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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/36714-8.txt b/36714-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ad5114e --- /dev/null +++ b/36714-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6881 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dickens, by Adolphus William Ward + +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: Dickens + English Men of Letters + +Author: Adolphus William Ward + +Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36714] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKENS *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive.) + + + + + + + + + +English Men of Letters + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY + + + + + DICKENS + + + BY ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD + + + NEW YORK + HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS + FRANKLIN SQUARE + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. + + JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. + GIBBON J. C. Morison. + SCOTT R. H. Hutton. + SHELLEY J. A. Symonds. + HUME T. H. Huxley. + GOLDSMITH William Black. + DEFOE William Minto. + BURNS J. C. Shairp. + SPENSER R. W. Church. + THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. + BURKE John Morley. + MILTON Mark Pattison. + HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr. + SOUTHEY E. Dowden. + CHAUCER A. W. Ward. + BUNYAN J. A. Froude. + COWPER Goldwin Smith. + POPE Leslie Stephen. + BYRON John Nichol. + LOCKE Thomas Fowler. + WORDSWORTH F. Myers. + DRYDEN G. Saintsbury. + LANDOR Sidney Colvin. + DE QUINCEY David Masson. + LAMB Alfred Ainger. + BENTLEY R. C. Jebb. + DICKENS A. W. Ward. + GRAY E. W. Gosse. + SWIFT Leslie Stephen. + STERNE H. D. Traill. + MACAULAY J. Cotter Morison. + FIELDING Austin Dobson. + SHERIDAN Mrs. Oliphant. + ADDISON W. J. Courthope. + BACON R. W. Church. + COLERIDGE H. D. Traill. + SIR PHILIP SIDNEY J. A. Symonds. + KEATS Sidney Colvin. + +12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. + +_Other volumes in preparation._ + +PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. + +_Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part +of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price._ + + + + +PREFACE. + + +At the close of a letter addressed by Dickens to his friend John Forster, +but not to be found in the English editions of the _Life_, the writer adds +to his praises of the biography of Goldsmith these memorable words: "I +desire no better for my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the +control of my love of order, than such a biographer and such a critic." +Dickens was a man of few close friendships--"his breast," he said, "would +not hold many people"--but, of these friendships, that with Forster was +one of the earliest, as it was one of the most enduring. To Dickens, at +least, his future biographer must have been the embodiment of two +qualities rarely combined in equal measure--discretion and candour. In +literary matters his advice was taken almost as often as it was given, and +nearly every proof-sheet of nearly every work of Dickens passed through +his faithful helpmate's hands. Nor were there many important decisions +formed by Dickens concerning himself in the course of his manhood to which +Forster was a stranger, though, unhappily, he more than once counselled in +vain. + +On Mr. Forster's _Life of Charles Dickens_, together with the three +volumes of _Letters_ collected by Dickens's eldest daughter and his +sister-in-law--his "dearest and best friend"--it is superfluous to state +that the biographical portion of the following essay is mainly based. It +may be superfluous, but it cannot be considered impertinent, if I add that +the shortcomings of the _Life_ have, in my opinion, been more frequently +proclaimed than defined; and that its merits are those of its author as +well as of its subject. + +My sincere thanks are due for various favours shown to me in connexion +with the production of this little volume by Miss Hogarth, Mr. Charles +Dickens, Professor Henry Morley, Mr. Alexander Ireland, Mr. John Evans, +Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Britton. Mr. Evans has kindly enabled me to correct +some inaccuracies in Mr. Forster's account of Dickens's early Chatham days +on unimpeachable first-hand evidence. I also beg Captain and Mrs. Budden +to accept my thanks for allowing me to see Gad's Hill Place. + +I am under special obligations to Mr. R. F. Sketchley, Librarian of the +Dyce and Forster Libraries at South Kensington, for his courtesy in +affording me much useful aid and information. With the kind permission of +Mrs. Forster, Mr. Sketchley enabled me to supplement the records of +Dickens's life, in the period 1838-'41, from a hitherto unpublished +source--a series of brief entries by him in four volumes of _The Law and +Commercial Daily Remembrancer_ for those years. These volumes formed no +part of the Forster bequest, but were added to it, under certain +conditions, by Mrs. Forster. The entries are mostly very brief; and +sometimes there are months without an entry. Many days succeed one another +with no other note than "Work." + +Mr. R. H. Shepherd's _Bibliography of Dickens_ has been of considerable +service to me. May I take this opportunity of commending to my readers, as +a charming reminiscence of the connexion between _Charles Dickens and +Rochester_, Mr. Robert Langton's sketches illustrating a paper recently +printed under that title? + +Last, not least, as the Germans say, I wish to thank my friend Professor +T. N. Toller for the friendly counsel which has not been wanting to me on +this, any more than on former occasions. + +A. W. W. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + PREFACE v + + CHAPTER I. + BEFORE "PICKWICK" 1 + + CHAPTER II. + FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 20 + + CHAPTER III. + STRANGE LANDS 49 + + CHAPTER IV. + "DAVID COPPERFIELD" 85 + + CHAPTER V. + CHANGES 108 + + CHAPTER VI. + LAST YEARS 146 + + CHAPTER VII. + THE FUTURE OF DICKENS'S FAME 192 + + + + +DICKENS. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +BEFORE "PICKWICK." + +[1812-1836.] + + +Charles Dickens, the eldest son, and the second of the eight children, of +John and Elizabeth Dickens, was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsea, on +Friday, February 7, 1812. His baptismal names were Charles John Huffham. +His father, at that time a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and employed in +the Portsmouth Dock-yard, was recalled to London when his eldest son was +only two years of age; and two years afterwards was transferred to +Chatham, where he resided with his family from 1816 to 1821. Thus Chatham, +and the more venerable city of Rochester adjoining, with their +neighbourhood of chalk hills and deep green lanes and woodland and +marshes, became, in the words of Dickens's biographer, the birthplace of +his fancy. He looked upon himself as, to all intents and purposes, a +Kentish man born and bred, and his heart was always in this particular +corner of the incomparable county. Again and again, after Mr. Alfred +Jingle's spasmodic eloquence had, in the very first number of _Pickwick_, +epitomised the antiquities and comforts of Rochester, already the scene of +one of the _Sketches_, Dickens returned to the local associations of his +early childhood. It was at Chatham that poor little David Copperfield, on +his solitary tramp to Dover, slept his Sunday night's sleep "near a +cannon, happy in the society of the sentry's footsteps;" and in many a +Christmas narrative or uncommercial etching the familiar features of town +and country, of road and river, were reproduced, before in _Great +Expectations_ they suggested some of the most picturesque effects of his +later art, and before in his last unfinished romance his faithful fancy +once more haunted the well-known precincts. During the last thirteen years +of his life he was again an inhabitant of the loved neighbourhood where, +with the companions of his mirthful idleness, he had so often made +holiday; where, when hope was young, he had spent his honey-moon; and +whither, after his last restless wanderings, he was to return, to seek +such repose as he would allow himself, and to die. But, of course, the +daily life of the "very queer small boy" of that early time is only quite +incidentally to be associated with the grand gentleman's house on Gad's +Hill, where his father, little thinking that his son was to act over again +the story of Warren Hastings and Daylesford, had told him he might some +day come to live, if he were to be very persevering, and to work hard. The +family abode was in Ordnance (not St. Mary's) Place, at Chatham, amidst +surroundings classified in Mr. Pickwick's notes as "appearing to be +soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, offices, and dock-yard men." But +though the half-mean, half-picturesque aspect of the Chatham streets may +already at an early age have had its fascination for Dickens, yet his +childish fancy was fed as fully as were his powers of observation. Having +learned reading from his mother, he was sent with his elder sister, Fanny, +to a day-school kept in Gibraltar Place, New Road, by Mr. William Giles, +the eldest son and namesake of a worthy Baptist minister, whose family had +formed an intimate acquaintance with their neighbours in Ordnance Row. The +younger Giles children were pupils at the school of their elder brother +with Charles and Fanny Dickens, and thus naturally their constant +playmates. In later life Dickens preserved a grateful remembrance, at +times refreshed by pleasant communications between the families, of the +training he had received from Mr. William Giles, an intelligent as well as +generous man, who, recognising his pupil's abilities, seems to have +resolved that they should not lie fallow for want of early cultivation. +Nor does there appear to be the slightest reason for supposing that this +period of his life was anything but happy. For his sister Fanny he always +preserved a tender regard; and a touching little paper, written by him +after her death in womanhood, relates how the two children used to watch +the stars together, and make friends with one in particular, as belonging +to themselves. But obviously he did not lack playmates of his own sex; and +it was no doubt chiefly because his tastes made him disinclined to take +much part in the rougher sports of his school-fellows, that he found +plenty of time for amusing himself in his own way. And thus it came to +pass that already as a child he followed his own likings in the two +directions from which they were never very materially to swerve. He once +said of himself that he had been "a writer when a mere baby, an actor +always." + +Of these two passions he could always, as a child and as a man, be "happy +with either," and occasionally with both at the same time. In his tender +years he was taken by a kinsman, a Sandhurst cadet, to the theatre, to +see the legitimate drama acted, and was disillusioned by visits behind the +scenes at private theatricals; while his own juvenile powers as a teller +of stories and singer of comic songs (he was possessed, says one who +remembers him, of a sweet treble voice) were displayed on domestic chairs +and tables, and then in amateur plays with his school-fellows. He also +wrote a--not strictly original--tragedy, which is missing among his +_Reprinted Pieces_. There is nothing unique in these childish doings, nor +in the circumstance that he was an eager reader of works of fiction; but +it is noteworthy that chief among the books to which he applied himself, +in a small neglected bookroom in his father's house, were those to which +his allegiance remained true through much of his career as an author. +Besides books of travel, which he says had a fascination for his mind from +his earliest childhood, besides the "Arabian Nights" and kindred tales, +and the English Essayists, he read Fielding and Smollett, and Cervantes +and Le Sage, in all innocence of heart, as well as Mrs. Inchbald's +collection of farces, in all contentment of spirit. Inasmuch as he was no +great reader in the days of his authorship, and had to go through hard +times of his own before, it was well that the literature of his childhood +was good of its kind, and that where it was not good it was at least gay. +Dickens afterwards made it an article of his social creed that the +imagination of the young needs nourishment as much as their bodies require +food and clothing; and he had reason for gratefully remembering that at +all events the imaginative part of his education had escaped neglect. + +But these pleasant early days came to a sudden end. In the year 1821 his +family returned to London, and soon his experiences of trouble began. +Misfortune pursued the elder Dickens to town, his salary having been +decreased already at Chatham in consequence of one of the early efforts at +economical reform. He found a shabby home for his family in Bayham Street, +Camden Town; and here, what with the pecuniary embarrassments in which he +was perennially involved, and what with the easy disposition with which he +was blessed by way of compensation, he allowed his son's education to take +care of itself. John Dickens appears to have been an honourable as well as +a kindly man. His son always entertained an affectionate regard for him, +and carefully arranged for the comfort of his latter years; nor would it +be fair, because of a similarity in their experiences, and in the grandeur +of their habitual phraseology, to identify him absolutely with the +immortal Mr. Micawber. Still less, except in certain details of manner and +incident, can the character of the elder Dickens be thought to have +suggested that of the pitiful "Father of the Marshalsea," to which prison, +almost as famous in English fiction as it is in English history, the +unlucky navy-clerk was consigned a year after his return to London. + +Every effort had been made to stave off the evil day; and little Charles, +whose eyes were always wide open, and who had begun to write descriptive +sketches of odd personages among his acquaintance, had become familiar +with the inside of a pawnbroker's shop, and had sold the paternal +"library" piecemeal to the original of the drunken second-hand bookseller, +with whom David Copperfield dealt as Mr. Micawber's representative. But +neither these sacrifices nor Mrs. Dickens's abortive efforts at setting up +an educational establishment had been of avail. Her husband's creditors +_would not_ give him time; and a dark period began for the family, and +more especially for the little eldest son, now ten years old, in which, +as he afterwards wrote, in bitter anguish of remembrance, "but for the +mercy of God, he might easily have become, for any care that was taken of +him, a little robber or a little vagabond." + +Forster has printed the pathetic fragment of autobiography, communicated +to him by Dickens five-and-twenty years after the period to which it +refers, and subsequently incorporated with but few changes in the +_Personal History of David Copperfield_. Who can forget the thrill with +which he first learned the well-kept secret that the story of the solitary +child, left a prey to the cruel chances of the London streets, was an +episode in the life of Charles Dickens himself? Between fact and fiction +there was but a difference of names. Murdstone & Grinby's wine warehouse +down in Blackfriars was Jonathan Warren's blacking warehouse at Hungerford +Stairs, in which a place had been found for the boy by a relative, a +partner in the concern; and the bottles he had to paste over with labels +were in truth blacking-pots. But the menial work and the miserable pay, +the uncongenial companionship during worktime, and the speculative devices +of the dinner-hour were the same in each case. At this time, after his +family had settled itself in the Marshalsea, the haven open to the little +waif at night was a lodging in Little College Street, Camden Town, +presenting even fewer attractions than Mr. Micawber's residence in Windsor +Terrace, and kept by a lady afterwards famous under the name of Mrs. +Pipchin. His Sundays were spent at home in the prison. On his urgent +remonstrance--"the first I had ever made about my lot"--concerning the +distance from his family at which he was left through the week, a back +attic was found for him in Lant Street, in the Borough, "where Bob Sawyer +lodged many years afterwards;" and he now breakfasted and supped with his +parents in their apartment. Here they lived in fair comfort, waited upon +by a faithful "orfling," who had accompanied the family and its fortunes +from Chatham, and who is said by Forster to have her part in the character +of the Marchioness. Finally, after the prisoner had obtained his +discharge, and had removed with his family to the Lant Street lodgings, a +quarrel occurred between the elder Dickens and his cousin, and the boy was +in consequence taken away from the business. + +He had not been ill-treated there; nor indeed is it ill-treatment which +leads to David Copperfield's running away in the story. Nevertheless, it +is not strange that Dickens should have looked back with a bitterness very +unusual in him upon the bad old days of his childish solitude and +degradation. He never "forgot" his mother's having wished him to remain in +the warehouse; the subject of his employment there was never afterwards +mentioned in the family; he could not bring himself to go near old +Hungerford Market so long as it remained standing; and to no human being, +not even to his wife, did he speak of this passage in his life until he +narrated it in the fragment of autobiography which he confided to his +trusty friend. Such a sensitiveness is not hard to explain; for no man is +expected to dilate upon the days "when he lived among the beggars in St. +Mary Axe," and it is only the Bounderbies of society who exult, truly or +falsely, in the sordid memories of the time before they became rich or +powerful. And if the sharp experiences of his childhood might have ceased +to be resented by one whom the world on the whole treated so kindly, at +least they left his heart unhardened, and helped to make him ever tender +to the poor and weak, because he too had after a fashion "eaten his bread +with tears" when a puny child. + +A happy accident having released the David Copperfield of actual life from +his unworthy bondage, he was put in the way of an education such as at +that time was the lot of most boys of the class to which he belonged. "The +world has done much better since in that way, and will do far better yet," +he writes at the close of his description of _Our School_, the "Wellington +House Academy," situate near that point in the Hampstead Road where modest +gentility and commercial enterprise touch hands. Other testimony confirms +his sketch of the ignorant and brutal head-master; and doubtless this +worthy and his usher, "considered to know everything as opposed to the +chief who was considered to know nothing," furnished some of the features +in the portraits of Mr. Creakle and Mr. Mell. But it has been very justly +doubted by an old school-fellow whether the statement "We were First Boy" +is to be regarded as strictly historical. If Charles Dickens, when he +entered the school, was "put into Virgil," he was not put there to much +purpose. On the other hand, with the return of happier days had come the +resumption of the old amusements which were to grow into the occupations +of his life. A club was founded among the boys at Wellington House for the +express purpose of circulating short tales written by him, and he was the +manager of the private theatricals which they contrived to set on foot. + +After two or three years of such work and play it became necessary for +Charles Dickens once more to think of earning his bread. His father, who +had probably lost his official post at the time when, in Mr. Micawber's +phrase, "hope sunk beneath the horizon," was now seeking employment as a +parliamentary reporter, and must have rejoiced when a Gray's Inn solicitor +of his acquaintance, attracted by the bright, clever looks of his son, +took the lad into his office as a clerk at a modest weekly salary. His +office associates here were perhaps a grade or two above those of the +blacking warehouse; but his danger now lay rather in the direction of the +vulgarity which he afterwards depicted in such samples of the profession +as Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling. He is said to have frequented, in company +with a fellow-clerk, one of the minor theatres, and even occasionally to +have acted there; and assuredly it must have been personal knowledge which +suggested the curiously savage description of _Private Theatres_ in the +_Sketches by Boz_, the all but solitary _unkindly_ reference to theatrical +amusements in his works. But whatever his experiences of this kind may +have been, he passed unscathed through them; and during the year and a +half of his clerkship picked up sufficient knowledge of the technicalities +of the law to be able to assail its enormities without falling into +rudimentary errors about it, and sufficient knowledge of lawyers and +lawyers' men to fill a whole chamber in his gallery of characters. + +Oddly enough, it was, after all, the example of the father that led the +son into the line of life from which he was easily to pass into the career +where success and fame awaited him. The elder Dickens having obtained +employment as a parliamentary reporter for the _Morning Herald_, his son, +who was living with him in Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, resolved to +essay the same laborious craft. He was by this time nearly seventeen years +of age, and already we notice in him what were to remain, through life, +two of his most marked characteristics--strength of will, and a +determination, if he did a thing at all, to do it thoroughly. The art of +short-hand, which he now resolutely set himself to master, was in those +days no easy study, though, possibly, in looking back upon his first +efforts, David Copperfield overestimated the difficulties which he had +conquered with the help of love and Traddles. But Dickens, whose education +no Dr. Strong had completed, perceived that in order to succeed as a +reporter of the highest class he needed something besides the knowledge of +short-hand. In a word, he lacked reading; and this deficiency he set +himself to supply as best he could by a constant attendance at the British +Museum. Those critics who have dwelt on the fact that the reading of +Dickens was neither very great nor very extensive, have insisted on what +is not less true than obvious; but he had this one quality of the true +lover of reading, that he never professed a familiarity with that of which +he knew little or nothing. He continued his visits to the Museum, even +when in 1828 he had become a reporter in Doctors' Commons. With this +occupation he had to remain as content as he could for nearly two years. +Once more David Copperfield, the double of Charles Dickens in his youth, +will rise to the memory of every one of his readers. For not only was his +soul seized with a weariness of Consistory, Arches, Delegates, and the +rest of it, to which he afterwards gave elaborate expression in his story, +but his heart was full of its first love. In later days he was not of +opinion that he had loved particularly wisely; but how well he had loved +is known to every one who after him has lost his heart to Dora. Nothing +came of the fancy, and in course of time he had composure enough to visit +the lady who had been its object in the company of his wife. He found that +Jip was stuffed as well as dead, and that Dora had faded into Flora; for +it was as such that, not very chivalrously, he could bring himself to +describe her, for the second time, in _Little Dorrit_. + +Before at last he was engaged as a reporter on a newspaper, he had, and +not for a moment only, thought of turning aside to another profession. It +was the profession to which--uncommercially--he was attached during so +great a part of his life, that when he afterwards created for himself a +stage of his own, he seemed to be but following an irresistible +fascination. His best friend described him to me as "a born actor;" and +who needs to be told that the world falls into two divisions only--those +whose place is before the foot-lights, and those whose place is behind +them? His love of acting was stronger than himself; and I doubt whether he +ever saw a play successfully performed without longing to be in and of it. +"Assumption," he wrote in after days to Lord Lytton, "has charms for me--I +hardly know for how many wild reasons--so delightful that I feel a loss +of, oh! I can't say what exquisite foolery, when I lose a chance of being +some one in voice, etc., not at all like myself." He loved the theatre and +everything which savoured of histrionics with an intensity not even to be +imagined by those who have never felt a touch of the same passion. He had +that "belief in a play" which he so pleasantly described as one of the +characteristics of his life-long friend, the great painter, Clarkson +Stanfield. And he had that unextinguishable interest in both actors and +acting which makes a little separate world of the "quality." One of the +staunchest friendships of his life was that with the foremost English +tragedian of his age, Macready; one of the delights of his last years was +his intimacy with another well-known actor, the late Mr. Fechter. No +performer, however, was so obscure or so feeble as to be outside the pale +of his sympathy. His books teem with kindly likenesses of all manner of +entertainers and entertainments--from Mr. Vincent Crummles and the more or +less legitimate drama, down to Mr. Sleary's horse-riding and Mrs. Jarley's +wax-work. He has a friendly feeling for Chops the dwarf, and for Pickleson +the giant; and in his own quiet Broadstairs he cannot help tumultuously +applauding a young lady "who goes into the den of ferocious lions, tigers, +leopards, etc., and pretends to go to sleep upon the principal lion, upon +which a rustic keeper, who speaks through his nose, exclaims, 'Behold the +abazid power of woobad!'" He was unable to sit through a forlorn +performance at a wretched country theatre without longing to add a +sovereign to the four-and-ninepence which he had made out in the house +when he entered, and which "had warmed up in the course of the evening to +twelve shillings;" and in Bow Street, near his office, he was beset by +appeals such as that of an aged and greasy suitor for an engagement as +Pantaloon: "Mr. Dickens, you know our profession, sir--no one knows it +better, sir--there is no right feeling in it. I was Harlequin on your own +circuit, sir, for five-and-thirty years, and was displaced by a boy, +sir!--a boy!" Nor did his disposition change when he crossed the seas; the +streets he first sees in the United States remind him irresistibly of the +set-scene in a London pantomime; and at Verona his interest is divided +between _Romeo and Juliet_ and the vestiges of an equestrian troupe in the +amphitheatre. + +What success Dickens might have achieved as an actor it is hardly to the +present purpose to inquire. A word will be said below of the success he +achieved as an amateur actor and manager, and in his more than +half-dramatic readings. But, the influence of early associations and +personal feelings apart, it would seem that the artists of the stage whom +he most admired were not those of the highest type. He was subdued by the +genius of Frédéric Lemaître, but blind and deaf to that of Ristori. "Sound +melodrama and farce" were the dramatic species which he affected, and in +which as a professional actor he might have excelled. His intensity might +have gone for much in the one, and his versatility and volubility for more +in the other; and in both, as indeed in any kind of play or part, his +thoroughness, which extended itself to every detail of performance or +make-up, must have stood him in excellent stead. As it was, he was +preserved for literature. But he had carefully prepared himself for his +intended venture, and when he sought an engagement at Covent Garden, a +preliminary interview with the manager was postponed only on account of +the illness of the applicant. + +Before the next theatrical season opened he had at last--in the year +1831--obtained employment as a parliamentary reporter, and after some +earlier engagements he became, in 1834, one of the reporting staff of the +famous Whig _Morning Chronicle_, then in its best days under the +editorship of Mr. John Black. Now, for the first time in his life, he had +an opportunity of putting forth the energy that was in him. He shrunk from +none of the difficulties which in those days attended the exercise of his +craft. They were thus depicted by himself, when a few years before his +death he "held a brief for his brothers" at the dinner of the Newspaper +Press Fund: "I have often transcribed for the printer from my short-hand +notes important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was +required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely +compromising; writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark +lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, and +through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen +miles an hour.... I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back +row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my +feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, +where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep kept in waiting, +say, until the woolsack might want restuffing. Returning home from excited +political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do +verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle +known in this country. I have been in my time belated on miry by-roads, +towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless +carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back +in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments +by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest +of hearts I ever knew." Thus early had Dickens learnt the secret of +throwing himself into any pursuit once taken up by him, and of half +achieving his task by the very heartiness with which he set about it. When +at the close of the parliamentary session of the year 1836 his labours as +a reporter came to an end, he was held to have no equal in the gallery. +During this period his naturally keen powers of observation must have been +sharpened and strengthened, and that quickness of decision acquired which +constitutes, perhaps, the most valuable lesson that journalistic practice +of any kind can teach to a young man of letters. To Dickens's experience +as a reporter may likewise be traced no small part of his political creed, +in which there was a good deal of infidelity; or, at all events, his +determined contempt for the parliamentary style proper, whether in the +mouth of "Thisman" or of "Thatman," and his rooted dislike of the +"cheap-jacks" and "national dustmen" whom he discerned among our orators +and legislators. There is probably no very great number of Members of +Parliament who are heroes to those who wait attendance on their words. +Moreover, the period of Dickens's most active labours as a reporter was +one that succeeded a time of great political excitement; and when men wish +thankfully to rest after deeds, words are in season. + +Meanwhile, very tentatively and with a very imperfect consciousness of the +significance for himself of his first steps on a slippery path, Dickens +had begun the real career of his life. It has been seen how he had been a +writer as a "baby," as a school-boy, and as a lawyer's clerk, and the time +had come when, like all writers, he wished to see himself in print. In +December, 1833, the _Monthly Magazine_ published a paper which he had +dropped into its letter-box, and with eyes "dimmed with joy and pride" the +young author beheld his first-born in print. The paper, called _A Dinner +at Poplar Walk_, was afterwards reprinted in the _Sketches by Boz_ under +the title of _Mr. Minns and his Cousin_, and is laughable enough. His +success emboldened him to send further papers of a similar character to +the same magazine, which published ten contributions of his by February, +1835. That which appeared in