dickens that there is nobody more worth living with than a +strong, splendid, entertaining, immortal nuisance. Micawber interrupts +practical life; but what is practical life that it should venture to +interrupt Micawber? Dora confuses the housekeeping; but we are not angry +with Dora because she confuses the housekeeping. We are angry with the +housekeeping because it confuses Dora. I repeat, and it cannot be too +much repeated that the whole lesson of Dickens is here. It is better to +know Micawber than not to know the minor worries that arise out of +knowing Micawber. It is better to have a bad debt and a good friend. In +the same way it is better to marry a human and healthy personality which +happens to attract you than to marry a mere housewife; for a mere +housewife is a mere housekeeper. All this was what Dickens stood for; +that the very people who are most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +irritating in small business circumstances are often the people who are +most delightful in long stretches of experience of life. It is just the +man who is maddening when he is ordering a cutlet or arranging an +appointment who is probably the man in whose company it is worth while +to journey steadily towards the grave. Distribute the dignified people +and the capable people and the highly business-like people among all the +situations which their ambition or their innate corruption may demand; +but keep close to your heart, keep deep in your inner councils the +absurd people. Let the clever people pretend to govern you, let the +unimpeachable people pretend to advise you, but let the fools alone +influence you; let the laughable people whose faults you see and +understand be the only people who are really inside your life, who +really come near you or accompany you on your lonely march towards the +last impossibility. That is the whole meaning of Dickens; that we should +keep the absurd people for our friends. And here at the end of <i>David +Copperfield</i> he seems in some dim way to deny it. He seems to want to +get rid of the preposterous people simply because they will always +continue to be preposterous. I have a horrible feeling that David +Copperfield will send even his aunt to Australia if she worries him too +much about donkeys.</p> + +<p>I repeat, then, that this wrong ending of <i>David Copperfield</i> is one of +the very few examples in Dickens of a real symptom of fatigue. Having +created splendid beings for whom alone life might be worth living, he +cannot endure the thought of his hero living with them. Having given his +hero superb and terrible <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +friends, he is afraid of the awful and tempestuous vista of their +friendship. He slips back into a more superficial kind of story and ends +it in a more superficial way. He is afraid of the things he has made; of +that terrible figure Micawber; of that yet more terrible figure Dora. He +cannot make up his mind to see his hero perpetually entangled in the +splendid tortures and sacred surprises that come from living with really +individual and unmanageable people. He cannot endure the idea that his +fairy prince will not have henceforward a perfectly peaceful time. But +the wise old fairy tales (which are the wisest things in the world, at +any rate the wisest things of worldly origin), the wise old fairy tales +never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived +peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and +princess lived happily ever afterwards: and so they did. They lived +happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw +the furniture at each other. Most marriages, I think, are happy +marriages; but there is no such thing as a contented marriage. The whole +pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis. David Copperfield +and Dora quarrelled over the cold mutton; and if they had gone on +quarrelling to the end of their lives, they would have gone on loving +each other to the end of their lives; it would have been a human +marriage. But David Copperfield and Agnes would agree about the cold +mutton. And that cold mutton would be very cold.</p> + +<p>I have here endeavoured to suggest some of the main merits of Dickens +within the framework of one of his faults. I have said that <i>David +Copperfield</i> represents a rather sad transition from his strongest +method to his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +weakest. Nobody would ever complain of Charles Dickens going on writing +his own kind of novels, his old kind of novels. If there be anywhere a +man who loves good books, that man wishes that there were four <i>Oliver +Twists</i> and at least forty-four <i>Pickwicks</i>. If there be any one who +loves laughter and creation, he would be glad to read a hundred of +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> and two hundred of <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>. But +while any one would have welcomed one of Dickens’s own ordered and +conventional novels, it was not in this spirit that they welcomed <i>David +Copperfield</i>.</p> + +<p><i>David Copperfield</i> begins as if it were going to be a new kind of +Dickens novel; then it gradually turns into an old kind of Dickens +novel. It is here that many readers of this splendid book have been +subtly and secretly irritated. Nicholas Nickleby is all very well; we +accept him as something which is required to tie the whole affair +together. Nicholas is a sort of string or clothes-line on which are hung +the limp figure of Smike, the jumping-jack of Mr. Squeers and the twin +dolls named Cheeryble. If we do not accept Nicholas Nickleby as the hero +of the story, at least we accept him as the title of the story. But in +<i>David Copperfield</i> Dickens begins something which looks for the moment +fresh and startling. In the earlier chapters (the amazing earlier +chapters of this book) he does seem to be going to tell the living truth +about a living boy and man. It is melancholy to see that sudden fire +fading. It is sad to see David Copperfield gradually turning into +Nicholas Nickleby. Nicholas Nickleby does not exist at all; he is a +quite colourless primary condition of the story. We look through +Nicholas Nickleby at the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> +story just as we look through a plain pane of glass at the street. But +David Copperfield does begin by existing; it is only gradually that he +gives up that exhausting habit.</p> + +<p>Any fair critical account of Dickens must always make him out much +smaller than he is. For any fair criticism of Dickens must take account +of his evident errors, as I have taken account of one of the most +evident of them during the last two or three pages. It would not even be +loyal to conceal them. But no honest criticism, no criticism, though it +spoke with the tongues of men and angels, could ever really talk about +Dickens. In all this that I have said I have not been talking about +Dickens at all. I say it with equanimity; I say it even with arrogance. +I have been talking about the gaps of Dickens. I have been talking about +the omissions of Dickens. I have been talking about the slumber of +Dickens and the forgetfulness and unconsciousness of Dickens. In one +word, I have been talking not about Dickens, but about the absence of +Dickens. But when we come to him and his work itself, what is there to +be said? What is there to be said about earthquake and the dawn? He has +created, especially in this book of <i>David Copperfield</i>, he has created, +creatures who cling to us and tyrannise over us, creatures whom we would +not forget if we could, creatures whom we could not forget if we would, +creatures who are more actual than the man who made them.</p> + +<p>This is the excuse for all that indeterminate and rambling and sometimes +sentimental criticism of which Dickens, more than any one else, is the +victim, of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +which I fear that I for one have made him the victim in this place. +When I was a boy I could not understand why the Dickensians worried so +wearily about Dickens, about where he went to school and where he ate +his dinners, about how he wore his trousers and when he cut his hair. I +used to wonder why they did not write something that I could read about +a man like Micawber. But I have come to the conclusion that this almost +hysterical worship of the man, combined with a comparatively feeble +criticism on his works, is just and natural. Dickens was a man like +ourselves; we can see where he went wrong, and study him without being +stunned or getting the sunstroke. But Micawber is not a man; Micawber is +the superman. We can only walk round and round him wondering what we +shall say. All the critics of Dickens, when all is said and done, have +only walked round and round Micawber wondering what they should say. I +am myself at this moment walking round and round Micawber wondering what +I shall say. And I have not found out yet.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></p> +<h2><a name="CHRISTMAS_STORIES" id="CHRISTMAS_STORIES"></a>CHRISTMAS STORIES</h2> + +<p>The power of Dickens is shown even in the scraps of Dickens, just as the +virtue of a saint is said to be shown in fragments of his property or +rags from his robe. It is with such fragments that we are chiefly +concerned in the <i>Christmas Stories</i>. Many of them are fragments in the +literal sense; Dickens began them and then allowed some one else to +carry them on; they are almost rejected notes. In all the other cases we +have been considering the books that he wrote; here we have rather to +consider the books that he might have written. And here we find the +final evidence and the unconscious stamp of greatness, as we might find +it in some broken bust or some rejected moulding in the studio of +Michael Angelo.</p> + +<p>These sketches or parts of sketches all belong to that period in his +later life when he had undertaken the duties of an editor, the very +heavy duties of a very popular editor. He was not by any means naturally +fitted for that position. He was the best man in the world for founding +papers; but many people wished that he could have been buried under the +foundations, like the first builder in some pagan and prehistoric pile. +He called the <i>Daily News</i> into existence, but when once it existed, it +objected to him strongly. It is not easy, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +and perhaps it is not important, to state truly the cause of this +incapacity. It was not in the least what is called the ordinary fault or +weakness of the artist. It was not that he was careless; rather it was +that he was too conscientious. It was not that he had the +irresponsibility of genius; rather it was that he had the irritating +responsibility of genius; he wanted everybody to see things as he saw +them. But in spite of all this he certainly ran two great popular +periodicals—<i>Household Words</i> and <i>All the Year Round</i>—with +enormous popular success. And he certainly so far succeeded in throwing +himself into the communism of journalism, into the nameless brotherhood +of a big paper, that many earnest Dickensians are still engaged in +picking out pieces of Dickens from the anonymous pages of <i>Household +Words</i> and <i>All the Year Round</i>, and those parts which have been already +beyond question picked out and proved are often fragmentary. The genuine +writing of Dickens breaks off at a certain point, and the writing of +some one else begins. But when the writing of Dickens breaks off, I +fancy that we know it.</p> + +<p>The singular thing is that some of the best work that Dickens ever did, +better than the work in his best novels, can be found in these slight +and composite scraps of journalism. For instance, the solemn and +self-satisfied account of the duty and dignity of a waiter given in the +opening chapter of <i>Somebody’s Luggage</i> is quite as full and fine +as anything done anywhere by its author in the same vein of sumptuous +satire. It is as good as the account which Mr. Bumble gives of out-door +relief, which, “properly understood, is the parochial safeguard. +The great thing is to give <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +the paupers what they don’t want, and then they never come +again.” It is as good as Mr. Podsnap’s description of the +British Constitution, which was bestowed on him by Providence. None of +these celebrated passages is more obviously Dickens at his best than +this, the admirable description of “the true principles of +waitering,” or the account of how the waiter’s father came +back to his mother in broad daylight, “in itself an act of madness +on the part of a waiter,” and how he expired repeating continually +“two and six is three and four is nine.” That waiter’s +explanatory soliloquy might easily have opened an excellent novel, as +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> is opened by the clever nonsense about the genealogy +of the Chuzzlewits, or as <i>Bleak House</i> is opened by a satiric account +of the damp, dim life of a law court. Yet Dickens practically abandoned +the scheme of <i>Somebody’s Luggage</i>; he only wrote two sketches out +of those obviously intended. He may almost be said to have only written +a brilliant introduction to another man’s book.</p> + +<p>Yet it is exactly in such broken outbreaks that his greatness appears. +If a man has flung away bad ideas he has shown his sense, but if he has +flung away good ideas he has shown his genius. He has proved that he +actually has that over-pressure of pure creativeness which we see in +nature itself, “that of a hundred seeds, she often brings but one +to bear.” Dickens had to be Malthusian about his spiritual +children. Critics have called Keats and others who died young “the +great Might-have-beens of literary history.” Dickens certainly was +not merely a great Might-have-been. Dickens, to say the least of him, +was a great Was.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +Yet this fails fully to express the richness of his talent; for the +truth is that he was a great Was and also a great Might-have-been. He +said what he had to say, and yet not all he had to say. Wild pictures, +possible stories, tantalising and attractive trains of thought, +perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually upon his mind that at +the end there was a vast mass of them left over, ideas that he literally +had not the opportunity to develop, tales that he literally had not the +time to tell. This is shown clearly in his private notes and letters, +which are full of schemes singularly striking and suggestive, schemes +which he never carried out. It is indicated even more clearly by these +<i>Christmas Stories</i>, collected out of the chaotic opulence of <i>Household +Words</i> and <i>All the Year Round</i>. He wrote short stories actually because +he had not time to write long stories. He often put into the short story +a deep and branching idea which would have done very well for a long +story; many of his long stories, so to speak, broke off short. This is +where he differs from most who are called the Might-have-beens of +literature. Marlowe and Chatterton failed because of their weakness. +Dickens failed because of his force.</p> + +<p>Examine for example this case of the waiter in <i>Somebody’s +Luggage</i>. Dickens obviously knew enough about that waiter to have made +him a running spring of joy throughout a whole novel; as the beadle is +in <i>Oliver Twist</i>, or the undertaker in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. Every touch +of him tingles with truth, from the vague gallantry with which he asks, +“Would’st thou know, fair reader (if of the adorable female +sex)” to the official severity with which he takes the chambermaid +down,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> +“as many pegs as is desirable for the future comfort of all +parties.” If Dickens had developed this character at full length +in a book he would have preserved for ever in literature a type of great +humour and great value, and a type which may only too soon be +disappearing from English history. He would have eternalised the English +waiter. He still exists in some sound old taverns and decent country +inns, but there is no one left really capable of singing his praises. I +know that Mr. Bernard Shaw has done something of the sort in the +delightfully whimsical account of William in <i>You Never Can Tell</i>. But +nothing will persuade me that Mr. Bernard Shaw can really understand the +English waiter. He can never have ordered wine from him for instance. +And though the English waiter is by the nature of things solemn about +everything, he can never reach the true height and ecstasy of his +solemnity except about wine. What the real English waiter would do or +say if Mr. Shaw asked him for a vegetarian meal I cannot dare to +predict. I rather think that for the first time in his life he would +laugh—a horrible sight.</p> + +<p>Dickens’s waiter is described by one who is not merely witty, +truthful, and observant, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, but one who really knew +the atmosphere of inns, one who knew and even liked the smell of beef, +and beer, and brandy. Hence there is a richness in Dickens’s +portrait which does not exist in Mr. Shaw’s. Mr. Shaw’s +waiter is merely a man of tact; Dickens’s is a man of principle. +Mr. Shaw’s waiter is an opportunist, just as Mr. Shaw is an +opportunist in politics. Dickens’s waiter is ready to stand up +seriously for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> +“the true principles of waitering,” just as Dickens was +ready to stand up for the true principles of Liberalism. Mr. +Shaw’s waiter is agnostic; his motto is “You never can +tell.” Dickens’s waiter is a dogmatist; his motto is +“You can tell; I will tell you.” And the true old-fashioned +English waiter had really this grave and even moral attitude; he was the +servant of the customers as a priest is the servant of the faithful, but +scarcely in any less dignified sense. Surely it is not mere patriotic +partiality that makes one lament the disappearance of this careful and +honourable figure crowded out by meaner men at meaner wages, by the +German waiter who has learnt five languages in the course of running +away from his own, or the Italian waiter who regards those he serves +with a darkling contempt which must certainly be that either of a +dynamiter or an exiled prince. The human and hospitable English waiter +is vanishing. And Dickens might perhaps have saved him, as he saved +Christmas.</p> + +<p>I have taken this case of the waiter in Dickens and his equally +important counterpart in England as an example of the sincere and genial +sketches scattered about these short stories. But there are many others, +and one at least demands special mention; I mean Mrs. Lirriper, the +London landlady. Not only did Dickens never do anything better in a +literary sense, but he never performed more perfectly his main moral +function, that of insisting through laughter and flippancy upon the +virtue of Christian charity. There has been much broad farce against the +lodging-house keeper: he alone could have written broad farce in her +favour. It is fashionable to represent the landlady as a tyrant; +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +it is too much forgotten that if she is one of the oppressors she is at +least as much one of the oppressed. If she is bad-tempered it is often +for the same reasons that make all women bad-tempered (I suppose the +exasperating qualities of the other sex); if she is grasping it is often +because when a husband makes generosity a vice it is often necessary +that a wife should make avarice a virtue. All this Dickens suggested +very soundly and in a few strokes in the more remote character of Miss +Wozenham. But in Mrs. Lirriper he went further and did not fare worse. +In Mrs. Lirriper he suggested quite truly how huge a mass of real good +humour, of grand unconscious patience, of unfailing courtesy and +constant and difficult benevolence is concealed behind many a +lodging-house door and compact in the red-faced person of many a +preposterous landlady. Any one could easily excuse the ill-humour of the +poor. But great masses of the poor have not even any ill-humour to be +excused. Their cheeriness is startling enough to be the foundation of a +miracle play; and certainly is startling enough to be the foundation of +a romance. Yet I do not know of any romance in which it is expressed +except this one.</p> + +<p>Of the landlady as of the waiter it may be said that Dickens left in a +slight sketch what he might have developed through a long and strong +novel. For Dickens had hold of one great truth, the neglect of which +has, as it were, truncated and made meagre the work of many brilliant +modern novelists. Modern novelists try to make long novels out of subtle +characters. But a subtle character soon comes to an end, because it +works in and in to its own centre and dies there. But a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +simple character goes on for ever in a fresh interest and energy, +because it works out and out into the infinite universe. Mr. George +Moore in France is not by any means so interesting as Mrs. Lirriper in +France; for she is trying to find France and he is only trying to find +George Moore. Mrs. Lirriper is the female equivalent of Mr. Pickwick. +Unlike Mrs. Bardell (another and lesser landlady) she was fully worthy +to be Mrs. Pickwick. For in both cases the essential truth is the same; +that original innocence which alone deserves adventures and because it +alone can appreciate them. We have had Mr. Pickwick in England and we +can imagine him in France. We have had Mrs. Lirriper in France and we +can imagine her in Mesopotamia or in heaven. The subtle character in the +modern novels we cannot really imagine anywhere except in the suburbs or +in Limbo.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></p> +<h2><a name="BLEAK" id="BLEAK"></a>BLEAK HOUSE</h2> + +<p><i>Bleak House</i> is not certainly Dickens’s best book; but perhaps it +is his best novel. Such a distinction is not a mere verbal trick; it has +to be remembered rather constantly in connection with his work. This +particular story represents the highest point of his intellectual +maturity. Maturity does not necessarily mean perfection. It is idle to +say that a mature potato is perfect; some people like new potatoes. A +mature potato is not perfect, but it is a mature potato; the mind of an +intelligent epicure may find it less adapted to his particular purpose; +but the mind of an intelligent potato would at once admit it as being, +beyond all doubt, a genuine, fully developed specimen of his own +particular species. The same is in some degree true even of literature. +We can say more or less when a human being has come to his full mental +growth, even if we go so far as to wish that he had never come to it. +Children are very much nicer than grown-up people; but there is such a +thing as growing up. When Dickens wrote <i>Bleak House</i> he had grown up.