August, 1834, was the first signed "Boz," a +nickname given by him in his boyhood to a favourite brother. Since Dickens +used this signature not only as the author of the _Sketches_ and a few +other minor productions, but also as "editor" of the _Pickwick Papers_, it +is not surprising that, especially among his admirers on the Continent and +in America, the name should have clung to him so tenaciously. It was on +a steamboat near Niagara that he heard from his state-room a gentleman +complaining to his wife: "Boz keeps himself very close." + +But the _Monthly Magazine_, though warmly welcoming its young +contributor's lively sketches, could not afford to pay for them. He was +therefore glad to conclude an arrangement with Mr. George Hogarth, the +conductor of the _Evening Chronicle_, a paper in connexion with the great +morning journal on the reporting staff of which he was engaged. He had +gratuitously contributed a sketch to the evening paper as a personal +favour to Mr. Hogarth, and the latter readily proposed to the proprietors +of the _Morning Chronicle_ that Dickens should be duly remunerated for +this addition to his regular labours. With a salary of seven instead of, +as heretofore, five guineas a week, and settled in chambers in Furnival's +Inn--one of those old legal inns which he loved so well--he might already +in this year, 1835, consider himself on the high-road to prosperity. By +the beginning of 1836 the _Sketches by Boz_ printed in the _Evening +Chronicle_ were already numerous enough, and their success was +sufficiently established to allow of his arranging for their +republication. They appeared in two volumes, with etchings by Cruikshank, +and the sum of a hundred and fifty pounds was paid to him for the +copyright. The stepping-stones had been found and passed, and on the last +day of March, which saw the publication of the first number of the +_Pickwick Papers_, he stood in the field of fame and fortune. Three days +afterwards Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, the eldest daughter of the +friend who had so efficiently aided him in his early literary ventures. +Mr. George Hogarth's name thus links together the names of two masters of +English fiction; for Lockhart speaks of him when a writer to the signet +in Edinburgh as one of the intimate friends of Scott. Dickens's +apprenticeship as an author was over almost as soon as it was begun; and +he had found the way short from obscurity to the dazzling light of +popularity. As for the _Sketches by Boz_, their author soon repurchased +the copyright for more than thirteen times the sum which had been paid to +him for it. + +In their collected form these _Sketches_ modestly described themselves as +"illustrative of every-day life and every-day people." Herein they only +prefigured the more famous creations of their writer, whose genius was +never so happy as when lighting up, now the humorous, now what he chose to +term the romantic, side of familiar things. The curious will find little +difficulty in tracing in these outlines, often rough and at times coarse, +the groundwork of more than one finished picture of later date. Not a few +of the most peculiar features of Dickens's humour are already here, +together with not a little of his most characteristic pathos. It is true +that in these early _Sketches_ the latter is at times strained, but its +power is occasionally beyond denial, as, for instance, in the brief +narrative of the death of the hospital patient. On the other hand, the +humour--more especially that of the _Tales_--is not of the most refined +sort, and often degenerates in the direction of boisterous farce. The +style, too, though in general devoid of the pretentiousness which is the +bane of "light" journalistic writing, has a taint of vulgarity about it, +very pardonable under the circumstances, but generally absent from +Dickens's later works. Weak puns are not unfrequent; and the diction but +rarely reaches that exquisite felicity of comic phrase in which _Pickwick_ +and its successors excel. For the rest, Dickens's favourite passions and +favourite aversions alike reflect themselves here in small. In the +description of the election for beadle he ridicules the tricks and the +manners of political party-life, and his love of things theatrical has its +full freshness upon it--however he may pretend at Astley's that his +"histrionic taste is gone," and that it is the audience which chiefly +delights him. But of course the gift which these _Sketches_ pre-eminently +revealed in their author was a descriptive power that seemed to lose sight +of nothing characteristic in the object described, and of nothing humorous +in an association suggested by it. Whether his theme was street or river, +a Christmas dinner or the extensive groves of the illustrious dead (the +old clothes shops in Monmouth Street), he reproduced it in all its shades +and colours, and under a hundred aspects, fanciful as well as real. How +inimitable, for instance, is the sketch of "the last cab-driver, and the +first omnibus cad," whose earlier vehicle, the omnipresent "red cab," was +not the gondola, but the very fire-ship of the London streets. + +Dickens himself entertained no high opinion of these youthful efforts; and +in this he showed the consciousness of the true artist, that masterpieces +are rarely thrown off at hazard. But though much of the popularity of the +_Sketches_ may be accounted for by the fact that commonplace people love +to read about commonplace people and things, the greater part of it is due +to genuine literary merit. The days of half-price in theatres have +followed the days of coaching; "Honest Tom" no more paces the lobby in a +black coat with velvet facings and cuffs, and a D'Orsay hat; the Hickses +of the present time no longer quote "Don Juan" over boarding-house +dinner-tables; and the young ladies in Camberwell no longer compare young +men in attitudes to Lord Byron, or to "Satan" Montgomery. But the +_Sketches by Boz_ have survived their birth-time; and they deserve to be +remembered among the rare instances in which a young author has no sooner +begun to write than he has shown a knowledge of his real strength. As yet, +however, this sudden favourite of the public was unaware of the range to +which his powers were to extend, and of the height to which they were to +mount. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS. + +[1836-1841.] + + +Even in those years of which the record is brightest in the story of his +life, Charles Dickens, like the rest of the world, had his share of +troubles--troubles great and small, losses which went home to his heart, +and vexations manifold in the way of business. But in the history of his +early career as an author the word failure has no place. + +Not that the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_, published as they +were in monthly numbers, at once took the town by storm; for the public +needed two or three months to make up its mind that "Boz" was equal to an +effort considerably in advance of his _Sketches_. But when the popularity +of the serial was once established, it grew with extraordinary rapidity +until it reached an altogether unprecedented height. He would be a bold +man who should declare that its popularity has very materially diminished +at the present day. Against the productions of _Pickwick_, and of other +works of amusement of which it was the prototype, Dr. Arnold thought +himself bound seriously to contend among the boys of Rugby; and twenty +years later young men at the university talked nothing but _Pickwick_, and +quoted nothing but _Pickwick_, and the wittiest of undergraduates set the +world at large an examination paper in _Pickwick_, over which pretentious +half-knowledge may puzzle, unable accurately to "describe the common +Profeel-machine," or to furnish a satisfactory definition of "a red-faced +Nixon." No changes in manners and customs have interfered with the hold of +the work upon nearly all classes of readers at home; and no translation +has been dull enough to prevent its being relished even in countries where +all English manners and customs must seem equally uninteresting or equally +absurd. + +So extraordinary has been the popularity of this more than thrice +fortunate book, that the wildest legends have grown up as to the history +of its origin. The facts, however, as stated by Dickens himself, are few +and plain. Attracted by the success of the _Sketches_, Messrs. Chapman & +Hall proposed to him that he should write "something" in monthly numbers +to serve as a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by the comic +draughtsman, Mr. R. Seymour; and either the publishers or the artist +suggested as a kind of leading notion, the idea of a "Nimrod Club" of +unlucky sportsmen. The proposition was at Dickens's suggestion so modified +that the plates were "to arise naturally out of the text," the range of +the latter being left open to him. This explains why the rather artificial +machinery of a club was maintained, and why Mr. Winkle's misfortunes by +flood and field hold their place by the side of the philanthropical +meanderings of Mr. Pickwick and the amorous experiences of Mr. Tupman. An +original was speedily found for the pictorial presentment of the hero of +the book, and a felicitous name for him soon suggested itself. Only a +single number of the serial had appeared when Mr. Seymour's own hand put +an end to his life. It is well known that among the applicants for the +vacant office of illustrator of the _Pickwick Papers_ was Thackeray--the +senior of Dickens by a few months--whose style as a draughtsman would have +been singularly unsuited to the adventures and the gaiters of Mr. +Pickwick. Finally, in no altogether propitious hour for some of Dickens's +books, Mr. Hablot Browne ("Phiz") was chosen as illustrator. Some happy +hits--such as the figure of Mr. Micawber--apart, the illustrations of +Dickens by this artist, though often both imaginative and effective, are +apt, on the one hand, to obscure the author's fidelity to nature, and on +the other, to intensify his unreality. _Oliver Twist_, like the +_Sketches_, was illustrated by George Cruikshank, a pencil humourist of no +common calibre, but as a rule ugly with the whole virtuous intention of +his heart. Dickens himself was never so well satisfied with any +illustrator as with George Cattermole (_alias_ "Kittenmoles"), a +connection of his by marriage, who co-operated with Hablot Browne in +_Master Humphrey's Clock_; in his latest works he resorted to the aid of +younger artists, whose reputation has since justified his confidence. The +most congenial of the pictorial interpreters of Dickens, in his brightest +and freshest humour, was his valued friend John Leech, whose services, +together occasionally with those of Doyle, Frank Stone, and Tenniel, as +well as of his faithful Stanfield and Maclise, he secured for his +Christmas books. + +The _Pickwick Papers_, of which the issue was completed by the end of +1837, brought in to Dickens a large sum of money, and after a time a +handsome annual income. On the whole this has remained the most general +favourite of all his books. Yet it is not for this reason only that +_Pickwick_ defies criticism, but also because the circumstances under +which the book was begun and carried on make it preposterous to judge it +by canons applicable to its author's subsequent fictions. As the serial +proceeded, the interest which was to be divided between the inserted +tales, some of which have real merit, and the framework, was absorbed by +the latter. The rise in the style of the book can almost be measured by +the change in the treatment of its chief character, Mr. Pickwick himself. +In a later preface, Dickens endeavoured to illustrate this change by the +analogy of real life. The truth, of course, is that it was only as the +author proceeded that he recognised the capabilities of the character, and +his own power of making it, and his book with it, truly lovable as well as +laughable. Thus, on the very same page in which Mr. Pickwick proves +himself a true gentleman in his leave-taking from Mr. Nupkins, there +follows a little bit of the idyl between Sam and the pretty housemaid, +written with a delicacy that could hardly have been suspected in the +chronicler of the experiences of Miss Jemima Evans or of Mr. Augustus +Cooper. In the subsequent part of the main narrative will be found +exemplified nearly all the varieties of pathos of which Dickens was +afterwards so repeatedly to prove himself master, more especially, of +course, in those prison scenes for which some of our older novelists may +have furnished him with hints. Even that subtle species of humour is not +wanting which is content to miss its effect with the less attentive +reader; as in this passage concerning the ruined cobbler's confidences to +Sam in the Fleet: + + "The cobbler paused to ascertain what effect his story had produced on + Sam; but finding that he had dropped asleep, knocked the ashes out of + his pipe, _sighed_, put it down, drew the bedclothes over his head, + and went to sleep too." + +Goldsmith himself could not have put more of pathos and more of irony into +a single word. + +But it may seem out of place to dwell upon details such as this in view +of the broad and universally acknowledged comic effects of this +masterpiece of English humour. Its many genuinely comic characters are as +broadly marked as the heroes of the least refined of sporting novels, and +as true to nature as the most elaborate products of Addison's art. The +author's humour is certainly not one which eschews simple in favour of +subtle means, or which is averse from occasional desipience in the form of +the wildest farce. Mrs. Leo Hunter's garden-party--or rather "public +breakfast"--at The Den, Eatanswill; Mr. Pickwick's nocturnal descent, +through three gooseberry-bushes and a rose-tree, upon the virgin soil of +Miss Tomkins's establishment for young ladies; the _supplice d'un homme_ +of Mr. Pott; Mr. Weller junior's love-letter, with notes and comments by +Mr. Weller senior, and Mr. Weller senior's own letter of affliction +written by somebody else; the footmen's "swarry" at Bath, and Mr. Bob +Sawyer's bachelors' party in the Borough--all these and many other scenes +and passages have in them that jovial element of exaggeration which nobody +mistakes and nobody resents. Whose duty is it to check the volubility of +Mr. Alfred Jingle, or to weigh the heaviness, _quot libras_, of the Fat +Boy? Every one is conscious of the fact that in the contagious high +spirits of the author lies one of the chief charms of the book. Not, +however, that the effect produced is obtained without the assistance of a +very vigilant art. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the character +which is upon the whole the most brilliant of the many brilliant additions +which the author made to his original group of personages. If there is +nothing so humorous in the book as Sam Weller, neither is there in it +anything more pathetic than the relation between him and his master. As +for Sam Weller's style of speech, scant justice was done to it by Mr. +Pickwick when he observed to Job Trotter, "My man is in the right, +although his mode of expressing his opinion is somewhat homely, and +occasionally incomprehensible." The fashion of Sam's gnomic philosophy is +at least as old as Theocritus;[1] but the special impress which he has +given to it is his own, rudely foreshadowed, perhaps, in some of the +apophthegms of his father. Incidental Sam Wellerisms in _Oliver Twist_ and +_Nicholas Nickleby_ show how enduring a hold the whimsical fancy had taken +of its creator. For the rest, the freshness of the book continues the same +to the end; and farcical as are some of the closing scenes--those, for +instance, in which a chorus of coachmen attends the movements of the elder +Mr. Weller--there is even here no straining after effect. An exception +might perhaps be found in the catastrophe of the Shepherd, which is +coarsely contrived; but the fun of the character is in itself neither +illegitimate nor unwholesome. It will be observed below that it is the +constant harping on the same string, the repeated picturing of +professional preachers of religion as gross and greasy scoundrels, which +in the end becomes offensive in Dickens. + +On the whole, no hero has ever more appropriately bidden farewell to his +labours than Mr. Pickwick in the words which he uttered at the table of +the ever-hospitable Mr. Wardle at the Adelphi. + + "'I shall never regret,' said Mr. Pickwick, in a low voice--'I shall + never regret having devoted the greater part of two years to mixing + with different varieties and shades of human character; frivolous as + my pursuit of novelty may appear to many. Nearly the whole of my + previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of + wealth, numerous scenes of which I had no previous conception have + dawned upon me--I hope to the enlargement of my mind, and to the + improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I + trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be + other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection to me in the + decline of life. God bless you all.'" + +Of course Mr. Pickwick "filled and drained a bumper" to the sentiment. +Indeed, it "snoweth" in this book "of meat and drink." Wine, ale, and +brandy abound there, and viands to which ample justice is invariably +done--even under Mr. Tupman's heart-rending circumstances at the (now, +alas! degenerate) Leather Bottle. Something of this is due to the times in +which the work was composed, and to the class of readers for which we may +suppose it in the first instance to have been intended; but Dickens, +though a temperate man, loved the paraphernalia of good cheer, besides +cherishing the associations which are inseparable from it. At the same +time, there is a little too much of it in the _Pickwick Papers_, however +well its presence may consort with the geniality which pervades them. It +is difficult to turn any page of the book without chancing on one of those +supremely felicitous phrases in the ready mintage of which Dickens at all +times excelled. But its chief attraction lies in the spirit of the +whole--that spirit of true humour which calls forth at once merriment, +good-will, and charity. + +In the year 1836, which the commencement of the _Pickwick Papers_ has made +memorable in the history of English literature, Dickens was already in the +full tide of authorship. In February, 1837, the second number of +_Bentley's Miscellany_, a new monthly magazine which he had undertaken to +edit, contained the opening chapters of his story of _Oliver Twist_. +Shortly before this, in September and December, 1836, he had essayed two +of the least ambitious branches of dramatic authorship. The acting of +Harley, an admirable dry comedian, gave some vitality to _The Strange +Gentleman_, a "comic burletta," or farce, in two acts, founded upon the +tale in the _Sketches_ called _The Great Winglebury Duel_. It ran for +seventy nights at Drury Lane, and, in its author's opinion, was "the best +thing Harley did." But the adaptation has no special feature +distinguishing it from the original, unless it be the effective bustle of +the opening. _The Village Coquettes_, an operetta represented at the St. +James's Theatre, with music by Hullah, was an equally unpretending effort. +In this piece Harley took one part, that of "a very small farmer with a +very large circle of intimate friends," and John Parry made his _début_ on +the London stage in another. To quote any of the songs in this operetta +would be very unfair to Dickens.[2] He was not at all depressed by the +unfavourable criticisms which were passed upon his libretto, and against +which he had to set the round declaration of Braham, that there had been +"no such music since the days of Shiel, and no such piece since _The +Duenna_." As time went on, however, he became anything but proud of his +juvenile productions as a dramatist, and strongly objected to their +revival. His third and last attempt of this kind, a farce called _The +Lamplighter_, which he wrote for Covent Garden in 1838, was never acted, +having been withdrawn by Macready's wish; and in 1841 Dickens converted it +into a story printed among the _Picnic Papers_, a collection generously +edited by him for the benefit of the widow and children of a publisher +towards whom he had little cause for personal gratitude. His friendship +for Macready kept alive in him for some time the desire to write a comedy +worthy of so distinguished an actor; and, according to his wont, he had +even chosen beforehand for the piece a name which he was not to +forget--_No Thoroughfare_. But the genius of the age, an influence which +is often stronger than personal wishes or inclinations, diverted him from +dramatic composition. He would have been equally unwilling to see +mentioned among his literary works the _Life of Grimaldi_, which he merely +edited, and which must be numbered among forgotten memorials of forgotten +greatness. + +To the earlier part of 1838 belong one or two other publications, which +their author never cared to reprint. The first of these, however, a short +pamphlet entitled _Sunday under Three Heads_, is not without a certain +biographical interest. This little book was written with immediate +reference to a bill "for the better observance of the Sabbath," which the +House of Commons had recently thrown out by a small majority; and its +special purpose was the advocacy of Sunday excursions, and harmless Sunday +amusements, in lieu of the alternate gloom and drunkenness distinguishing +what Dickens called a London _Sunday as it is_. His own love of fresh air +and brightness intensified his hatred of a formalism which shuts its ears +to argument. In the powerful picture of a Sunday evening in London, +"gloomy, close, and stale," which he afterwards drew in _Little Dorrit_, +he almost seems to hold Sabbatarianism and the weather responsible for one +another. When he afterwards saw a Parisian Sunday, he thought it "not +comfortable," so that, like others who hate bigotry, he may perhaps have +come to recognise the difficulty of arranging an English _Sunday as it +might be made_. On the other hand, he may have remembered his youthful +fancy of the good clergyman encouraging a game of cricket after church, +when thirty years later, writing from Edinburgh, he playfully pictured the +counterpart of _Sunday as Sabbath bills would have it_: describing how +"the usual preparations are making for the band in the open air in the +afternoon, and the usual pretty children (selected for that purpose) are +at this moment hanging garlands round the Scott monument preparatory to +the innocent Sunday dance round that edifice with which the diversions +invariably close." The _Sketches of Young Gentlemen_, published in the +same year, are little if at all in advance of the earlier _Sketches by +Boz_, and were evidently written to order. He finished them in precisely a +fortnight, and noted in his diary that "one hundred and twenty-five pounds +for such a book, without any name to it, is pretty well." The _Sketches of +Young Couples_, which followed as late as 1840, have the advantage of a +facetious introduction, suggested by her Majesty's own announcement of her +approaching marriage. But the life has long gone out of these +pleasantries, as it has from others of the same cast, in which many a +mirthful spirit, forced to coin its mirth into money, has ere now spent +itself. + +It was the better fortune of Dickens to be able almost from the first to +keep nearly all his writings on a level with his powers. He never made a +bolder step forwards than when, in the very midst of the production of +_Pickwick_, he began his first long continuous story, the _Adventures of +Oliver Twist_. Those who have looked at the MS. of this famous novel will +remember the vigour of the handwriting, and how few, in comparison with +his later MSS., are the additions and obliterations which it exhibits. +But here and there the writing shows traces of excitement; for the +author's heart was in his work, and much of it, contrary to his later +habit, was written at night. No doubt he was upheld in the labour of +authorship by something besides ambition and consciousness of strength. +_Oliver Twist_ was certainly written _with a purpose_, and with one that +was afterwards avowed. The author intended to put before his readers--"so +long as their speech did not offend the ear"--a picture of "dregs of +life," hitherto, as he believed, never exhibited by any novelist in their +loathsome reality. Yet the old masters of fiction, Fielding in particular, +as well as the old master of the brush whom Dickens cites (Hogarth), had +not shrunk from the path which their disciple now essayed. Dickens, +however, was naturally thinking of his own generation, which had already +relished _Paul Clifford_, and which was not to be debarred from exciting +itself over _Jack Sheppard_, begun before _Oliver Twist_ had been +completed, and in the self-same magazine. Dickens's purpose was an honest +and a praiseworthy one. But the most powerful and at the same time the +most lovable element in his genius suggested the silver lining to the +cloud. To that unfailing power of sympathy which was the mainspring of +both his most affecting and his most humorous touches, we owe the +redeeming features in his company of criminals; not only the devotion and +the heroism of Nancy, but the irresistible vivacity of the Artful Dodger, +and the good-humour of Charley Bates, which moved Talfourd to "plead as +earnestly in mitigation of judgment" against him as ever he had done "at +the bar for any client he most respected." Other parts of the story were +less carefully tempered. Mr. Fang, the police-magistrate, appears to have +been a rather hasty portrait of a living original; and the whole picture +of Bumble and Bumbledom was certainly a caricature of the working of the +new Poor-law, confounding the question of its merits and demerits with +that of its occasional maladministration. On the other hand, a vein of +truest pathos runs through the whole of poor Nancy's story, and adds to +the effect of a marvellously powerful catastrophe. From Nancy's interview +with Rose at London Bridge to the closing scenes--the flight of Sikes, his +death at Jacob's Island, and the end of the Jew--the action has an +intensity rare in the literature of the terrible. By the side of this +genuine tragic force, which perhaps it would be easiest to parallel from +some of the "low" domestic tragedy of the Elizabethans, the author's comic +humour burst forth upon the world in a variety of entirely new types: +Bumble and his partner; Noah Claypole, complete in himself, but full of +promise for Uriah Heep; and the Jew, with all the pupils and supporters of +his establishment of technical education. Undeniably the story of _Oliver +Twist_ also contains much that is artificial and stilted, with much that +is weak and (the author of _Endymion_ is to be thanked for the word) +"gushy." Thus, all the Maylie scenes, down to the last in which Oliver +discreetly "glides" away from the lovers, are barely endurable. But, +whatever its shortcomings, _Oliver Twist_ remains an almost unique example +of a young author's brilliant success in an enterprise of complete novelty +and extreme difficulty. Some of its situations continue to exercise their +power even over readers already familiarly acquainted with them; and some +of its characters will live by the side of Dickens's happiest and most +finished creations. Even had a sapient critic been right who declared, +during the progress of the story, that Mr. Dickens appeared to have +worked out "the particular vein of humour which had hitherto yielded so +much attractive metal," it would have been worked out to some purpose. +After making his readers merry with _Pickwick_, he had thrilled them with +_Oliver Twist_; and by the one book as by the other he had made them think +better of mankind. + +But neither had his vein been worked out, nor was his hand content with a +single task. In April, 1838, several months before the completion of +_Oliver Twist_, the first number of _Nicholas Nickleby_ appeared; and +while engaged upon the composition of these books he contributed to +_Bentley's Miscellany_, of which he retained the editorship till the early +part of 1839, several smaller articles. Of these, the _Mudfog Papers_ have +been recently thought worth reprinting; but even supposing the satire +against the Association for the Advancement of Everything to have not yet +altogether lost its savour, the fun of the day before yesterday refuses to +be revived. _Nicholas Nickleby_, published in twenty numbers, was the +labour of many months, but was produced under so great a press of work +that during the whole time of publication Dickens was never a single +number in advance. Yet, though not one of the most perfect of his books, +it is indisputably one of the most thoroughly original, and signally +illustrates the absurdity of recent attempts to draw a distinction between +the imaginative romance of the past and the realistic novel of the +present. Dickens was never so strong as when he produced from the real; +and in this instance--starting, no doubt, with a healthy prejudice--so +carefully had he inspected the neighbourhood of the Yorkshire schools, of +which Dotheboys Hall was to be held up as the infamous type, that there +seems to be no difficulty in identifying the site of the very school +itself; while the Portsmouth Theatre is to the full as accurate a study +as the Yorkshire school. So, again, as every one knows, the Brothers +Cheeryble were real personages well known in Manchester,[3] where even the +original of Tim Linkinwater still survives in local remembrance. On the +other hand, with how conscious a strength has the author's imaginative +power used and transmuted his materials: in the Squeers family creating a +group of inimitable grotesqueness; in their humblest victim Smike giving +one of his earliest pictures of those outcasts whom he drew again and +again with such infinite tenderness; and in Mr. Vincent Crummles and his +company, including the Phenomenon, establishing a jest, but a kindly one, +for all times! In a third series of episodes in this book, it is +universally agreed that the author has no less conspicuously failed. +Dickens's first attempt to picture the manners and customs of the +aristocracy certainly resulted in portraying some very peculiar people. +Lord Frederick Verisopht, indeed--who is allowed to redeem his character +in the end--is not without touches resembling nature. + + "'I take an interest, my lord,' said Mrs. Wititterly, with a faint + smile, 'such an interest in the drama.' + + "'Ye-es. It's very interasting,' replied Lord Frederick. + + "'I'm always ill after Shakspeare,' said Mrs. Wititterly. 'I scarcely + exist the next day. I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, + my lord, and Shakspeare is such a delicious creature.' + + "'Ye-es,' replied Lord Frederick. 'He was a clayver man.'" + +But Sir Mulberry Hawk is a kind of scoundrel not frequently met with in +polite society; his henchmen Pluck and Pyke have the air of "followers of +Don John," and the enjoyments of the "trainers of young noblemen and +gentlemen" at Hampton races, together with the riotous debauch which +precedes the catastrophe, seem taken direct from the transpontine stage. +The fact is that Dickens was here content to draw his vile seducers and +wicked orgies just as commonplace writers had drawn them a thousand times +before, and will draw them a thousand times again. Much of the hero's talk +is of the same conventional kind. On the other hand, nothing could be more +genuine than the flow of fun in this book, which finds its outlet in the +most unexpected channels, but nowhere so resistlessly as in the +invertebrate talk of Mrs. Nickleby. For her Forster discovered a literary +prototype in a character of Miss Austen's; but even if Mrs. Nickleby was +founded on Miss Bates, in _Emma_, she left her original far behind. Miss +Bates, indeed, is verbose, roundabout, and parenthetic; but the widow +never deviates into coherence. + +_Nicholas Nickleby_ shows the comic genius of its author in full activity, +and should be read with something of the buoyancy of spirit in which it +was written, and not with a callousness capable of seeing in so amusing a +scamp as Mr. Mantalini one of Dickens's "monstrous failures." At the same +time this book displays the desire of the author to mould his manner on +the old models. The very title has a savour of Smollett about it; the +style has more than one reminiscence of him, as well as of Fielding and of +Goldsmith; and the general method of the narrative resembles that of our +old novelists and their Spanish and French predecessors. Partly for this +reason, and partly, no doubt, because of the rapidity with which the story +was written, its construction is weaker than is usual even with Dickens's +earlier works. Coincidences are repeatedly employed to help on the +action; and the _dénoûment_, which, besides turning Mr. Squeers into a +thief, reveals Ralph Nickleby as the father of Smike, is oppressively +complete. As to the practical aim of the novel, the author's word must be +taken for the fact that "Mr. Squeers and his school were faint and feeble +pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they +should be deemed impossible." The exposure, no doubt, did good in its way, +though perhaps Mr. Squeers, in a more or less modified form, has proved a +tougher adversary to overcome than Mrs. Gamp. + +During these years Dickens was chiefly resident in the modest locality of +Doughty Street, whither he had moved his household from the "three rooms," +"three storeys high," in Furnival's Inn, early in 1837. It was not till +the end of 1839 that he took up his abode, further west, in a house which +he came to like best among all his London habitations, in Devonshire +Terrace, Regent's Park. His town life was, however, varied by long +rustications at Twickenham and at Petersham, and by sojourns at the +sea-side, of which he was a most consistent votary. He is found in various +years of his life at Brighton, Dover, and Bonchurch--where he liked his +neighbours better than he liked the climate; and in later years, when he +had grown accustomed to the Continent, he repeatedly domesticated himself +at Boulogne. But already in 1837 he had discovered the little sea-side +village, as it then was, which for many years afterwards became his +favourite holiday retreat, and of which he would be the _genius loci_, +even if he had not by a special description immortalised _Our English +Watering-place_. Broadstairs--whose afternoon tranquillity even to this +day is undisturbed except by the Ethiopians on their tramp from Margate to +Ramsgate--and its constant visitor, are thus described in a letter +written to an American friend in 1843: "This is a little fishing-place; +intensely quiet; built on a cliff, whereon--in the centre of a tiny +semicircular bay--our house stands; the sea rolling and dashing under the +windows. Seven miles out are the Goodwin Sands (you've heard of the +Goodwin Sands?), whence floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if +they were carrying on intrigues with the servants. Also there is a big +light-house called the North Foreland on a hill beyond the village, a +severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy floaters, and +stares grimly out upon the sea. Under the cliff are rare good sands, where +all the children assemble every morning and throw up impossible +fortifications, which the sea throws down again at high-water. Old +gentlemen and ancient ladies flirt after their own manner in two +reading-rooms and on a great many scattered seats in the open air. Other +old gentlemen look all day through telescopes and never see anything. In a +bay-window in a one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with +rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought +he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz." + +Not a few houses at Broadstairs may boast of having been at one time or +another inhabited by him and his. Of the long-desired Fort House, however, +which local perverseness triumphantly points out as the original of _Bleak +House_ (no part even of _Bleak House_ was written there, though part of +_David Copperfield_ was), he could not obtain possession till 1850. As +like Bleak House as it is like Chesney Wold, it stands at the very highest +end of the place, looking straight out to sea, over the little harbour and +its two colliers, with a pleasant stretch of cornfields leading along the +cliff towards the light-house which Dickens promised Lord Carlisle should +serve him as a night-light. But in 1837 Dickens was content with narrower +quarters. The "long small procession of sons" and daughters had as yet +only begun with the birth of his eldest boy. His life was simple and full +of work, and occasional sea-side or country quarters, and now and then a +brief holiday tour, afforded the necessary refreshment of change. In 1837 +he made his first short trip abroad, and in the following year, +accompanied by Mr. Hablot Browne, he spent a week of enjoyment in +Warwickshire, noting in his _Remembrancer_: "Stratford; Shakspeare; the +birthplace; visitors, scribblers, old woman (query whether she knows what +Shakspeare did), etc." Meanwhile, among his truest home enjoyments were +his friendships. They were few in number, mostly with men for whom, after +he had once taken them into his heart, he preserved a life-long regard. +Chief of all these were John Forster and Daniel Maclise, the high-minded +painter, to whom we owe a charming portrait of his friend in this youthful +period of his life. Losing them, he afterwards wrote when absent from +England, was "like losing my arms and legs, and dull and tame I am without +you." Besides these, he was at this time on very friendly terms with +William Harrison Ainsworth, who succeeded him in the editorship of the +_Miscellany_, and concerning whom he exclaimed in his _Remembrancer_: +"Ainsworth has a fine heart." At the close of 1838, Dickens, Ainsworth, +and Forster constituted themselves a club called the Trio, and afterwards +the Cerberus. Another name frequent in the _Remembrancer_ entries is that +of Talfourd, a generous friend, in whom, as Dickens finely said after his +death, "the success of other men made as little change as his own." All +these, together with Stanfield, the Landseers, Douglas Jerrold, Macready, +and others less known to fame, were among the friends and associates of +Dickens's prime. The letters, too, remaining from this part of Dickens's +life, have all the same tone of unaffected frankness. With some of his +intimate friends he had his established epistolary jokes. Stanfield, the +great marine painter, he pertinaciously treated as a "very salt" +correspondent, communications to whom, as to a "block-reeving, +main-brace-splicing, lead-heaving, ship-conning, stun'sail-bending, +deck-swabbing son of a sea-cook," needed garnishing with the obscurest +technicalities and strangest oaths of his element. (It is touching to turn +from these friendly buffooneries to a letter written by Dickens many years +afterward--in 1867--and mentioning a visit to "poor dear Stanfield," when +"it was clear that the shadow of the end had fallen on him.... It happened +well that I had seen, on a wild day at Tynemouth, a remarkable sea effect, +of which I wrote a description to him, and he had kept it under his +pillow.") Macready, after his retirement from the stage, is bantered on +the score of his juvenility with a pertinacity of fun recalling similar +whimsicalities of Charles Lamb's; or the jest is changed, and the great +London actor in his rural retreat is depicted in the character of a +country gentleman strange to the wicked ways of the town. As in the case +of many delightful letter-writers, the charm of Dickens as a correspondent +vanishes so soon as he becomes self-conscious. Even in his letters to Lady +Blessington and Mrs. Watson, a striving after effect is at times +perceptible; the homage rendered to Lord John Russell is not offered with +a light hand; on the contrary, when writing to Douglas Jerrold, Dickens is +occasionally so intent upon proving himself a sound Radical that his +vehemence all but passes into a shriek. + +In these early years, at all events, Dickens was happy in the society of +his chosen friends. His favourite amusements were a country walk or ride +with Forster, or a dinner at Jack Straw's Castle with him and Maclise. He +was likewise happy at home. Here, however, in the very innermost circle of +his affections, he had to suffer the first great personal grief of his +life. His younger sister-in-law, Miss Mary Hogarth, had accompanied him +and his wife into their new abode in Doughty Street, and here, in May, +1837, she died, at the early age of seventeen. No sorrow seems ever to +have touched the heart and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens +like that for the loss of this dearly-loved girl, "young, beautiful, and +good." "I can solemnly say," he wrote to her mother a few months after her +death, "that, waking or sleeping, I have never lost the recollection of +our hard trial and sorrow, and I feel that I never shall." "If," ran part +of his first entry in the Diary which he began on the first day of the +following year, "she were with us now, the same winning, happy, amiable +companion, sympathising with all my thoughts and feelings more than any +one I knew ever did or will, I think I should have nothing to wish for but +a continuance of such happiness. But she is gone, and pray God I may one +day, through his mercy, rejoin her." It was not till, in after years, it +became necessary to abandon the project, that he ceased to cherish the +intention of being buried by her side, and through life the memory of her +haunted him with strange vividness. At the Niagara Falls, when the +spectacle of Nature in her glory had produced in him, as he describes it, +a wondrously tranquil and happy peace of mind, he longed for the presence +of his dearest friends, and "I was going to add, what would I give if the +dear girl, whose ashes lie in Kensal Green, had lived to come so far along +with us; but she has been here many times, I doubt not, since her sweet +face faded from my earthly sight." "After she died," he wrote to her +mother in May, 1843, "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and +always with a kind of quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that +I never lay down at night without a hope of the vision coming back in one +shape or other. And so it did." Once he dreamt of her, when travelling in +Yorkshire; and then, after an interval of many months, as he lay asleep +one night at Genoa, it seemed to him as if her spirit visited him and +spoke to him in words which he afterwards precisely remembered, when he +had awaked, with the tears running down his face. He never forgot her, and +in the year before he died he wrote to his friend: "She is so much in my +thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful and have greatly +prospered in anything, that the recollection of her is an essential part +of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as the beating of my +heart is!" In a word, she was the object of the one great imaginative +passion of his life. Many have denied that there is any likeness to nature +in the fictitious figure in which, according to the wont of imaginative +workers, he was irresistibly impelled to embody the sentiment with which +she inspired him; but the sentiment itself became part of his nature, and +part of his history. When in writing the _Old Curiosity Shop_ he +approached the death of Little Nell, he shrunk from the task: "Dear Mary +died yesterday, when I think of this sad story." + +The _Old Curiosity Shop_ has long been freed from the encumbrances which +originally surrounded it, and there is little except biographical interest +in the half-forgotten history of _Master Humphrey's Clock_. Early in the +year 1840, his success and confidence in his powers induced him to +undertake an illustrated weekly journal, in which he depended solely on +his own name, and, in the first instance, on his own efforts, as a writer. +Such was his trust in his versatility that he did not think it necessary +even to open with a continuous story. Perhaps the popularity of the +_Pickwick Papers_ encouraged him to adopt the time-honoured device of +wrapping up several tales in one. In any case, his framework was in the +present instance too elaborate to take hold of the public mind, while the +characters introduced into it possessed little or nothing of the freshness +of their models in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. In order to +re-enforce Master Humphrey, the deaf gentleman, and the other original +members of his benevolent conclave, he hereupon resorted to a natural, but +none the less unhappy, expedient. Mr. Pickwick was revived, together with +Sam Weller and his parent; and a Weller of the third generation was +brought on the stage in the person of a precocious four-year-old, +"standing with his little legs very wide apart as if the top-boots were +familiar to them, and actually winking upon the house-keeper with his +infant eye, in imitation of his grandfather." A laugh may have been raised +at the time by this attempt, from which, however, every true Pickwickian +must have turned sadly away. Nor was there much in the other contents of +these early numbers to make up for the disappointment. As, therefore, +neither "Master Humphrey's Clock" nor "Mr. Weller's Watch" seemed to +promise any lasting success, it was prudently determined that the story of +the _Old Curiosity Shop_, of which the first portion had appeared in the +fourth number of the periodical, should run on continuously; and when this +had been finished, a very short "link" sufficed to introduce another +story, _Barnaby Rudge_, with the close of which _Master Humphrey's Clock_ +likewise stopped. + +In the _Old Curiosity Shop_, though it abounds in both grotesquely +terrible and boisterously laughable effects, the key-note is that of an +idyllic pathos. The sense of this takes hold of the reader at the very +outset, as he lingers over the picture, with which the first chapter +concludes, of little Nell asleep through the solitary night in the +curiosity-dealer's warehouse. It retains possession of him as he +accompanies the innocent heroine through her wanderings, pausing with her +in the church-yard where all is quiet save the cawing of the satirical +rooks, or in the school-master's cottage by the open window, through which +is borne upon the evening air the distant hum of the boys at play upon the +green, while the poor school-master holds in his hand the small cold one +of the little scholar that has fallen asleep. Nor is it absent to the last +when Nell herself lies at rest in her little bed. "Her little bird--a poor +slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed--was stirring +nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute +and motionless forever." The hand which drew Little Nell afterwards formed +other figures not less affecting, but none so essentially poetic. Like +many such characters, this requires, for its full appreciation, a certain +tension of the mind; and those who will not, or cannot, pass in some +measure out of themselves, will be likely to tire of the conception, or to +declare its execution artificial. Curiously enough, not only was Little +Nell a favourite of Landor, a poet and critic utterly averse from +meretricious art, but she also deeply moved the sympathy of Lord Jeffrey, +who at least knew his own mind, and spoke it in both praise and blame. As +already stated, Dickens only with difficulty brought himself to carry his +story to its actual issue, though it is hard to believe that he could ever +have intended a different close from that which he gave to it. His whole +heart was in the story, nor could he have consoled himself by means of an +ordinary happy ending. + +Dickens's comic humour never flowed in a pleasanter vein than in the _Old +Curiosity Shop_, and nowhere has it a more exquisite element of pathos in +it. The shock-headed, red-cheeked Kit is one of the earliest of those +ungainly figures who speedily find their way into our affections--the odd +family to which Mr. Toots, Tom Pinch, Tommy Traddles, and Joe Gargery +alike belong. But the triumph of this serio-comic form of art in the _Old +Curiosity Shop_ is to be found in the later experiences of Dick Swiveller, +who seems at first merely a more engaging sample of the Bob Sawyer +species, but who ends by endearing himself to the most thoughtless +laugher. Dick Swiveller and his protégée have gained a lasting place among +the favourite characters of English fiction, and the privations of the +Marchioness have possibly had a result which would have been that most +coveted by Dickens--that of helping towards the better treatment of a +class whose lot is among the dust and ashes, too often very bitter ashes, +of many households. Besides these, the story contains a variety of +incidental characters of a class which Dickens never grew weary of drawing +from the life. Messrs. Codlin, Short, and Company, and the rest of the +itinerant showmen, seem to have come straight from the most real of +country fairs; and if ever a _troupe_ of comedians deserved pity on their +wanderings through a callous world, it was the most diverting and the most +dismal of all the mountebanks that gathered round the stew of tripe in +the kitchen of The Jolly Sandboys--Jerry's performing dogs. + + "'Your people don't usually travel in character, do they?' said Short, + pointing to the dresses of the dogs. 'It must come expensive if they + do.' + + "'No,' replied Jerry--'no, it's not the custom with us. But we've been + playing a little on the road to-day, and we come out with a new + wardrobe at the races, so I didn't think it worth while to stop to + undress. Down, Pedro!'" + +In addition to these public servants we have a purveyor of diversion--or +instruction--of an altogether different stamp. "Does the caravan look as +if _it_ know'd em?" indignantly demands the proprietress of Jarley's +wax-work, when asked whether she is acquainted with the men of the Punch +show. She too is drawn, or moulded, in the author's most exuberant style +of fun, together with _her_ company, in which "all the gentlemen were very +pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards, and all the ladies were +miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all the gentlemen were looking +intensely nowhere, and staring with extraordinary earnestness at nothing." + +In contrast with these genial products of observation and humour stand the +grotesquely hideous personages who play important parts in the machinery +of the story, the vicious dwarf Quilp and the monstrous virago Sally +Brass. The former is among the most successful attempts of Dickens in a +direction which was full of danger for him, as it is for all writers; the +malevolent little demon is so blended with his surroundings--the +description of which forms one of the author's most telling pictures of +the lonely foulnesses of the river-side--that his life seems natural in +its way, and his death a most appropriate ending to it. Sally Brass, +"whose accomplishments were all of a masculine and strictly legal kind," +is less of a caricature, and not without a humorously redeeming point of +feminine weakness; yet the end of her and her brother is described at the +close of the book with almost tragic earnestness. On the whole, though the +poetic sympathy of Dickens when he wrote this book was absorbed in the +character of his heroine, yet his genius rarely asserted itself after a +more diversified fashion. + +Of _Barnaby Rudge_, though in my opinion an excellent book after its kind, +I may speak more briefly. With the exception of _A Tale of Two Cities_, it +was Dickens's only attempt in the historical novel. In the earlier work +the relation between the foreground and background of the story is +skilfully contrived, and the colouring of the whole, without any elaborate +attempt at accurate fidelity, has a generally true and harmonious effect. +With the help of her portrait by a painter (Mr. Frith) for whose pictures +Dickens had a great liking, Dolly Varden has justly taken hold of the +popular fancy as a charming type of a pretty girl of a century ago. And +some of the local descriptions in the early part of the book are hardly +less pleasing: the Temple in summer, as it was before the charm of +Fountain Court was destroyed by its guardians; and the picturesque +comforts of the Maypole Inn, described beforehand, by way of contrast to +the desecration of its central sanctuary. The intrigue of the story is +fairly interesting in itself, and the gentlemanly villain who plays a +principal part in it, though, as usual, over-elaborated, is drawn with +more skill than Dickens usually displays in such characters. After the +main interest of the book has passed to the historical action of the +George Gordon riots, the story still retains its coherence, and, a few +minor improbabilities apart, is successfully conducted to its close. No +historical novel can altogether avoid the banalities of the species; and +though Dickens, like all the world, had his laugh at the late Mr. G. P. R. +James, he is constrained to introduce the historical hero of the tale, +with his confidential adviser, and his attendant, in the familiar guise of +three horsemen. As for Lord George Gordon himself, and the riots of which +the responsibility remains inseparable from his unhappy memory, the +representation of them in the novel sufficiently accords both with poetic +probability and with historical fact. The poor lord's evil genius, indeed, +Gashford--who has no historical original--tries the reader's sense of +verisimilitude rather hard; such converts are uncommon except among +approvers. The Protestant hangman, on the other hand, has some slight +historical warranty; but the leading part which he is made to play in the +riots, and his resolution to go any lengths "in support of the great +Protestant principle of hanging," overshoot the mark. It cannot be said +that there is any substantial exaggeration in the description of the +riots; thus, the burning of the great distiller's house in Holborn is a +well-authenticated fact; and there is abundant vigour in the narrative. +Repetition is unavoidable in treating such a theme, but in _Barnaby Rudge_ +it is not rendered less endurable by mannerism, nor puffed out with +rhetoric. + +One very famous character in this story was, as personages in historical +novels often are, made up out of two originals.[4] This was Grip the +Raven, who, after seeing the idiot hero of the tale safe through his +adventures, resumed his addresses on the subject of the kettle to the +horses in the stable; and who, "as he was a mere infant when Barnaby was +gray, has very probably gone on talking to the present time." In a later +preface to _Barnaby Rudge_, Dickens, with infinite humour, related his +experiences of the two originals in question, and how he had been +ravenless since the mournful death before the kitchen fire of the second +of the pair, the _Grip_ of actual life. This occurred in the house at +Devonshire Terrace, into which the family had moved two years before (in +1839). + +As Dickens's fame advanced his circle of acquaintances was necessarily +widened; and in 1841 he was invited to visit Edinburgh, and to receive +there the first great tribute of public recognition which had been paid to +him. He was entertained with great enthusiasm at a public banquet, voted +the freedom of the city, and so overwhelmed with hospitalities that, +notwithstanding his frank pleasure in these honours, he was glad to make +his escape at last, and refreshed himself with a tour in the Highlands. +These excitements may have intensified in him a desire which had for some +time been active in his mind, and which in any case would have been kept +alive by an incessant series of invitations. He had signed an agreement +with his publishers for a new book before this desire took the shape of an +actual resolution. There is no great difficulty in understanding why +Dickens made up his mind to go to America, and thus to interrupt for the +moment a course of life and work which was fast leading him on to great +heights of fame and fortune. The question of international copyright alone +would hardly have induced him to cross the seas. Probably he felt +instinctively that to see men and cities was part of the training as well +as of the recreation which his genius required. Dickens was by nature one +of those artists who when at work always long to be in sympathy with their +public, and to know it to be in sympathy with them. And hitherto he had +not met more than part of his public of readers face to face. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +STRANGE LANDS. + +[1842-1847.] + + +A journey across the Atlantic in midwinter is no child's-play even at the +present day, when, bad though their passage may have been, few people +would venture to confess doubts, as Dickens did, concerning the safety of +such a voyage by steam in heavy weather. The travellers--for Dickens was +accompanied by his wife--had an exceptionally rough crossing, the horrors +of which he has described in his _American Notes_. His powers of +observation were alive in the midst of the lethargy of sea-sickness, and +when he could not watch others he found enough amusement in watching +himself. At last, on January 28, 1842, they found themselves in Boston +harbour. Their stay in the United States lasted about four months, during +which time they saw Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, +Richmond, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Buffalo. Then they passed by +Niagara into Canada, and after a pleasant visit to Montreal, diversified +by private theatricals with the officers there, were safe at home again in +July. + +Dickens had met with an enthusiastic welcome in every part of the States +where he had not gone out of the way of it; in New York, in particular, +he had been fêted, with a fervour unique even in the history of American +enthusiasms, under the resounding title of "the Guest of the Nation." +Still, even this imposed no moral obligation upon him to take the advice +tendered to him in America, and to avoid writing about that country--"we +are so very suspicious." On the other hand, whatever might be his +indignation at the obstinate unwillingness of the American public to be +moved a hair's-breadth by his championship of the cause of international +copyright,[5] this failure could not, in a mind so reasonable as his, have +outweighed the remembrance of the kindness shown to him and to his fame. +But the truth seems to be that he had, if not at first, at least very +speedily, taken a dislike to American ways which proved too strong for him +to the last. In strange lands, most of all in a country which, like the +United States, is not in the least ashamed to be what it is, travellers +are necessarily at the outset struck by details; and Dickens's habit of +minute observation was certain not to let him lose many of them. He was +neither long enough in the country to study very closely, nor was it in +his way to ponder very deeply, the problems involved in the existence of +many of the institutions with which he found fault. Thus, he was indignant +at the sight of slavery, and even ventured to "tell a piece of his mind" +on the subject to a judge in the South; but when, twenty years later, the +great struggle came, at the root of which this question lay, his +sympathies were with the cause of disunion and slavery in its conflict +with the "mad and villanous" North. In short, his knowledge of America +and its affairs was gained in such a way and under such circumstances as +to entitle him, if he chose, to speak to the vast public which he +commanded as an author of men and manners as observed by him; but he had +no right to judge the destinies and denounce the character of a great +people on evidence gathered in the course of a holiday tour. + +Nor, indeed, did the _American Notes_, published by him after his return +home, furnish any serious cause of offence. In an introductory chapter, +which was judiciously suppressed, he had taken credit for the book as not +having "a grain of any political ingredient in its whole composition." +Indeed, the contents were rather disappointing from their meagreness. The +author showed good taste in eschewing all reference to his personal +reception, and good judgment in leaving the copyright question +undiscussed. But though his descriptions were as vivid as usual--whether +of the small steamboat, "of about half a pony power," on the Connecticut +river, or of the dismal scenery on the Mississippi, "great father of +rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him!"--and +though some of the figure-sketches were touched off with the happiest of +hands, yet the public, even in 1842, was desirous to learn something more +about America than this. It is true that Dickens had, with his usual +conscientiousness, examined and described various interesting public +institutions in the States--prisons, asylums, and the like; but the book +was not a very full one; it was hardly anything but a sketch-book, with +more humour, but with infinitely less poetic spirit, than the +_Sketch-book_ of the illustrious American author whose friendship had been +one of the chief personal gains of Dickens's journey. + +The _American Notes_, for which the letters to Forster had furnished ample +materials, were published in the year of Dickens's return, after he had +refreshed himself with a merry Cornish trip in the company of his old +friend, and his two other intimates, "Stanny" and "Mac." But he had not +come home, as he had not gone out, to be idle. On the first day of the +following year, 1843, appeared the first number of the story which was to +furnish the real _casus discriminis_ between Dickens and the enemies, as +well no doubt as a very large proportion of the friends, whom he had left +behind him across the water. The American scenes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ +did not, it is true, begin till the fifth number of the story; nor is it +probable from the accounts of the sale, which was much smaller than +Dickens had expected, that these particular episodes at first produced any +strong feeling in the English public. But the merits of the book gradually +obtained for it a popularity at home which has been surpassed by that of +but one or two other of Dickens's works; and in proportion to this +popularity was the effect exercised by its American chapters. What that +effect has been, it would be hypocrisy to question. + +Dickens, it is very clear, had been unable to resist the temptation of at +once drawing upon the vast addition to his literary capital as a +humourist. That the satire of many of the American scenes in _Martin +Chuzzlewit_ is, as satire, not less true than telling, it needs but a +small acquaintance with American journalism and oratory even at the +present day to perceive; and the heartrending history of Eden, as a type +of some of the settlements "vaunted in England as a mine of Golden Hope," +at least had the warrant of something more than hearsay and a look in +passing. Nor, as has already been observed, would it have been in +accordance either with human nature, or with the fitness of things, had +Dickens allowed his welcome in America to become to him (as he termed it +in the suppressed Preface to the _Notes_) "an iron muzzle disguised +beneath a flower or two." But the frankness, to say the least, of the +mirror into which he now invited his late hosts to gaze was not likely to +produce grateful compliments to its presenter, nor was the effect softened +by the despatch with which this _souvenir_ of the "guest of the nation" +was pressed upon its attention. No doubt it would have been easy to +reflect that only the evil, not the good, sides of social life in America +were held up to derision and contempt, and that an honourable American +journalist had no more reason to resent the portraiture of Mr. Jefferson +Brick than a virtuous English paterfamilias had to quarrel with that of +Mr. Pecksniff. Unfortunately, offence is usually taken where offence is +meant; and there can be little doubt as to the _animus_ with which Dickens +had written. Only two months after landing at Boston Dickens had declared +to Macready, that "however much he liked the ingredients of this great +dish, he could not but say that the dish itself went against the grain +with him, and that he didn't like it." It was not, and could not be, +pleasant for Americans to find the "_New York Sewer_, in its twelfth +thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their +names printed," introduced as the first expression of "the bubbling +passions of their country;" or to be certified, apropos of a conversation +among American "gentlemen" after dinner, that dollars, and dollars only, +at the risk of honesty and honour, filled their souls. "No satirist," +Martin Chuzzlewit is told by a candid and open-minded American, "could, I +believe, breathe this air." But satire in such passages as these borders +too closely on angry invective; and neither the irresistible force nor the +earnest pathos of the details which follow can clear away the suspicion +that at the bottom lay a desire to depreciate. Nor was the general effect +of the American episodes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ materially modified by +their conclusion, to which, with the best of intentions, the author could +not bring himself to give a genuinely complimentary turn. The Americans +did not like all this, and could not be expected to like it. The tone of +the whole satire was too savage, and its tenor was too hopelessly +one-sided, for it to pass unresented; while much in it was too near the +truth to glance off harmless. It is well known that in time Dickens came +himself to understand this. Before quitting America, in 1868, he declared +his intention to publish in every future edition of his _American Notes_ +and _Martin Chuzzlewit_ his testimony to the magnanimous cordiality of his +second reception in the States, and to the amazing changes for the better +which he had seen everywhere around him during his second sojourn in the +country. But it is not likely that the postscript, all the more since it +was added under circumstances so honourable to both sides, has undone, or +will undo, the effect of the text. Very possibly the Americans may, in the +eyes of the English people as well as in their own, cease to be chargeable +with the faults and foibles satirised by Dickens; but the satire itself +will live, and will continue to excite laughter and loathing, together +with the other satire of the powerful book to which it belongs. + +For in none of his books is that power, which at times filled their author +himself with astonishment, more strikingly and abundantly revealed than in +_The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit_. Never was his inventive +force more flexible and more at his command; yet none of his books cost +him more hard work. The very names of hero and novel were only the final +fortunate choice out of a legion of notions; though "Pecksniff" as well as +"Charity" and "Mercy" ("not unholy names, I hope," said Mr. Pecksniff to +Mrs. Todgers) were first inspirations. The MS. text too is full of the +outward signs of care. But the author had his reward in the general +impression of finish which is conveyed by this book as compared with its +predecessors; so that _Martin Chuzzlewit_ may be described as already one +of the masterpieces of Dickens's maturity as a writer. Oddly enough, the +one part of the book which moves rather heavily is the opening chapter, an +effort in the mock-heroic, probably suggested by the author's eighteenth +century readings. + +A more original work, however, than _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was never +composed, or one which more freshly displays the most characteristic +qualities of its author's genius. Though the actual construction of the +story is anything but faultless--for what could be more slender than the +thread by which the American interlude is attached to the main action, or +more wildly improbable than the hazardous stratagem of old Martin upon +which that action turns?