</p> + +<p>Like Napoleon, he had made his army on the march. He had walked in front +of his mob of aggressive characters as Napoleon did in front of the +half-baked battalions of the Revolution. And, like Napoleon, he won +battle after battle before he knew his own plan <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +of campaign; like Napoleon, he put the enemies’ forces to rout +before he had put his own force into order. Like Napoleon, he had a +victorious army almost before he had an army. After his decisive +victories Napoleon began to put his house in order; after his decisive +victories Dickens also began to put his house in order. The house, when +he had put it in order, was <i>Bleak House</i>.</p> + +<p>There was one thing common to nearly all the other Dickens tales, with +the possible exception of <i>Dombey and Son</i>. They were all rambling +tales; and they all had a perfect right to be. They were all rambling +tales for the very simple reason that they were all about rambling +people. They were novels of adventure; they were even diaries of travel. +Since the hero strayed from place to place, it did not seem unreasonable +that the story should stray from subject to subject. This is true of the +bulk of the novels up to and including <i>David Copperfield</i>, up to the +very brink or threshold of <i>Bleak House</i>. Mr. Pickwick wanders about on +the white English roads, always looking for antiquities and always +finding novelties. Poor Oliver Twist wanders along the same white roads +to seek his fortune and to find his misfortune. Nicholas Nickleby goes +walking across England because he is young and hopeful; Little +Nell’s grandfather does the same thing because he is old and +silly. There is not much in common between Samuel Pickwick and Oliver +Twist; there is not much in common between Oliver Twist and Nicholas +Nickleby; there is not much in common (let us hope) between Little +Nell’s grandfather and any other human being. But they all have +this in common, that they may actually all have trodden in each +other’s footprints.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> +They were all wanderers on the face of the same fair English land. +<i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> was only made popular by the travels of the hero in +America. When we come to <i>Dombey and Son</i> we find, as I have said, an +exception; but even here it is odd to note the fact that it was an +exception almost by accident. In Dickens’s original scheme of the +story, much greater prominence was to have been given to the travels and +trials of Walter Gay; in fact, the young man was to have had a +deterioration of character which could only have been adequately +detailed in him in his character of a vagabond and a wastrel. The most +important point, however, is that when we come to <i>David Copperfield</i>, +in some sense the summit of his serious literature, we find the thing +still there. The hero still wanders from place to place, his genius is +still gipsy. The adventures in the book are less violent and less +improbable than those which wait for Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby; but +they are still adventures and not merely events; they are still things +met on a road. The facts of the story fall away from David as such facts +do fall away from a traveller walking fast. We are more likely perhaps, +to pass by Mr. Creakle’s school than to pass by Mrs. +Jarley’s wax-works. The only point is that we should pass by both +of them. Up to this point in Dickens’s development, his novel, +however true, is still picaresque; his hero never really rests anywhere +in the story. No one seems really to know where Mr. Pickwick lived. Here +he has no abiding city.</p> + +<p>When we come to <i>Bleak House</i>, we come to a change in artistic +structure. The thing is no longer a string of incidents; it is a cycle +of incidents. It returns upon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +itself; it has recurrent melody and poetic justice; it has artistic +constancy and artistic revenge. It preserves the unities; even to some +extent it preserves the unities of time and place. The story circles +round two or three symbolic places; it does not go straggling +irregularly all over England like one of Mr. Pickwick’s coaches. +People go from one place to another place; but not from one place to +another place on the road to everywhere else. Mr. Jarndyce goes from +Bleak House to visit Mr. Boythorn; but he comes back to Bleak House. +Miss Clare and Miss Summerson go from Bleak House to visit Mr. and Mrs. +Bayham Badger; but they come back to Bleak House. The whole story strays +from Bleak House and plunges into the foul fogs of Chancery and the +autumn mists of Chesney Wold; but the whole story comes back to Bleak +House. The domestic title is appropriate; it is a permanent address.</p> + +<p>Dickens’s openings are almost always good; but the opening of +<i>Bleak House</i> is good in a quite new and striking sense. Nothing could +be better, for instance, than the first foolish chapter about the +genealogy of the Chuzzlewits; but it has nothing to do with the +Chuzzlewits. Nothing could be better than the first chapter of <i>David +Copperfield</i>; the breezy entrance and banging exit of Miss Betsy +Trotwood. But if there is ultimately any crisis or serious +subject-matter of <i>David Copperfield</i>, it is the marred marriage with +Dora, the final return to Agnes; and all this is in no way involved in +the highly-amusing fact that his aunt expected him to be a girl. We may +repeat that the matter is picaresque. The story begins in one place and +ends in another place, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +and there is no real connection between the beginning and the end +except a biographical connection.</p> + +<p>A picaresque novel is only a very eventful biography; but the opening of +<i>Bleak House</i> is quite another business altogether. It is admirable in +quite another way. The description of the fog in the first chapter of +<i>Bleak House</i> is good in itself; but it is not merely good in itself, +like the description of the wind in the opening of <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>; +it is also good in the sense that Maeterlinck is good; it is what the +modern people call an atmosphere. Dickens begins in the Chancery fog +because he means to end in the Chancery fog. He did not begin in the +Chuzzlewit wind because he meant to end in it; he began in it because it +was a good beginning. This is perhaps the best short way of stating the +peculiarity of the position of <i>Bleak House</i>. In this <i>Bleak House</i> +beginning we have the feeling that it is not only a beginning; we have +the feeling that the author sees the conclusion and the whole. The +beginning is alpha and omega: the beginning and the end. He means that +all the characters and all the events shall be read through the smoky +colours of that sinister and unnatural vapour.</p> + +<p>The same is true throughout the whole tale; the whole tale is symbolic +and crowded with symbols. Miss Flite is a funny character, like Miss La +Creevy, but Miss La Creevy means only Miss La Creevy. Miss Flite means +Chancery. The rag-and-bone man, Krook, is a powerful grotesque; so is +Quilp; but in the story Quilp only means Quilp; Krook means Chancery. +Rick Carstone is a kind and tragic figure, like Sidney Carton; but +Sidney Carton only means the tragedy of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span> +human nature; Rick Carstone means the tragedy of Chancery. Little Jo +dies pathetically like Little Paul; but for the death of Little Paul we +can only blame Dickens; for the death of Little Jo we blame Chancery. +Thus the artistic unity of the book, compared to all the author’s +earlier novels, is satisfying, almost suffocating. There is the <i>motif</i>, +and again the <i>motif</i>. Almost everything is calculated to assert and +re-assert the savage morality of Dickens’s protest against a +particular social evil. The whole theme is that which another Englishman +as jovial as Dickens defined shortly and finally as the law’s +delay. The fog of the first chapter never lifts.</p> + +<p>In this twilight he traced wonderful shapes. Those people who fancy that +Dickens was a mere clown; that he could not describe anything delicate +or deadly in the human character,—those who fancy this are mostly +people whose position is explicable in many easy ways. The vast majority +of the fastidious critics have, in the quite strict and solid sense of +the words, never read Dickens at all; hence their opposition is due to +and inspired by a hearty innocence which will certainly make them +enthusiastic Dickensians if they ever, by some accident, happen to read +him. In other cases it is due to a certain habit of reading books under +the eye of a conventional critic, admiring what we expect to admire, +regretting what we are told to regret, waiting for Mr. Bumble to admire +him, waiting for Little Nell to despise her. Yet again, of course, it is +sometimes due to that basest of all artistic indulgences (certainly far +baser than the pleasure of absinthe or the pleasure of opium), the +pleasure of appreciating <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> +works of art which ordinary men cannot appreciate. Surely the vilest +point of human vanity is exactly that; to ask to be admired for admiring +what your admirers do not admire. But whatever be the reason, whether +rude or subtle, which has prevented any particular man from personally +admiring Dickens, there is in connection with a book like <i>Bleak House</i> +something that may be called a solid and impressive challenge. Let +anyone who thinks that Dickens could not describe the semi-tones and the +abrupt instincts of real human nature simply take the trouble to read +the stretch of chapters which detail the way in which Carstone’s +mind grew gradually morbid about his chances in Chancery. Let him note +the manner in which the mere masculinity of Carstone is caught; how as +he grows more mad he grows more logical, nay, more rational. Good women +who love him come to him, and point out the fact that Jarndyce is a good +man, a fact to them solid like an object of the senses. In answer he +asks them to understand his position. He does not say this; he does not +say that. He only urges that Jarndyce may have become cynical in the +affair in the same sense that he himself may have become cynical in the +affair. He is always a man; that is to say, he is always unanswerable, +always wrong. The passionate certainty of the woman beats itself like +battering waves against the thin smooth wall of his insane consistency. +I repeat: let any one who thinks that Dickens was a gross and indelicate +artist read that part of the book. If Dickens had been the clumsy +journalist that such people represent, he never could have written such +an episode at all. A clumsy journalist would have made +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +Rick Carstone in his mad career cast off Esther and Ada and the others. +The great artist knew better. He knew that even if all the good in a man +is dying, the last sense that dies is the sense that knows a good woman +from a bad; it is like the scent of a noble hound.</p> + +<p>The clumsy journalist would have made Rick Carstone turn on John +Jarndyce with an explosion of hatred, as of one who had made an +exposure—who had found out what low people call “a false +friend” in what they call “his true colours.” The +great artist knew better; he knew that a good man going wrong tries to +salve his soul to the last with the sense of generosity and intellectual +justice. He will try to love his enemy if only out of mere love of +himself. As the wolf dies fighting, the good man gone wrong dies +arguing. This is what constitutes the true and real tragedy of Richard +Carstone. It is strictly the one and only great tragedy that Dickens +wrote. It is like the tragedy of Hamlet. The others are not tragedies +because they deal almost with dead men. The tragedy of old Dorrit is +merely the sad spectacle of a dotard dragged about Europe in his last +childhood. The tragedy of Steerforth is only that of one who dies +suddenly; the tragedy of old Dombey only that of one who was dead all +the time. But Rick is a real tragedy, for he is still alive when the +quicksand sucks him down.</p> + +<p>It is impossible to avoid putting in the first place this pall of smoke +which Dickens has deliberately spread over the story. It is quite true +that the country underneath is clear enough to contain any number of +unconscious comedians or of merry monsters such as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> +he was in the custom of introducing into the carnival of his tales. But +he meant us to take the smoky atmosphere seriously. Charles Dickens, who +was, like all men who are really funny about funny things, horribly +serious about serious things, certainly meant us to read this story in +terms of his protest and his insurrection against the emptiness and +arrogance of law, against the folly and the pride of judges. Everything +else that there is in this story entered into it through the unconscious +or accidental energy of his genius, which broke in at every gap. But it +was the tragedy of Richard Carstone that he meant, not the comedy of +Harold Skimpole. He could not help being amusing; but he meant to be +depressing.</p> + +<p>Another case might be taken as testing the greater seriousness of this +tale. The passages about Mrs. Jellyby and her philanthropic schemes show +Dickens at his best in his old and more familiar satiric manner. But in +the midst of the Jellyby pandemonium, which is in itself described with +the same <i>abandon</i> and irrelevance as the boarding-house of Mrs. Todgers +or the travelling theatre of Mr. Crummles, the elder Dickens introduced +another piece of pure truth and even tenderness. I mean the account of +Caddy Jellyby. If Carstone is a truly masculine study of how a man goes +wrong, Caddy is a perfectly feminine study of how a girl goes right. +Nowhere else perhaps in fiction, and certainly nowhere else in Dickens, +is the mere female paradox so well epitomised, the unjust use of words +covering so much capacity for a justice of ultimate estimate; the +seeming irresponsibility in language concealing such a fixed and +pitiless sense of responsibility <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +about things; the air of being always at daggers-drawn with her own +kindred, yet the confession of incurable kinship implied in pride and +shame; and, above all, that thirst for order and beauty as for something +physical; that strange female power of hating ugliness and waste as good +men can only hate sin and bad men virtue. Every touch in her is true, +from her first bewildering outbursts of hating people because she likes +them, down to the sudden quietude and good sense which announces that +she has slipped into her natural place as a woman. Miss Clare is a +figure-head, Miss Summerson in some ways a failure; but Miss Caddy +Jellyby is by far the greatest, the most human, and the most really +dignified of all the heroines of Dickens.</p> + +<p>With one or two exceptions, all the effects in this story are of this +somewhat quieter kind, though none of them are so subtly successful as +Rick Carstone and Caddy. Harold Skimpole begins as a sketch drawn with a +pencil almost as airy and fanciful as his own. The humour of the earlier +scenes is delightful—the scenes in which Skimpole looks on at other +people paying his debts with the air of a kindly outsider, and suggests +in formless legal phraseology that they might “sign +something” or “make over something,” or the scene in +which he tries to explain the advantages of accepting everything to the +apoplectic Mr. Boythorn. But it was one of the defects of Dickens as a +novelist that his characters always became coarser and clumsier as they +passed through the practical events of a story, and this would +necessarily be so with Skimpole, whose position was conceivable even to +himself only on the assumption that he was a mere spectator of life. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> +Poor Skimpole only asked to be kept out of the business of this world, +and Dickens ought to have kept him out of the business of <i>Bleak House</i>. +By the end of the tale he has brought Skimpole to doing acts of mere low +villainy. This altogether spoils the ironical daintiness of the original +notion. Skimpole was meant to end with a note of interrogation. As it +is, he ends with a big, black, unmistakable blot. Speaking purely +artistically, we may say that this is as great a collapse or +vulgarisation as if Richard Carstone had turned into a common blackguard +and wife-beater, or Caddy Jellyby into a comic and illiterate landlady. +Upon the whole it may, I think, be said that the character of Skimpole +is rather a piece of brilliant moralising than of pure observation or +creation. Dickens had a singularly just mind. He was wild in his +caricatures, but very sane in his impressions. Many of his books were +devoted, and this book is partly devoted, to a denunciation of +aristocracy—of the idle class that lives easily upon the toil of +nations. But he was fairer than many modern revolutionists, and he +insisted on satirising also those who prey on society not in the name of +rank or law, but in the name of intellect and beauty. Sir Leicester +Dedlock and Mr. Harold Skimpole are alike in accepting with a royal +unconsciousness the anomaly and evil of their position. But the idleness +and insolence of the aristocrat is human and humble compared to the +idleness and insolence of the artist.</p> + +<p>With the exception of a few fine freaks, such as Turveydrop and +Chadband, all the figures in this book are touched more delicately, even +more faintly, than is common with Dickens. But if the figures are +touched <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> +more faintly, it is partly because they are figures in a fog—the +fog of Chancery. Dickens meant that twilight to be oppressive; for it +was the symbol of oppression. Deliberately he did not dispel the +darkness at the end of this book, as he does dispel it at the end of +most of his books. Pickwick gets out of the Fleet Prison; Carstone never +gets out of Chancery but by death. This tyranny, Dickens said, shall not +be lifted by the light subterfuge of a fiction. This tyranny shall never +be lifted till all Englishmen lift it together.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></p> +<h2><a name="HISTORY" id="HISTORY"></a>CHILD’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND</h2> + +<p>There are works of great authors manifestly inferior to their typical +work which are yet necessary to their fame and their figure in the +world. It is not difficult to recall examples of them. No one, for +instance, would talk of Scott’s <i>Tales of a Grandfather</i> as +indicating the power that produced <i>Kenilworth</i> and <i>Guy Mannering</i>. +Nevertheless, without this chance minor compilation we should not really +have the key of Scott. Without this one insignificant book we should not +see his significance. For the truth was that Scott loved history more +than romance, because he was so constituted as to find it more romantic +than romance. He preferred the deeds of Wallace and Douglas to those of +Marmion and Ivanhoe. Therefore his garrulous gossip of old times, his +rambles in dead centuries, give us the real material and impulse of all +his work; they represent the quarry in which he dug and the food on +which he fed. Almost alone among novelists Scott actually preferred +those parts of his historical novels which he had not invented himself. +He exults when he can boast in an eager note that he has stolen some +saying from history. Thus <i>The Tales of a Grandfather</i>, though small, is +in some sense the frame of all the Waverley novels. We realise that all +Scott’s novels are tales of a grandfather.</p> + +<p>What has been said here about Scott might be said +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +in a less degree about Thackeray’s <i>Four Georges</i>. Though +standing higher among his works than <i>The Tales of a Grandfather</i> among +Scott’s they are not his works of genius; yet they seem in some +way to surround, supplement, and explain such works. Without the <i>Four +Georges</i> we should know less of the link that bound Thackeray to the +beginning and to the end of the eighteenth century; thence we should +have known less of Colonel Esmond and also less of Lord Steyne. To these +two examples I have given of the slight historical experiments of two +novelists a third has to be added. The third great master of English +fiction whose glory fills the nineteenth century also produced a small +experiment in the popularisation of history. It is separated from the +other two partly by a great difference of merit but partly also by an +utter difference of tone and outlook. We seem to hear it suddenly as in +the first words spoken by a new voice, a voice gay, colloquial, and +impatient. Scott and Thackeray were tenderly attached to the past; +Dickens (in his consciousness at any rate) was impatient with +everything, but especially impatient with the past.</p> + +<p>A collection of the works of Dickens would be incomplete in an essential +as well as a literal sense without his <i>Child’s History of +England</i>. It may not be important as a contribution to history, but it +is important as a contribution to biography; as a contribution to the +character and the career of the man who wrote it, a typical man of his +time. That he had made no personal historical researches, that he had no +special historical learning, that he had not had, in truth, even +anything that could be called a good education, all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +this only accentuates not the merit but at least the importance of the +book. For here we may read in plain popular language, written by a man +whose genius for popular exposition has never been surpassed among men, +a brief account of the origin and meaning of England as it seemed to the +average Englishman of that age. When subtler views of our history, some +more false and some more true than his, have become popular, or at least +well known, when in the near future Carlylean or Catholic or Marxian +views of history have spread themselves among the reading public, this +book will always remain as a bright and brisk summary of the cock-sure, +healthy-minded, essentially manly and essentially ungentlemanly view of +history which characterised the Radicals of that particular Radical era. +The history tells us nothing about the periods that it talks about; but +it tells us a great deal about the period that it does not talk about; +the period in which it was written. It is in no sense a history of +England from the Roman invasion; but it is certainly one of the +documents which will contribute to a history of England in the +nineteenth century.