--yet it is so contrived as to fulfil the author's +avowed intention of exhibiting under various forms the evil and the folly +of selfishness. This vice is capable of both serious and comic treatment, +and commended itself in each aspect to Dickens as being essentially +antagonistic to his moral and artistic ideals of human life. A true comedy +of humours thus unfolded itself with the progress of his book, and one for +which the types had not been fetched from afar: "Your homes the scene; +yourselves the actors here," had been the motto which he had at first +intended to put upon his title-page. Thus, while in "the old-established +firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son" selfishness is cultivated as a growth +excellent in itself, and the son's sentiment, "Do other men, for they +would do you," is applauded by his admiring father, in young Martin the +vice rather resembles a weed strong and rank, yet not so strong but that +it gives way at last before a manly endeavour to uproot it. The character +of the hero, though very far from heroic, is worked out with that reliance +upon the fellow-feeling of candid readers which in our great novelists of +the eighteenth century has obtained sympathy for much less engaging +personages. More especially is the young man's loss of self-respect in the +season of his solitary wretchedness depicted with admirable feeling. It +would not, I think, be fanciful to assert that in this story Dickens has +with equal skill distinguished between two species of unselfishness. Mark +Tapley's is the actively unselfish nature, and though his reiteration of +his guiding motive is wearisome and occasionally absurd, yet the power of +coming out jolly under unpropitious circumstances is a genuinely English +ideal of manly virtue. Tom Pinch's character, on the other hand, is +unselfish from innate sweetness; and never has the art of Dickens drawn a +type which, while closely approaching the border-line of the grotesque, is +yet so charmingly true to nature. + +Grotesque characters proper are numerous enough in this book, but all the +others pale before the immortal presence of Mrs. Gamp. She had been traced +to an original in real life, but her literary right to stand on her own +legs has been most properly vindicated against any supposition of likeness +to the different type, the subject of Leigh Hunt's _Monthly Nurse_--a +paper, by-the-way, distinguished by shrewdness as well as feeling. +Imagination has never taken bolder flights than those requisite for the +development of Mrs. Gamp's mental processes: + + "'And which of all them smoking monsters is the Ankworks boat, I + wonder? Goodness me!' cried Mrs. Gamp. + + "'What boat did you want?' asked Ruth. + + "'The Ankworks package,' Mrs. Gamp replied. 'I will not deceive you, + my sweet. Why should I?' + + "'That is the Antwerp packet in the middle,' said Ruth. + + "'And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do!' cried Mrs. Gamp, + appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in this miraculous + aspiration." + +A hardly inferior exertion of creative power was needed in order to fix in +distinct forms the peculiarities of her diction, nay, to sustain the +unique rhythm of her speech: + + "'I says to Mrs. Harris,' Mrs. Gamp continued, 'only t' other day, the + last Monday fortnight as ever dawned upon this Piljian's Projiss of a + mortal wale; I says to Mrs. Harris, when she says to me, "Years and + our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us all"--"Say not the words, + Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to be continual friends, for sech is not + the case."'" + +Yet the reality of Mrs. Gamp has been acknowledged to be such that she has +been the death of her sisterhood in a great part (to say the least) of our +hospital wards and sick-rooms; and as for her oddities of tongue, they +are, with the exception of her boldest figures, but the glorified type of +all the utterances heard to this day from charwomen, laundresses, and +single gentlemen's house-keepers. Compared with her, even her friend and +patron, Mr. Mould, and her admirer, Mr. Bailey, and in other parts of the +book the low company at Todgers's and the fine company at Mr. Tigg +Montague's sink into insignificance. The aged Chuffey is a grotesque study +of a very different kind, of which the pathos never loses itself in +exaggeration. As for Pecksniff, he is as far out of the range of +grotesque as, except when moralising over the banisters at Todgers's, he +is out of that of genial characters. He is the richest comic type, while +at the same time one of the truest, among the innumerable reproductions in +English imaginative literature of our favourite national vice--hypocrisy. +His friendliness is the very quintessence of falsehood: "Mr. Pinch," he +cries to poor Tom over the currant-wine and captain's biscuits, "if you +spare the bottle, we shall quarrel!" His understanding with his daughters +is the very perfection of guile, for they confide in him, even when +ignorant of his intentions, because of their certainty "that in all he +does he has his purpose straight and full before him." And he is a man who +understands the times as well as the land in which he lives; for, as M. +Taine has admirably pointed out, where Tartuffe would have been full of +religious phrases, Pecksniff presents himself as a humanitarian +philosopher. Comic art has never more successfully fulfilled its highest +task after its truest fashion than in this picture of the rise and fall of +a creature who never ceases to be laughable, and yet never ceases to be +loathsome. Nothing is wanting in this wonderful book to attest the +exuberance of its author's genius. The kindly poetic spirit of the +Christmas books breathes in sweet Ruth Pinch; and the tragic power of the +closing chapters of _Oliver Twist_ is recalled by the picture of Jonas +before and after his deed of blood. I say nothing of merely descriptive +passages, though in none of his previous stories had Dickens so completely +mastered the secret of describing scenery and weather in their relation to +his action or his characters. + +_Martin Chuzzlewit_ ran its course of twenty monthly numbers; but already +a week or two before the appearance of the first of these, Dickens had +bestowed upon the public, young and old, the earliest of his delightful +_Christmas Books_. Among all his productions perhaps none connected him so +closely, and as it were personally, with his readers. Nor could it well +have been otherwise; since nowhere was he so directly intent upon +promoting kindliness of feeling among men--more especially good-will, +founded upon respect, towards the poor. Cheerfulness was, from his point +of view, twin-sister to charity; and sulkiness, like selfishness, +belonged, as an appropriate ort, to the dust-heap of "Tom Tiddler's +Ground." What more fit than that he should mingle such sentiments as these +with the holly and the mistletoe of the only English holiday in which +remains a vestige of religious and poetic feeling? Beyond all doubt there +is much that is tedious in the _cultus_ of Father Christmas, and there was +yet more in the days when the lower classes in England had not yet come to +look upon a sufficiency of periodical holidays as part of their democratic +inheritance. But that Dickens should constitute himself its chief minister +and interpreter was nothing but fit. Already one of the _Sketches_ had +commended a Christmas-dinner at which a seat is not denied even to "poor +Aunt Margaret;" and Mr. Pickwick had never been more himself than in the +Christmas game of Blind-man's-buff at Dingley Dell, in which "the poor +relations caught the people who they thought would like it," and, when the +game flagged, "got caught themselves." But he now sought to reach the +heart of the subject; and the freshness of his fancy enabled him +delightfully to vary his illustrations of a text of which it can do no man +harm to be reminded in as well as out of season. + +Dickens's Christmas books were published in the Christmas seasons of +1843-1846, and of 1848. If the palm is to be granted to any one among +them above its fellows, few readers would hesitate, I think, to declare +themselves in favour of _The Cricket on the Hearth_, as tender and +delicate a domestic idyl as any literature can boast. But the informing +spirit proper of these productions, the desire to stir up a feeling of +benevolence, more especially towards the poor and lowly, nowhere shows +itself more conspicuously than in the earliest, _A Christmas Carol in +Prose_, and nowhere more combatively than in the second in date, the +"Goblin Story" of _The Chimes_. Of the former its author declared that he +"wept and laughed and wept again" over it, "and excited himself in a most +extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking thereof he walked +about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a night, +when all the sober folks had gone to bed." Simple in its romantic design +like one of Andersen's little tales, the _Christmas Carol_ has never lost +its hold upon a public in whom it has called forth Christmas thoughts +which do not all centre on "holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, +geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, +puddings, fruit, and punch;" and the Cratchit household, with Tiny Tim, +who did not die, are living realities even to those who have not seen Mr. +Toole--an actor after Dickens's own heart--as the father of the family, +shivering in his half-yard of comforter. + +In _The Chimes_, composed in self-absorbed solitude at Genoa, he imagined +that "he had written a tremendous book, and knocked the _Carol_ out of the +field." Though the little work failed to make "the great uproar" he had +confidently anticipated, its purpose was certainly unmistakable; but the +effect of hard exaggerations such as Mr. Filer and Alderman Cute, and of a +burlesque absurdity like Sir Joseph Bowley, was too dreary to be +counteracted by the more pleasing passages of the tale. In his novel _Hard +Times_ Dickens afterwards reproduced some of the ideas, and repeated some +of the artistic mistakes, to be found in _The Chimes_, though the design +of the later work was necessarily of a more mixed kind. The Christmas book +has the tone of a _doctrinaire_ protest against _doctrinaires_, and, as +Forster has pointed out, is manifestly written under the influence of +Carlyle. But its main doctrine was one which Dickens lost no opportunity +of proclaiming, and which here breaks forth in the form of an indignant +appeal by Richard Fern, the outlaw in spite of himself: "Gentlefolks, be +not hard upon the poor!" No feeling was more deeply rooted in Dickens's +heart than this; nor could he forbear expressing it by invective and +satire as well as by humorous and pathetic pictures of his clients, among +whom Trotty Veck too takes a representative place. + +_The Cricket on the Hearth_, as a true work of art, is not troubled about +its moral, easily though half-a-dozen plain morals might be drawn from it; +a purer and more lightsome creation of the fancy has never been woven out +of homespun materials. Of the same imaginative type, though not executed +with a fineness so surpassing, is _The Battle of Life_, the treatment of a +fancy in which Dickens appears to have taken great pleasure. Indeed, he +declared that he was "thoroughly wretched at having to use the idea for so +short a story." As it stands, it is a pretty idyl of resignation, very +poetical in tone as well as in conception, though here and there, +notwithstanding the complaint just quoted, rather lengthy. It has been +conjectured, with much probability, that the success which had attended +dramatic versions of Dickens's previous Christmas books caused "those +admirable comedians, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley," to be in his mind "when he drew +the charming characters of Britain and Clemency Newcome." At all events +the pair serve as good old bits of English pottery to relieve the delicate +Sèvres sentiment of Grace and Marion. In the last of Dickens's Christmas +books, _The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain_, he returns once more to +a machinery resembling those of the earliest. But the fancy on which the +action turns is here more forced, and the truth which it illustrates is +after all only a half-truth, unless taken as part of the greater truth, +that the moral conditions of man's life are more easily marred than +mended. Once more the strength of the book lies in its humorous side. The +picture of the good Milly's humble protégés, the Tetterby family, is to +remind us that happiness consists precisely in that which the poor and the +rich may alike obtain, but which it is so difficult for the poor, amidst +their shifts and shabbiness, to keep fresh and green. Even without the +evil influence of an enchanted chemist, it is hard enough for the Mrs. +Tetterbys of real life always to be ministering angels to their families; +for the hand of every little Tetterby not occasionally to be against the +other little Tetterbys, and even for a devoted Johnny's temper never to +rise against Moloch. All the more is that to be cherished in the poor +which makes them love one another. + +More than one of these Christmas books, both the humour and the sentiment +of which are so peculiarly English, was written on foreign soil. Dickens's +general conceptions of life, not less than his literary individuality, had +been formed before he became a traveller and sojourner in foreign lands. +In Italy, as elsewhere, a man will, in a sense, find only what he takes +there. At all events the changed life brought with it for Dickens, though +not at once, a refreshment and a brief repose which invigorated him for +some of the truest efforts of his genius. His resolution to spend some +time on the Continent had not been taken rashly, although it was at least +hastened by business disappointments. He seems at this time, as was +virtually inevitable, to have seen a good deal of society in London, and +more especially to have become a welcome guest of Lady Blessington and +Count d'Orsay at Gore House. Moreover, his services were beginning to be +occasionally claimed as a public speaker; and altogether he must have +found more of his time than he wished slipping through his hands. Lastly, +he very naturally desired to see what was to be seen, and to enjoy what +was to be enjoyed, by one gifted with a sleepless observation and animated +by a genuine love of nature and art. The letters, public and private, +which he wrote from Italy, are not among the most interesting productions +of his pen; even his humour seems now and then ill at ease in them, and +his descriptive power narrow in its range. His eyes were occasionally +veiled, as are those of most travellers in quest of "first impressions." +Thus I cannot but think his picture of Naples inadequate, and that of its +population unjust. Again, although he may have told the truth in asserting +that the Eternal City, at first sight, "looked like--I am half afraid to +write the word--like LONDON," and although his general description of Rome +has been pronounced correct by competent judgment, yet it is impossible to +ignore in it the undertone of Bow Bells. On the other hand, not even in +his newspaper letters can he be said to fall into affectation; his +impressions are never given pretentiously, and are accordingly seldom +altogether worthless; while his criticisms of works of art, when offered, +are candid and shrewd, besides being invariably his own. + +Thus, there was never anything truer in its way than the account which he +gave to Maclise of his first impressions a few days after his arrival at +Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where he found himself settled with his family +in July, 1844. He re-christened his abode, the Villa Bagnerello ("it +sounds romantic, but Signor Banderello is a butcher hard by"), "the Pink +Jail." Here, with abundance of space and time, and with a view from his +writing-table of "the sea, the mountains, the washed-out villas, the +vineyards, the blistering hot fort, with a sentry on the drawbridge +standing in a bit of shadow no broader than his own musket, and the sky," +he began his _villeggiatura_, and resolving not to know, or to be known +where it could be helped, looked round him at his leisure. This looking +round very naturally took up some time; for the circuit of Dickens's daily +observation was unusually wide. Soon he was seeking winter-quarters in +Genoa it self, and by October was established in the Palazzo Peschiere, +situate on a height within the walls of the city, and overlooking the +whole of it, with the harbour and the sea beyond. "There is not in Italy, +they say (and I believe them), a lovelier residence." Even here, however, +among fountains and frescoes, it was some time before he could set +steadily to work at his Christmas story. At last the bells of Genoa chimed +a title for it into his restless ears; and, though longing with a nostalgy +that was specially strong upon him at periods of mental excitement for his +nightly walks in the London streets, he settled down to his task. I have +already described the spirit in which he executed it. No sooner was the +writing done than the other half of his double artist-nature was seized +with another craving. The rage which possesses authors to read their +writings aloud to sympathizing ears, if such can be found, is a well-worn +theme of satire; but in Dickens the actor was almost as strong as the +author, and he could not withstand the desire to interpret in person what +he had written, and to watch its effect with his own eyes and ears. In the +first days of November, therefore, he set off from Genoa, and made his way +home by Bologna, Venice, Milan, and the Simplon Pass. Of this journey his +_Pictures from Italy_ contains the record, including a chapter about +Venice, pitched in an unusually poetic key. But not all the memories of +all the Doges could have stayed the execution of his set purpose. On the +30th of November he reached London, and on the 2d of December he was +reading the _Chimes_, from the proofs, to the group of friends +immortalised in Maclise's inimitable sketch. Three days afterwards the +reading was repeated to a slightly different audience; and, indeed, it +would seem, from an enthusiastic postscript to a letter addressed to his +wife, that he had read at least part of the book to Macready on the night +before that of the first conclave. The distance was no doubt wide between +the intimacy of these friendly readings and the stormy seas of public +audiences; but, however unconsciously, the first step had been taken. It +may be worth noticing, in connexion with this, that the scheme of a +private dramatic performance, which was to occupy much of Dickens's +"leisure" in the year following, was proposed for the first time on the +occasion of the first reading of the _Chimes_. Before Christmas he was +back again in his "Italian bowers." If the strain of his effort in writing +the _Chimes_ had been severe, the holiday which followed was long. In the +later winter and early spring of 1845 he and the ladies of his family saw +Rome and Naples, and in June their Italian life came to an end, and they +were in London before the close of the month. Projects of work remained in +abeyance until the absorbing fancy of a private play had been realised +with an earnestness such as only Dickens could carry into his amusements, +and into this particular amusement above all others. The play was _Every +Man in his Humour_; the theatre, the little house in Dean Street, of whose +chequered fortunes no theatrical history has succeeded in exhausting the +memories; and the manager was, of course, "Bobadil," as Dickens now took +to signing himself. His joking remark to Macready, that he "thought of +changing his present mode of life, and was open to an engagement," was +after all not so very wide of the mark. According to the inevitable rule +in such things, he and his friends--among whom Mark Lemon, Douglas +Jerrold, and Forster were conspicuous--were "induced" to repeat their +performance at a larger house for a public charity, and later in the year +they played _The Elder Brother_ for Miss Fanny Kelly's benefit. Leigh +Hunt, whose opinion, however, could hardly fail to be influenced by the +circumstances under which Ben Jonson's comedy was afterwards performed by +the amateurs, and who was no longer the youthful Draco of the _News_, +afterwards spoke very highly of Dickens's Bobadil. It had "a spirit in it +of intellectual apprehension beyond anything the existing stage has +shown." His acting in the farce which followed Leigh Hunt thought +"throughout admirable; quite rich and filled up." + +Christmas, 1845, had passed, and _The Cricket on the Hearth_ had graced +the festival, when an altogether new chapter in Dickens's life seemed +about to open for him. The experience through which he now passed was one +on which his biographer, for reasons easy to guess, has touched very +slightly, while his _Letters_ throw no additional light on it at all. Most +people, I imagine, would decline to pronounce upon the qualifications +requisite in an editor of a great political journal. Yet, literary power +of a kind which acts upon the multitude rapidly and powerfully, habits of +order so confirmed as to have almost become second nature, and an interest +in the affairs of the nation fed by an ardent enthusiasm for its +welfare--these would seem to go some way towards making up the list. Of +all these qualifications Dickens at various times gave proof, and they +sufficed in later years to make him the successful conductor of a weekly +journal which aimed at the enlightenment hardly less than at the +entertainment of no inconsiderable portion of the British public. But, in +the first place, political journalism proper is a craft of which very few +men have been known to become masters by intuition, and Dickens had as yet +had no real experience of it. His zealous efforts as a reporter can hardly +be taken into account here. He had for a short time edited a miscellany of +amusement, and had failed to carry beyond a beginning the not very +carefully considered scheme of another. Recently, he had resumed the old +notion of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ in a different shape; but nothing had +come of his projected cheap weekly paper for the present, while its title, +"_The Cricket_," was reserved for a different use. Since his reporting +days he had, however, now and then appeared among the lighter combatants +of political literature. In 1841 he had thrown a few squibs in the +_Examiner_ at Sir Robert Peel and the Tories; and from about the same date +he had, besides occasionally contributing to the literary and theatrical +columns of the same weekly journal, now and then discussed in it subjects +of educational or other general interest.[6] Finally, it is stated by +Forster that in 1844, when the greatest political struggle of the last +generation was approaching its climax, Dickens contributed some articles +to the _Morning Chronicle_ which attracted attention and led to +negotiations with the editor that arrived at no positive result. If these +contributions treated any political questions whatever, they were, with +the exception of the few _Examiner_ papers, and of the letters to the +_Daily News_ to be mentioned in this chapter, the only articles of this +kind which, to my knowledge, he ever wrote. + +For, from first to last, whether in the days when Oliver Twist suffered +under the maladministration of the Poor-law, or in those when Arthur +Clennam failed to make an impression upon the Circumlocution Office, +politics were with Dickens a sentiment rather than a study or a pursuit. +With his habits of application and method, it might have taken but a very +short time for him to train himself as a politician; but this short time +never actually occurred. There is, however, no reason to suppose that +when, in 1841, a feeler was put out by some more or less influential +persons at Reading, with regard to his willingness to be nominated for the +representation of that borough, he had any reason for declining the +proposal besides that which he stated in his replies. He could not afford +the requisite expense; and he was determined not to forfeit his +independence through accepting Government--by which I hope he means Whig +party--aid for meeting the cost of the contest. Still, in 1845, though +slack of faith in the "people who govern us," he had not yet become the +irreclaimable political sceptic of later days; and without being in any +way bound to the Whigs, he had that general confidence in Lord John +Russell which was all they could expect from their irregular followers. As +yet, however, he had shown no sign of any special aptitude or inclination +for political work, though if he addressed himself to questions affecting +the health and happiness of the humbler classes, he was certain to bring +to them the enthusiasm of a genuine sympathy. And a question of this kind +was uppermost in Englishmen's minds in this year 1845, when at last the +time was drawing near for the complete abolition of the tax upon the +staple article of the poor man's daily food. + +The establishment of a new London morning paper, on the scale to which +those already in existence had attained, was a serious matter in itself; +but it seems to have been undertaken in no spirit of diffidence by the +projectors and first proprietors of the _Daily News_. With the early +history of the experiment I cannot here concern myself; it is, however, an +open secret that the rate of expenditure of the new journal was at first +on a most liberal, not to say lavish, scale, and that the losses of the +proprietors were for many years very large indeed. Established on those +principles of Radicalism which, on the whole, it has in both good and evil +times consistently maintained, the _Daily News_ was to rise superior to +the opportunism, if not to the advertisements, of the _Times_, and to +outstrip the cautious steps of the Whig _Morning Chronicle_. Special +attention was to be given to those industrial enterprises with which the +world teemed in that speculative age, and no doubt also to those social +questions affecting the welfare and elevation of the masses and the +relations between employers and employed, which were attracting more and +more of the public attention. But in the first instance the actual +political situation would oblige the new journal to direct the greater +part of its energies to one particular question, which had, in truth, +already been threshed out by the organs of public opinion, and as to which +the time for action had at last arrived. No Liberal journal projected in +1845, and started early in 1846, could fail to concentrate its activity +for a time upon the question of the Corn-laws, to which the session of +1846 was to give the death-blow. + +It is curious enough, on opening the first number of the _Daily News_, +dated January 21, 1846, to find one's self transplanted into the midst of +one of the most memorable episodes of our more recent political history. +The very advertisements of subscriptions to the Anti-Corn-law League, with +the good old Manchester names figuring conspicuously among them, have a +historic interest; and the report of a disputation on free-trade at +Norwich, in which all the hits are made by Mr. Cobden, another report of a +great London meeting on the same subject, and some verses concerning the +people's want of its bread, probably written by Mr. Charles Mackay, occupy +an entire page of the paper. Railway news and accounts of railway meetings +fill about the same space; while the foreign news is extremely meagre. +There remain the leading articles, four in number--of which three are on +the burning question of the day--and the first of a series of _Travelling +Letters Written on the Road, by Charles Dickens_ (the Avignon chapter in +the _Pictures from Italy_.)