</p> + +<p>Of the actual nature of its philosophical and technical limitations it +is, I suppose, unnecessary to speak. They all resolve themselves into +one fault common in the modern world, and certainly characteristic of +historians much more learned and pretentious than Dickens. That fault +consists simply in ignoring or underrating the variety of strange evils +and unique dangers in the world. The Radicals of the nineteenth century +were engaged, and most righteously engaged, in dealing with one +particular problem of human <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> +civilisation; they were shifting and apportioning more equally a load +of custom that had really become unmeaning, often accidental, and nearly +always unfair. Thus, for instance, a fierce and fighting penal code, +which had been perfectly natural when the robbers were as strong as the +Government, had become in more ordered times nothing but a base and +bloody habit. Thus again Church powers and dues, which had been human +when every man felt the Church as the best part of himself, were mere +mean privileges when the nation was full of sects and full of +freethinkers. This clearing away of external symbols that no longer +symbolised anything was an honourable and needful work; but it was so +difficult that to the men engaged in it it blocked up the perspective +and filled the sky, so that they slid into a very natural mental mistake +which coloured all their views of history. They supposed that this +particular problem on which they were engaged was the one problem upon +which all mankind had always been engaged. They got it into their heads +that breaking away from a dead past was the perpetual process of +humanity. The truth is obviously that humanity has found itself in many +difficulties very different from that. Sometimes the best business of an +age is to resist some alien invasion; sometimes to preach practical +self-control in a world too self-indulgent and diffused; sometimes to +prevent the growth in the State of great new private enterprises that +would poison or oppress it. Above all it may sometimes happen that the +highest task of a thinking citizen may be to do the exact opposite of +the work which the Radicals had to do. It may be his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> +highest duty to cling on to every scrap of the past that he can find, +if he feels that the ground is giving way beneath him and sinking into +mere savagery and forgetfulness of all human culture. This was exactly +the position of all thinking men in what we call the dark ages, say from +the sixth to the tenth century. The cheap progressive view of history +can never make head or tail of that epoch; it was an epoch upside down. +We think of the old things as barbaric and the new things as +enlightened. In that age all the enlightened things were old; all the +barbaric and brutally ignorant things were new and up to date. +Republicanism was a fading legend; despotism was a new and successful +experiment. Christianity was not only better than the clans that +rebelled against it; Christianity was more rationalistic than they were. +When men looked back they saw progress and reason; when they looked +forward they saw shapeless tradition and tribal terror. Touching such an +age it is obvious that all our modern terms describing reform or +conservation are foolish and beside the mark. The Conservative was then +the only possible reformer. If a man did not strengthen the remains of +Roman order and the root of Roman Christianity, he was simply helping +the world to roll downhill into ruin and idiotcy. Remember all these +evident historical truths and then turn to the account given by Charles +Dickens of that great man, St. Dunstan. It is not that the pert cockney +tone of the abuse is irritating to the nerves: it is that he has got the +whole hang of the thing wrong. His head is full of the +nineteenth-century situation; that a priest imposing discipline is a +person somehow blocking the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +way to equality and light. Whereas the point about such a man as +Dunstan was that nobody in the place except he cared a button about +equality or light: and that he was defending what was left of them +against the young and growing power of darkness and division and caste.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless the case against such books as this is commonly stated +wrong. The fault of Dickens is not (as is often said) that he +“applies the same moral standard to all ages.” Every sane +man must do that: a moral standard must remain the same or it is not a +moral standard. If we call St. Anthony of Padua a good man, we must mean +what we mean when we call Huxley a good man, or else there is no sense +in using the word “good.” The fault of the Dickens school of +popular history lies, not in the application of a plain rule of right +and wrong to all circumstances, but in ignorance of the circumstances to +which it was applied. It is not that they wrongly enforce the fixed +principle that life should be saved; it is that they take a fire-engine +to a shipwreck and a lifeboat to a house on fire. The business of a good +man in Dickens’s time was to bring justice up to date. The +business of a good man in Dunstan’s time was to toil to ensure the +survival of any justice at all.</p> + +<p>And Dickens, through being a living and fighting man of his own time, +kept the health of his own heart, and so saw many truths with a single +eye: truths that were spoilt for subtler eyes. He was much more really +right than Carlyle; immeasurably more right than Froude. He was more +right precisely because he applied plain human morals to all facts as he +saw them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +Carlyle really had a vague idea that in coarse and cruel times it was +right to be coarse and cruel; that tyranny was excusable in the twelfth +century: as if the twelfth century did not denounce tyrants as much or +more than any other. Carlyle, in fact, fancied that Rufus was the right +sort of man; a view which was not only not shared by Anselm, but was +probably not shared by Rufus. In this connection, or rather in +connection with the other case of Froude, it is worth while to take +another figure from Dickens’s history, which illustrates the other +and better side of the facile and popular method. Sheer ignorance of the +environment made him wrong about Dunstan. But sheer instinct and good +moral tradition made him right, for instance, about Henry VIII.; right +where Froude is wildly wrong. Dickens’s imagination could not +re-picture an age where learning and liberty were dying rather than +being born: but Henry VIII. lived in a time of expanding knowledge and +unrest; a time therefore somewhat like the Victorian. And Dickens in his +childish but robust way does perceive the main point about him: that he +was a wicked man. He misses all the fine shades, of course; he makes him +every kind of wicked man at once. He leaves out the serious interests of +the man: his strange but real concern for theology; his love of certain +legal and moral forms; his half-unconscious patriotism. But he sees the +solid bulk of definite badness simply because it was there; and Froude +cannot see it at all; because Froude followed Carlyle and played tricks +with the eternal conscience. Henry VIII. <i>was</i> “a blot of blood +and grease upon the history of England.” For he was the embodiment +of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> +Devil in the Renascence, that wild worship of mere pleasure and scorn, +which with its pictures and its palaces has enriched and ruined the +world.</p> + +<p>The time will soon come when the mere common-sense of Dickens, like the +mere common-sense of Macaulay (though his was poisoned by learning and +Whig politics), will appear to give a plainer and therefore truer +picture of the mass of history than the mystical perversity of a man of +genius writing only out of his own temperament, like Carlyle or Taine. +If a man has a new theory of ethics there is one thing he must not be +allowed to do. Let him give laws on Sinai, let him dictate a Bible, let +him fill the world with cathedrals if he can. But he must not be allowed +to write a history of England; or a history of any country. All history +was conducted on ordinary morality: with his extraordinary morality he +is certain to read it all askew. Thus Carlyle tries to write of the +Middle Ages with a bias against humility and mercy; that is, with a bias +against the whole theoretic morality of the Middle Ages. The result is +that he turns into a mere turmoil of arrogant German savages what was +really the most complete and logical, if not the highest, of human +civilisations. Historically speaking, it is better to be Dickens than to +be this; better to be ignorant, provincial, slap-dash, seeing only the +passing moment, but in that moment, to be true to eternal things.</p> + +<p>It must be remembered, of course, that Dickens deliberately offers this +only as a “child’s” history of England. That is, he +only professes to be able to teach history as any father of a little boy +of five professes to be able to teach him history. And although +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> +the history of England would certainly be taught very differently (as +regards the actual criticism of events and men) in a family with a wider +culture or with another religion, the general method would be the same. +For the general method is quite right. This black-and-white history of +heroes and villains; this history full of pugnacious ethics and of +nothing else, is the right kind of history for children. I have often +wondered how the scientific Marxians and the believers in “the +materialist view of history” will ever manage to teach their +dreary economic generalisations to children: but I suppose they will +have no children. Dickens’s history will always be popular with +the young; almost as popular as Dickens’s novels, and for the same +reason: because it is full of moralising. Science and art without +morality are not dangerous in the sense commonly supposed. They are not +dangerous like a fire, but dangerous like a fog. A fire is dangerous in +its brightness; a fog in its dulness; and thought without morals is +merely dull, like a fog. The fog seems to be creeping up the street; +putting out lamp after lamp. But this cockney lamp-post which the +children love is still crowned with its flame; and when the fathers have +forgotten ethics, their babies will turn and teach them.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></p> +<h2><a name="HARD_TIMES" id="HARD_TIMES"></a>HARD TIMES</h2> + +<p>I have heard that in some debating clubs there is a rule that the +members may discuss anything except religion and politics. I cannot +imagine what they do discuss; but it is quite evident that they have +ruled out the only two subjects which are either important or amusing. +The thing is a part of a certain modern tendency to avoid things because +they lead to warmth; whereas, obviously, we ought, even in a social +sense, to seek those things specially. The warmth of the discussion is +as much a part of hospitality as the warmth of the fire. And it is +singularly suggestive that in English literature the two things have +died together. The very people who would blame Dickens for his +sentimental hospitality are the very people who would also blame him for +his narrow political conviction. The very people who would mock him for +his narrow radicalism are those who would mock him for his broad +fireside. Real conviction and real charity are much nearer than people +suppose. Dickens was capable of loving all men; but he refused to love +all opinions. The modern humanitarian can love all opinions, but he +cannot love all men; he seems, sometimes, in the ecstasy of his +humanitarianism, even to hate them all. He can love all opinions, +including the opinion that men are unlovable.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> +In feeling Dickens as a lover we must never forget him as a fighter, and +a fighter for a creed; but indeed there is no other kind of fighter. The +geniality which he spread over all his creations was geniality spread +from one centre, from one flaming peak. He was willing to excuse Mr. +Micawber for being extravagant; but Dickens and Dickens’s doctrine +were strictly to decide how far he was to be excused. He was willing to +like Mr. Twemlow in spite of his snobbishness, but Dickens and +Dickens’s doctrine were alone to be judges of how far he was +snobbish. There was never a more didactic writer: hence there was never +one more amusing. He had no mean modern notion of keeping the moral +doubtful. He would have regarded this as a mere piece of slovenliness, +like leaving the last page illegible.</p> + +<p>Everywhere in Dickens’s work these angles of his absolute opinion +stood up out of the confusion of his general kindness, just as sharp and +splintered peaks stand up out of the soft confusion of the forests. +Dickens is always generous, he is generally kind-hearted, he is often +sentimental, he is sometimes intolerably maudlin; but you never know +when you will not come upon one of the convictions of Dickens; and when +you do come upon it you do know it. It is as hard and as high as any +precipice or peak of the mountains. The highest and hardest of these +peaks is <i>Hard Times</i>.</p> + +<p>It is here more than anywhere else that the sternness of Dickens emerges +as separate from his softness; it is here, most obviously, so to speak, +that his bones stick out. There are indeed many other books of his which +are written better and written in a sadder tone. <i>Great Expectations</i> is +melancholy in a sense; but it is doubtful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> +of everything, even of its own melancholy. <i>The Tale of Two Cities</i> is +a great tragedy, but it is still a sentimental tragedy. It is a great +drama, but it is still a melodrama. But this tale of <i>Hard Times</i> is in +some way harsher than all these. For it is the expression of a righteous +indignation which cannot condescend to humour and which cannot even +condescend to pathos. Twenty times we have taken Dickens’s hand +and it has been sometimes hot with revelry and sometimes weak with +weariness; but this time we start a little, for it is inhumanly cold; +and then we realise that we have touched his gauntlet of steel.</p> + +<p>One cannot express the real value of this book without being irrelevant. +It is true that one cannot express the real value of anything without +being irrelevant. If we take a thing frivolously we can take it +separately, but the moment we take a thing seriously, if it were only an +old umbrella, it is obvious that that umbrella opens above us into the +immensity of the whole universe. But there are rather particular reasons +why the value of the book called <i>Hard Times</i> should be referred back to +great historic and theoretic matters with which it may appear +superficially to have little or nothing to do. The chief reason can +perhaps be stated thus—that English politics had for more than a +hundred years been getting into more and more of a hopeless tangle (a +tangle which, of course, has since become even worse) and that Dickens +did in some extraordinary way see what was wrong, even if he did not see +what was right.</p> + +<p>The Liberalism which Dickens and nearly all of his contemporaries +professed had begun in the American and the French Revolutions. Almost +all modern<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> +English criticism upon those revolutions has been vitiated by the +assumption that those revolutions burst upon a world which was +unprepared for their ideas—a world ignorant of the possibility of +such ideas. Somewhat the same mistake is made by those who suggest that +Christianity was adopted by a world incapable of criticising it; whereas +obviously it was adopted by a world that was tired of criticising +everything. The vital mistake that is made about the French Revolution +is merely this—that everyone talks about it as the introduction of +a new idea. It was not the introduction of a new idea; there are no new +ideas. Or if there are new ideas, they would not cause the least +irritation if they were introduced into political society; because the +world having never got used to them there would be no mass of men ready +to fight for them at a moment’s notice. That which was irritating +about the French Revolution was this—that it was not the +introduction of a new ideal, but the practical fulfilment of an old one. +From the time of the first fairy tales men had always believed ideally +in equality; they had always thought that something ought to be done, if +anything could be done, to redress the balance between Cinderella and +the ugly sisters. The irritating thing about the French was not that +they said this ought to be done; everybody said that. The irritating +thing about the French was that they did it. They proposed to carry out +into a positive scheme what had been the vision of humanity; and +humanity was naturally annoyed. The kings of Europe did not make war +upon the Revolution because it was a blasphemy, but because it was a +copy-book maxim which had been just too accurately copied. It +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> +was a platitude which they had always held in theory unexpectedly put +into practice. The tyrants did not hate democracy because it was a +paradox; they hated it because it was a truism which seemed in some +danger of coming true.</p> + +<p>Now it happens to be hugely important to have this right view of the +Revolution in considering its political effects upon England. For the +English, being a deeply and indeed excessively romantic people, could +never be quite content with this quality of cold and bald obviousness +about the republican formula. The republican formula was merely +this—that the State must consist of its citizens ruling equally, +however unequally they may do anything else. In their capacity of +members of the State they are all equally interested in its +preservation. But the English soon began to be romantically restless +about this eternal truism; they were perpetually trying to turn it into +something else, into something more picturesque—progress perhaps, or +anarchy. At last they turned it into the highly exciting and highly +unsound system of politics, which was known as the Manchester School, +and which was expressed with a sort of logical flightiness, more +excusable in literature, by Mr. Herbert Spencer. Of course Danton or +Washington or any of the original republicans would have thought these +people were mad. They would never have admitted for a moment that the +State must not interfere with commerce or competition; they would merely +have insisted that if the State did interfere, it must really be the +State—that is, the whole people. But the distance between the common +sense of Danton and the mere ecstasy of Herbert Spencer marks +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +the English way of colouring and altering the revolutionary idea. The +English people as a body went blind, as the saying is, for interpreting +democracy entirely in terms of liberty. They said in substance that if +they had more and more liberty it did not matter whether they had any +equality or any fraternity. But this was violating the sacred trinity of +true politics; they confounded the persons and they divided the +substance.</p> + +<p>Now the really odd thing about England in the nineteenth century is +this—that there was one Englishman who happened to keep his head. The +men who lost their heads lost highly scientific and philosophical heads; +they were great cosmic systematisers like Spencer, great social +philosophers like Bentham, great practical politicians like Bright, +great political economists like Mill. The man who kept his head kept a +head full of fantastic nonsense; he was a writer of rowdy farces, a +demagogue of fiction, a man without education in any serious sense +whatever, a man whose whole business was to turn ordinary cockneys into +extraordinary caricatures. Yet when all these other children of the +revolution went wrong he, by a mystical something in his bones, went +right. He knew nothing of the Revolution; yet he struck the note of it. +He returned to the original sentimental commonplace upon which it is +forever founded, as the Church is founded on a rock. In an England gone +mad about a minor theory he reasserted the original idea—the idea that +no one in the State must be too weak to influence the State.</p> + +<p>This man was Dickens. He did this work much more genuinely than it was +done by Carlyle or Ruskin; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +for they were simply Tories making out a romantic case for the return +of Toryism. But Dickens was a real Liberal demanding the return of real +Liberalism. Dickens was there to remind people that England had rubbed +out two words of the revolutionary motto, had left only Liberty and +destroyed Equality and Fraternity. In this book, <i>Hard Times</i>, he +specially champions equality. In all his books he champions fraternity.</p> + +<p>The atmosphere of this book and what it stands for can be very +adequately conveyed in the note on the book by Lord Macaulay, who may +stand as a very good example of the spirit of England in those years of +eager emancipation and expanding wealth—the years in which Liberalism +was turned from an omnipotent truth to a weak scientific system. +Macaulay’s private comment on <i>Hard Times</i> runs, “One or two +passages of exquisite pathos and the rest sullen Socialism.” That +is not an unfair and certainly not a specially hostile criticism, but it +exactly shows how the book struck those people who were mad on political +liberty and dead about everything else. Macaulay mistook for a new +formula called Socialism what was, in truth, only the old formula called +political democracy. He and his Whigs had so thoroughly mauled and +modified the original idea of Rousseau or Jefferson that when they saw +it again they positively thought that it was something quite new and +eccentric. But the truth was that Dickens was not a Socialist, but an +unspoilt Liberal; he was not sullen; nay, rather, he had remained +strangely hopeful. They called him a sullen Socialist only to disguise +their astonishment at finding still loose about the London streets a +happy republican.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> +Dickens is the one living link between the old kindness and the new, +between the good will of the past and the good works of the future. He +links May Day with Bank Holiday, and he does it almost alone. All the +men around him, great and good as they were, were in comparison +puritanical, and never so puritanical as when they were also atheistic. +He is a sort of solitary pipe down which pours to the twentieth century +the original river of Merry England. And although this <i>Hard Times</i> is, +as its name implies, the hardest of his works, although there is less in +it perhaps than in any of the others of the <i>abandon</i> and the buffoonery +of Dickens, this only emphasises the more clearly the fact that he stood +almost alone for a more humane and hilarious view of democracy. None of +his great and much more highly-educated contemporaries could help him in +this. Carlyle was as gloomy on the one side as Herbert Spencer on the +other. He protested against the commercial oppression simply and solely +because it was not only an oppression but a depression. And this protest +of his was made specially in the case of the book before us. It may be +bitter, but it was a protest against bitterness. It may be dark, but it +is the darkness of the subject and not of the author. He is by his own +account dealing with hard times, but not with a hard eternity, not with +a hard philosophy of the universe. Nevertheless, this is the one place +in his work where he does not make us remember human happiness by +example as well as by precept. This is, as I have said, not the saddest, +but certainly the harshest of his stories. It is perhaps the only place +where Dickens, in defending happiness, for a moment forgets to be +happy.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> +He describes Bounderby and Gradgrind with a degree of grimness and +sombre hatred very different from the half affectionate derision which +he directed against the old tyrants or humbugs of the earlier nineteenth +century—the pompous Dedlock or the fatuous Nupkins, the grotesque +Bumble or the inane Tigg. In those old books his very abuse was +benignant; in <i>Hard Times</i> even his sympathy is hard. And the reason is +again to be found in the political facts of the century. Dickens could +be half genial with the older generation of oppressors because it was a +dying generation. It was evident, or at least it seemed evident then, +that Nupkins could not go on much longer making up the law of England to +suit himself; that Sir Leicester Dedlock could not go on much longer +being kind to his tenants as if they were dogs and cats. And some of +these evils the nineteenth century did really eliminate or improve. For +the first half of the century Dickens and all his friends were justified +in feeling that the chains were falling from mankind. At any rate, the +chains did fall from Mr. Rouncewell the Iron-master. And when they fell +from him he picked them up and put them upon the poor.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 462px;"><a name="CD1858" id="CD1858"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1858.jpg" width="462" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, 1858<br /> +From a black and white drawing by Baughiet.</span></div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></p> + +<h2><a name="DORRIT" id="DORRIT"></a>LITTLE DORRIT</h2> + +<p><i>Little Dorrit</i> stands in Dickens’s life chiefly as a signal of +how far he went down the road of realism, of sadness, and of what is +called modernity. True, it was by no means the best of the books of his +later period; some even think it the worst. <i>Great Expectations</i> is +certainly the best of the later novels; some even think it the best of +all the novels. Nor is it the novel most concerned with strictly recent +problems; that title must be given to <i>Hard Times</i>. Nor again is it the +most finely finished or well constructed of the later books; that claim +can be probably made for <i>Edwin Drood</i>. By a queer verbal paradox the +most carefully finished of his later tales is the tale that is not +finished at all. In form, indeed, the book bears a superficial +resemblance to those earlier works by which the young Dickens had set +the whole world laughing long ago. Much of the story refers to a remote +time early in the nineteenth century; much of it was actually recalled +and copied from the life of Dickens’s father in the old Marshalsea +prison. Also the narrative has something of the form, or rather absence +of form, which belonged to <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> or <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. +It has something of the old air of being a string of disconnected +adventures, like a boy’s book about bears and Indians. The Dorrits +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> +go wandering for no particular reason on the Continent of Europe, just +as young Martin Chuzzlewit went wandering for no particular reason on +the continent of America. The story of <i>Little Dorrit</i> stops and lingers +at the doors of the Circumlocution Office much in the same way that the +story of Samuel Pickwick stops and lingers in the political excitement +of Eatanswill. The villain, Blandois, is a very stagey villain indeed; +quite as stagey as Ralph Nickleby or the mysterious Monk. The secret of +the dark house of Clennam is a very silly secret; quite as silly as the +secret of Ralph Nickleby or the secret of Monk. Yet all these external +similarities between <i>Little Dorrit</i> and the earliest books, all this +loose, melodramatic quality, only serves to make more obvious and +startling the fact that some change has come over the soul of Dickens. +<i>Hard Times</i> is harsh; but then <i>Hard Times</i> is a social pamphlet; +perhaps it is only harsh as a social pamphlet must be harsh. <i>Bleak +House</i> is a little sombre; but then <i>Bleak House</i> is almost a detective +story; perhaps it is only sombre in the sense that a detective story +must be sombre. <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> is a tragedy; but then <i>A Tale of +Two Cities</i> is a tale of the French Revolution; perhaps it is only a +tragedy because the French Revolution was a tragedy. <i>The Mystery of +Edwin Drood</i> is dark; but then the mystery of anybody must be dark. In +all these other cases of the later books an artistic reason can be +given—a reason of theme or of construction for the slight sadness +that seems to cling to them. But exactly because <i>Little Dorrit</i> is a +mere Dickens novel, it shows that something must somehow have happened +to Dickens himself. Even in resuming <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> +his old liberty, he cannot resume his old hilarity. He can re-create +the anarchy, but not the revelry.</p> + +<p>It so happens that this strange difference between the new and the old +mode of Dickens can be symbolised and stated in one separate and simple +contrast. Dickens’s father had been a prisoner in a debtors’ +prison, and Dickens’s works contain two pictures partly suggested +by the personality of that prisoner. Mr. Micawber is one picture of him. +Mr. Dorrit is another. This truth is almost incredible, but it is the +truth. The joyful Micawber, whose very despair was exultant, and the +desolate Dorrit, whose very pride was pitiful, were the same man. The +valiant Micawber and the nervous, shaking Dorrit were the same man. The +defiant Micawber and the snobbish, essentially obsequious Dorrit were +the same man. I do not mean of course that either of the pictures was an +exact copy of anybody. The whole Dickens genius consisted of taking +hints and turning them into human beings. As he took twenty real persons +and turned them into one fictitious person, so he took one real person +and turned him into twenty fictitious persons. This quality would +suggest one character, that quality would suggest another. But in this +case, at any rate, he did take one real person and turn him into two. +And what is more, he turned him into two persons who seem to be quite +opposite persons. To ordinary readers of Dickens, to say that Micawber +and Dorrit had in any sense the same original, will appear unexpected +and wild. No conceivable connection between the two would ever have +occurred to anybody who had read Dickens with simple and superficial +enjoyment, as all good literature ought to be read.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> +It will seem to them just as silly as saying that the Fat Boy and Mr. +Alfred Jingle were both copied from the same character. It will seem as +insane as saying that the character of Smike and the character of Major +Bagstock were both copied from Dickens’s father. Yet it is an +unquestionable historical fact that Micawber and Dorrit were both copied +from Dickens’s father, in the only sense that any figures in good +literature are ever copied from anything or anybody. Dickens did get the +main idea of Micawber from his father; and that idea is that a poor man +is not conquered by the world. And Dickens did get the main idea of +Dorrit from his father; and that idea is that a poor man may be +conquered by the world. I shall take the opportunity of discussing, in a +moment, which of these ideas is true. Doubtless old John Dickens +included both the gay and the sad moral; most men do. My only purpose +here is to point out that Dickens drew the gay moral in 1849, and the +sad moral in 1857.</p> + +<p>There must have been some real sadness at this time creeping like a +cloud over Dickens himself. It is nothing that a man dwells on the +darkness of dark things; all healthy men do that. It is when he dwells +on the darkness of bright things that we have reason to fear some +disease of the emotions. There must really have been some depression +when a man can only see the sad side of flowers or the sad side of +holidays or the sad side of wine. And there must be some depression of +an uncommonly dark and genuine character when a man has reached such a +point that he can see only the sad side of Mr. Wilkins Micawber.</p> + +<p>Yet this is in reality what had happened to Dickens <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> +about this time. Staring at Wilkins Micawber he could see only the +weakness and the tragedy that was made possible by his indifference, his +indulgence, and his bravado. He had already indeed been slightly moved +towards this study of the feebleness and ruin of the old epicurean type +with which he had once sympathised, the type of Bob Sawyer or Dick +Swiveller. He had already attacked the evil of it in <i>Bleak House</i> in +the character of Harold Skimpole, with its essentially cowardly +carelessness and its highly selfish communism. Nevertheless, as I have +said before, it must have been no small degree of actual melancholia +which led Dickens to look for a lesson of disaster and slavery in the +very same career from which he had once taught lessons of continual +recuperation and a kind of fantastic freedom. There must have been at +this time some melancholy behind the writings. There must have existed +on this earth at the time that portent and paradox—a somewhat +depressed Dickens.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was a reminiscence of that metaphorical proverb which tells +us that “truth lies at the bottom of a well.” Perhaps these +people thought that the only way to find truth in the well was to drown +oneself. But on whatever thin theoretic basis, the type and period of +George Gissing did certainly consider that Dickens, so far as he went, +was all the worse for the optimism of the story of Micawber; hence it is +not unnatural that they should think him all the better for the +comparative pessimism of the story of <i>Little Dorrit</i>. The very things +in the tale that would naturally displease the ordinary admirers of +Dickens, are the things which would naturally please a man like George +Gissing. There are <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +many of these things, but one of them emerges pre-eminent and +unmistakable. This is the fact that when all is said and done the main +business of the story of <i>Little Dorrit</i> is to describe the victory of +circumstances over a soul. The circumstances are the financial ruin and +long imprisonment of Edward Dorrit; the soul is Edward Dorrit himself. +Let it be granted that the circumstances are exceptional and oppressive, +are denounced as exceptional and oppressive, are finally exploded and +overthrown; still, they are circumstances. Let it be granted that the +soul is that of a man perhaps weak in any case and retaining many merits +to the last, still it is a soul. Let it be granted, above all, that the +admission that such spiritual tragedies do occur does not decrease by so +much as an iota our faith in the validity of any spiritual struggle. For +example, Stevenson has made a study of the breakdown of a good +man’s character under a burden for which he is not to blame, in +the tragedy of Henry Durie in <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>. Yet he has +added, in the mouth of Mackellar, the exact common sense and good +theology of the matter, saying “It matters not a jot; for he that +is to pass judgment upon the records of our life is the same that formed +us in frailty.” Let us concede then all this, and the fact remains +that the study of the slow demoralisation of a man through mere +misfortune was not a study congenial to Dickens, not in accordance with +his original inspiration, not connected in any manner with the special +thing that he had to say. In a word, the thing is not quite a part of +himself; and he was not quite himself when he did it.</p> + +<p>He was still quite a young man; his depression did not +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> +come from age. In fact, as far as I know, mere depression never does +come from mere age. Age can pass into a beautiful reverie. Age can pass +into a sort of beautiful idiocy. But I do not think that the actual +decline and close of our ordinary vitality brings with it any particular +heaviness of the spirits. The spirits of the old do not as a rule seem +to become more and more ponderous until they sink into the earth. Rather +the spirits of the old seem to grow lighter and lighter until they float +away like thistledown. Wherever there is the definite phenomenon called +depression, it commonly means that something else has been closer to us +than so normal a thing as death. There has been disease, bodily or +mental, or there has been sin, or there has been some struggle or +effort, breaking past the ordinary boundaries of human custom. In the +case of Dickens there had been two things that are not of the routine of +a wholesome human life; there had been the quarrel with his wife, and +there had been the strain of incessant and exaggerated intellectual +labour. He had not an easy time; and on top of that (or perhaps rather +at the bottom of it) he had not an easy nature. Not only did his life +necessitate work, but his character necessitated worry about work; and +that combination is always one which is very dangerous to the +temperament which is exposed to it. The only people who ought to be +allowed to work are the people who are able to shirk. The only people +who ought to be allowed to worry are the people who have nothing to +worry about. When the two are combined, as they were in Dickens, you are +very likely to have at least one collapse. <i>Little Dorrit</i> is a very +interesting, sincere, and fascinating <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> +book. But for all that, I fancy it is the one collapse.</p> + +<p>The complete proof of this depression may be difficult to advance; +because it will be urged, and entirely with reason, that the actual +examples of it are artistic and appropriate. Dickens, the Gissing school +will say, was here pointing out certain sad truths of psychology; can +any one say that he ought not to point them out? That may be; in any +case, to explain depression is not to remove it. But the instances of +this more sombre quality of which I have spoken are not very hard to +find. The thing can easily be seen by comparing a book like <i>Little +Dorrit</i> with a book like <i>David Copperfield</i>. David Copperfield and +Arthur Clennam have both been brought up in unhappy homes, under bitter +guardians and a black, disheartening religion. It is the whole point of +David Copperfield that he has broken out of a Calvinistic tyranny which +he cannot forgive. But it is the whole point of Arthur Clennam that he +has not broken out of the Calvinistic tyranny, but is still under its +shadow. Copperfield has come from a gloomy childhood; Clennam, though +forty years old, is still in a gloomy childhood. When David meets the +Murdstones again it is to defy them with the health and hilarious anger +that go with his happy delirium about Dora. But when Clennam re-enters +his sepulchral house there is a weight upon his soul which makes it +impossible for him to answer, with any spirit, the morbidities of his +mother, or even the grotesque interferences of Mr. Flintwinch. This is +only another example of the same quality which makes the Dickens of +<i>Little Dorrit</i> insist on the degradation of the debtor, while the +Dickens of <i>David Copperfield</i> insisted on his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> +splendid irresponsibility, his essential emancipation. Imprisonments +passed over Micawber like summer clouds. But the imprisonment in <i>Little +Dorrit</i> is like a complete natural climate and environment; it has +positively modified the shapes and functions of the animals that dwell +in it. A horrible thing has happened to Dickens; he has almost become an +Evolutionist. Worse still, in studying the Calvinism of Mrs. +Clennam’s house, he has almost become a Calvinist. He half +believes (as do some of the modern scientists) that there is really such +a thing as “a child of wrath,” that a man on whom such an +early shadow had fallen could never shake it off. For ancient Calvinism +and modern Evolutionism are essentially the same things. They are both +ingenious logical blasphemies against the dignity and liberty of the +human soul.</p> + +<p>The workmanship of the book in detail is often extremely good. The one +passage in the older and heartier Dickens manner (I mean the description +of the Circumlocution Office) is beyond praise. It is a complete picture +of the way England is actually governed at this moment. The very core of +our politics is expressed in the light and easy young Barnacle who told +Clennam with a kindly frankness that he, Clennam, would “never go +on with it.” Dickens hit the mark so that the bell rang when he +made all the lower officials, who were cads, tell Clennam coldly that +his claim was absurd, until the last official, who is a gentleman, tells +him genially that the whole business is absurd. Even here, perhaps, +there is something more than the old exuberant derision of Dickens; +there is a touch of experience that verges on scepticism. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> +Everywhere else, certainly, there is the note which I have called +Calvinistic; especially in the predestined passion of Tattycoram or the +incurable cruelty of Miss Wade. Even Little Dorrit herself had, we are +told, one stain from her prison experience; and it is spoken of like a +bodily stain; like something that cannot be washed away.</p> + +<p>There is no denying that this is Dickens’s dark moment. It adds +enormously to the value of his general view of life that such a dark +moment came. He did what all the heroes and all the really happy men +have done; he descended into Hell. Nor is it irreverent to continue the +quotation from the Creed, for in the next book he was to write he was to +break out of all these dreams of fate and failure, and with his highest +voice to speak of the triumph of the weak of this world. His next book +was to leave us saying, as Sydney Carton mounted the scaffold, words +which, splendid in themselves, have never been so splendidly +quoted—“I am the Resurrection and the Life; whoso believeth in Me +though he be dead yet he shall live.” In Sydney Carton at least, +Dickens shows none of that dreary submission to the environment of the +irrevocable that had for an instant lain on him like a cloud. On this +occasion he sees with the old heroic clearness that to be a failure may +be one step to being a saint. On the third day he rose again from the +dead.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 445px;"><a name="CD1859" id="CD1859"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1859.jpg" width="445" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, 1859 From an oil painting by W. P. +Frith, R.A.</span></div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></p> + +<h2><a name="TWO_CITIES" id="TWO_CITIES"></a>A TALE OF TWO CITIES</h2> + +<p>As an example of Dickens’s literary work, <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> +is not wrongly named. It is his most typical contact with the civic +ideals of Europe. All his other tales have been tales of one city. He +was in spirit a Cockney; though that title has been quite unreasonably +twisted to mean a cad. By the old sound and proverbial test a Cockney +was a man born within the sound of Bow bells. That is, he was a man born +within the immediate appeal of high civilisation and of eternal +religion. Shakespeare, in the heart of his fantastic forest, turns with +a splendid suddenness to the Cockney ideal as being the true one after +all. For a jest, for a reaction, for an idle summer love or still idler +summer hatred, it is well to wander away into the bewildering forest of +Arden. It is well that those who are sick with love or sick with the +absence of love, those who weary of the folly of courts or weary yet +more of their wisdom, it is natural that these should trail away into +the twinkling twilight of the woods. Yet it is here that Shakespeare +makes one of his most arresting and startling assertions of the truth. +Here is one of those rare and tremendous moments of which one may say +that there is a stage direction, “Enter Shakespeare.” He has +admitted that for men weary of courts, for men sick of cities, the wood +is the wisest place, and he has <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +praised it with his purest lyric ecstasy. But when a man enters +suddenly upon that celestial picnic, a man who is not sick of cities, +but sick of hunger, a man who is not weary of courts, but weary of +walking, then Shakespeare lets through his own voice with a shattering +sincerity and cries the praise of practical human civilisation:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If ever you have looked on better days,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If ever you have sat at good men’s feasts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If ever been where bells have knolled to church,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or know what ’tis to pity and be pitied.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is nothing finer even in Shakespeare than that conception of the +circle of rich men all pretending to rough it in the country, and the +one really hungry man entering, sword in hand, and praising the city. +“If ever been where bells have knolled to church”; if you +have ever been within sound of Bow bells; if you have ever been happy +and haughty enough to call yourself a Cockney.</p> + +<p>We must remember this distinction always in the case of Dickens. Dickens +is the great Cockney, at once tragic and comic, who enters abruptly upon +the Arcadian banquet of the æsthetics and says, “Forbear and eat +no more,” and tells them that they shall not eat “until +necessity be served.” If there was one thing he would have +favoured instinctively it would have been the spreading of the town as +meaning the spreading of civilisation. And we should (I hope) all favour +the spreading of the town if it did mean the spreading of civilisation. +The objection to the spreading <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> +of the modern Manchester or Birmingham suburb is simply that such a +suburb is much more barbaric than any village in Europe could ever +conceivably be. And again, if there is anything that Dickens would have +definitely hated it is that general treatment of nature as a dramatic +spectacle, a piece of scene-painting which has become the common mark of +the culture of our wealthier classes. Despite many fine pictures of +natural scenery, especially along the English roadsides, he was upon the +whole emphatically on the side of the town. He was on the side of bricks +and mortar. He was a citizen; and, after all, a citizen means a man of +the city. His strength was, after all, in the fact that he was a man of +the city. But, after all, his weakness, his calamitous weakness, was +that he was a man of one city.