[7] The hand of the editor is traceable only +in this _feuilleton_ and in the opening article of the new paper. On +internal evidence I conclude that this article, which has little to +distinguish it from similar manifestoes, unless it be a moderation of tone +that would not have suited Captain Shandon, was not written by Dickens +alone or unassisted. But his hand is traceable in the concluding +paragraphs, which contain the following wordy but spirited assertion of a +cause that Dickens lost no opportunity of advocating: + + "We seek, so far as in us lies, to elevate the character of the Public + Press in England. We believe it would attain a much higher position, + and that those who wield its powers would be infinitely more respected + as a class, and an important one, if it were purged of a disposition + to sordid attacks _upon itself_, which only prevails in England and + America. We discern nothing in the editorial plural that justifies a + gentleman, or body of gentlemen, in discarding a gentleman's + forbearance and responsibility, and venting ungenerous spleen against + a rival, by a perversion of a great power--a power, however, which is + only great so long as it is good and honest. The stamp on newspapers + is not like the stamp on universal medicine-bottles, which licenses + anything, however false and monstrous; and we are sure this misuse of + it, in any notorious case, not only offends and repels right-minded + men in that particular instance, but naturally, though unjustly, + involves the whole Press, as a pursuit or profession, in the feeling + so awakened, and places the character of all who are associated with + it at a great disadvantage. + + "Entering on this adventure of a new daily journal in a spirit of + honourable competition and hope of public usefulness, we seek, in our + new station, at once to preserve our own self-respect, and to be + respected, for ourselves and for it, by our readers. Therefore, we + beg them to receive, in this our first number, the assurance that no + recognition or interchange of trade abuse, by us, shall be the + destruction of either sentiment; and that we intend proceeding on our + way, and theirs, without stooping to any such flowers by the + roadside." + +I am unable to say how many days it was after the appearance of this first +number that Dickens, or the proprietors of the journal, or, as seems most +likely, both sides simultaneously, began to consider the expediency of +ending the connexion between them. He was "revolving plans for quitting +the paper" on January 30, and resigned his editorship on February 9 +following. In the interval, with the exception of two or three more of the +_Travelling Letters_, very few signs of his hand appear in the journal. +The number of January 24, however, contains an editorial contribution, in +the shape of "a new song, but an old story," concerning _The British +Lion_, his accomplishment of eating Corn-law Leagues, his principal +keeper, _Wan Humbug_, and so forth. This it would be cruel to unearth. A +more important indication of a line of writing that his example may have +helped to domesticate in the _Daily News_ appears in the number of +February 4, which contains a long letter, with his signature, urging the +claims of Ragged Schools, and giving a graphic account of his visit to one +in Saffron Hill. After he had placed his resignation in the hands of the +proprietors, and was merely holding on at his post till the time of his +actual withdrawal, he was naturally not anxious to increase the number of +his contributions. The _Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers_--which appeared +on February 14--is, of course, an echo of the popular cry of the day; but +the subtler pathos of Dickens never found its way into his verse. The most +important, and so far as I know, the last, of his contributions to the +_Daily News_, consisted of a series of three letters (March 9, 13, and +16) on capital punishment. It was a question which much occupied him at +various times of his life, and on which it cannot be shown that he really +changed his opinions. The letters in the _Daily News_, based in part on +the arguments of one of the ablest men of his day, the "unlucky" Mr. +Wakefield, are an interesting contribution to the subject; and the first +of them, with its Hogarthian sketch of the temptation and fall of Thomas +Hocker, Sunday-school teacher and murderer, would be worth reprinting as +an example of Dickens's masterly use of the argument _ex concreto_. + +The few traditions which linger in the _Daily News_ office concerning +Dickens as editor of the paper, agree with the conjecture that his labours +on its behalf were limited, or very nearly so, to the few pieces +enumerated above. Of course there must have been some inevitable business; +but of this much may have been taken off his hands by his sub-editor, Mr. +W. H. Wills, who afterwards became his _alter ego_ at the office of his +own weekly journal and his intimate personal friend. In the days of the +first infancy of the _Daily News_, Mr. Britton, the present publisher of +that journal, was attached to the editor as his personal office attendant; +and he remembers very vividly what little there can have been to remember +about Dickens's performance of his functions. His habit, following a +famous precedent, was to make up for coming late--usually about half-past +ten P.M.--by going away early--usually not long after midnight. There were +frequently sounds of merriment, if not of modest revelry, audible from the +little room at the office in Lombard Street, where the editor sat in +conclave with Douglas Jerrold and one or two other intimates. Mr. Britton +is not sure that the work did not sometimes begin _after the editor had +left_; but at all events he cannot recollect that Dickens ever wrote +anything at the office--that he ever, for instance, wrote about a debate +that had taken place in Parliament on the same night. And he sums up his +reminiscences by declaring his conviction that Dickens was "not a +newspaper man, at least not when in 'the chair.'" And so Dickens seems on +this occasion to have concluded; for when, not long after quitting the +paper, he republished with additions the _Travelling Letters_ which during +his conduct of it had been its principal ornaments, he spoke of "a brief +mistake he had made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between +himself and his readers, and departing for a moment from his old +pursuits." He had been virtually out of "the chair" almost as soon as he +had taken it. His successor, but only for a few months, was his friend +Forster. + +Never has captive released made a more eager or a better use of his +recovered freedom. Before the summer had fairly set in Dickens had let his +house, and was travelling with his family up the Rhine towards +Switzerland. This was, I think, Dickens's only passage through Germany, +which in language and literature remained a _terra incognita_ to him, +while in various ways so well known to his friendly rivals, Lord Lytton +and Thackeray. He was on the track of poor Thomas Hood's old journeyings, +whose facetious recollections of Rhineland he had some years before +reviewed in a spirit of admiration rather for the author than for the +book, funny as it is. His point of destination was Lausanne, where he had +resolved to establish his household for the summer, and where by the +middle of June they were most agreeably settled in a little villa or +cottage which did not belie its name of Rosemont, and from which they +looked upon the lake and the mighty Alpine chain beyond. If Rome had +reminded Dickens of London, the green woods near Lausanne recalled to him +his Kentish glades; but he had the fullest sense and the truest enjoyment +of the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, and lost no opportunity of becoming +acquainted with them. Thus his letters contain an admirable description +(not untinged with satire) of a trip to the Great St. Bernard and its +convent, many years afterwards reproduced in one of the few enjoyable +chapters of the Second Part of _Little Dorrit_. More interesting, however, +because more characteristic, is the freshness and candour with which in +Switzerland, where by most English visitors the native inhabitants are +"taken for granted," he set himself to observe, and, so far as he could, +to appreciate, the people among whom he was a temporary resident. His +solutions of some of the political difficulties, which were mostly +connected with religious differences, at that time rife in Switzerland, +are palpably one-sided. But the generosity of spirit which reveals itself +in his kindly recognition of the fine qualities of the people around him +is akin to what was best and noblest in Dickens. + +He had, at the same time, been peculiarly fortunate in finding at Lausanne +a circle of pleasant acquaintances, to whom he dedicated the Christmas +book which he wrote among the roses and the foliage of his lake-side +cottage. Of course _The Battle of Life_ was read aloud by its author to so +kindly an audience. The day of parting, however, soon came; on the 16th of +November _paterfamilias_ had his "several tons of luggage, other tons of +servants, and other tons of children," in travelling order, and soon had +safely stowed them away at Paris "in the most preposterous house in the +world. The like of it cannot, and so far as my knowledge goes, does not, +exist in any other part of the globe. The bedrooms are like opera-boxes; +the dining-rooms, staircases, and passages quite inexplicable. The +dining-room"--which in another letter he describes as "mere midsummer +madness"--"is a sort of cavern, painted (ceiling and all) to represent a +grove, with unaccountable bits of looking-glass sticking in among the +branches of the trees. There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room, but +it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints in a +telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery." Here, with the +exception of two brief visits to England, paid before his final departure, +he spent three months, familiarising himself for the first time of his +life with the second of his "Two Cities." + +Dickens came to know the French language well enough to use it with ease, +if not with elegance; and he lost no opportunity, it need hardly be said, +of resorting to the best of schools for the purpose. Macready, previously +addressed from "Altorf," had made him acquainted with Regnier, of the +Théâtre Français, who in his turn had introduced him to the greenroom of +the house of Molière. Other theatres were diligently visited by him and +Forster, when the latter arrived on a visit; and celebrities were polite +and hospitable to their distinguished English _confrère_. With these, +however, Dickens was not cosmopolitan enough to consort except in passing; +the love of literary society _because_ it is literary society was at no +time one of his predilections or foibles. The streets of Paris were to him +more than its _salons_, more even than its theatres. They are so to a +larger number of Englishmen than that which cares to confess it, but +Dickens would have been the last to disown the impeachment. They were the +proper sphere for his powers of humorous observation, as he afterwards +showed in more than one descriptive paper as true to life as any of his +London _Sketches_. And, moreover, he _needed_ the streets for the work +which he had in hand. _Dombey and Son_ had been begun at Rosemont, and the +first of its twenty monthly numbers had been published in October, 1846. +No reader of the book is likely to forget how, after writing the chapter +which relates the death of little Paul, Dickens during the greater part of +the night wandered restlessly with a heavy heart about the Paris streets. +Sooner, however, than he had intended, his residence abroad had to come to +a close; and early in 1847 he and his family were again in London. + +_Dombey and Son_ has, perhaps, been more criticised than any other amongst +the stories of its author; and yet it certainly is not the one which has +been least admired, or least loved. Dickens himself, in the brief preface +which he afterwards prefixed to the story, assumed a half-defiant air +which sits ill upon the most successful author, but which occasionally he +was tempted to assume. Before condescending to defend the character of Mr. +Dombey as in accordance with both probability and experience, he "made so +bold as to believe that the faculty (or the habit) of correctly observing +the characters of men is a rare one." Yet, though the drawing of this +character is only one of the points which have been objected against the +story, not only did the book at the time of publication far surpass its +predecessor in popularity, but it has, I believe, always preserved to +itself a special congregation of enthusiastic admirers. Manifestly, this +novel is one of its author's most ambitious endeavours. In it, more +distinctly even than in _Chuzzlewit_, he has chosen for his theme one of +the chief vices of human nature, and has striven to show what pride +cannot achieve, what it cannot conquer, what it cannot withstand. This +central idea gives to the story, throughout a most varied succession of +scenes, a unity of action to be found in few of Dickens's earlier works. +On the other hand, _Dombey and Son_ shares with these earlier productions, +and with its successor, _David Copperfield_, the freshness of invention +and spontaneous flow of both humour and pathos which at times are wanting +in the more powerfully conceived and more carefully constructed romances +of Dickens's later years. If there be any force at all in the common +remark that the most interesting part of the book ends together with the +life of little Paul, the censure falls upon the whole design of the +author. Little Paul, in something besides the ordinary meaning of the +words, was born to die; and though, like the writer, most readers may have +dreaded the hour which was to put an end to that frail life, yet in this +case there could be no question--such as was possible in the story of +Little Nell--of any other issue. Indeed, deep as is the pathos of the +closing scene, its beauty is even surpassed by those which precede it. In +death itself there is release for a child as for a man, and for those +sitting by the pillow of the patient; but it is the gradual approach of +death which seems hardest of all for the watchers to bear; it is the +sinking of hope which seems even sadder than its extinction. What old +fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so +visibly expressed in him, so plainly seen by so many people? Every heart +is softened and every eye dimmed as the innocent child passes on his way +to his grave. The hand of God's angel is on him; he is no longer +altogether of this world. The imagination which could picture and present +this mysterious haze of feeling, through which the narrative moves, half +like a reality, half like a dream, is that of a true poet, and of a great +one. + +What even the loss of his son could not effect in Mr. Dombey is to be +accomplished in the progress of the story by a yet stronger agency than +sorrow. His pride is to be humbled to the dust, where he is to be sought +and raised up by the love of his despised and ill-used daughter. Upon the +relations between this pair, accordingly, it was necessary for the author +to expend the greatest care, and upon the treatment of those relations the +criticism to which the character of Mr. Dombey has been so largely +subjected must substantially turn. The unfavourable judgments passed upon +it have, in my opinion, not been altogether unjust. The problem obviously +was to show how the father's cold indifference towards the daughter +gradually becomes jealousy, as he finds that upon her is concentrated, +first, the love of his innocent little son, and then that of his haughty +second wife; and how hereupon this jealousy deepens into hate. But, unless +we are to suppose that Mr. Dombey hated his daughter from the first, the +disfavour shown by him on her account to young Walter Gay remains without +adequate explanation. His dislike of Florence is not manifestly founded +upon his jealousy of what Mrs. Chick calls her brother's "infatuation" for +her; and the main motives at work in the unhappy man are either not very +skilfully kept asunder, or not very intelligibly intermixed. Nor are the +later stages of the relations between father and daughter altogether +satisfactorily conceived. The momentary yielding of Mr. Dombey, after his +"coming home" with his new wife, is natural and touching; but his threat +to visit his daughter with the consequences of her step-mother's conduct +is sheer brutality. The passage in which Mr. Dombey's ultimatum to Mrs. +Dombey is conveyed by him in her presence through a third person is so +artificial as to fall not very far short of absurdity. The closing scene +which leads to the flight of Florence is undeniably powerful; but it is +the development of the relations between the pair in which the art of the +author is in my judgment occasionally at fault. + +As to the general effect of the latter part of the story--or rather of its +main plot--which again has been condemned as melodramatic and unnatural, a +distinction should be drawn between its incidents and its characters. +Neither Edith Dombey nor Mr. Carker is a character of real life. The pride +of the former comes very near to bad breeding, and her lapses into +sentiment seem artificial lapses. How differently Thackeray would have +managed the "high words" between her and her frivolous mother! how +differently, for that matter, he _has_ managed a not altogether dissimilar +scene in the _Newcomes_ between Ethel Newcome and old Lady Kew! As for Mr. +Carker, with his white teeth and glistening gums, who calls his unhappy +brother "Spaniel," and contemplates a life of sensual ease in Sicily, he +has the semi-reality of the stage. Possibly the French stage had helped to +suggest the _scène de la pièce_ between the fugitives at Dijon--an +effective situation, but one which many a novelist might have worked out +not less skilfully than Dickens. His own master-hand, however, re-asserts +itself in the wondrously powerful narrative of Carker's flight and death. +Here again he excites terror--as in the same book he had evoked pity--by +foreshadowing, without prematurely revealing, the end. We know what the +morning is to bring which rises in awful tranquillity over the victim of +his own sins; and, as in Turner's wild but powerful picture, the engine +made by the hand of man for peaceful purposes seems a living agent of +wrath.[8] + +No other of Dickens's books is more abundantly stocked than this with +genuinely comic characters; but nearly all of them, in accordance with the +pathetic tone which is struck at the outset, and which never dies out till +the story has run its course, are in a more subdued strain of humour. Lord +Jeffrey was, I think, warranted in his astonishment that Dickens should +devote so much pains to characters like Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox. Probably +the habit remained with him from his earliest times of authorship, when he +had not always distinguished very accurately between the humorous and the +_bizarre_. But Polly and the Toodles household, Mrs. Pipchin and her +"select infantine boarding-house," and the whole of Doctor Blimber's +establishment, from the Doctor himself down to Mr. Toots, and up again, in +the scale of intellect, to Mr. Feeder, B.A., are among the most admirable +of all the great humourist's creations. Against this ample provision for +her poor little brother's nursing and training Florence has to set but her +one Susan Nipper; but she is a host in herself, an absolutely original +character among the thousands of _soubrettes_ that are known to comedy and +fiction, and one of the best tonic mixtures ever composed out of much +humour and not a few grains of pathos. Her tartness has a cooling flavour +of its own; but it is the Mrs. Pipchinses only upon whom she acts, as +their type acted upon her, "like early gooseberries." Of course she has a +favourite figure of speech belonging to herself, which rhetoricians would +probably class among the figures "working by surplusage:" + + "'Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, + Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole + set.'" + +Dickens was to fall very largely into this habit of "labelling" his +characters, as it has been called, by particular tricks or terms of +speech; and there is a certain excess in this direction already in _Dombey +and Son_, where not only Miss Nipper and Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots, but +Major Bagstock too and Cousin Feenix, are thus furnished forth. But the +invention is still so fresh and the play of humour so varied, that this +mannerism cannot be said as yet seriously to disturb them. A romantic +charm of a peculiar kind clings to honest Captain Cuttle and the quaint +home over which he mounts guard during the absence of its owner. The +nautical colouring and concomitant fun apart--for only Smollett could have +drawn Jack Bunsby's fellow, though the character in his hands would have +been differently accentuated--Dickens has never approached more nearly to +the manner of Sir Walter Scott than in this singularly attractive part of +his book. Elsewhere the story passes into that sphere of society in +describing which Dickens was, as a novelist, rarely very successful. But +though Edith is cold and unreal, there is, it cannot be denied, human +nature in the pigments and figments of her hideous old mother; and, to +outward appearance at all events, the counterparts of her apoplectic +admirer, Major Bagstock, still pace those pavements and promenades which +it suits them to frequent. Cousin Feenix is likewise very far from +impossible, and is besides extremely delightful--and a good fellow too at +bottom, so that the sting of the satire is here taken away. On the other +hand, the meeting between the _sacs et parchemins_ at Mr. Dombey's house +is quite out of focus. + +The book has other heights and depths, and pleasant and unpleasant parts +and passages. But enough has been said to recall the exuberant creative +force, and the marvellous strength of pathos and humour which _Dombey and +Son_ proves that Dickens, now near the very height of his powers as a +writer of fiction, possessed. In one of his public readings many years +afterwards, when he was reciting the adventures of Little Dombey, he +narrates that "a very good fellow," whom he noticed in the stalls, could +not refrain from wiping the tears out of his eyes as often as he thought +that Toots was coming on. And just as Toots had become a reality to this +good fellow, so Toots and Toots's little friend, and divers other +personages in this story, have become realities to half the world that +reads the English tongue, and to many besides. What higher praise could be +given to this wonderful book? Of all the works of its author none has more +powerfully and more permanently taken hold of the imagination of its +readers. Though he conjured up only pictures familiar to us from the +aspect of our own streets and our own homes, he too wielded a wizard's +wand. + +After the success of _Dombey_ it might have seemed that nothing further +was wanting to crown the prosperity of Dickens's literary career. While +the publication of this story was in progress he had concluded +arrangements for the issue of his collected writings, in a cheap edition, +which began in the year 1847, and which he dedicated "to the English +people, in whose approval, if the books be true in spirit, they will +live, and out of whose memory, if they be false, they will very soon die." +He who could thus proudly appeal to posterity was already, beyond all +dispute, the people's chosen favourite among its men of letters. That +position he was not to lose so long as he lived; but even at this time the +height had not been reached to which (in the almost unanimous judgment of +those who love his writings) he was in his next work to attain. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +"DAVID COPPERFIELD." + +[1847-1851.] + + +The five years, reckoned roughly, from the beginning of 1847 to the close +of 1851, were most assuredly the season in which the genius of Dickens +produced its richest and rarest fruit. When it opened he was still at work +upon _Dombey and Son_; towards its end he was already engaged upon the +earliest portions of _Bleak House_. And it was during the interval that he +produced a book cherished by himself with an affection differing in kind, +as well as in degree, from the common fondness of an author for his +literary offspring, and a pearl without a peer amongst the later fictions +of our English school--_David Copperfield_. To this period also belong, it +is true, not a few lesser productions of the same ready pen; for the last +of his Christmas books was written in 1848, and in 1850 his weekly +periodical, _Household Words_, began to run its course. There was much +play too in these busy years, but all more or less of the kind which his +good-humoured self-irony afterwards very correctly characterised: + + "'Play!' said Thomas Idle. 'Here is a man goes systematically tearing + himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant course of + training, as if he were always under articles to fight a match for the + champion's belt, and he calls it "Play." Play!' exclaimed Thomas + Idle, scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air; 'you can't + play. You don't know what it is. You make work of everything!'" + +"A man," added the same easy philosopher, "who can do nothing by halves +appears to me to be a fearful man." And as at all times in Dickens's life, +so most emphatically in these years when his physical powers seemed ready +to meet every demand, and the elasticity of his mind seemed equal to every +effort, he did nothing by halves. Within this short space of time not only +did he write his best book, and conduct a weekly journal of solid merit +through its most trying stage, but he also established his reputation as +one of the best "unpolitical" speakers in the country; and as an amateur +actor and manager successfully weathered what may be called three +theatrical seasons, to the labours and glories of which it would be +difficult to find a parallel even in the records of that most exacting of +all social amusements. One likes to think of him in these years of +vigorous manhood, no longer the fair youth with the flowing locks of +Maclise's charming portrait, but not yet, I suppose, altogether the +commanding and rather stern presence of later years. Mr. Frith's portrait +was not painted till 1859, by which time the face occasionally had a more +set expression, and the entire personality a more weather-beaten +appearance, than this well-known picture suggests. But even eight years +before this date, when Dickens was acting in Lord Lytton's comedy the part +of a young man of _mode_, Mr. Sala's well-known comparison of his outward +man to "some prosperous sea-captain home from a sea-voyage," was thought +applicable to him by another shrewd observer, Mr. R. H. Horne, who says +that, fashionable "make-up" notwithstanding, "he presented a figure that +would have made a good portrait of a Dutch privateer after having taken a +capital prize." And in 1856 Ary Scheffer, to whom when sitting for his +portrait he had excused himself for being a difficult subject, "received +the apology as strictly his due, and said, with a vexed air, 'At this +moment, _mon cher_ Dickens, you look more like an energetic Dutch admiral +than anything else;' for which I apologised again." In 1853, in the +sympathetic neighbourhood of Boulogne, he was "growing a mustache," and, +by 1856, a beard of the _Henri Quatre_ type had been added; but even +before that time we may well believe that he was, as Mr. Sala says, "one +of the few men whose individuality was not effaced by the mournful +conventionality of evening-dress." Even in morning-dress he unconsciously +contrived, born actor as he was, to have something unusual about him; and, +if report speaks the truth, even at the sea-side, when most prodigal of +ease, he was careful to dress the character. + +The five years of which more especially I am speaking brought him +repeatedly face to face with the public, and within hearing of the +applause that was becoming more and more of a necessity to him. They were +thus unmistakably amongst the very happiest years of his life. The shadow +that was to fall upon his home can hardly yet have been visible even in +the dim distance. For this the young voices were too many and too fresh +around him behind the garden-wall in Devonshire Terrace, and amongst the +autumnal corn on the cliffs at Broadstairs. "They are all in great force," +he writes to his wife, in September, 1850, and "much excited with the +expectation of receiving you on Friday;" and I only wish I had space to +quote the special report sent on this occasion to the absent mother +concerning her precocious three-year-old. What sorrowful experiences he in +these years underwent were such as few men escape amongst the chances of +life. In 1848 he lost the sister who had been the companion of his +earliest days, and three years later his father, whom he had learned to +respect as well as love. Not long afterwards his little Dora, the youngest +of his flock, was suddenly taken from him. Meanwhile, his old friends +clung to him. Indeed, I never heard that he lost the affection of any one +who had been attached to him; and though the circle of his real intimates +was never greatly widened, yet he was on friendly or even familiar terms +with many whose names belong to the history of their times. Amongst these +were the late Lord Lytton--then Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton--whose splendid +abilities were still devoted mainly to literary labours, and between whom +and Dickens there were more points of contrast than might at first sight +appear. Of Thackeray, too, he seems to have been coming to know more; and +with Leech, more especially during a summer sojourn of both their families +at Bonchurch, in 1849, he grew intimate. Mr. Monckton Milnes--then, and +since as Lord Houghton, _semper amicus, semper hospes_ both to successful +merit and to honest endeavour--Lord Carlisle, and others who adorned the +great world under more than one of its aspects, were, of course, welcome +friends and acquaintances; and even Carlyle occasionally found his way to +the house of his staunch admirer, though he might declare that he was, in +the language of Mr. Peggotty's house-keeper, "a lorn lone creature, and +everything went contrairy with him." + +It is not very easy to describe the personal habits of a man who is found +seeing the spring in at Brighton and the autumn out at Broadstairs, and in +the interval "strolling" through the chief towns of the kingdom at the +head of a large company of ladies and gentlemen, according to the +description which he put into Mrs. Gamp's mouth, "with a great box of +papers under his arm, a-talking to everybody wery indistinct, and exciting +of himself dreadful." But since under ordinary circumstances he made, even +in outward matters and arrangements of detail, a home for himself wherever +he was, and as a rule cared little for the society of companions whose +ideas and ways of life were foreign to his own, certain habits had become +second nature to him, and to others he adhered with sophistical tenacity. +He was an early riser, if for no other reason, because every man in whose +work imagination plays its part must sometimes be alone; and Dickens has +told us that there was to him something incomparably solemn in the still +solitude of the morning. But it was only exceptionally, and when +hard-pressed by the necessities of his literary labours, that he wrote +before breakfast; in general he was contented with the ordinary working +hours of the morning, not often writing after luncheon, and, except in +early life, never in the evening. Ordinarily, when engaged on a work of +fiction, he considered three of his not very large MS. pages a good, and +four an excellent, day's work; and, while very careful in making his +corrections clear and unmistakable, he never rewrote what a morning's +labour had ultimately produced. On the other hand, he was frequently slow +in beginning a story, being, as he himself says, affected by something +like despondency at such times, or, as he elsewhere humorously puts it, +"going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go about +and about his sugar before he touches it." A temperate liver, he was at +the same time a zealous devotee of bodily exercise. He had not as yet +given up riding, and is found, in 1848, spending the whole of a March day, +with Forster, Leech, and Mark Lemon, in riding over every part of +Salisbury Plain. But walking exercise was at once his forte and his +fanaticism. He is said to have constructed for himself a theory that, to +every portion of the day given to intellectual labour should correspond an +equal number of hours spent in walking; and frequently, no doubt, he gave +up his morning's chapter before he had begun it, "entirely persuading +himself that he was under a moral obligation" to do his twenty miles on +the road. By day he found in the London thoroughfares stimulative variety, +and at a later date he states it to be "one of his fancies that even his +idlest walk must have its appointed destination;" and by night, in seasons +of intellectual excitement, he found in these same streets the refreshment +of isolation among crowds. But the walks he loved best were long stretches +on the cliffs or across the downs by the sea, where, following the track +of his "breathers," one half expects to meet him coming along against the +wind at four and a half miles an hour, the very embodiment of energy and +brimful of life. + +And besides this energy he carried with him, wheresoever he pitched his +tent, what was the second cause of his extraordinary success in so much of +the business of life as it fell to him to perform. He hated disorder as +Sir Artegal hated injustice; and if there was anything against which he +took up his parable with burning indignation, it was slovenliness, and +half-done work, and "shoddiness" of all kinds. His love of order made him +always the most regular of men. "Everything with him," Miss Hogarth told +me, "went as by clock-work; his movements, his absences from home, and the +times of his return were all fixed beforehand, and it was seldom that he +failed to adhere to what he had fixed." Like most men endowed with a +superfluity of energy, he prided himself on his punctuality. He could not +live in a room or in a house till he had put every piece of furniture into +its proper place, nor could he begin to work till all his writing-gear was +at hand, with no item missing or misplaced. Yet he did not, like so many, +combine with these habits and tendencies a saving disposition. "No man," +he said of himself, "attaches less importance to the possession of money, +or less disparagement to the want of it, than I do." His circumstances, +though easy, were never such as to warrant a display to which, perhaps, +certain qualities of his character might have inclined him; even at a much +later date he described himself--rather oddly, perhaps--as "a man of +moderate savings, always supporting a very expensive public position." +But, so far as I can gather, he never had a reasonable want which he could +not and did not satisfy, though at the same time he cared for very few of +the pursuits or amusements that are apt to drain much larger resources +than his. He never had to think twice about country or sea-side quarters; +wherever it might suit his purpose or fancy to choose them, at one of his +south-coast haunts or, for his wife's health, at Malvern, thither he went; +and when the whim seized him for a trip _en garçon_ to any part of England +or to Paris, he had only to bid the infallible Anne pack his trunk. He was +a provident as well as an affectionate father; but the cost of educating +his numerous family seems to have caused him no serious anxiety. In 1849 +he sent his eldest son to Eton. And while he had sworn a kind of +_vendetta_ against begging-letter writers, and afterwards used to parry +the attacks of his pertinacious enemies by means of carefully-prepared +written forms, his hand seems to have been at all times open for charity. + +Some of these personal characteristics of Dickens were to be brought out +with remarkable vividness during the period of his life which forms the +special subject of the present chapter. Never was he more thoroughly +himself than as a theatrical manager and actor, surrounded by congenial +associates. He starred it to his heart's content at the country seat of +his kind Lausanne friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watson. But the first occasion on +which he became publicly known in both the above-mentioned capacities was +the reproduction of the amateur performance of _Every Man in his Humour_. +This time the audiences were to be in Manchester and Liverpool, where it +was hoped that a golden harvest might be reaped for Leigh Hunt, who was at +that time in sore straits. As it chanced, a civil-list pension was just +about this time--1847--conferred upon the most unaffectedly graceful of +all modern writers of English verse. It was accordingly resolved to divert +part of the proceeds of the undertaking in favour of a worthy playwright, +the author of _Paul Pry_. The comedy was acted with brilliant success at +Manchester, on July 26, and at Liverpool two days later; and then the +"managerial miseries," which Dickens had enjoyed with his whole heart and +soul, were over for the nonce. Already, however, in the following year, +1848, an excellent reason was found for their recommencement; and nine +performances of Ben Jonson's play, this time alternated with _The Merry +Wives of Windsor_, were given by Dickens's "company of amateurs"--the +expression is his own--at the Haymarket, and in the theatres of five of +the largest towns in the kingdom, for the benefit of Sheridan Knowles. +Nothing could have been more honourable than Dickens's readiness to serve +the interests of an actor with whom, but for his own generous temper, he +would only a few months before have been involved in a wordy quarrel. In +_The Merry Wives_, the manager acted Justice Shallow to Mark Lemon's +Falstaff. Dame Quickly was played by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who speedily +became a favourite correspondent of Dickens. But the climax of these +excitements arrived in the year of wonders, 1851, when, with a flourish of +trumpets resounding through the world of fashion as well as of letters, +the comedy _Not so Bad as We Seem_, written for the occasion by Bulwer +Lytton, was performed under Dickens's management at Devonshire House, in +the presence of the Queen, for the benefit of the Guild of Literature and +Art. The object was a noble one, though the ultimate result of the scheme +has been an almost pitiable failure; and nothing was spared, by the host +or the actors, to make the effect worthy of it. While some of the most +popular men of letters took parts in the clever and effective play, its +scenery was painted by some of the most eminent among the English artists. +Dickens was fired by the ardour of the enterprise, and, proceeding on his +principle that the performance could not possibly "be a success if the +smallest pepper-corn of arrangement were omitted," covered himself and his +associates with glory. From Devonshire House play and theatre were +transferred to the Hanover Square Rooms, where the farce of _Mr. +Nightingale's Diary_ was included in the performance, of which some vivid +reminiscences have been published by one of the few survivors of that +noble company, Mr. R. H. Horne. Other accounts corroborate his +recollections of the farce, which was the triumph of "gag," and would have +been reckoned a masterpiece in the old _commedia dell' arte_. The +characters played by Dickens included Sam Weller turned waiter; a voluble +barrister by the name of Mr. Gabblewig; a hypochondriac suffering from a +prescription of mustard and milk; the Gampish mother of a charity-boy +(Mr. Egg); and her brother, a stone-deaf old sexton, who appeared to be +"at least ninety years of age." The last-named assumption seems to have +been singularly effective: + + "After repeated shoutings ('It's of no use whispering to me, young + man') of the word 'buried'--'_Brewed!_ Oh yes, sir, I have brewed many + a good gallon of ale in my time. The last batch I brewed, sir, was + finer than all the rest--the best ale ever brewed in the county. It + used to be called in our parts here "Samson with his hair on!" in + allusion'--here his excitement shook the tremulous frame into coughing + and wheezing--'in allusion to its great strength.' He looked from face + to face to see if his feat was duly appreciated, and his venerable + jest understood by those around; and then, softly repeating, with a + glimmering smile, 'in allusion to its great strength,' he turned + about, and made his exit, like one moving towards his own grave while + he thinks he is following the funeral of another." + +From London the company travelled into the country, where their series of +performances was not closed till late in the succeeding year, 1852. +Dickens was from first to last the manager, and the ruling spirit of the +undertaking. Amongst his latest recruits Mr. Wilkie Collins is specially +mentioned by Forster. The acquaintance which thus began soon ripened into +a close and lasting friendship, and became, with the exception of that +with Forster himself, the most important of all Dickens's personal +intimacies for the history of his career as an author. + +Speech-making was not in quite the same sense, or to quite the same +degree, as amateur acting and managing, a voluntary labour on Dickens's +part. Not that he was one of those to whom the task of occasionally +addressing a public audience is a pain or even a burden. Indeed, he was a +born orator; for he possessed both that strong and elastic imaginative +power which enables a man to place himself at once in sympathy with his +audience, and that gift of speech, pointed, playful, and where necessary +impetuous, which pleads well in any assembly for any cause. He had +moreover the personal qualifications of a handsome manly presence, a +sympathetic eye, and a fine flexible voice, which, as his own hints on +public speaking show, he managed with care and intelligence. He had, he +says, "fought with beasts (oratorically) in divers arenas." But though a +speaker in whom ease bred force, and force ease, he was the reverse of a +mere builder of phrases and weaver of periods. "Mere holding forth," he +declared, "I utterly detest, abominate, and abjure." His innate hatred of +talk for mere talk's sake had doubtless been intensified by his early +reporting experiences, and by what had become his stereotyped notion of +our parliamentary system. At the Administration Reform meeting in 1855 he +stated that he had never before attended a public meeting. On the other +hand, he had been for already several years in great request for meetings +of a different kind, concerned with the establishment or advancement of +educational or charitable institutions in London and other great towns of +the country. His addresses from the chair were often of remarkable +excellence; and this not merely because crowded halls and increased +subscription-lists were their concomitants, and because the happiness of +his humour--never out of season, and even on such occasions often +singularly prompt--sent every one home in good spirits. In these now +forgotten speeches on behalf of Athenæums and Mechanics' Institutes, or of +actors' and artists' and newsmen's charities, their occasional advocate +never appears occasional. Instead of seeming to have just mastered his +brief while the audience was taking its seats, or to have become for the +first time deeply interested in his subject in the interval between his +soup and his speech, the cause which Dickens pleads never has in him +either an imperfectly informed or a half-indifferent representative. +Amongst many charming illustrations of a vein of oratory in which he has +been equalled by very few if by any public men of his own or the +succeeding generation, I will instance only one address, though it belongs +to a considerably later date than the time of _David Copperfield_. +Nothing, however, that Dickens has ever written--not even _David +Copperfield_ itself--breathes a tenderer sympathy for the weakness of +unprotected childhood than the beautiful little speech delivered by him on +February 9, 1858, on behalf of the London Hospital for Sick Children. +Beginning with some touches of humour concerning the spoilt children of +the rich, the orator goes on to speak of the "spoilt children" of the +poor, illustrating with concrete directness both the humorous and the +pathetic side of his subject, and after a skilfully introduced sketch of +the capabilities and wants of the "infant institution" for which he +pleads, ending with an appeal, founded on a fancy of Charles Lamb, to the +support of the "dream-children" belonging to each of his hearers: "the +dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might +have had, the child you certainly have been." This is true eloquence, of a +kind which aims at something besides opening purse-strings. In 1851 he had +spoken in the same vein of mixed humour and pathos on behalf of his +clients, the poor actors, when, unknown to him, a little child of his own +was lying dead at home. But in these years of his life, as indeed at all +times, his voice was at the service of such causes as had his sympathy; it +was heard at Birmingham, at Leeds, at Glasgow; distance was of little +moment to his energetic nature; and as to trouble, how could he do +anything by halves? + +There was yet a third kind of activity, distinct from that of literary +work pure and simple, in which Dickens in these years for the first time +systematically engaged. It has been seen how he had long cherished the +notion of a periodical conducted by himself, and marked by a unity of +design which should make it in a more than ordinary sense his own paper. +With a genius like his, which attached itself to the concrete, very much +depended at the outset upon the choice of a title. _The Cricket_ could not +serve again, and for some time the notion of an omnipresent _Shadow_, with +something, if possible, tacked to it "expressing the notion of its being +cheerful, useful, and always welcome," seemed to promise excellently. For +a rather less ambitious design, however, a rather less ambitious title was +sought, and at last fortunately found, in the phrase, rendered proverbial +by Shakspeare, "_Household Words_." "We hope," he wrote a few weeks before +the first number appeared, on March 30, 1850, "to do some solid good, and +we mean to be as cheery and pleasant as we can." But _Household Words_, +which in form and in cost was to be a paper for the multitude, was to be +something more than agreeable and useful and cheap. It was to help in +casting out the many devils that had taken up their abode in popular +periodical literature, the "bastards of the Mountain," and the foul fiends +who dealt in infamous scurrility, and to do this with the aid of a charm +more potent than the most lucid argument and the most abundant facts. "In +the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor," says +the _Preliminary Word_ in the first number, "we would tenderly cherish +that light of fancy which is inherent in the human breast." To this +purpose it was the editor's constant and deliberate endeavour to bind his +paper. "KEEP 'HOUSEHOLD WORDS' IMAGINATIVE!" is the "solemn and continual +Conductorial Injunction" which three years after the foundation of the +journal he impresses, with the artful aid of capitals, upon his faithful +coadjutor, Mr. W. H. Wills. In his own contributions he was not forgetful +of this maxim, and the most important of them, the serial story, _Hard +Times_, was written with the express intention of pointing it as a moral. + +There are, I suppose, in addition to the many mysterious functions +performed by the editor of a literary journal, two of the very highest +significance; in the first place, the choice of his contributors, and +then, if the expression may be used, the management of them. In both +respects but one opinion seems to exist of Dickens's admirable qualities +as an editor. Out of the many contributors to _Household Words_, and its +kindred successor, _All the Year Round_--some of whom are happily still +among living writers--it would be invidious to select for mention a few in +proof of the editor's discrimination. But it will not be forgotten that +the first number of the earlier journal contained the beginning of a tale +by Mrs. Gaskell, whose name will long remain a household word in England, +both North and South. And a periodical could hardly be deemed one-sided +which included among its contributors scholars and writers of the +distinction belonging to the names of Forster and Mr. Henry Morley, +together with humorous observers of men and things such as Mr. Sala and +Albert Smith. On the other hand, _Household Words_ had what every literary +journal ought to have, an individuality of its own; and this individuality +was, of course, that of its editor. The mannerisms of Dickens's style +afterwards came to be imitated by some among his contributors; but the +general unity perceptible in the journal was the natural and legitimate +result of the fact that it stood under the independent control of a +vigorous editor, assisted by a sub-editor--Mr. W. H. Wills--of rare +trustworthiness. Dickens had a keen eye for selecting subjects from a +definite field, a ready skill for shaping, if necessary, the articles +accepted by him, and a genius for providing them with expressive and +attractive titles. Fiction and poetry apart, these articles have mostly a +social character or bearing, although they often deviate into the pleasant +paths of literature or art; and usually, but by no means always, the +scenes or associations with which they connect themselves are of England, +English. + +Nothing could surpass the unflagging courtesy shown by Dickens towards his +contributors, great or small, old or new, and his patient interest in +their endeavours, while he conducted _Household Words_, and afterwards +_All the Year Round_. Of this there is evidence enough to make the records +of the office in Wellington Street a pleasant page in the history of +journalism. He valued a good workman when he found him, and was far too +reasonable and generous to put his own stamp upon all the good metal that +passed through his hands. Even in his Christmas Numbers he left the utmost +possible freedom to his associates. Where he altered or modified it was as +one who had come to know the pulse of the public; and he was not less +considerate with novices, than he was frank and explicit with experts, in +the writer's art. The articles in his journal being anonymous, he was not +tempted to use names as baits for the public, though many who wrote for +him were men or women of high literary reputation. And he kept his doors +open. While some editors deem it their duty to ward off would-be +contributors, as some ministers of state think it theirs to get rid of +deputations, Dickens sought to ignore instead of jealously guarding the +boundaries of professional literature. Nothing in this way ever gave him +greater delight than to have welcomed and published several poems sent to +him under a feigned name, but which he afterwards discovered to be the +first-fruits of the charming poetical talent of Miss Adelaide Procter, the +daughter of his old friend "Barry Cornwall." + +In the preparation of his own papers, or of those which, like the +Christmas Numbers, he composed conjointly with one or more of his +familiars, he spared no labour and thought no toil too great. At times, of +course, he, like all periodical writers who cannot be merry every +Wednesday or caustic every Saturday, felt the pressure of the screw. "As +to two comic articles," he exclaims on one occasion, "or two any sort of +articles, out of me, that's the intensest extreme of no-goism." But, as a +rule, no great writer ever ran more gaily under his self-imposed yoke. His +"Uncommercial Travels," as he at a later date happily christened them, +familiarised him with whatever parts or aspects of London his long walks +had still left unexplored; and he was as conscientious in hunting up the +details of a complicated subject as in finding out the secrets of an +obscure pursuit or trade. Accomplished antiquarians and "commissioners" +assisted him in his labours; but he was no _roi fainéant_ on the editorial +sofa which he so complacently describes. Whether he was taking _A Walk in +a Workhouse_, or knocking at the door of another with the supernumerary +waifs in Whitechapel, or _On_ (night) _Duty with Inspector Field_ among +the worst of the London slums, he was always ready to see with his own +eyes; after which the photographic power of his pen seemed always capable +of doing the rest. Occasionally he treats topics more properly +journalistic, but he is most delightful when he takes his ease in his +_English_ or his _French Watering-place_, or carries his readers with him +on _A Flight to Paris_, bringing before them, as it were, in breathless +succession, every inch of the familiar journey. Happiest of all is he +when, with his friend Mr. Wilkie Collins--this, however, not until the +autumn of 1857--he starts on _The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_, the +earlier chapters of which furnish some of the best specimens of his most +humorous prose. Neither at the same time does he forget himself to enforce +the claim of his journal to strengthen the imaginary side of literature. +In an assumed character he allows a veteran poet to carry him _By Rail to +Parnassus_, and even good-humouredly banters an old friend, George +Cruikshank, for having committed _Frauds on the Fairies_ by re-editing +legendary lore with the view of inculcating the principle of total +abstinence. + +Such, then, were some of the channels in which the intense mental and +physical energy of Dickens found a congenial outlet in these busy years. +Yet in the very midst of this multifarious activity the mysterious and +controlling power of his genius enabled him to collect himself for the +composition of a work of fiction which, as I have already said, holds, and +will always continue to hold, a place of its own among its works. "Of all +my books," he declares, "I like this the best. It will be easily believed +that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can +ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond +parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child--and his name is +DAVID COPPERFIELD!" He parted from the story with a pang, and when in +after life he returned to its perusal, he was hardly able to master the +emotions which it recalled; perhaps even he hardly knew what the effort +of its production had cost him. + +The first number of _David Copperfield_ was published in May, 1849--the +last in November, 1850. To judge from the difficulty which Dickens found +in choosing a title for his story--of which difficulty plentiful evidence +remains in MS. at South Kensington--he must have been fain to delay longer +even than usual on the threshold. In the end the name of the hero evolved +itself out of a series of transformations, from Trotfield and Trotbury to +Copperboy, Copperstone--"Copperfull" being reserved as a _lectio varians_ +for Mrs. Crupp--and _Copperfield_. Then at last the pen could fall +seriously to work, and, proceeding slowly at first--for the first page of +the MS. contains a great number of alterations--dip itself now into black, +now into blue ink, and in a small writing, already contrasting with the +bolder hand of earlier days, produce page upon page of an incomparable +book. No doubt what so irresistibly attracted Dickens to _David +Copperfield_, and what has since fascinated many readers, more or less +conscious of the secret of the charm, is the autobiographical element in +the story. Until the publication of Forster's _Life_ no reader of +_Copperfield_ could be aware of the pang it must have cost Dickens to lay +bare, though to unsuspecting eyes, the story of experiences which he had +hitherto kept all but absolutely secret, and to which his own mind could +not recur without a quivering sensitiveness. No reader could trace, as the +memory of Dickens always must have traced, some of the most vivid of those +experiences, imbued though they were with the tints of a delightfully +playful humor, in the doings and dealings of Mr. Wilkins Micawber, whose +original, by a strange coincidence, was passing tranquilly away out of +life, while his comic counterpart was blossoming into a whimsical +immortality. And no reader could divine, what very probably even the +author may hardly have ventured to confess to himself, that in the lovely +little idyl of the loves of Doady and Dora--with Jip, as Dora's father +might have said, intervening--there were, besides the reminiscences of an +innocent juvenile amour, the vestiges of a man's unconfessed though not +altogether unrepressed disappointment--the sense that "there was always +something wanting." But in order to be affected by a personal or +autobiographical element in a fiction or poem, it is by no means necessary +to be aware of its actual bearing and character, or even of its very +existence. _Amelia_ would gain little by illustrative notes concerning the +experiences of the first Mrs. Fielding. To excite in a work of fiction the +peculiar kind of interest of which I am speaking the existence of an +autobiographical substratum need not be apparent in it, nor need its +presence be even suspected. Enough, if it be _there_. But it had far +better be away altogether, unless the novelist has so thoroughly fused +this particular stream of metal with the mass filling his mould that the +result is an integral artistic whole. Such was, however, the case with +_David Copperfield_, which of all Dickens's fictions is on the whole the +most perfect as a work of art. Personal reminiscences which lay deep in +the author's breast are, as effects, harmonised with local associations +old and new. Thus, Yarmouth, painted in the story with singular poetic +truthfulness, had only quite recently been seen by Dickens for the first +time, on a holiday trip. His imagination still subdued to itself all the +elements with which he worked; and, whatever may be thought of the +construction of this story, none of his other books equals it in that +harmony of tone which no artist can secure unless by recasting all his +materials. + +As to the construction of _David Copperfield_, however, I frankly confess +that I perceive no serious fault in it. It is a story with a plot, and not +merely a string of adventures and experiences, like little Davy's old +favourites upstairs at Blunderstone. In the conduct of this plot blemishes +may here and there occur. The boy's flight from London, and the direction +which it takes, are insufficiently accounted for. A certain amount of +obscurity, as well perhaps as of improbability, pervades the relations +between Uriah and the victim, round whom the unspeakably slimy thing +writhes and wriggles. On the other hand, the mere conduct of the story has +much that is beautiful in it. Thus, there is real art in the way in which +the scene of Barkis's death--written with admirable moderation--prepares +for the "greater loss" at hand for the mourning family. And in the entire +treatment of his hero's double love story Dickens has, to my mind, avoided +that discord which, in spite of himself, jars upon the reader both in +_Esmond_ and in _Adam Bede_. The best constructed part of _David +Copperfield_ is, however, unmistakably the story of Little Emily and her +kinsfolk. This is most skilfully interwoven with the personal experiences +of David, of which--except in its very beginnings--it forms no integral +part; and throughout the reader is haunted by a presentiment of the coming +catastrophe, though unable to divine the tragic force and justice of its +actual accomplishment. A touch altered here and there in Steerforth, with +the Rosa Dartle episode excluded or greatly reduced, and this part of +_David Copperfield_ might challenge comparison as to workmanship with the +whole literature of modern fiction. + +Of the idyl of Davy and Dora what shall I say? Its earliest stages are +full of the gayest comedy. What, for instance, could surpass the history +of the picnic--where was it? perhaps it was near Guildford. At that feast +an imaginary rival, "Red Whisker," made the salad--how could they eat +it?--and "voted himself into the charge of the wine-cellar, which he +constructed, _being an ingenious beast_, in the hollow trunk of a tree." +Better still are the backward ripples in the course of true love; best of +all the deep wisdom of Miss Mills, in whose nature mental trial and +suffering supplied, in some measure, the place of years. In the narrative +of the young house-keeping David's real trouble is most skilfully mingled +with the comic woes of the situation; and thus the idyl almost +imperceptibly passes into the last phase, where the clouds dissolve in a +rain of tears. The genius which conceived and executed these closing +scenes was touched by a pity towards the fictitious creatures of his own +imagination, which melted his own heart; and thus his pathos is here +irresistible. + +The inventive power of Dickens in none of his other books indulged itself +so abundantly in the creation of eccentric characters, but neither was it +in any so admirably tempered by taste and feeling. It contains no +character which could strictly be called grotesque, unless it be little +Miss Mowcher. Most of her outward peculiarities Dickens had copied from a +living original; but receiving a remonstrance from the latter, he +good-humouredly altered the use he had intended to make of the character, +and thereby spoiled what there was in it--not much, in my opinion--to +spoil. Mr. Dick belongs to a species of eccentric personages--mad people, +in a word--for which Dickens as a writer had a curious liking; but though +there is consequently no true humour in this character, it helps to bring +out the latent tenderness in another. David's Aunt is a figure which none +but a true humourist such as Sterne or Dickens could have drawn, and she +must have sprung from the author's brain armed _cap-à-pie_ as she appeared +in her garden before his little double. Yet even Miss Betsey Trotwood was +not altogether a creation of the fancy, for at Broadstairs the locality is +still pointed out where the "one great outrage of her life" was daily +renewed. In the other chief characters of this story the author seems to +rely entirely on natural truthfulness. He must have had many opportunities +of noting the ways of seamen and fishermen, but the occupants of the old +boat near Yarmouth possess the typical characteristics with which the +experience and the imagination of centuries have agreed to credit the +"salt" division of mankind. Again, he had had his own experience of +shabby-genteel life, and of the struggle which he had himself seen a happy +and a buoyant temperament maintaining against a sea of trouble. But Mr. +Micawber, whatever features may have been transferred to him, is the type +of a whole race of men who will not vanish from the face of the earth so +long as the hope which lives eternal in the human breast is only +temporarily suspended by the laws of debtor and creditor, and is always +capable of revival with the aid of a bowl of milk-punch. A kindlier and a +merrier, a more humorous and a more genuine character was never conceived +than this; and if anything was wanted to complete the comicality of the +conception, it was the wife of his bosom with the twins at her own, and +her mind made up _not_ to desert Mr. Micawber. Delightful too in his way, +though of a class more common in Dickens, is Tommy Traddles, the genial +picture of whose married life in chambers in Gray's Inn, with the dearest +girl in the world and her five sisters, including the beauty, on a visit, +may have been suggested by kindly personal reminiscences of youthful days. +In contrast to these characters, the shambling, fawning, villanous +hypocrisy of Uriah Heep is a piece of intense and elaborate workmanship, +almost cruelly done without being overdone. It was in his figures of +hypocrites that Dickens's satirical power most diversely displayed itself; +and by the side of Uriah Heep in this story, literally so in the +prison-scene at the close, stands another species of the race, the valet +Littimer, a sketch which Thackeray himself could not have surpassed. + +Thus, then, I must leave the book, with its wealth of pathos and humour, +with the glow of youth still tinging its pages, but with the gentler mood +of manhood pervading it from first to last. The _reality_ of _David +Copperfield_ is, perhaps, the first feature in it likely to strike the +reader new to its charms; but a closer acquaintance will produce, and +familiarity will enhance, the sense of its wonderful _art_. Nothing will +ever destroy the popularity of a work of which it can truly be said that, +while offering to his muse a gift not less beautiful than precious, its +author put into it his life's blood. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +CHANGES. + +[1852-1858.] + + +I have spoken of both the intellectual and the physical vigour of Charles +Dickens as at their height in the years of which the most enduring fruit +was the most delightful of all his fictions. But there was no break in his +activity after the achievement of this or any other of his literary +successes, and he was never harder at work than during the seven years of +which I am about to speak, although in this period also occasionally he +was to be found hard at play. Its beginning saw him settled in his new and +cheerfully-furnished abode at Tavistock House, of which he had taken +possession in October, 1851. At its close he was master of the country +residence which had been the dream of his childhood, but he had become a +stranger to that tranquillity of mind without which no man's house is +truly his home. Gradually, but surely, things had then, or a little +before, come to such a pass that he wrote to his faithful friend: "I am +become incapable of rest. I am quite confident I should rust, break, and +die, if I spared myself. Much better to die, doing. What I am in that way +Nature made me first, and my way of life has of late, alas! confirmed." +Early in 1852 the youngest of his children had been born to him--the boy +whose babyhood once more revived in him a tenderness the depth of which +no eccentric humours and fantastic _sobriquets_ could conceal. In May, +1858, he had separated from the mother of his children; and though +self-sacrificing affection was at hand to watch over them and him, yet +that domestic life of which he had become the prophet and poet to hundreds +of thousands was in its fairest and fullest form at an end for himself. + +In the earlier of these years Dickens's movements were still very much of +the same kind, and varied much after the same fashion, as in the period +described in my last chapter. In 1852 the series of amateur performances +in the country was completed; but time was found for a summer residence in +Camden Crescent, Dover. During his stay there, and during most of his +working hours in this and the following year--the spring of which was +partly spent at Brighton--he was engaged upon his new story, _Bleak +House_, published in numbers dating from March, 1852, to September, 1853. +"To let you into a secret," he had written to his lively friend, Miss Mary +Boyle, from Dover, "I am not quite sure that I ever did like, or ever +shall like, anything quite so well as _Copperfield_. But I foresee, I +think, some very good things in _Bleak House_." There is no reason to +believe that, by the general public, this novel was at the time of its +publication a whit less favourably judged or less eagerly read than its +predecessor. According to the author's own testimony it "took +extraordinarily, especially during the last five or six months" of its +issue, and "retained its immense circulation from the first, beating dear +old _Copperfield_ by a round ten thousand or more." To this day the book +has its staunch friends, some of whom would perhaps be slow to confess by +which of the elements in the story they are most forcibly attracted. On +the other hand, _Bleak House_ was probably the first of Dickens's works +which furnished a suitable text to a class of censors whose precious balms +have since descended upon his head with constant reiteration. The power of +amusing being graciously conceded to the "man of genius," his book was +charged with "absolute want of construction," and with being a +heterogeneous compound made up of a meagre and melodramatic story, and a +number of "odd folks that have to do with a long Chancery suit." Of the +characters themselves it was asserted that, though in the main excessively +funny, they were more like caricatures of the stage than studies from +nature. Some approval was bestowed upon particular figures, but rather as +types of the influence of externals than as real individualities; and +while the character of the poor crossing-sweeper was generously praised, +it was regretted that Dickens should never have succeeded in drawing "a +man or woman whose lot is cast among the high-born or wealthy." He +belonged, unfortunately, "in literature to the same class as his +illustrator, Hablot Browne, in design, though he far surpasses the +illustrator in range and power." In other words, he was essentially a +caricaturist. + +As applied to _Bleak House_, with which I am at present alone concerned, +this kind of censure was in more ways than one unjust. So far as +constructive skill was concerned, the praise given by Forster to _Bleak +House_ may be considered excessive; but there can be no doubt that, as +compared, not with _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_, but with its immediate +predecessor, _David Copperfield_, this novel exhibits a decided advance in +that respect. In truth, Dickens in _Bleak House_ for the first time +emancipated himself from that form of novel which, in accordance with his +great eighteenth-century favourites, he had hitherto more or less +consciously adopted--the novel of adventure, of which the person of the +hero, rather than the machinery of the plot, forms the connecting element. +It may be that the influence of Mr. Wilkie Collins was already strong upon +him, and that the younger writer, whom Dickens was about this time +praising for his unlikeness to the "conceited idiots who suppose that +volumes are to be tossed off like pancakes," was already teaching +something to, as well as learning something from, the elder. It may also +be that the criticism which as editor of _Household Words_ Dickens was now +in the habit of judiciously applying to the fictions of others, +unconsciously affected his own methods and processes. Certain it is that +from this point of view _Bleak House_ may be said to begin a new series +among his works of fiction. The great Chancery suit and the fortunes of +those concerned in it are not a disconnected background from which the +mystery of Lady Dedlock's secret stands forth in relief; but the two main +parts of the story are skilfully interwoven as in a Spanish double-plot. +Nor is the success of the general action materially affected by the +circumstance that the tone of Esther Summerson's diary is not altogether +true. At the same time there is indisputably some unevenness in the +construction of _Bleak House_. It drags, and drags very perceptibly, in +some of its earlier parts. On the other hand, the interest of the reader +is strongly revived when that popular favourite, Mr. Inspector Bucket, +appears on the scene, and when, more especially in the admirably vivid +narrative of Esther's journey with the detective, the nearness of the +catastrophe exercises its exciting influence. Some of the machinery, +moreover--such as the Smallweed family's part in the plot--is tiresome; +and particular incidents are intolerably horrible or absurd--such as on +the one hand the spontaneous combustion (which is proved possible by the +analogy of historical facts!), and on the other the intrusion of the +oil-grinding Mr. Chadband into the solemn presence of Sir Leicester +Dedlock's grief. But in general the parts of the narrative are well knit +together; and there is a subtle skill in the way in which the two main +parts of the story converge towards their common close. + +The idea of making an impersonal object like a great Chancery suit the +centre round which a large and manifold group of characters revolves, +seems to savour of a drama rather than of a story. No doubt the theme +suggested itself to Dickens with a very real purpose, and on the basis of +facts which he might well think warranted him in his treatment of it; for, +true artist though he was, the thought of exposing some national defect, +of helping to bring about some real reform, was always paramount in his +mind over any mere literary conception. _Primâ facie_, at least, and with +all due deference to Chancery judges and eminent silk gowns like Mr. +Blowers, the length of Chancery suits was a real public grievance, as well +as a frequent private calamity. But even as a mere artistic notion the +idea of Jarndyce _v._ Jarndyce as diversely affecting those who lived by +it, those who rebelled against it, those who died of it, was, in its way, +of unique force; and while Dickens never brought to any other of his +subjects so useful a knowledge of its external details--in times gone by +he had served a "Kenge and Carboys" of his own--hardly any one of those +subjects suggested so wide a variety of aspects for characteristic +treatment. + +For never before had his versatility in drawing character filled his +canvas with so multitudinous and so various a host of personages. The +legal profession, with its servitors and hangers-on of every degree, +occupies the centre of the picture. In this group no figure is more +deserving of admiration than that of Mr. Tulkinghorn, the eminently +respectable family solicitor, at whose very funeral, by a four-wheeled +affliction, the good-will of the aristocracy manifests itself. We learn +very little about him, and probably care less; but he interests us +precisely as we should be interested by the real old family lawyer, about +whom we might know and care equally little, were we to find him alone in +the twilight, drinking his ancient port in his frescoed chamber in those +fields where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop. (Mr. +Forster, by-the-way, omitted to point out to his readers, what the piety +of American research has since put on record, that Mr. Tulkinghorn's house +was a picture of the biographer's own residence.) The portrait of Mr. +Vholes, who supports an unassailable but unenviable professional +reputation for the sake of "the three dear girls at home," and a father +whom he has to support "in the Vale of Taunton," is less attractive; but +nothing could be more in its place in the story than the clammy tenacity +of this legal ghoul and his "dead glove." Lower down in the great system +of the law we come upon Mr. Guppy and his fellows, the very quintessence +of cockney vulgarity, seasoned with a flavour of legal sharpness without +which the rankness of the mixture would be incomplete. To the legal group +Miss Flite, whose original, if I remember right, used to haunt the Temple +as well as the precincts of the Chancery courts, may likewise be said to +belong. She is quite legitimately introduced into the story--which cannot +be said of all Dickens's madmen--because her madness associates itself +with its main theme. + +Much admiration has been bestowed upon the figures of an eccentric by or +under plot in this story, in which the family of the Jellybys and the +august Mr. Turveydrop are, actively, or by passive endurance, engaged. The +philanthropic section of _le monde où l'on s'ennuie_ has never been +satirised more tellingly, and, it must be added, more bitterly. Perhaps at +the time of the publication of _Bleak House_ the activity of our Mrs. +Jellybys took a wider and more cosmopolitan sweep than in later days; for +we read at the end of Esther's diary how Mrs. Jellyby "has been +disappointed in Borrioboola Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence +of the King of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody--who survived the +climate--for rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in +Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more +correspondence than the old one." But Mrs. Jellyby's interference in the +affairs of other people is after all hurtful only because in busying +herself with theirs she forgets her own. The truly offensive benefactress +of her fellow-creatures is Mrs. Pardiggle, who, maxim in mouth and tract +in hand, turns everything she approaches to stone. Among her victims are +her own children, including Alfred, aged five, who has been induced to +take an oath "never to use tobacco in any form." + +The particular vein of feeling that led Dickens to the delineation of +these satirical figures was one which never ran dry with him, and which +suggested some forcible-feeble satire in his very last fiction. I call it +a vein of feeling only; for he could hardly have argued in cold blood that +the efforts which he ridicules were not misrepresented as a whole by his +satire. When poor Jo on his death-bed is "asked whether he ever knew a +prayer," and replies that he could never make anything out of those spoken +by the gentlemen who "came down Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin'," but who +"mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong," the author brings a charge +which he might not have found it easy to substantiate. Yet--with the +exception of such isolated passages--the figure of Jo is in truth one of +the most powerful protests that have been put forward on behalf of the +friendless outcasts of our streets. Nor did the romantic element in the +conception interfere with the effect of the realistic. If Jo, who seems at +first to have been intended to be one of the main figures of the story, is +in Dickens's best pathetic manner, the Bagnet family is in his happiest +vein of quiet humour. Mr. Inspector Bucket, though not altogether free +from mannerism, well deserves the popularity which he obtained. For this +character, as the pages of _Household Words_ testify, Dickens had made +many studies in real life. The detective police-officer had at that time +not yet become a standing figure of fiction and the drama, nor had the +detective of real life begun to destroy the illusion. + +_Bleak House_ was least of all among the novels hitherto published by its +author obnoxious to the charge persistently brought against him, that he +was doomed to failure in his attempts to draw characters taken from any +but the lower spheres of life--in his attempts, in short, to draw ladies +and gentlemen. To begin with, one of the most interesting characters in +the book--indeed, in its relation to the main idea of the story, the most +interesting of all--is the youthful hero, if he is to be so called, +Richard Carson. From the very nature of the conception the character is +passive only; but the art and feeling are in their way unsurpassed with +which the gradual collapse of a fine nature is here exhibited. Sir +Leicester Dedlock, in some measure intended as a type of his class, has +been condemned as wooden and unnatural; and no doubt the machinery of that +part of the story in which he is concerned creaks before it gets under +way. On the other hand, after the catastrophe has overwhelmed him and his +house, he becomes a really fine picture, unmarred by any Grandisonianisms +in either thought or phrase, of a true gentleman, bowed but not warped by +distress. Sir Leicester's relatives, both dead and living; Volumnia's +sprightly ancestress on the wall, and that "fair Dedlock" herself; the +whole cousinhood, debilitated and otherwise, but of one mind on such +points as William Buffy's blameworthy neglect of his duty _when in +office_; all these make up a very probable picture of a house great +enough--or thinking itself great enough--to look at the affairs of the +world from the family point of view. In Lady Dedlock alone a failure must +be admitted; but she, with her wicked double, the uncanny French maid +Hortense, exists only for the sake of the plot. + +With all its merits, _Bleak House_ has little of that charm which belongs +to so many of Dickens's earlier stories, and to _David Copperfield_ above +all. In part, at least, this may be due to the excessive severity of the +task which Dickens had set himself in _Bleak House_; for hardly any other +of his works is constructed on so large a scale, or contains so many +characters organically connected with the progress of its plot; and in +part, again, to the half-didactic, half-satirical purport of the story, +which weighs heavily on the writer. An overstrained tone announces itself +on the very first page; an opening full of power--indeed, of genius--but +pitched in a key which we feel at once will not, without effort, be +maintained. On the second page the prose has actually become verse; or how +else can one describe part of the following apostrophe? + + "'This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its + blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in + every mad-house, and its dead in every church-yard; which has its + ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing + and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance; which gives + to moneyed might the means abundantly of wearing out the right; which + so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain + and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its + practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the + warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come + here!"'" + +It was possibly with some thought of giving to _Bleak House_ also, though +in a different way, the close relation to his experiences of living men to +which _David Copperfield_ had owed so much, that Dickens introduced into +it two _portraits_. Doubtless, at first, his intention had by no means +gone so far as this. His constant counsellor always disliked his mixing up +in his fictitious characters any personal reminiscences of particular men, +experience having shown that in such cases the whole character came out +_more like_ than the author was aware. Nor can Dickens himself have failed +to understand how such an experiment is always tempting, and always +dangerous; how it is often irreconcilable with good feeling, and quite as +often with good taste. In _Bleak House_, however, it occurred to him to +introduce likenesses of two living men, both more or less well known to +the public and to himself; and both of individualities too clearly marked +for a portrait, or even a caricature, of either to be easily mistaken. Of +that art of mystification which the authors of both English and French +_romans à clef_ have since practised with so much transient success, he +was no master, and fortunately so; for what could be more ridiculous than +that the reader's interest in a character should be stimulated, first, by +its being evidently the late Lord P-lm-rst-n or the P---- of O----, and +then by its being no less evidently somebody else? It should be added +that neither of the two portrait characters in _Bleak House_ possesses the +least importance for the conduct of the story, so that there is nothing to +justify their introduction except whatever excellence may belong to them +in themselves. + +Lawrence Boythorn is described by Mr. Sydney Colvin as drawn from Walter +Savage Landor with his intellectual greatness left out. It was, of course, +unlikely that his intellectual greatness should be left in, the intention +obviously being to reproduce what was eccentric in the ways and manner, +with a suggestion of what was noble in the character, of Dickens's famous +friend. Whether, had he attempted to do so, Dickens could have drawn a +picture of the whole Landor, is another question. Landor, who could put +into a classic dialogue that sense of the _naïf_ to which Dickens is +generally a stranger, yet passionately admired the most _sentimental_ of +all his young friend's poetic figures; and it might almost be said that +the intellectual natures of the two men were drawn together by the force +of contrast. They appear to have first become intimate with one another +during Landor's residence at Bath--which began in 1837--and they +frequently met at Gore House. At a celebration of the poet's birthday in +his lodgings at Bath, so Forster tells us in his biography of Landor, "the +fancy which took the form of Little Nell in the _Curiosity Shop_ first +dawned on the genius of its creator." In Landor's spacious mind there was +room for cordial admiration of an author the bent of whose genius differed +widely from that of his own; and he could thus afford to sympathise with +his whole heart in a creation which men of much smaller intellectual build +have pronounced mawkish and unreal. Dickens afterwards gave to one of his +sons the names of Walter Landor; and when the old man died at last, +_after_ his godson, paid him an eloquent tribute of respect in _All the +Year Round_. In this paper the personal intention of the character of +Boythorn is avowed by implication; but though Landor esteemed and loved +Dickens, it might seem matter for wonder, did not eccentrics after all +sometimes cherish their own eccentricity, that his irascible nature failed +to resent a rather doubtful compliment. For the character of Boythorn is +whimsical rather than, in any but the earlier sense of the word, humorous. +But the portrait, however imperfect, was in this instance, beyond all +doubt, both kindly meant and kindly taken; though it cannot be said to +have added to the attractions of the book into which it is introduced. + +While no doubt ever existed as to this likeness, the case may not seem so +clear with regard to the original of Harold Skimpole. It would be far more +pleasant to pass by without notice the controversy--if controversy it can +be called--which this character provoked; but a wrong done by one eminent +man of letters to another, however unforeseen its extent may have been, +and however genuine the endeavour to repair its effect, becomes part of +literary history. That the original of Harold Skimpole was Leigh Hunt +cannot reasonably be called into question. This assertion by no means +precludes the possibility, or probability, that a second original +suggested certain features in the portrait. Nor does it contradict the +substantial truthfulness of Dickens's own statement, published in _All the +Year Round_ after Leigh Hunt's death, on the appearance of the new edition +of the _Autobiography_ with Thornton Hunt's admirable introduction. While, +Dickens then wrote, "he yielded to the temptation of too often making the +character speak like his old friend," yet "he no more thought, God forgive +him! that the admired original would ever be charged with the imaginary +vices of the fictitious creature, than he had himself ever thought of +charging the blood of Desdemona and Othello on the innocent Academy model +who sat for Iago's leg in the picture. Even as to the mere occasional +manner," he declared that he had "altered the whole of that part of the +text, when two intimate friends of Leigh Hunt--both still +living--discovered too strong a resemblance to his 'way.'" But, while +accepting this statement, and suppressing a regret that after discovering +the dangerous closeness of the resemblance Dickens should have, quite at +the end of the story, introduced a satirical reference to Harold +Skimpole's autobiography--Leigh Hunt's having been published only a year +or two before--one must confess that the explanation only helps to prove +the rashness of the offence. While intending the portrait to keep its own +secret from the general public, Dickens at the same time must have wished +to gratify a few keen-sighted friends. In March, 1852, he writes to +Forster, evidently in reference to the apprehensions of his correspondent: +"Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him singularly unlike the +great original." The "great original" was a man for whom, both before and +after this untoward incident in the relations between them, Dickens +professed a warm regard, and who, to judge from the testimony of those who +knew him well,[9] and from his unaffected narrative of his own life, +abundantly deserved it. A perusal of Leigh Hunt's _Autobiography_ suffices +to show that he used to talk in Skimpole's manner, and even to write in +it; that he was at one period of his life altogether ignorant of money +matters, and that he cultivated cheerfulness on principle. But it likewise +shows that his ignorance of business was acknowledged by him as a +misfortune in which he was very far from exulting. "Do I boast of this +ignorance?" he writes. "Alas! I have no such respect for the pedantry of +absurdity as that. I blush for it, and I only record it out of a sheer +painful movement of conscience, as a warning to those young authors who +might be led to look upon such folly as a fine thing, which at all events +is what I never thought it myself." On the other hand, as his son showed, +his cheerfulness, which was not inconsistent with a natural proneness to +intervals of melancholy, rested on grounds which were the result of a fine +as well as healthy morality. "The value of cheerful opinions," he wrote, +in words embodying a moral that Dickens himself was never weary of +enforcing, "is inestimable; they will retain a sort of heaven round a man, +when everything else might fail him, and consequently they ought to be +religiously inculcated upon his children." At the same time, no quality +was more conspicuous in his life than his readiness for hard work, even +under the most depressing circumstances; and no feature was more marked in +his moral character than his conscientiousness. "In the midst of the +sorest temptations," Dickens wrote of him, "he maintained his honesty +unblemished by a single stain; and in all public and private transactions +he was the very soul of truth and honour." To mix up with the outward +traits of such a man the detestable obliquities of Harold Skimpole was an +experiment paradoxical even as a mere piece of character-drawing. The +merely literary result is a failure, while a wound was needlessly +inflicted, if not upon Leigh Hunt himself, at least upon all who +cherished his friendship or good name. Dickens seems honestly and deeply +to have regretted what he had done, and the extremely tasteful little +tribute to Leigh Hunt's poetic gifts which, some years before the death of +the latter, Dickens wrote for _Household Words_,[10] must have partaken of +the nature of an _amende honorable_. Neither his subsequent repudiation of +unfriendly intentions, nor his earlier exertions on Leigh Hunt's behalf, +are to be overlooked, but they cannot undo a mistake which forms an +unfortunate incident in Dickens's literary life, singularly free though +that life, as a whole, is from the miseries of personal quarrels, and all +the pettinesses with which the world of letters is too familiar. + +While Dickens was engaged upon a literary work such as would have absorbed +the intellectual energies of most men, he not only wrote occasionally for +his journal, but also dictated for publication in it, the successive +portions of a book altogether outside his usual range of authorship. This +was _A Child's History of England_, the only one of his works that was not +written by his own hand. A history of England, written by Charles Dickens +for his own or any one else's children, was sure to be a different work +from one written under similar circumstances by Mr. Freeman or the late M. +Guizot. The book, though it cannot be called a success, is, however, by no +means devoid of interest. Just ten years earlier he had written, and +printed, a history of England for the benefit of his eldest son, then a +hopeful student of the age of five, which was composed, as he informed +Douglas Jerrold at the time, "in the exact spirit" of that advanced +politician's paper, "for I don't know what I should do if he were to get +hold of any Conservative or High Church notions; and the best way of +guarding against any such horrible result is, I take it, to wring the +parrots' necks in his very cradle." The _Child's History of England_ is +written in the same spirit, and illustrates more directly, and, it must be +added, more coarsely, than any of Dickens's other works his hatred of +ecclesiasticism of all kinds. Thus, the account of Dunstan is pervaded by +a prejudice which is the fruit of anything but knowledge; Edward the +Confessor is "the dreary old" and "the maudlin Confessor;" and the Pope +and what belongs to him are treated with a measure of contumely which +would have satisfied the heart of Leigh Hunt himself. To be sure, if King +John is dismissed as a "miserable brute," King Henry the Eighth is not +more courteously designated as a "blot of blood and grease upon the +history of England." On the other hand, it could hardly be but that +certain passages of the national story should be well told by so great a +master of narrative; and though the strain in which parts of the history +of Charles the Second are recounted strikes one as hardly suitable to the +young, to whom irony is in general _caviare_ indeed, yet there are touches +both in the story of "this merry gentleman"--a designation which almost +recalls Fagin--and elsewhere in the book not unworthy of its author. Its +patriotic spirit is quite as striking as its Radicalism; and vulgar as +some of its expressions must be called, there is a pleasing glow in the +passage on King Alfred, which declares the "English-Saxon" character to +have been "the greatest character among the nations of the earth;" and +there is a yet nobler enthusiasm, such as it would indeed be worth any +writer's while to infuse into the young, in the passionate earnestness +with which, by means of the story of Agincourt, the truth is enforced that +"nothing can make war otherwise than horrible." + +This book must have been dictated, and some at least of the latter portion +of _Bleak House_ written, at Boulogne, where, after a spring sojourn at +Brighton, Dickens spent the summer of 1853, and where were also passed the +summers of 1854 and 1856. Boulogne, where Le Sage's last years were spent, +was _Our French Watering-place_, so graphically described in a paper in +_Household Words_ as a companion picture to the old familiar Broadstairs. +The family were comfortably settled on a green hill-side close to the +town, "in a charming garden in a very pleasant country," with "excellent +light wines on the premises, French cookery, millions of roses, two +cows--for milk-punch--vegetables cut for the pot, and handed in at the +kitchen window; five summer-houses, fifteen fountains--with no water in +'em--and thirty-seven clocks--keeping, as I conceive, Australian time, +having no reference whatever to the hours on this side of the globe." The +energetic owner of the Villa des Moulineaux was the "M. Loyal Devasseur" +of _Our French Watering-place_--jovial, convivial, genial, sentimental too +as a Buonapartist and a patriot. In 1854 the same obliging personage +housed the Dickens family in another abode, at the top of the hill, close +to the famous Napoleonic column; but in 1856 they came back to the +Moulineaux. The former year had been an exciting one for Englishmen in +France, with royal visits to and fro to testify to the _entente cordiale_ +between the governments. Dickens, notwithstanding his humorous assertions, +was only moderately touched by the Sebastopol fever; but when a concrete +problem came before him in the shape of a festive demonstration, he +addressed himself to it with the irrepressible ardour of the born +stage-manager. "In our own proper illumination," he writes, on the +occasion of the Prince Consort's visit to the camp at Boulogne, "I laid +on all the servants, all the children now at home, all the visitors, one +to every window, with everything ready to light up on the ringing of a big +dinner-bell by your humble correspondent. St. Peter's on Easter Monday was +the result." + +Of course, at Boulogne, Dickens was cut off neither from his business nor +from his private friends. His hospitable invitations were as urgent to his +French villa in the summer as to his London house in the winter, and on +both sides of the water the _Household Words_ familiars were as sure of a +welcome from their chief. During his absences from London he could have +had no trustier lieutenant than Mr. W. H. Wills, with whom, being always +ready to throw himself into a part, he corresponded in an amusing +paragraphed, semi-official style. And neither in his working nor in his +leisure hours had he by this time any more cherished companion than Mr. +Wilkie Collins, whose progress towards brilliant success he was watching +with the keenest and kindliest interest. With him and his old friend +Augustus Egg, Dickens, in October, 1853, started on a tour to Switzerland +and Italy, in the course of which he saw more than one old friend, and +revisited more than one known scene--ascending Vesuvius with Mr. Layard +and drinking punch at Rome with David Roberts. It would be absurd to make +any lofty demands upon the brief records of a holiday journey; and, for my +part, I would rather think of Dickens assiduous over his Christmas number +at Rome and at Venice, than weigh his moralisings about the electric +telegraph running through the Coliseum. His letters