</p> + +<p>For all practical purposes he had never been outside such places as +Chatham and London. He did indeed travel on the Continent; but surely no +man’s travel was ever so superficial as his. He was more +superficial than the smallest and commonest tourist. He went about +Europe on stilts; he never touched the ground. There is one good test +and one only of whether a man has travelled to any profit in Europe. An +Englishman is, as such, a European, and as he approaches the central +splendours of Europe he ought to feel that he is coming home. If he does +not feel at home he had much better have stopped at home. England is a +real home; London is a real home; and all the essential feelings of +adventure or the picturesque can easily be gained by going out at night +upon the flats of Essex or the cloven hills of Surrey. Your visit to +Europe is useless unless <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> +it gives you the sense of an exile returning. Your first sight of Rome +is futile unless you feel that you have seen it before. Thus useless and +thus futile were the foreign experiments and the continental raids of +Dickens. He enjoyed them as he would have enjoyed, as a boy, a scamper +out of Chatham into some strange meadows, as he would have enjoyed, when +a grown man, a steam in a police boat out into the fens to the far east +of London. But he was the Cockney venturing far; he was not the European +coming home. He is still the splendid Cockney Orlando of whom I spoke +above; he cannot but suppose that any strange men, being happy in some +pastoral way, are mysterious foreign scoundrels. Dickens’s real +speech to the lazy and laughing civilisation of Southern Europe would +really have run in the Shakespearian words:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">but whoe’er you be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who in this desert inaccessible,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Under the shade of melancholy boughs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If ever you have looked on better things,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If ever been where bells have knolled to church.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>If, in short, you have ever had the advantage of being born within the +sound of Bow bells. Dickens could not really conceive that there was any +other city but his own.</p> + +<p>It is necessary thus to insist that Dickens never understood the +Continent, because only thus can we appreciate the really remarkable +thing he did in <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>. It is necessary to feel, first +of all, the fact that to him London was the centre of the universe. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> +He did not understand at all the real sense in which Paris is the +capital of Europe. He had never realised that all roads lead to Rome. He +had never felt (as an Englishman can feel) that he was an Athenian +before he was a Londoner. Yet with everything against him he did this +astonishing thing. He wrote a book about two cities, one of which he +understood; the other he did not understand. And his description of the +city he did not know is almost better than his description of the city +he did know. This is the entrance of the unquestionable thing about +Dickens; the thing called genius; the thing which every one has to talk +about directly and distinctly because no one knows what it is. For a +plain word (as for instance the word fool) always covers an infinite +mystery.</p> + +<p><i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> is one of the more tragic tints of the later life +of Dickens. It might be said that he grew sadder as he grew older; but +this would be false, for two reasons. First, a man never or hardly ever +does grow sad as he grows old; on the contrary, the most melancholy +young lovers can be found forty years afterwards chuckling over their +port wine. And second, Dickens never did grow old, even in a physical +sense. What weariness did appear in him appeared in the prime of life; +it was due not to age but to overwork, and his exaggerative way of doing +everything. To call Dickens a victim of elderly disenchantment would be +as absurd as to say the same of Keats. Such fatigue as there was, was +due not to the slowing down of his blood, but rather to its unremitting +rapidity. He was not wearied by his age; rather he was wearied by his +youth. And though <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> is full +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> +of sadness, it is full also of enthusiasm; that pathos is a young +pathos rather than an old one. Yet there is one circumstance which does +render important the fact that <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> is one of the +later works of Dickens. This fact is the fact of his dependence upon +another of the great writers of the Victorian era. And it is in +connection with this that we can best see the truth of which I have been +speaking; the truth that his actual ignorance of France went with +amazing intuitive perception of the truth about it. It is here that he +has most clearly the plain mark of the man of genius; that he can +understand what he does not understand.</p> + +<p>Dickens was inspired to the study of the French Revolution and to the +writing of a romance about it by the example and influence of Carlyle. +Thomas Carlyle undoubtedly rediscovered for Englishmen the revolution +that was at the back of all their policies and reforms. It is an +entertaining side joke that the French Revolution should have been +discovered for Britons by the only British writer who did not really +believe in it. Nevertheless, the most authoritative and the most recent +critics on that great renaissance agree in considering Carlyle’s +work one of the most searching and detailed power. Carlyle had read a +great deal about the French Revolution. Dickens had read nothing at all, +except Carlyle. Carlyle was a man who collected his ideas by the careful +collation of documents and the verification of references. Dickens was a +man who collected his ideas from loose hints in the streets, and those +always the same streets; as I have said, he was the citizen of one city. +Carlyle was in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> +way learned; Dickens was in every way ignorant. Dickens was an +Englishman cut off from France; Carlyle was a Scotsman, historically +connected with France. And yet, when all this is said and certified, +Dickens is more right than Carlyle. Dickens’s French Revolution is +probably more like the real French Revolution than Carlyle’s. It +is difficult, if not impossible, to state the grounds of this strong +conviction. One can only talk of it by employing that excellent method +which Cardinal Newman employed when he spoke of the “notes” +of Catholicism. There were certain “notes” of the +Revolution. One note of the Revolution was the thing which silly people +call optimism, and sensible people call high spirits. Carlyle could +never quite get it, because with all his spiritual energy he had no high +spirits. That is why he preferred prose to poetry. He could understand +rhetoric; for rhetoric means singing with an object. But he could not +understand lyrics; for the lyric means singing without an object; as +every one does when he is happy. Now for all its blood and its black +guillotines, the French Revolution was full of mere high spirits. Nay, +it was full of happiness. This actual lilt and levity Carlyle never +really found in the Revolution, because he could not find it in himself. +Dickens knew less of the Revolution, but he had more of it. When Dickens +attacked abuses, he battered them down with exactly that sort of cheery +and quite one-sided satisfaction with which the French mob battered down +the Bastille. Dickens utterly and innocently believed in certain things; +he would, I think, have drawn the sword for them. Carlyle half believed +in half a hundred things; he was at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> +once more of a mystic and more of a sceptic. Carlyle was the perfect +type of the grumbling servant; the old grumbling servant of the +aristocratic comedies. He followed the aristocracy, but he growled as he +followed. He was obedient without being servile, just as Caleb +Balderstone was obedient without being servile. But Dickens was the type +of the man who might really have rebelled instead of grumbling. He might +have gone out into the street and fought, like the man who took the +Bastille. It is somewhat nationally significant that when we talk of the +man in the street it means a figure silent, slouching, and even feeble. +When the French speak of the man in the street, it means danger in the +street.</p> + +<p>No one can fail to notice this deep difference between Dickens and the +Carlyle whom he avowedly copied. Splendid and symbolic as are +Carlyle’s scenes of the French Revolution, we have in reading them +a curious sense that everything is happening at night. In Dickens even +massacre happens by daylight. Carlyle always assumes that because things +were tragedies therefore the men who did them felt tragic. Dickens knows +that the man who works the worst tragedies is the man who feels comic; +as for example, Mr. Quilp. The French Revolution was a much simpler +world than Carlyle could understand; for Carlyle was subtle and not +simple. Dickens could understand it, for he was simple and not subtle. +He understood that plain rage against plain political injustice; he +understood again that obvious vindictiveness and that obvious brutality +which followed. “Cruelty and the abuse of absolute power,” +he told an American slave-owner, “are two of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> +the bad passions of human nature.” Carlyle was quite incapable of +rising to the height of that uplifted common-sense. He must always find +something mystical about the cruelty of the French Revolution. The +effect was equally bad whether he found it mystically bad and called the +thing anarchy, or whether he found it mystically good and called it the +rule of the strong. In both cases he could not understand the +common-sense justice or the common-sense vengeance of Dickens and the +French Revolution.</p> + +<p>Yet Dickens has in this book given a perfect and final touch to this +whole conception of mere rebellion and mere human nature. Carlyle had +written the story of the French Revolution and had made the story a mere +tragedy. Dickens writes the story about the French Revolution, and does +not make the Revolution itself the tragedy at all. Dickens knows that an +outbreak is seldom a tragedy; generally it is the avoidance of a +tragedy. All the real tragedies are silent. Men fight each other with +furious cries, because men fight each other with chivalry and an +unchangeable sense of brotherhood. But trees fight each other in utter +stillness; because they fight each other cruelly and without quarter. In +this book, as in history, the guillotine is not the calamity, but rather +the solution of the calamity. The sin of Sydney Carton is a sin of +habit, not of revolution. His gloom is the gloom of London, not the +gloom of Paris.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 382px;"><a name="CD1860" id="CD1860"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1860.jpg" width="382" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, Circa 1860<br /> +Photograph by J. & C. Watkins.</span></div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></p> + +<h2><a name="EXPECTATIONS" id="EXPECTATIONS"></a>GREAT EXPECTATIONS</h2> + +<p><i>Great Expectations</i>, which was written in the afternoon of +Dickens’s life and fame, has a quality of serene irony and even +sadness, which puts it quite alone among his other works. At no time +could Dickens possibly be called cynical, he had too much vitality; but +relatively to the other books this book is cynical; but it has the soft +and gentle cynicism of old age, not the hard cynicism of youth. To be a +young cynic is to be a young brute; but Dickens, who had been so +perfectly romantic and sentimental in his youth, could afford to admit +this touch of doubt into the mixed experience of his middle age. At no +time could any books by Dickens have been called Thackerayan. Both of +the two men were too great for that. But relatively to the other +Dickensian productions this book may be called Thackerayan. It is a +study in human weakness and the slow human surrender. It describes how +easily a free lad of fresh and decent instincts can be made to care more +for rank and pride and the degrees of our stratified society than for +old affection and for honour. It is an extra chapter to <i>The Book of +Snobs</i>.</p> + +<p>The best way of stating the change which this book marks in Dickens can +be put in one phrase. In this book for the first time the hero +disappears. The hero had descended to Dickens by a long line which +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span> +begins with the gods, nay, perhaps if one may say so, which begins with +God. First comes Deity and then the image of Deity; first comes the god +and then the demi-god, the Hercules who labours and conquers before he +receives his heavenly crown. That idea, with continual mystery and +modification, has continued behind all romantic tales; the demi-god +became the hero of paganism; the hero of paganism became the +knight-errant of Christianity; the knight-errant who wandered and was +foiled before he triumphed became the hero of the later prose romance, +the romance in which the hero had to fight a duel with the villain but +always survived, in which the hero drove desperate horses through the +night in order to rescue the heroine, but always rescued her.</p> + +<p>This heroic modern hero, this demi-god in a top-hat, may be said to +reach his supreme moment and typical example about the time when Dickens +was writing that thundering and thrilling and highly unlikely scene in +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, the scene where Nicholas hopelessly denounces the +atrocious Gride in his hour of grinning triumph, and a thud upon the +floor above tells them that the heroine’s tyrannical father has +died just in time to set her free. That is the apotheosis of the pure +heroic as Dickens found it, and as Dickens in some sense continued it. +It may be that it does not appear with quite so much unmistakable youth, +beauty, valour, and virtue as it does in Nicholas Nickleby. Walter Gay +is a simpler and more careless hero, but when he is doing any of the +business of the story he is purely heroic. Kit Nubbles is a humbler +hero, but he is a hero; when he is good he is very good. Even +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +David Copperfield, who confesses to boyish tremors and boyish +evasions in his account of his boyhood, acts the strict stiff part of +the chivalrous gentleman in all the active and determining scenes of the +tale. But <i>Great Expectations</i> may be called, like <i>Vanity Fair</i>, a +novel without a hero. Almost all Thackeray’s novels except Esmond +are novels without a hero, but only one of Dickens’s novels can be +so described. I do not mean that it is a novel without a <i>jeune +premier</i>, a young man to make love; <i>Pickwick</i> is that and <i>Oliver +Twist</i>, and, perhaps, <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>. I mean that it is a +novel without a hero in the same far deeper and more deadly sense in +which <i>Pendennis</i> is also a novel without a hero. I mean that it is a +novel which aims chiefly at showing that the hero is unheroic.</p> + +<p>All such phrases as these must appear of course to overstate the case. +Pip is a much more delightful person than Nicholas Nickleby. Or to take +a stronger case for the purpose of our argument, Pip is a much more +delightful person than Sydney Carton. Still the fact remains. Most of +Nicholas Nickleby’s personal actions are meant to show that he is +heroic. Most of Pip’s actions are meant to show that he is not +heroic. The study of Sydney Carton is meant to indicate that with all +his vices Sydney Carton was a hero. The study of Pip is meant to +indicate that with all his virtues Pip was a snob. The motive of the +literary explanation is different. Pip and Pendennis are meant to show +how circumstances can corrupt men. Sam Weller and Hercules are meant to +show how heroes can subdue circumstances.</p> + +<p>This is the preliminary view of the book which is +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> +necessary if we are to regard it as a real and separate fact in the +life of Dickens. Dickens had many moods because he was an artist; but he +had one great mood, because he was a great artist. Any real difference +therefore from the general drift, or rather (I apologise to Dickens) the +general drive of his creation is very important. This is the one place +in his work in which he does, I will not say feel like Thackeray, far +less think like Thackeray, less still write like Thackeray, but this is +the one of his works in which he understands Thackeray. He puts himself +in some sense in the same place; he considers mankind at somewhat the +same angle as mankind is considered in one of the sociable and sarcastic +novels of Thackeray. When he deals with Pip he sets out not to show his +strength like the strength of Hercules, but to show his weakness like +the weakness of Pendennis. When he sets out to describe Pip’s +great expectation he does not set out, as in a fairytale, with the idea +that these great expectations will be fulfilled; he sets out from the +first with the idea that these great expectations will be disappointing. +We might very well, as I have remarked elsewhere, apply to all +Dickens’s books the title <i>Great Expectations</i>. All his books are +full of an airy and yet ardent expectation of everything; of the next +person who shall happen to speak, of the next chimney that shall happen +to smoke, of the next event, of the next ecstasy; of the next fulfilment +of any eager human fancy. All his books might be called <i>Great +Expectations</i>. But the only book to which he gave the name of <i>Great +Expectations</i> was the only book in which the expectation was never +realised. It was so with the whole of that splendid and +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> +unconscious generation to which he belonged. The whole glory of that +old English middle class was that it was unconscious; its excellence was +entirely in that, that it was the culture of the nation, and that it did +not know it. If Dickens had ever known that he was optimistic, he would +have ceased to be happy.</p> + +<p>It is necessary to make this first point clear: that in <i>Great +Expectations</i> Dickens was really trying to be a quiet, a detached, and +even a cynical observer of human life. Dickens was trying to be +Thackeray. And the final and startling triumph of Dickens is this: that +even to this moderate and modern story, he gives an incomparable energy +which is not moderate and which is not modern. He is trying to be +reasonable; but in spite of himself he is inspired. He is trying to be +detailed, but in spite of himself he is gigantic. Compared to the rest +of Dickens this is Thackeray; but compared to the whole of Thackeray we +can only say in supreme praise of it that it is Dickens.</p> + +<p>Take, for example, the one question of snobbishness. Dickens has +achieved admirably the description of the doubts and vanities of the +wretched Pip as he walks down the street in his new gentlemanly clothes, +the clothes of which he is so proud and so ashamed. Nothing could be so +exquisitely human, nothing especially could be so exquisitely masculine +as that combination of self-love and self-assertion and even insolence +with a naked and helpless sensibility to the slightest breath of +ridicule. Pip thinks himself better than every one else, and yet anybody +can snub him; that is the everlasting male, and perhaps the everlasting +gentleman. Dickens has described perfectly this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> +quivering and defenceless dignity. Dickens has described perfectly how +ill-armed it is against the coarse humour of real humanity—the +real humanity which Dickens loved, but which idealists and +philanthropists do not love, the humanity of cabmen and costermongers +and men singing in a third-class carriage; the humanity of Trabb’s +boy. In describing Pip’s weakness Dickens is as true and as +delicate as Thackeray. But Thackeray might have been easily as true and +as delicate as Dickens. This quick and quiet eye for the tremors of +mankind is a thing which Dickens possessed, but which others possessed +also. George Eliot or Thackeray could have described the weakness of +Pip. Exactly what George Eliot and Thackeray could not have described +was the vigour of Trabb’s boy. There would have been admirable +humour and observation in their accounts of that intolerable urchin. +Thackeray would have given us little light touches of Trabb’s boy, +absolutely true to the quality and colour of the humour, just as in his +novels of the eighteenth century, the glimpses of Steele or Bolingbroke +or Doctor Johnson are exactly and perfectly true to the colour and +quality of their humour. George Eliot in her earlier books would have +given us shrewd authentic scraps of the real dialect of Trabb’s +boy, just as she gave us shrewd and authentic scraps of the real talk in +a Midland country town. In her later books she would have given us +highly rationalistic explanations of Trabb’s boy; which we should +not have read. But exactly what they could never have given, and exactly +what Dickens does give, is the <i>bounce</i> of Trabb’s boy. It is the +real unconquerable rush and energy in a character which was the supreme +and quite <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span> +indescribable greatness of Dickens. He conquered by rushes; he attacked +in masses; he carried things at the spear point in a charge of spears; +he was the Rupert of Fiction. The thing about any figure of Dickens, +about Sam Weller or Dick Swiveller, or Micawber, or Bagstock, or +Trabb’s boy,—the thing about each one of these persons is +that he cannot be exhausted. A Dickens character hits you first on the +nose and then in the waistcoat, and then in the eye and then in the +waistcoat again, with the blinding rapidity of some battering engine. +The scene in which Trabb’s boy continually overtakes Pip in order +to reel and stagger as at a first encounter is a thing quite within the +real competence of such a character; it might have been suggested by +Thackeray, or George Eliot, or any realist. But the point with Dickens +is that there is a rush in the boy’s rushings; the writer and the +reader rush with him. They start with him, they stare with him, they +stagger with him, they share an inexpressible vitality in the air which +emanates from this violent and capering satirist. Trabb’s boy is +among other things a boy; he has a physical rapture in hurling himself +like a boomerang and in bouncing to the sky like a ball. It is just +exactly in describing this quality that Dickens is Dickens and that no +one else comes near him. No one feels in his bones that Felix Holt was +strong as he feels in his bones that little Quilp was strong. No one can +feel that even Rawdon Crawley’s splendid smack across the face of +Lord Steyne is quite so living and life-giving as the “kick after +kick” which old Mr. Weller dealt the dancing and quivering +Stiggins as he drove him towards the trough. This quality, whether +expressed intellectually <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> +or physically, is the profoundly popular and eternal quality in +Dickens; it is the thing that no one else could do. This quality is the +quality which has always given its continuous power and poetry to the +common people everywhere. It is life; it is the joy of life felt by +those who have nothing else but life. It is the thing that all +aristocrats have always hated and dreaded in the people. And it is the +thing which poor Pip really hates and dreads in Trabb’s boy.</p> + +<p>A great man of letters or any great artist is symbolic without knowing +it. The things he describes are types because they are truths. +Shakespeare may, or may not, have ever put it to himself that Richard +the Second was a philosophical symbol; but all good criticism must +necessarily see him so. It may be a reasonable question whether the +artist should be allegorical. There can be no doubt among sane men that +the critic should be allegorical. Spenser may have lost by being less +realistic than Fielding. But any good criticism of <i>Tom Jones</i> must be +as mystical as the <i>Faery Queen</i>. Hence it is unavoidable in speaking of +a fine book like <i>Great Expectations</i> that we should give even to its +unpretentious and realistic figures a certain massive mysticism. Pip is +Pip, but he is also the well-meaning snob. And this is even more true of +those two great figures in the tale which stand for the English +democracy. For, indeed, the first and last word upon the English +democracy is said in Joe Gargery and Trabb’s boy. The actual +English populace, as distinct from the French populace or the Scotch or +Irish populace, may be said to lie between those two types. The first is +the poor man who does not assert <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span> +himself at all, and the second is the poor man who asserts himself +entirely with the weapon of sarcasm. The only way in which the English +now ever rise in revolution is under the symbol and leadership of +Trabb’s boy. What pikes and shillelahs were to the Irish populace, +what guns and barricades were to the French populace, that chaff is to +the English populace. It is their weapon, the use of which they really +understand. It is the one way in which they can make a rich man feel +uncomfortable, and they use it very justifiably for all it is worth. If +they do not cut off the heads of tyrants at least they sometimes do +their best to make the tyrants lose their heads. The gutter boys of the +great towns carry the art of personal criticism to so rich and delicate +a degree that some well-dressed persons when they walk past a file of +them feel as if they were walking past a row of omniscient critics or +judges with a power of life and death. Here and there only is some +ordinary human custom, some natural human pleasure suppressed in +deference to the fastidiousness of the rich. But all the rich tremble +before the fastidiousness of the poor.</p> + +<p>Of the other type of democracy it is far more difficult to speak. It is +always hard to speak of good things or good people, for in satisfying +the soul they take away a certain spur to speech. Dickens was often +called a sentimentalist. In one sense he sometimes was a sentimentalist. +But if sentimentalism be held to mean something artificial or +theatrical, then in the core and reality of his character Dickens was +the very reverse of a sentimentalist. He seriously and definitely loved +goodness. To see sincerity and charity satisfied <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> +him like a meal. What some critics call his love of sweet stuff is +really his love of plain beef and bread. Sometimes one is tempted to +wish that in the long Dickens dinner the sweet courses could be left +out; but this does not make the whole banquet other than a banquet +singularly solid and simple. The critics complain of the sweet things, +but not because they are so strong as to like simple things. They +complain of the sweet things because they are so sophisticated as to +like sour things; their tongues are tainted with the bitterness of +absinthe. Yet because of the very simplicity of Dickens’s moral +tastes it is impossible to speak adequately of them; and Joe Gargery +must stand as he stands in the book, a thing too obvious to be +understood. But this may be said of him in one of his minor aspects, +that he stands for a certain long-suffering in the English poor, a +certain weary patience and politeness which almost breaks the heart. One +cannot help wondering whether that great mass of silent virtue will ever +achieve anything on this earth.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></p> +<h2><a name="MUTUAL" id="MUTUAL"></a>OUR MUTUAL FRIEND</h2> + +<p><i>Our Mutual Friend</i> marks a happy return to the earlier manner of +Dickens at the end of Dickens’s life. One might call it a sort of +Indian summer of his farce. Those who most truly love Dickens love the +earlier Dickens; and any return to his farce must be welcomed, like a +young man come back from the dead. In this book indeed he does not +merely return to his farce; he returns in a manner to his vulgarity. It +is the old democratic and even uneducated Dickens who is writing here. +The very title is illiterate. Any priggish pupil teacher could tell +Dickens that there is no such phrase in English as “our mutual +friend.” Any one could tell Dickens that “our mutual +friend” means “our reciprocal friend,” and that +“our reciprocal friend” means nothing. If he had only had +all the solemn advantages of academic learning (the absence of which in +him was lamented by the <i>Quarterly Review</i>), he would have known better. +He would have known that the correct phrase for a man known to two +people is “our common friend.” But if one calls one’s +friend a common friend, even that phrase is open to misunderstanding.</p> + +<p>I dwell with a gloomy pleasure on this mistake in the very title of the +book because I, for one, am not pleased to see Dickens gradually +absorbed by modern culture and good manners. Dickens, by class and +genius, belonged to the kind of people who do talk about a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span> +“mutual friend”; and for that class there is a very great +deal to be said. These two things can at least be said—that this class +does understand the meaning of the word “friend” and the +meaning of the word “mutual.” I know that for some long time +before he had been slowly and subtly sucked into the whirlpool of the +fashionable views of later England. I know that in <i>Bleak House</i> he +treats the aristocracy far more tenderly than he treats them in <i>David +Copperfield</i>. I know that in <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, having come under +the influence of Carlyle, he treats revolution as strange and weird, +whereas under the influence of Cobbett he would have treated it as +obvious and reasonable. I know that in <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i> he +not only praised the Minor Canon of Cloisterham at the expense of the +dissenting demagogue, Honeythunder; I know that he even took the last +and most disastrous step in the modern English reaction. While blaming +the old Cloisterham monks (who were democratic), he praised the +old-world peace that they had left behind them—an old-world peace which +is simply one of the last amusements of aristocracy. The modern rich +feel quite at home with the dead monks. They would have felt anything +but comfortable with the live ones. I know, in short, how the simple +democracy of Dickens was gradually dimmed by the decay and reaction of +the middle of the nineteenth century. I know that he fell into some of +the bad habits of aristocratic sentimentalism. I know that he used the +word “gentleman” as meaning good man. But all this only adds +to the unholy joy with which I realise that the very title of one of his +best books was a vulgarism. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> +is pleasant to contemplate this last unconscious knock in the eye for +the gentility with which Dickens was half impressed. Dickens is the old +self-made man; you may take him or leave him. He has its disadvantages +and its merits. No university man would have written the title; no +university man could have written the book.</p> + +<p>If it were a mere matter of the accident of a name it would not be worth +while thus to dwell on it, even as a preface. But the title is in this +respect typical of the tale. The novel called <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is in +many ways a real reaction towards the earlier Dickens manner. I have +remarked that <i>Little Dorrit</i> was a reversion to the form of the first +books, but not to their spirit; <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is a reversion to +the spirit as well as the form. Compare, for instance, the public +figures that make a background in each book. Mr. Merdle is a commercial +man having no great connection with the plot; similarly Mr. Podsnap is a +commercial man having no great connection with the plot. This is +altogether in the spirit of the earlier books; the whole point of an +early Dickens novel was to have as many people as possible entirely +unconnected with the plot. But exactly because both studies are +irrelevant, the contrast between them can be more clearly perceived. +Dickens goes out of his way to describe Merdle; and it is a gloomy +description. But Dickens goes out of his way to describe Podsnap, and it +is a happy and hilarious description. It recalls the days when he hunted +great game; when he went out of his way to entrap such adorable monsters +as Mr. Pecksniff or Mr. Vincent Crummles. With these wild beings we +never bother about the cause of their coming. Such guests in a +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>\ +story may be uninvited, but they are never <i>de trop</i>. They earn their +night’s lodging in any tale by being so uproariously amusing; like +little Tommy Tucker in the legend, they sing for their supper. This is +really the marked truth about <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, as a stage in the +singular latter career of Dickens. It is like the leaping up and flaming +of a slowly dying fire. The best things in the book are in the old best +manner of the author. They have that great Dickens quality of being +something which is pure farce and yet which is not superficial; an +unfathomable farce—a farce that goes down to the roots of the +universe. The highest compliment that can ever be paid to the humour of +Dickens is paid when some lady says, with the sudden sincerity of her +sex, that it is “too silly.” The phrase is really a +perfectly sound and acute criticism. Humour does consist in being too +silly, in passing the borderland, in breaking through the floor of sense +and falling into some starry abyss of nonsense far below our ordinary +human life. This “too silly” quality is really present in +<i>Our Mutual Friend</i>. It is present in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> just as it is +present in <i>Pickwick</i>, or <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>; just as it is not present +in <i>Little Dorrit</i> or in <i>Hard Times</i>. Many tests might be employed. One +is the pleasure in purely physical jokes—jokes about the body. The +general dislike which every one felt for Mr. Stiggins’s nose is of +the same kind as the ardent desire which Mr. Lammle felt for Mr. +Fledgeby’s nose. “Give me your nose, Sir,” said Mr. +Lammle. That sentence alone would be enough to show that the young +Dickens had never died.</p> + +<p>The opening of a book goes for a great deal. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span> +opening of <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is much more instinctively energetic and +light-hearted than that of any of the other novels of his concluding +period. Dickens had always enough optimism to make his stories end well. +He had not, in his later years, always enough optimism to make them +begin well. Even <i>Great Expectations</i>, the saddest of his later books, +ends well; it ends well in spite of himself, who had intended it to end +badly. But if we leave the evident case of good endings and take the +case of good beginnings, we see how much <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> stands out +from among the other novels of the evening or the end of Dickens. The +tale of <i>Little Dorrit</i> begins in a prison. One of the prisoners is a +villain, and his villainy is as dreary as the prison; that might matter +nothing. But the other prisoner is vivacious, and even his vivacity is +dreary. The first note struck is sad. In the tale of <i>Edwin Drood</i> the +first scene is in an opium den, suffocated with every sort of phantasy +and falsehood. Nor is it true that these openings are merely accidental; +they really cast their shadow over the tales. The people of <i>Little +Dorrit</i> begin in prison; and it is the whole point of the book that +people never get out of prison. The story of <i>Edwin Drood</i> begins amid +the fumes of opium, and it never gets out of the fumes of opium. The +darkness of that strange and horrible smoke is deliberately rolled over +the whole story. Dickens, in his later years, permitted more and more +his story to take the cue from its inception. All the more remarkable, +therefore, is the real jerk and spurt of good spirits with which he +opens <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>. It begins with a good piece of rowdy satire, +wildly exaggerated and extremely true.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span> +It belongs to the same class as the first chapter of <i>Martin +Chuzzlewit</i>, with its preposterous pedigree of the Chuzzlewit family, or +even the first chapter of <i>Pickwick</i>, with its immortal imbecilities +about the Theory of Tittlebats and Mr. Blotton of Aldgate. Doubtless the +early satiric chapter in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> is of a more strategic and +ingenious kind of satire than can be found in these early and explosive +parodies. Still, there is a quality common to both, and that quality is +the whole of Dickens. It is a quality difficult to define—hence +the whole difficulty of criticising Dickens. Perhaps it can be best +stated in two separate statements or as two separate symptoms. The first +is the mere fact that the reader rushes to read it. The second is the +mere fact that the writer rushed to write it.</p> + +<p>This beginning, which is like a burst of the old exuberant Dickens, is, +of course, the Veneering dinner-party. In its own way it is as good as +anything that Dickens ever did. There is the old faculty of managing a +crowd, of making character clash with character, that had made Dickens +not only the democrat but even the demagogue of fiction. For if it is +hard to manage a mob, it is hardest of all to manage a swell mob. The +particular kind of chaos that is created by the hospitality of a rich +upstart has perhaps never been so accurately and outrageously described. +Every touch about the thing is true; to this day any one can test it if +he goes to a dinner of this particular kind. How admirable, for +instance, is the description of the way in which all the guests ignored +the host; how the host and hostess peered and gaped for some stray +attention as if they had been a pair of poor relations. Again, how well, +as a matter <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span> +of social colour, the distinctions between the type and tone of the +guests are made even in the matter of this unguestlike insolence. How +well Dickens distinguishes the ill-bred indifference of Podsnap from the +well-bred indifference of Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn. How +well he distinguishes the bad manners of the merchant from the equally +typical bad manners of the gentleman. Above all, how well he catches the +character of the creature who is really the master of all these: the +impenetrable male servant. Nowhere in literature is the truth about +servants better told. For that truth is simply this: that the secret of +aristocracy is hidden even from aristocrats. Servants, butlers, footmen, +are the high priests who have the real dispensation; and even gentlemen +are afraid of them. Dickens was never more right than when he made the +new people, the Veneerings, employ a butler who despised not only them +but all their guests and acquaintances. The admirable person called the +Analytical Chemist shows his perfection particularly in the fact that he +regards all the sham gentlemen and all the real gentlemen with the same +gloomy and incurable contempt. He offers wine to the offensive Podsnap +or the shrieking Tippins with a melancholy sincerity and silence; but he +offers his letter to the aristocratic and unconscious Mortimer with the +same sincerity and with the same silence. It is a great pity that the +Analytical Chemist only occurs in two or three scenes of this excellent +story. As far as I know, he never really says a word from one end of the +book to the other; but he is one of the best characters in Dickens.</p> + +<p>Round the Veneering dinner-table are collected not +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span> +indeed the best characters in Dickens, but certainly the best +characters in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>. Certainly one exception must be made. +Fledgeby is unaccountably absent. There was really no reason why he +should not have been present at a dinner-party given by the Veneerings +and including the Lammles. His money was at least more genuine than +theirs. If he had been present the party would really have included all +that is important in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>. For indeed, outside Mr. +Fledgeby and the people at the dinner-party, there is something a little +heavy and careless about the story. Mr. Silas Wegg is really funny; and +he serves the purpose of a necessary villain in the plot. But his humour +and his villainy seem to have no particular connection with each other; +when he is not scheming he seems the last man likely to scheme. He is +rather like one of Dickens’s agreeable Bohemians, a pleasant +companion, a quoter of fine verses. His villainy seems an artificial +thing attached to him, like his wooden leg. For while his villainy is +supposed to be of a dull, mean, and bitter sort (quite unlike, for +instance, the uproarious villainy of Quilp), his humour is of the +sincere, flowing and lyric character, like that of Dick Swiveller or Mr. +Micawber. He tells Mr. Boffin that he will drop into poetry in a +friendly way. He does drop into it in a friendly way; in much too really +a friendly way to make him convincing as a mere calculating knave. He +and Mr. Venus are such natural and genuine companions that one does not +see why if Venus repents Wegg should not repent too. In short, Wegg is a +convenience for a plot and not a very good plot at that. But if he is +one of the blots on the business, he is not the principal +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span> +one. If the real degradation of Wegg is not very convincing, it is at +least immeasurably more convincing than the pretended degradation of +Boffin. The passage in which Boffin appears as a sort of miser, and then +afterwards explains that he only assumed the character for reasons of +his own, has something about it highly jerky and unsatisfactory. The +truth of the whole matter I think, almost certainly, is that Dickens did +not originally mean Boffin’s lapse to be fictitious. He originally +meant Boffin really to be corrupted by wealth, slowly to degenerate and +as slowly to repent. But the story went too quickly for this long, +double, and difficult process; therefore Dickens at the last moment made +a sudden recovery possible by representing that the whole business had +been a trick. Consequently, this episode is not an error merely in the +sense that we may find many errors in a great writer like Dickens; it is +a mistake patched up with another mistake. It is a case of that +ossification which occurs round the healing of an actual fracture; the +story had broken down and been mended.</p> + +<p>If Dickens had fulfilled what was probably his original design, and +described the slow freezing of Boffin’s soul in prosperity, I do +not say that he would have done the thing well. He was not good at +describing change in anybody, especially not good at describing a change +for the worse. The tendency of all his characters is upwards, like +bubbles, never downwards, like stones. But at least it would probably +have been more credible than the story as it stands; for the story as it +stands is actually less credible than any conceivable kind of moral ruin +for Boffin. Such a character as his—rough, simple and lumberingly +unconscious—might be more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span> +easily conceived as really sinking in self-respect and honour than as +keeping up, month after month, so strained and inhuman a theatrical +performance. To a good man (of that particular type) it would be easier +to be bad than to pretend to be bad. It might have taken years to turn +Noddy Boffin into a miser; but it would have taken centuries to turn him +into an actor. This unreality in the later Boffin scenes makes the end +of the story of John Harmon somewhat more unimpressive perhaps than it +might otherwise have been. Upon no hypothesis, however, can he be made +one of the more impressive figures of Dickens. It is true that it is an +unfair criticism to object, as some have done, that Dickens does not +succeed in disguising the identity of John Harmon with John Rokesmith. +Dickens never intended to disguise it; the whole story would be mainly +unintelligible and largely uninteresting if it had been successfully +disguised. But though John Harmon or Rokesmith was never intended to be +merely a man of mystery, it is not quite so easy to say what he was +intended to be. Bella is a possible and pretty sketch. Mrs. Wilfer, her +mother, is an entirely impossible and entirely delightful one. Miss +Podsnap is not only excellent, she is to a healthy taste positively +attractive; there is a real suggestion in her of the fact that humility +is akin to truth, even when humility takes its more comic form of +shyness. There is not in all literature a more human <i>cri de cœur</i> than +that with which Georgiana Podsnap receives the information that a young +man has professed himself to be attracted by her—“Oh what a +Fool he must be!”</p> + +<p>Two other figures require praise, though they are in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span> +the more tragic manner which Dickens touched from time to time in his +later period. Bradley Headstone is really a successful villain; so +successful that he fully captures our sympathies. Also there is +something original in the very conception. It was a new notion to add to +the villains of fiction, whose thoughts go quickly, this villain whose +thoughts go slow but sure; and it was a new notion to combine a deadly +criminality not with high life or the slums (the usual haunts for +villains) but with the laborious respectability of the lower, middle +classes. The other good conception is the boy, Bradley Headstone’s +pupil, with his dull, inexhaustible egoism, his pert, unconscious +cruelty, and the strict decorum and incredible baseness of his views of +life. It is singular that Dickens, who was not only a radical and a +social reformer, but one who would have been particularly concerned to +maintain the principle of modern popular education, should nevertheless +have seen so clearly this potential evil in the mere educationalism of +our time—the fact that merely educating the democracy may easily +mean setting to work to despoil it of all the democratic virtues. It is +better to be Lizzie Hexam and not know how to read and write than to be +Charlie Hexam and not know how to appreciate Lizzie Hexam. It is not +only necessary that the democracy should be taught; it is also necessary +that the democracy should be taught democracy. Otherwise it will +certainly fall a victim to that snobbishness and system of worldly +standards which is the most natural and easy of all the forms of human +corruption. This is one of the many dangers which Dickens saw before it +existed. Dickens was really a prophet; far more of a prophet than +Carlyle.</p> + +<hr /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 486px;"><a name="CD1868" id="CD1868"></a> +<img src="images/dickens1868.jpg" width="486" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +<span class="caption">Charles Dickens, 1868<br /> +From a photograph by Gurney.</span></div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></p> + +<h2><a name="DROOD" id="DROOD"></a>EDWIN DROOD</h2> + +<p><i>Pickwick</i> was a work partly designed by others, but ultimately filled +up by Dickens. <i>Edwin Drood</i>, the last book, was a book designed by +Dickens, but ultimately filled up by others. The <i>Pickwick Papers</i> +showed how much Dickens could make out of other people’s +suggestions; <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i> shows how very little other +people can make out of Dickens’s suggestions.</p> + +<p>Dickens was meant by Heaven to be the great melodramatist; so that even +his literary end was melodramatic. Something more seems hinted at in the +cutting short of <i>Edwin Drood</i> by Dickens than the mere cutting short of +a good novel by a great man. It seems rather like the last taunt of some +elf, leaving the world, that it should be this story which is not ended, +this story which is only a story. The only one of Dickens’s novels +which he did not finish was the only one that really needed finishing. +He never had but one thoroughly good plot to tell; and that he has only +told in heaven. This is what separates the case in question from any +parallel cases of novelists cut off in the act of creation. That great +novelist, for instance, with whom Dickens is constantly compared, died +also in the middle of <i>Denis Duval</i>. But any one can see in <i>Denis +Duval</i> the qualities of the later work of Thackeray; the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span> +increasing discursiveness, the increasing retrospective poetry, which +had been in part the charm and in part the failure of <i>Philip</i> and <i>The +Virginians</i>. But to Dickens it was permitted to die at a dramatic moment +and to leave a dramatic mystery. Any Thackerayan could have completed +the plot of <i>Denis Duval</i>; except indeed that a really sympathetic +Thackerayan might have had some doubt as to whether there was any plot +to complete. But Dickens, having had far too little plot in his stories +previously, had far too much plot in the story he never told. Dickens +dies in the act of telling, not his tenth novel, but his first news of +murder. He drops down dead as he is in the act of denouncing the +assassin. It is permitted to Dickens, in short, to come to a literary +end as strange as his literary beginning. He began by completing the old +romance of travel. He ended by inventing the new detective story.</p> + +<p>It is as a detective story first and last that we have to consider <i>The +Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>. This does not mean, of course, that the details +are not often admirable in their swift and penetrating humour; to say +that of the book would be to say that Dickens did not write it. Nothing +could be truer, for instance, than the manner in which the dazed and +drunken dignity of Durdles illustrates a certain bitterness at the +bottom of the bewilderment of the poor. Nothing could be better than the +way in which the haughty and allusive conversation between Miss +Twinkleton and the landlady illustrates the maddening preference of some +females for skating upon thin social ice. There is an even better +example than these of the original humorous insight of Dickens; and one +not very often remarked, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span> +because of its brevity and its unimportance in the narrative. But +Dickens never did anything better than the short account of Mr. +Grewgious’s dinner being brought from the tavern by two waiters: +“a stationary waiter,” and “a flying waiter.” +The “flying waiter” brought the food and the +“stationary waiter” quarrelled with him; the “flying +waiter” brought glasses and the “stationary waiter” +looked through them. Finally, it will be remembered the +“stationary waiter” left the room, casting a glance which +indicated “let it be understood that all emoluments are mine, and +that Nil is the reward of this slave.” Still, Dickens wrote the +book as a detective story; he wrote it as <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>. +And alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers, he never lived to +destroy his mystery. Here alone then among the Dickens novels it is +necessary to speak of the plot and of the plot alone. And when we speak +of the plot it becomes immediately necessary to speak of the two or +three standing explanations which celebrated critics have given of the +plot.</p> + +<p>The story, so far as it was written by Dickens, can be read here. It +describes, as will be seen, the disappearance of the young architect +Edwin Drood after a night of festivity which was supposed to celebrate +his reconciliation with a temporary enemy, Neville Landless, and was +held at the house of his uncle John Jasper. Dickens continued the tale +long enough to explain or explode the first and most obvious of his +riddles. Long before the existing part terminates it has become evident +that Drood has been put away, not by his obvious opponent, Landless, but +by his uncle who professes for him an almost painful affection. The fact +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span> +that we all know this, however, ought not in fairness to blind us to +the fact that, considered as the first fraud in a detective story, it +has been, with great skill, at once suggested and concealed. Nothing, +for instance, could be cleverer as a piece of artistic mystery than the +fact that Jasper, the uncle, always kept his eyes fixed on Drood’s +face with a dark and watchful tenderness; the thing is so told that at +first we really take it as only indicating something morbid in the +affection; it is only afterwards that the frightful fancy breaks upon us +that it is not morbid affection but morbid antagonism. This first +mystery (which is no longer a mystery) of Jasper’s guilt, is only +worth remarking because it shows that Dickens meant and felt himself +able to mask all his batteries with real artistic strategy and artistic +caution. The manner of the unmasking of Jasper marks the manner and tone +in which the whole tale was to be told. Here we have not got to do with +Dickens simply giving himself away, as he gave himself away in +<i>Pickwick</i> or <i>The Christmas Carol</i>. Not that one complains of his +giving himself away; there was no better gift.</p> + +<p>What was the mystery of Edwin Drood from Dickens’s point of view +we shall never know, except perhaps from Dickens in heaven, and then he +will very likely have forgotten. But the mystery of Edwin Drood from our +point of view, from that of his critics, and those who have with some +courage (after his death) attempted to be his collaborators, is simply +this. There is no doubt that Jasper either murdered Drood or supposed +that he had murdered him. This certainty we have from the fact that it +is the whole point of a scene between Jasper and Drood’s lawyer +Grewgious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span> +in which Jasper is struck down with remorse when he realises that Drood +has been killed (from his point of view) needlessly and without profit. +The only question is whether Jasper’s remorse was as needless as +his murder. In other words the only question is whether, while he +certainly thought he had murdered Drood, he had really done it. It need +hardly be said that such a doubt would not have been raised for nothing; +gentlemen like Jasper do not as a rule waste good remorse except upon +successful crime. The origin of the doubt about the real death of Drood +is this. Towards the latter end of the existing chapters there appears +very abruptly, and with a quite ostentatious air of mystery, a character +called Datchery. He appears for the purpose of spying upon Jasper and +getting up some case against him; at any rate, if he has not this +purpose in the story he has no other earthly purpose in it. He is an old +gentleman of juvenile energy, with a habit of carrying his hat in his +hand even in the open air; which some have interpreted as meaning that +he feels the unaccustomed weight of a wig. Now there are one or two +people in the story who this person might possibly be. Notably there is +one person in the story who seems as if he were meant to be something, +but who hitherto has certainly been nothing; I mean Bazzard, Mr. +Grewgious’s clerk, a sulky fellow interested in theatricals, of +whom an unnecessary fuss is made. There is also Mr. Grewgious himself, +and there is also another suggestion, so much more startling that I +shall have to deal with it later.</p> + +<p>For the moment, however, the point is this: That ingenious writer, Mr. +Proctor, started the highly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span> +plausible theory that this Datchery was Drood himself, who had not +really been killed. He adduced a most complex and complete scheme +covering nearly all the details; but the strongest argument he had was +rather one of general artistic effect. This argument has been quite +perfectly summed up by Mr. Andrew Lang in one sentence: “If Edwin +Drood is dead, there is not much mystery about him.” This is quite +true; Dickens, when writing in so deliberate, nay, dark and +conspiratorial a manner, would surely have kept the death of Drood and +the guilt of Jasper hidden a little longer if the only real mystery had +been the guilt of Jasper and the death of Drood. It certainly seems +artistically more likely that there was a further mystery of Edwin +Drood; not the mystery that he was murdered, but the mystery that he was +not murdered. It is true indeed that Mr. Cumming Walters has a theory of +Datchery (to which I have already darkly alluded) a theory which is wild +enough to be the centre not only of any novel but of any harlequinade. +But the point is that even Mr. Cumming Walters’s theory, though it +makes the mystery more extraordinary, does not make it any more of a +mystery of Edwin Drood. It should not have been called <i>The Mystery of +Drood</i>, but <i>The Mystery of Datchery</i>. This is the strongest case for +Proctor; if the story tells of Drood coming back as Datchery, the story +does at any rate fulfil the title upon its title-page.</p> + +<p>The principal objection to Proctor’s theory is that there seems no +adequate reason why Jasper should not have murdered his nephew if he +wanted to. And there seems even less reason why Drood, if unsuccessfully +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span> +murdered, should not have raised the alarm. Happy young architects, +when nearly strangled by elderly organists, do not generally stroll away +and come back some time afterwards in a wig and with a false name. +Superficially it would seem almost as odd to find the murderer +investigating the origin of the murder, as to find the corpse +investigating it. To this problem two of the ablest literary critics of +our time, Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. William Archer (both of them persuaded +generally of the Proctor theory) have especially addressed themselves. +Both have come to the same substantial conclusion; and I suspect that +they are right. They hold that Jasper (whose mania for opium is much +insisted on in the tale) had some sort of fit, or trance, or other +physical seizure as he was committing the crime so that he left it +unfinished; and they also hold that he had drugged Drood, so that Drood, +when he recovered from the attack, was doubtful about who had been his +assailant. This might really explain, if a little fancifully, his coming +back to the town in the character of a detective. He might think it due +to his uncle (whom he last remembered in a kind of murderous vision) to +make an independent investigation as to whether he was really guilty or +not. He might say, as Hamlet said of a vision equally terrifying, +“I’ll have grounds more relative than this.” In +fairness it must be said that there is something vaguely shaky about +this theory; chiefly, I think, in this respect; that there is a sort of +farcical cheerfulness about Datchery which does not seem altogether +appropriate to a lad who ought to be in an agony of doubt as to whether +his best friend was or was not his assassin. Still there are many such +incongruities <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span> +in Dickens; and the explanation of Mr. Archer and Mr. Lang is an +explanation. I do not believe that any explanation as good can be given +to account for the tale being called <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>, if +the tale practically starts with his corpse.</p> + +<p>If Drood is really dead one cannot help feeling the story ought to end +where it does end, not by accident but by design. The murder is +explained. Jasper is ready to be hanged, and every one else in a decent +novel ought to be ready to be married. If there was to be much more of +anything, it must have been of anticlimax. Nevertheless there are +degrees of anticlimax. Some of the more obvious explanations of Datchery +are quite reasonable, but they are distinctly tame. For instance, +Datchery may be Bazzard; but it is not very exciting if he is; for we +know nothing about Bazzard and care less. Again, he might be Grewgious; +but there is something pointless about one grotesque character dressing +up as another grotesque character actually less amusing than himself. +Now, Mr. Cumming Walters has at least had the distinction of inventing a +theory which makes the story at least an interesting story, even if it +is not exactly the story that is promised on the cover of the book. The +obvious enemy of Drood, on whom suspicion first falls, the swarthy and +sulky Landless, has a sister even swarthier and, except for her queenly +dignity, even sulkier than he. This barbaric princess is evidently meant +to be (in a sombre way) in love with Crisparkle, the clergyman and +muscular Christian who represents the breezy element in the emotions of +the tale. Mr. Cumming Walters seriously maintains that it is this +barbaric princess <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span> +who puts on a wig and dresses up as Mr. Datchery. He urges his case +with much ingenuity of detail. Helena Landless certainly had a motive; +to save her brother, who was accused falsely, by accusing Jasper justly. +She certainly had some of the faculties; it is elaborately stated in the +earlier part of her story that she was accustomed as a child to dress up +in male costume and run into the wildest adventures. There may be +something in Mr. Cumming Walters’s argument that the very +flippancy of Datchery is the self-conscious flippancy of a strong woman +in such an odd situation; certainly there is the same flippancy in +Portia and in Rosalind. Nevertheless, I think, there is one final +objection to the theory; and that is simply this, that it is comic. It +is generally wrong to represent a great master of the grotesque as being +grotesque exactly where he does not intend to be. And I am persuaded +that if Dickens had really meant Helena to turn into Datchery, he would +have made her from the first in some way more light, eccentric, and +laughable; he would have made her at least as light and laughable as +Rosa. As it is, there is something strangely stiff and incredible about +the idea of a lady so dark and dignified dressing up as a swaggering old +gentleman in a blue coat and grey trousers. We might almost as easily +imagine Edith Dombey dressing up as Major Bagstock. We might almost as +easily imagine Rebecca in <i>Ivanhoe</i> dressing up as Isaac of York.</p> + +<p>Of course such a question can never really be settled precisely, because +it is the question not merely of a mystery but of a puzzle. For here the +detective novel differs from every other kind of novel. The ordinary +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span> +novelist desires to keep his readers to the point; the detective +novelist actually desires to keep his readers off the point. In the +first case, every touch must help to tell the reader what he means; in +the second case, most of the touches must conceal or even contradict +what he means. You are supposed to see and appreciate the smallest +gestures of a good actor; but you do not see all the gestures of a +conjuror, if he is a good conjuror. Hence, into the critical estimate of +such works as this, there is introduced a problem, an extra perplexity, +which does not exist in other cases. I mean the problem of the things +commonly called blinds. Some of the points which we pick out as +suggestive may have been put in as deceptive. Thus the whole conflict +between a critic with one theory, like Mr. Lang, and a critic with +another theory, like Mr. Cumming Walters, becomes eternal and a trifle +farcical. Mr. Walters says that all Mr. Lang’s clues were blinds; +Mr. Lang says that all Mr. Walters’s clues were blinds. Mr. +Walters can say that some passages seemed to show that Helena was +Datchery; Mr. Lang can reply that those passages were only meant to +deceive simple people like Mr. Walters into supposing that she was +Datchery. Similarly Mr. Lang can say that the return of Drood is +foreshadowed; and Mr. Walters can reply that it was foreshadowed because +it was never meant to come off. There seems no end to this insane +process; anything that Dickens wrote may or may not mean the opposite of +what it says. Upon this principle I should be very ready for one to +declare that all the suggested Datcherys were really blinds; merely +because they can naturally be suggested. I would undertake to maintain +that Mr.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span> +Datchery is really Miss Twinkleton, who has a mercenary interest in +keeping Rosa Budd at her school. This suggestion does not seem to me to +be really much more humorous than Mr. Cumming Walters’s theory. +Yet either may certainly be true. Dickens is dead, and a number of +splendid scenes and startling adventures have died with him. Even if we +get the right solution we shall not know that it is right. The tale +might have been, and yet it has not been.</p> + +<p>And I think there is no thought so much calculated to make one doubt +death itself, to feel that sublime doubt which has created all +religion—the doubt that found death incredible. Edwin Drood may or may +not have really died; but surely Dickens did not really die. Surely our +real detective liveth and shall appear in the latter days of the earth. +For a finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary +sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more +essential and more strange.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></p> +<h2><a name="HUMPHREY" id="HUMPHREY"></a>MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK</h2> + +<p>It is quite indispensable to include a criticism of <i>Master +Humphrey’s Clock</i> in any survey of Dickens, although it is not one +of the books of which his admirers would chiefly boast; although perhaps +it is almost the only one of which he would not have boasted himself. As +a triumph of Dickens, at least, it is not of great importance. But as a +sample of Dickens it happens to be of quite remarkable importance. The +very fact that it is for the most part somewhat more level and even +monotonous than most of his creations, makes us realise, as it were, +against what level and monotony those creations commonly stand out. This +book is the background of his mind. It is the basis and minimum of him +which was always there. Alone, of all written things, this shows how he +felt when he was not writing. Dickens might have written it in his +sleep. That is to say, it is written by a sluggish Dickens, a half +automatic Dickens, a dreaming and drifting Dickens; but still by the +enduring Dickens.</p> + +<p>But this truth can only be made evident by beginning nearer to the root +of the matter. <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> had just completed, or, to speak more +strictly, confirmed, the popularity of the young author; wonderful as +<i>Pickwick</i> was it might have been a nine days’ wonder; <i>Oliver +Twist</i> had been powerful but painful; it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span> +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> that proved the man to be a great productive force +of which one could ask more, of which one could ask all things. His +publishers, Chapman and Hall, seem to have taken at about this point +that step which sooner or later most publishers do take with regard to a +half successful man who is becoming wholly successful. Instead of asking +him for something, they asked him for anything. They made him, so to +speak, the editor of his own works. And indeed it is literally as the +editor of his own works that he next appears; for the next thing to +which he proposes to put his name is not a novel, but for all practical +purposes a magazine. Yet although it is a magazine, it is a magazine +entirely written by himself; the publishers, in point of fact, wanted to +create a kind of Dickens Miscellany, in a much more literal sense than +that in which we speak of a Bentley Miscellany. Dickens was in no way +disposed to dislike such a job; for the more miscellaneous he was the +more he enjoyed himself. And indeed this early experiment of his bears a +great deal of resemblance to those later experiences in which he was the +editor of two popular periodicals. The editor of <i>Master +Humphrey’s Clock</i> was a kind of type or precursor of the editor of +<i>Household Words</i> and <i>All the Year Round</i>. There was the same sense of +absolute ease in an atmosphere of infinite gossip. There was the same +great advantage gained by a man of genius who wrote best scrappily and +by episodes. The omnipotence of the editor helped the eccentricities of +the author. He could excuse himself for all his own shortcomings. He +could begin a novel, get tired of it, and turn it into a short story. He +could begin a short <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span> +story, get fond of it, and turn it into a novel. Thus in the days of +<i>Household Words</i> he could begin a big scheme of stories, such as +<i>Somebody’s Luggage</i>, or <i>Seven Poor Travellers</i>, and after +writing a tale or two toss the rest to his colleagues. Thus, on the +other hand, in the time of <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>, he could +begin one small adventure of Master Humphrey and find himself unable to +stop it. It is quite clear I think (though only from moral evidence, +which some call reading between the lines) that he originally meant to +tell many separate tales of Master Humphrey’s wanderings in +London, only one of which, and that a short one, was to have been +concerned with a little girl going home. Fortunately for us that little +girl had a grandfather, and that grandfather had a curiosity shop and +also a nephew, and that nephew had an entirely irrelevant friend whom +men and angels called Richard Swiveller. Once having come into the +society of Swiveller it is not unnatural that Dickens stayed there for a +whole book. The essential point for us here, however, is that <i>Master +Humphrey’s Clock</i> was stopped by the size and energy of the thing +that had come of it. It died in childbirth.</p> + +<p>There is, however, another circumstance which, even in ordinary public +opinion, makes this miscellany important, besides the great novel that +came out of it. I mean that the ordinary reader can remember one great +thing about <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>, besides the fact that it +was the frame-work of <i>The Old Curiosity Shop</i>. He remembers that Mr. +Pickwick and the Wellers rise again from the dead. Dickens makes Samuel +Pickwick become a member of Master Humphrey’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span> +Clock Society; and he institutes a parallel society in the kitchen +under the name of Mr. Weller’s Watch.</p> + +<p>Before we consider the question of whether Dickens was wise when he did +this, it is worth remarking how really odd it is that this is the only +place where he did it. Dickens, one would have thought, was the one man +who might naturally have introduced old characters into new stories. +Dickens, as a matter of fact, was almost the one man who never did it. +It would have seemed natural in him for a double reason; first, that his +characters were very valuable to him, and second that they were not very +valuable to his particular stories. They were dear to him, and they are +dear to us; but they really might as well have turned up (within reason) +in one environment as well as in another. We, I am sure, should be +delighted to meet Mr. Mantalini in the story of <i>Dombey and Son</i>. And he +certainly would not be much missed from the plot of Nicholas Nickleby. +“I am an affectionate father,” said Dickens, “to all +the children of my fancy; but like many other parents I have in my heart +of hearts a favourite child; and his name is David Copperfield.” +Yet although his heart must often have yearned backwards to the children +of his fancy whose tale was already told, yet he never touched one of +them again even with the point of his pen. The characters in <i>David +Copperfield</i>, as in all the others, were dead for him after he had done +the book; if he loved them as children, it was as dead and sanctified +children. It is a curious test of the strength and even reticence that +underlay the seeming exuberance of Dickens, that he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span> +never did yield at all to exactly that indiscretion or act of +sentimentalism which would seem most natural to his emotions and his +art. Or rather he never did yield to it except here in this one case; +the case of <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>.</p> + +<p>And it must be remembered that nearly everybody else did yield to it. +Especially did those writers who are commonly counted Dickens’s +superiors in art and exactitude and closeness to connected reality. +Thackeray wallowed in it; Anthony Trollope lived on it. Those modern +artists who pride themselves most on the separation and unity of a work +of art have indulged in it often; thus, for instance, Stevenson gave a +glimpse of Alan Breck in <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i>, and meant to give a +glimpse of the Master of Ballantrae in another unwritten tale called +<i>The Rising Sun</i>. The habit of revising old characters is so strong in +Thackeray that <i>Vanity Fair</i>, <i>Pendennis</i>, <i>The Newcomes</i>, and <i>Philip</i> +are in one sense all one novel. Certainly the reader sometimes forgets +which one of them he is reading. Afterwards he cannot remember whether +the best description of Lord Steyne’s red whiskers or Mr. +Wagg’s rude jokes occurred in <i>Vanity Fair</i>, or <i>Pendennis</i>; he +cannot remember whether his favourite dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. +Pendennis occurred in <i>The Newcomes</i>, or in <i>Philip</i>. Whenever two +Thackeray characters in two Thackeray novels could by any possibility +have been contemporary, Thackeray delights to connect them. He makes +Major Pendennis nod to Dr. Firmin, and Colonel Newcome ask Major Dobbin +to dinner. Whenever two characters could not possibly have been +contemporary he goes out of his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span> +way to make one the remote ancestor of the other. Thus he created the +great house of Warrington solely to connect a “blue-bearded” +Bohemian journalist with the blood of Henry Esmond. It is quite +impossible to conceive Dickens keeping up this elaborate connection +between all his characters and all his books, especially across the +ages. It would give us a kind of shock if we learnt from Dickens that +Major Bagstock was the nephew of Mr. Chester. Still less can we imagine +Dickens carrying on an almost systematic family chronicle as was in some +sense done by Trollope. There must be some reason for such a paradox; +for in itself it is a very curious one. The writers who wrote carefully +were always putting, as it were, after-words and appendices to their +already finished portraits; the man who did splendid and flamboyant but +faulty portraits never attempted to touch them up. Or rather (we may say +again) he attempted it once, and then he failed.</p> + +<p>The reason lay, I think, in the very genius of Dickens’s creation. +The child he bore of his soul quitted him when his term was passed like +a veritable child born of the body. It was independent of him, as a +child is of its parents. It had become dead to him even in becoming +alive. When Thackeray studied Pendennis or Lord Steyne he was studying +something outside himself, and therefore something that might come +nearer and nearer. But when Dickens brought forth Sam Weller or Pickwick +he was creating something that had once been inside himself and +therefore when once created could only go further and further away. It +may seem a strange thing to say of such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span> +laughable characters and of so lively an author, yet I say it quite +seriously; I think it possible that there arose between Dickens and his +characters that strange and almost supernatural shyness that arises +often between parents and children; because they are too close to each +other to be open with each other. Too much hot and high emotion had gone +to the creation of one of his great figures for it to be possible for +him without embarrassment ever to speak with it again. This is the thing +which some fools call fickleness; but which is not the death of feeling, +but rather its dreadful perpetuation; this shyness is the final seal of +strong sentiment; this coldness is an eternal constancy.</p> + +<p>This one case where Dickens broke through his rule was not such a +success as to tempt him in any case to try the thing again.</p> + +<p>There is weakness in the strict sense of the word in this particular +reappearance of Samuel Pickwick and Samuel Weller. In the original +<i>Pickwick Papers</i> Dickens had with quite remarkable delicacy and +vividness contrived to suggest a certain fundamental sturdiness and +spirit in that corpulent and complacent old gentleman. Mr. Pickwick was +a mild man, a respectable man, a placid man; but he was very decidedly a +man. He could denounce his enemies and fight for his nightcap. He was +fat; but he had a backbone. In <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i> the +backbone seems somehow to be broken; his good nature seems limp instead +of alert. He gushes out of his good heart; instead of taking a good +heart for granted as a part of any decent gentleman’s furniture as +did the older and stronger Pickwick. The truth is, I think, that Mr. +Pickwick <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span> +in complete repose loses some part of the whole point of his existence. +The quality which makes the <i>Pickwick Papers</i> one of the greatest of +human fairy tales is a quality which all the great fairy tales possess, +and which marks them out from most modern writing. A modern novelist +generally endeavours to make his story interesting, by making his hero +odd. The most typical modern books are those in which the central figure +is himself or herself an exception, a cripple, a courtesan, a lunatic, a +swindler, or a person of the most perverse temperament. Such stories, +for instance, are <i>Sir Richard Calmady</i>, <i>Dodo</i>, <i>Quisante</i>, <i>La +Bête Humaine</i>, even the <i>Egoist</i>. But in a fairy tale the boy sees +all the wonders of fairyland because he is an ordinary boy. In the same +way Mr. Samuel Pickwick sees an extraordinary England because he is an +ordinary old gentleman. He does not see things through the rosy +spectacles of the modern optimist or the green-smoked spectacles of the +pessimist; he sees it through the crystal glasses of his own innocence. +One must see the world clearly even in order to see its wildest poetry. +One must see it sanely even in order to see that it is insane.</p> + +<p>Mr. Pickwick, then, relieved against a background of heavy kindliness +and quiet club life does not seem to be quite the same heroic figure as +Mr. Pickwick relieved against a background of the fighting police +constables at Ipswich or the roaring mobs of Eatanswill. Of the +degeneration of the Wellers, though it has been commonly assumed by +critics, I am not so sure. Some of the things said in the humorous +assembly round Mr. Weller’s Watch are really human and laughable +and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span> +altogether in the old manner. Especially, I think, the vague and awful +allusiveness of old Mr. Weller when he reminds his little grandson of +his delinquencies under the trope or figure of their being those of +another little boy, is really in the style both of the irony and the +domesticity of the poorer classes. Sam also says one or two things +really worthy of himself. We feel almost as if Sam were a living man, +and could not appear for an instant without being amusing.</p> + +<p>The other elements in the make-up of <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i> +come under the same paradox which I have applied to the whole work. +Though not very important in literature they are somehow quite important +in criticism. They show us better than anything else the whole +unconscious trend of Dickens, the stuff of which his very dreams were +made. If he had made up tales to amuse himself when half-awake (as I +have no doubt he did) they would be just such tales as these. They would +have been ghostly legends of the nooks and holes of London, echoes of +old love and laughter from the taverns or the Inns of Court. In a sense +also one may say that these tales are the great might-have-beens of +Dickens. They are chiefly designs which he fills up here slightly and +unsatisfactorily, but which he might have filled up with his own +brightest and most incredible colours. Nothing, for instance, could have +been nearer to the heart of Dickens than his great Gargantuan conception +of Gog and Magog telling London legends to each other all through the +night. Those two giants might have stood on either side of some new +great city of his invention, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span> +swarming with fanciful figures and noisy with new events. But as it is, +the two giants stand alone in a wilderness, guarding either side of a +gate that leads nowhere.</p> + +<hr /><p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></p> +<h2><a name="REPRINTED" id="REPRINTED"></a>REPRINTED PIECES</h2> + +<p>Those abuses which are supposed to belong specially to religion belong +to all human institutions. They are not the sins of supernaturalism, but +the sins of nature. In this respect it is interesting to observe that +all the evils which our Rationalist or Protestant tradition associates +with the idolatrous veneration of sacred figures arises in the merely +human atmosphere of literature and history. Every extravagance of +hagiology can be found in hero-worship. Every folly alleged in the +worship of saints can be found in the worship of poets. There are those +who are honourably and intensely opposed to the atmosphere of religious +symbolism or religious archæology. There are people who have a vague +idea that the worship of saints is worse than the imitation of sinners. +There are some, like a lady I once knew, who think that hagiology is the +scientific study of hags. But these slightly prejudiced persons +generally have idolatries and superstitions of their own, particularly +idolatries and superstitions in connection with celebrated people. Mr. +Stead preserves a pistol belonging to Oliver Cromwell in the office of +the <i>Review of Reviews</i>; and I am sure he worships it in his rare +moments of solitude and leisure. A man, who could not be induced to +believe in God <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span> +by all the arguments of all the philosophers, professed himself ready +to believe if he could see it stated on a postcard in the handwriting of +Mr. Gladstone. Persons not otherwise noted for their religious exercise +have been known to procure and preserve portions of the hair of +Paderewski. Nay, by this time blasphemy itself is a sacred tradition, +and almost as much respect would be paid to the alleged relics of an +atheist as to the alleged relics of a god. If any one has a fork that +belonged to Voltaire, he could probably exchange it in the open market +for a knife that belonged to St. Theresa.</p> + +<p>Of all the instances of this there is none stranger than the case of +Dickens. It should be pondered very carefully by those who reproach +Christianity with having been easily corrupted into a system of +superstitions. If ever there was a message full of what modern people +call true Christianity, the direct appeal to the common heart, a faith +that was simple, a hope that was infinite, and a charity that was +omnivorous, if ever there came among men what they call the Christianity +of Christ, it was in the message of Dickens. Christianity has been in +the world nearly two thousand years, and it has not yet quite lost, its +enemies being judges, its first fire and charity; but friends and +enemies would agree that it was from the very first more detailed and +doctrinal than the spirit of Dickens. The spirit of Dickens has been in +the world about sixty years; and already it is a superstition. Already +it is loaded with relics. Already it is stiff with antiquity.</p> + +<p>Everything that can be said about the perversion of Christianity can be +said about the perversion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span> +Dickens. It is said that Christ’s words are repeated by the very +High Priests and Scribes whom He meant to denounce. It is just as true +that the jokes in <i>Pickwick</i> are quoted with delight by the very bigwigs +of bench and bar whom Dickens wished to make absurd and impossible. It +is said that texts from Scripture are constantly taken in vain by Judas +and Herod, by Caiaphas and Annas. It is just as true that texts from +Dickens are rapturously quoted on all our platforms by Podsnap and +Honeythunder, by Pardiggle and Veneering, by Tigg when he is forming a +company, or Pott when he is founding a newspaper. People joke about +Bumble in defence of Bumbledom; people allude playfully to Mrs. Jellyby +while agitating for Borrioboola Gha. The very things which Dickens tried +to destroy are preserved as relics of him. The very houses he wished to +pull down are propped up as monuments of Dickens. We wish to preserve +everything of him, except his perilous public spirit.</p> + +<p>This antiquarian attitude towards Dickens has many manifestations, some +of them somewhat ridiculous. I give one startling instance out of a +hundred of the irony remarked upon above. In his first important book, +Dickens lashed the loathsome corruption of our oligarchical politics, +their blaring servility and dirty diplomacy of bribes, under the name of +an imaginary town called Eatanswill. If Eatanswill, wherever it was, had +been burned to the ground by its indignant neighbours the day after the +exposure, it would have been not inappropriate. If it had been entirely +deserted by its inhabitants, if they had fled to hide themselves in +holes and caverns, one could have understood <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span> +it. If it had been struck by a thunderbolt out of heaven or outlawed by +the whole human race, all that would seem quite natural. What has really +happened is this: that two respectable towns in Suffolk are still +disputing for the honour of having been the original Eatanswill; as if +two innocent hamlets each claimed to be Gomorrah. I make no comment; the +thing is beyond speech.</p> + +<p>But this strange sentimental and relic-hunting worship of Dickens has +many more innocent manifestations. One of them is that which takes +advantage of the fact that Dickens happened to be a journalist by trade. +It occupies itself therefore with hunting through papers and magazines +for unsigned articles which may possibly be proved to be his. Only a +little time ago one of these enthusiasts ran up to me, rubbing his +hands, and told me that he was sure he had found two and a half short +paragraphs in <i>All the Year Round</i> which were certainly written by +Dickens, whom he called (I regret to say) the Master. Something of this +archæological weakness must cling to all mere reprints of his minor +work. He was a great novelist; but he was also, among other things, a +good journalist and a good man. It is often necessary for a good +journalist to write bad literature. It is sometimes the first duty of a +good man to write it. Pot-boilers to my feeling are sacred things; but +they may well be secret as well as sacred, like the holy pot which it is +their purpose to boil. In the collection called <i>Reprinted Pieces</i> there +are some, I think, which demand or deserve this apology. There are many +which fall below the level of his recognised books of fragments, such as +<i>The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span> +Sketches by Boz</i>, and <i>The Uncommercial Traveller</i>. Two or three +elements in the compilation, however, make it quite essential to any +solid appreciation of the author.</p> + +<p>Of these the first in importance is that which comes last in order. I +mean the three remarkable pamphlets upon the English Sunday, called +<i>Sunday under Three Heads</i>. Here, at least, we find the eternal Dickens, +though not the eternal Dickens of fiction. His other political and +sociological suggestions in this volume are so far unimportant that they +are incidental, and even personal. Any man might have formed +Dickens’s opinion about flogging for garrotters, and altered it +afterwards. Any one might have come to Dickens’s conclusion about +model prisons, or to any other conclusion equally reasonable and +unimportant. These things have no colour of the great man’s +character. But on the subject of the English Sunday he does stand for +his own philosophy. He stands for a particular view, remote at present +both from Liberals and Conservatives. He was, in a conscious sense, the +first of its spokesmen. He was in every sense the last.</p> + +<p>In his appeal for the pleasures of the people, Dickens has remained +alone. The pleasures of the people have now no defender, Radical or +Tory. The Tories despise the people. The Radicals despise the pleasures.</p> + +<p class="c noin" style="font-size:120%;">THE END</p> + +<hr /><div class='blurb'> +<h3>Transcriber’s Notes & Errata</h3> + +<p>Some illustrations have been moved to between chapters. Therefore, the +entries in the List of Illustrations have been linked directly to the +images and not to the page numbers.</p> + +<p>The following typographical errors have been corrected:</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr class='b'><td align='left'>Page</td><td align='left'>Error</td><td align='left'>Correction</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>22</td><td align='left'>a dupe and who was</td><td align='left'>a dupe who was</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>57</td><td align='left'>pyschology</td><td align='left'>psychology</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>164</td><td align='left'>Similiarly</td><td align='left'>Similarly</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<p>The following words were found in both hyphenated and +un-hyphenated forms in the text. The numbers in parentheses +show the number of times each form occurred.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>framework (3)</td><td align='left'>frame-work (1)</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>cocksure (2)</td><td align='left'>cock-sure (2)</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>Ironmaster (1)</td><td align='left'>Iron-master (2)</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>footprints (1)</td><td align='left'>foot-prints (1)</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>goodwill (1)</td><td align='left'>good-will (1)</td></tr> +</table></div> +</div><hr class='full' /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Appreciations and Criticisms of the +Works of Charles Dickens, by G. K. 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