written to his wife +during this trip are bright and gay, and it was certainly no roving +bachelor who "kissed almost all the children he encountered in remembrance +of the sweet faces" of his own, and "talked to all the mothers who +carried them." By the middle of December the travellers were home again, +and before the year was out he had read to large audiences at Birmingham, +on behalf of a public institution, his favourite Christmas stories of _The +Christmas Carol_ and _The Cricket on the Hearth_. As yet, however, his +mind was not seriously intent upon any labours but those proper to his +career as an author, and the year 1854 saw, between the months of April +and August, the publication in his journal of a new story, which is among +the most characteristic, though not among the most successful, of his +works of fiction. + +In comparison with most of Dickens's novels, _Hard Times_ is contained +within a narrow compass; and this, with the further necessity of securing +to each successive small portion of the story a certain immediate degree +of effectiveness, accounts, in some measure, for the peculiarity of the +impression left by this story upon many of its readers. Short as the story +relatively is, few of Dickens's fictions were elaborated with so much +care. He had not intended to write a new story for a twelvemonth, when, as +he says, "the idea laid hold of him by the throat in a very violent +manner," and the labour, carried on under conditions of peculiar +irksomeness, "used him up" after a quite unaccustomed fashion. The book +thus acquired a precision of form and manner which commends it to the +French school of criticism rather than to lovers of English humour in its +ampler forms and more flowing moods. At the same time the work has its +purpose so visibly imprinted on its front, as almost to forbid our +regarding it in the first instance apart from the moral which avowedly it +is intended to inculcate. This moral, by no means new with Dickens, has +both a negative and a positive side. "Do not harden your hearts," is the +negative injunction, more especially do not harden them against the +promptings of that human kindness which should draw together man and man, +old and young, rich and poor; and keep your sympathies fresh by bringing +nourishment to them through channels which prejudice or short-sightedness +would fain narrow or stop up. This hortatory purpose assumes the form of +invective and even of angry menace; and "utilitarian economists, skeletons +of school-masters, commissioners of facts, genteel and used-up infidels, +gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds," are warned: "The poor you +have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the +utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives, so much +in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is +utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand +face to face, reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you." + +No authority, however eminent, not even Mr. Ruskin's, is required to teach +reflecting minds the infinite importance of the principles which _Hard +Times_ was intended to illustrate. Nor is it of much moment whether the +illustrations are always exact; whether the "commissioners of facts" have +reason to protest that the unimaginative character of their processes does +not necessarily imply an unimaginative purpose in their ends; whether +there is any actual Coketown in existence within a hundred miles of +Manchester; or whether it suffices that "everybody knew what was meant, +but every cotton-spinning town said it was the other cotton-spinning +town." The chief personal grievance of Stephen Blackpool has been removed +or abated, but the "muddle" is not yet altogether cleared up which +prevents the nation and the "national dustmen," its law-givers, from +impartially and sympathetically furthering the interest of all classes. In +a word, the moral of _Hard Times_ has not yet lost its force, however +imperfect or unfair the method may have been in which it is urged in the +book. + +Unfortunately, however, a work of art with a didactic purpose is only too +often prone to exaggerate what seems of special importance for the purpose +in question, and to heighten contrasts which seem likely to put it in the +clearest light. "Thomas Gradgrind, sir"--who announces himself with +something of the genuine Lancashire roll--and his system are a sound and a +laughable piece of satire, to begin with, only here and there marred by +the satirist's imperfect knowledge of the details which he caricatures. +The "Manchester School," which the novel strives to expose, is in itself +to a great extent a figment of the imagination, which to this day serves +to round many a hollow period in oratory and journalism. Who, it may +fairly be asked, were the parliamentary politicians satirized in the +member for Coketown, deaf and blind to any consideration but the +multiplication-table? But in any case the cause hardly warrants one of its +consequences as depicted in the novel--the utter brutalization of a stolid +nature like "the Whelp's." When Gradgrind's son is about to be shipped +abroad out of reach of the penalties of his crime, he reminds his father +that he merely exemplifies the statistical law that "so many people out of +so many will be dishonest." When the virtuous Bitzer is indignantly asked +whether he has a heart, he replies that he is physiologically assured of +the fact; and to the further inquiry whether this heart of his is +accessible to compassion, makes answer that "it is accessible to reason, +and to nothing else." These returnings of Mr. Gradgrind's philosophy upon +himself savour of the moral justice represented by Gratiano in the fourth +act. So, again, Coketown, with its tall chimneys and black river, and its +thirteen religious denominations, to which whoever else belonged the +working-men did _not_, is no perverse contradiction of fact. But the +influence of Coketown, or of a whole wilderness of Coketowns, cannot +justly be charged with a tendency to ripen such a product as Josiah +Bounderby, who is not only the "bully of humanity," but proves to be a +mean-spirited impostor in his pretensions to the glory of self-help. In +short, _Hard Times_ errs by its attempt to prove too much. + +Apart, however, from the didactic purposes which overburden it, the pathos +and humour of particular portions of this tale appear to me to have been +in no wise overrated. The domestic tragedy of Stephen and Rachael has a +subdued intensity of tenderness and melancholy of a kind rare with +Dickens, upon whom the example of Mrs. Gaskell in this instance may not +have been without its influence. Nor is there anything more delicately and +at the same time more appropriately conceived in any of his works than +poor Rachael's dominion over the imagination as well as over the +affections of her noble-minded and unfortunate lover: "As the shining +stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the +rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life." The +love-story of poor Louisa is of a different kind, and more wordy in the +telling; yet here also the feelings painted are natural and true. The +humorous interest is almost entirely concentrated upon the company of +horse-riders; and never has Dickens's extraordinary power of humorous +observation more genially asserted itself. From Mr. Sleary--"thtout man, +game-eye"--and his protagonist, Mr. E. W. B. Childers, who, when he shook +his long hair, caused it to "shake all at once," down to Master +Kidderminster, who used to form the apex of the human pyramids, and "in +whose young nature there was an original flavour of the misanthrope," +these honest equestrians are more than worthy to stand by the side of Mr. +Vincent Crummles and his company of actors; and the fun has here, in +addition to the grotesqueness of the earlier picture, a mellowness of its +own. Dickens's comic genius was never so much at its ease and so +inexhaustible in ludicrous fancies as in the depiction of such groups as +this; and the horse-riders, skilfully introduced to illustrate a truth, +wholesome if not novel, would have insured popularity to a far less +interesting and to a far less powerful fiction. + +The year after that which saw the publication of _Hard Times_ was one in +which the thoughts of most Englishmen were turned away from the problems +approached in that story. But if the military glories of 1854 had not +aroused in him any very exuberant enthusiasm, the reports from the Crimea +in the ensuing winter were more likely to appeal to his patriotism as well +as to his innate impatience of disorder and incompetence. In the first +instance, however, he contented himself with those grumblings to which, as +a sworn foe of red tape and a declared disbeliever in our parliamentary +system, he might claim to have a special right; and he seems to have been +too restless in and about himself to have entered very closely into the +progress of public affairs. The Christmas had been a merry one at +Tavistock House; and the amateur theatricals of its juvenile company had +passed through a most successful season. Their history has been written by +one of the performers--himself not the least distinguished of the company, +since it was he who, in Dickens's house, caused Thackeray to roll off his +seat in a fit of laughter. Dickens, who with Mark Lemon disported himself +among these precocious minnows, was, as our chronicler relates, like +Triplet, "author, manager, and actor too," organiser, deviser, and +harmoniser of all the incongruous assembled elements; it was he "who +improvised costumes, painted and corked our innocent cheeks, and suggested +all the most effective business of the scene." But, as was usual with him, +the transition was rapid from play to something very like earnest; and +already, in June, 1855, the Tavistock House theatre produced Mr. Wilkie +Collins's melodrama of _The Light-house_, which afterwards found its way +to the public stage. To Dickens, who performed in it with the author, it +afforded "scope for a piece of acting of great power," the old sailor +Aaron Gurnock, which by its savage picturesqueness earned a tribute of +recognition from Carlyle. No less a hand than Stanfield painted the +scenery, and Dickens himself, besides writing the prologue, introduced +into the piece a ballad called _The Story of the Wreck_, a not +unsuccessful effort in Cowper's manner. At Christmas, 1856-'57, there +followed _The Frozen Deep_, another melodrama by the same author; and by +this time the management of his private theatricals had become to Dickens +a serious business, to be carried on seriously for its own sake. "It was +to him," he wrote, "like writing a book in company;" and his young people +might learn from it "that kind of humility which is got from the earned +knowledge that whatever the right hand finds to do must be done with the +heart in it, and in a desperate earnest." _The Frozen Deep_ was several +times repeated, on one occasion for the benefit of the daughter of the +recently deceased Douglas Jerrold; but by the end of January the little +theatre was finally broken up; and though Dickens spent one more winter +season at Tavistock House, the shadow was then already falling upon his +cheerful home. + +In the midst of his children's Christmas gaieties of the year 1855 Dickens +had given two or three public readings to "wonderful audiences" in various +parts of the country. A trip to Paris with Mr. Wilkie Collins had +followed, during which, as he wrote home, he was wandering about Paris all +day, dining at all manner of places, and frequenting the theatres at the +rate of two or three a night. "I suppose," he adds, with pleasant +self-irony, "as an old farmer said of Scott, I am 'makin' mysel'' all the +time; but I seem to be rather a free-and-easy sort of superior vagabond." +And in truth a roving, restless spirit was strong upon him in these years. +Already, in April, he speaks of himself as "going off; I don't know where +or how far, to ponder about I don't know what." France, Switzerland, +Spain, Constantinople, in Mr. Layard's company, had been successively in +his thoughts, and, for aught he knew, Greenland and the North Pole might +occur to him next. At the same time he foresaw that the end of it all +would be his shutting himself up in some out-of-the-way place of which he +had not yet thought, and going desperately to work there. + +Before, however, these phantasmagoric schemes had subsided into the quiet +plan of an autumn visit to Folkestone, followed during the winter and +spring by a residence at Paris, he had at least found a subject to ponder +on, which was to suggest an altogether novel element in his next work of +fiction. I have said that though, like the majority of his +fellow-countrymen, Dickens regarded our war with Russia as inevitable, yet +his hatred of all war, and his impatience of the exaggerations of passion +and sentiment which all war produces, had preserved him from himself +falling a victim to their contagion. On the other hand, when in the winter +of 1854-'55 the note of exultation in the bravery of our soldiers in the +Crimea began to be intermingled with complaints against the grievously +defective arrangements for their comfort and health, and when these +complaints, stimulated by the loud-voiced energy of the press, and +extending into censures upon the whole antiquated and perverse system of +our army administration, speedily swelled into a roar of popular +indignation, sincere conviction ranged him on the side of the most +uncompromising malcontents. He was at all times ready to give vent to that +antipathy against officialism which is shared by so large a number of +Englishmen. Though the son of a dock-yard official, he is found roundly +asserting that "more obstruction of good things and patronage of bad +things has been committed in the dock-yards--as in everything connected +with the misdirection of the navy--than in every other branch of the +public service put together, including"--the particularisation is +hard--"even the Woods and Forests." He had listened, we may be sure, to +the scornful denunciations launched by the prophet of the _Latter-Day +Pamphlets_ against Downing Street and all its works, and to the +proclamation of the great though rather vague truth that "reform in that +Downing Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were +worth all others." And now the heart-rending sufferings of multitudes of +brave men had brought to light, in one department of the public +administration, a series of complications and perversities which in the +end became so patent to the Government itself that they had to be roughly +remedied in the very midst of the struggle. The cry for administrative +reform, which arose in the year 1855, however crude the form it +frequently took, was in itself a logical enough result of the situation; +and there is no doubt that the angriness of the complaint was intensified +by the attitude taken up in the House of Commons by the head of the +Government towards the pertinacious politician who made himself the +mouthpiece of the extreme demands of the feeling outside. Mr. Layard was +Dickens's valued friend; and the share is thus easily explained +which--against his otherwise uniform practice of abstaining from public +meetings--the most popular writer of the day took in the Administrative +Reform meetings, held in Drury Lane Theatre, on June 27, 1855. The speech +which he delivered on this occasion, and which was intended to aid in +forcing the "whole question" of Administrative Reform upon the attention +of an unwilling Government, possesses no value whatever in connexion with +its theme, though of course it is not devoid of some smart and telling +hits. Not on the platform, but at his desk as an author, was Dickens to do +real service to the cause of administrative efficiency. For whilst +invective of a general kind runs off like water from the rock of usage, +even Circumlocution Offices are not insensible to the acetous force of +satire. + +Dickens's caricature of British officialism formed the most generally +attractive element in the story of _Little Dorrit_--originally intended to +be called _Nobody's Fault_--which he published in monthly numbers, from +December, 1855, that year, to June, 1857. He was solemnly taken to task +for his audacity by the _Edinburgh Review_, which reproached him for his +persistent ridicule of "the institutions of the country, the laws, the +administration, in a word, the government under which we live." His +"charges" were treated as hardly seriously meant, but as worthy of severe +reprobation, because likely to be seriously taken by the poor, the +uneducated, and the young. And the caricaturist, besides being reminded of +the names of several eminent public servants, was specially requested to +look, as upon a picture contrasting with his imaginary Circumlocution +Office, upon the Post Office, or--for the choice offered was not more +extensive--upon the London police, so liberally praised by himself in his +own journal. The delighted author of _Little Dorrit_ replied to this not +very skilful diatribe in a short and spirited rejoinder in _Household +Words_. In this he judiciously confined himself to refuting an unfounded +incidental accusation in the Edinburgh article, and to dwelling, as upon a +"Curious Misprint," upon the indignant query: "How does he account for the +career of _Mr. Rowland Hill_?" whose name, as an example of the ready +intelligence of the Circumlocution Office, was certainly an odd _erratum_. +Had he, however, cared to make a more general reply to the main article of +the indictment, he might have pointed out that, as a matter of fact, our +official administrative machinery _had_ recently broken down in one of its +most important branches, and that circumlocution in the literal sense of +the word--circumlocution between department and department, or office and +office--had been one of the principal causes of the collapse. The general +drift of the satire was, therefore, in accordance with fact, and the +satire itself salutary in its character. To quarrel with it for not taking +into consideration what might be said on the other side, was to quarrel +with the method of treatment which satire has at all times considered +itself entitled to adopt; while to stigmatise a popular book as likely to +mislead the ill-informed, was to suggest a restraint which would have +deprived wit and humour of most of their opportunities of rendering +service to either a good or an evil cause. + +A far more legitimate exception has been taken to these Circumlocution +Office episodes as defective in art by the very reason of their being +exaggerations. Those best acquainted with the interiors of our government +offices may be right in denying that the Barnacles can be regarded as an +existing type. Indeed, it would at no time have been easy to point to any +office quite as labyrinthine, or quite as bottomless, as that permanently +presided over by Mr. Tite Barnacle; to any chief secretary or commissioner +so absolutely wooden of fibre as he; or to any private secretary so +completely absorbed in his eye-glass as Barnacle junior. But as satirical +figures they one and all fulfil their purpose as thoroughly as the picture +of the official sanctum itself, with its furniture "in the higher official +manner," and its "general bamboozling air of how not to do it." The only +question is, whether satire which, if it is to be effective, must be of a +piece and in its way exaggerated, is not out of place in a pathetic and +humorous fiction, where, like a patch of too diverse a thread, it +interferes with the texture into which it is introduced. In themselves +these passages of _Little Dorrit_ deserve to remain unforgotten amongst +the masterpieces of literary caricature; and there is, I do not hesitate +to say, something of Swiftian force in their grotesque embodiment of a +popular current of indignation. The mere name of the Circumlocution Office +was a stroke of genius, one of those phrases of Dickens which Professor +Masson justly describes as, whether exaggerated or not, "efficacious for +social reform." As usual, Dickens had made himself well acquainted with +the formal or outside part of his subject; the very air of Whitehall seems +to gather round us as Mr. Tite Barnacle, in answer to a persistent +enquirer who "wants to know" the position of a particular matter, +concedes that it "may have been, in the course of official business, +referred to the Circumlocution Office for its consideration," and that +"the department may have either originated, or confirmed, a minute on the +subject." In the _Household Words_ paper called _A Poor Man's Tale of a +Patent_ (1850) will be found a sufficiently elaborate study for Mr. +Doyce's experiences of the government of his country, as wrathfully +narrated by Mr. Meagles. + +With the exception of the Circumlocution Office passages--adventitious as +they are to the progress of the action--_Little Dorrit_ exhibits a +palpable falling-off in inventive power. Forster illustrates by a striking +fac-simile the difference between the "labour and pains" of the author's +short notes for _Little Dorrit_ and the "lightness and confidence of +handling" in what hints he had jotted down for _David Copperfield_. +Indeed, his "tablets" had about this time begun to be an essential part of +his literary equipment. But in _Little Dorrit_ there are enough internal +signs of, possibly unconscious, lassitude. The earlier, no doubt, is, in +every respect, the better part of the book; or, rather, the later part +shows the author wearily at work upon a canvas too wide for him, and +filling it up with a crowd of personages in whom it is difficult to take +much interest. Even Mr. Merdle and his catastrophe produce the effect +rather of a ghastly allegory than of an "extravagant conception," as the +author ironically called it in his preface, derived only too directly from +real life. In the earlier part of the book, in so far as it is not once +again concerned with enforcing the moral of _Hard Times_ in a different +way, by means of Mrs. Clennam and her son's early history, the humour of +Dickens plays freely over the figure of the Father of the Marshalsea. It +is a psychological masterpiece in its way; but the revolting selfishness +of Little Dorrit's father is not redeemed artistically by her own +long-suffering; for her pathos lacks the old irresistible ring. Doubtless +much in this part of the story--the whole episode, for instance, of the +honest turnkey--is in the author's best manner. But, admirable as it is, +this new picture of prison-life and prison-sentiment has an undercurrent +of bitterness, indeed, almost of contemptuousness, foreign to the best +part of Dickens's genius. This is still more perceptible in a figure not +less true to life than the Father of the Marshalsea himself--Flora, the +overblown flower of Arthur Clennam's boyish love. The humour of the +conception is undeniable, but the whole effect is cruel; and, though +greatly amused, the reader feels almost as if he were abetting a +profanation. Dickens could not have become what he is to the great +multitude of his readers had he, as a humourist, often indulged in this +cynical mood. + +There is in general little in the characters of this fiction to compensate +for the sense of oppression from which, as he follows the slow course of +its far from striking plot, the reader finds it difficult to free himself. +A vein of genuine humour shows itself in Mr. Plornish, obviously a +favourite of the author's, and one of those genuine working-men, as rare +in fiction as on the stage, where Mr. Toole has reproduced the species; +but the relation between Mr. and Mrs. Plornish is only a fainter revival +of that between Mr. and Mrs. Bagney. Nor is there anything fresh or novel +in the characters belonging to another social sphere. Henry Gowan, +apparently intended as an elaborate study in psychology, is only a very +tedious one; and his mother at Hampton Court, whatever phase of a +dilapidated aristocracy she may be intended to caricature, is merely +ill-bred. As for Mrs. General, she is so sorry a burlesque that she could +not be reproduced without extreme caution even on the stage--to the +reckless conventionalities of which, indeed, the whole picture of the +Dorrit family as _nouveaux riches_ bears a striking resemblance. There is, +on the contrary, some good caricature, which, in one instance at least, +was thought transparent by the knowing, in the _silhouettes_ of the great +Mr. Merdle's professional guests; but these are, like the Circumlocution +Office puppets, satiric sketches, not the living figures of creative +humour. + +I have spoken of this story with a censure which may be regarded as +exaggerated in its turn. But I well remember, at the time of its +publication in numbers, the general consciousness that _Little Dorrit_ was +proving unequal to the high-strung expectations which a new work by +Dickens then excited in his admirers, both young and old. There were new +and striking features in it, with abundant comic and serious effect, but +there was no power in the whole story to seize and hold, and the feeling +could not be escaped that the author was not at his best. And Dickens was +not at his best when he wrote _Little Dorrit_. Yet while nothing is more +remarkable in the literary career of Dickens than this apparently speedy +decline of his power, nothing is more wonderful in it than the degree to +which he righted himself again, not, indeed, with his public, for the +public never deserted its favourite, but with his genius. + +A considerable part of _Little Dorrit_ must have been written in Paris, +where, in October, after a quiet autumn at Folkestone, Dickens had taken a +family apartment in the Avenue des Champs Élysées, "about half a quarter +of a mile above Franconi's." Here, after his fashion, he lived much to +himself, his family, and his guests, only occasionally finding his way +into a literary or artistic _salon_; but he sat for his portrait to both +Ary and Henri Scheffer, and was easily persuaded to read his _Cricket on +the Hearth_ to an audience in the atelier. Macready and Mr. Wilkie Collins +were in turn the companions of many "theatrical and lounging" evenings. +Intent as Dickens now had become upon the technicalities of his own form +of composition, this interest must have been greatly stimulated by the +frequent comparison of modern French plays, in most of which nicety of +construction and effectiveness of situation have so paramount a +significance. At Boulogne, too, Mr. Wilkie Collins was a welcome summer +visitor. And in the autumn the two friends started on the _Lazy Tour of +Two Idle Apprentices_. It came to an untimely end as a pedestrian +excursion, but the record of it is one of the pleasantest memorials of a +friendship which brightened much of Dickens's life and intensified his +activity in work as well as in pleasure. + +"Mr. Thomas Idle" had indeed a busy time of it in this year 1857. The +publication of _Little Dorrit_ was not finished till June, and in August +we find him, between a reading and a performance of _The Frozen Deep_ at +Manchester--then in the exciting days of the great Art Exhibition--thus +describing to Macready his way of filling up his time: "I hope you have +seen my tussle with the _Edinburgh_. I saw the chance last Friday week, as +I was going down to read the _Carol_ in St. Martin's Hall. Instantly +turned to, then and there, and wrote half the article, flew out of bed +early next morning, and finished it by noon. Went down to Gallery of +Illustration (we acted that night), did the day's business, corrected the +proofs in Polar costume in dressing-room, broke up two numbers of +_Household Words_ to get it out directly, played in _Frozen Deep_ and +_Uncle John_, presided at supper of company, made no end of speeches, went +home and gave in completely for four hours, then got sound asleep, and +next day was as fresh as you used to be in the far-off days of your lusty +youth." It was on the occasion of the readings at St. Martin's Hall, for +the benefit of Douglas Jerrold's family, that the thought of giving +readings for his own benefit first suggested itself to Dickens; and, as +will be seen, by April, 1858, the idea had been carried into execution, +and a new phase of life had begun for him. And yet at this very time, when +his home was about to cease being in the fullest sense a home to Dickens, +by a strange irony of fortune, he had been enabled to carry out a +long-cherished fancy and to take possession, in the first instance as a +summer residence, of the house on Gad's Hill, of which a lucky chance had +made him the owner rather more than a twelvemonth before. + +"My little place," he wrote in 1858, to his Swiss friend Cerjat, "is a +grave red-brick house (time of George the First, I suppose), which I have +added to and stuck bits upon in all manner of ways, so that it is as +pleasantly irregular, and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas, +as the most hopeful man could possibly desire. It is on the summit of +Gad's Hill. The robbery was committed before the door, on the man with the +treasure, and Falstaff ran away from the identical spot of ground now +covered by the room in which I write. A little rustic ale-house, called +'The Sir John Falstaff,' is over the way--has been over the way ever +since, in honour of the event.... The whole stupendous property is on the +old Dover road...." + +Among "the blessed woods and fields" which, as he says, had done him "a +world of good," in a season of unceasing bodily and mental unrest, the +great English writer had indeed found a habitation fitted to become +inseparable from his name and fame. It was not till rather later, in 1860, +that, after the sale of Tavistock House, Gad's Hill Place became his +regular abode, a London house being only now and then taken for the +season, while furnished rooms were kept at the office in Wellington Street +for occasional use. And it was only gradually that he enlarged and +improved his Kentish place so as to make it the pretty and comfortable +country-house which at the present day it appears to be; constructing, in +course of time, the passage under the high-road to the shrubbery, where +the Swiss châlet given to him by Mr. Fechter was set up, and building the +pretty little conservatory, which, when completed, he was not to live many +days to enjoy. But an old-fashioned, homely look, free from the slightest +affectation of quietness, belonged to Gad's Hill Place, even after all +these alterations, and belongs to it even at this day, when Dickens's +solid old-fashioned furniture has been changed. In the pretty little front +hall still hangs the illuminated tablet recalling the legend of Gad's +Hill; and on the inside panels of the library door remain the facetious +sham book-titles: "Hudson's _Complete Failure_," and "_Ten Minutes in +China_," and "Cats' _Lives_" and, on a long series of leather backs, +"Hansard's _Guide to Refreshing Sleep_." The rooms are all of a modest +size, and the bedrooms--amongst them Dickens's own--very low; but the +whole house looks thoroughly habitable, while the views across the +cornfields at the back are such as in their undulation of soft outline are +nowhere more pleasant than in Kent. Rochester and the Medway are near, +even for those who do not--like Dickens and his dogs--count a stretch past +three or four "mile-stones on the Dover road" as the mere beginning of an +afternoon's walk. At a distance little greater there are in one direction +the green glades of Cobham Park, with Chalk and Gravesend beyond; and in +another the flat country towards the Thames, with its abundance of +market-gardens. There, too, are the marshes on the border of which lie +the massive ruin of Cooling Castle, the refuge of the Lollard martyr who +was _not_ concerned in the affair on Gad's Hill, and Cooling Church and +church-yard, with the quaint little gravestones in the grass. London and +the office were within easy reach, and Paris itself was, for practical +purposes, not much farther away, so that, in later days at all events, +Dickens found himself "crossing the Channel perpetually." + +The name of Dickens still has a good sound in and about Gad's Hill. He was +on very friendly terms with some families whose houses stand near to his +own; and though nothing was farther from his nature, as he says, than to +"wear topboots" and play the squire, yet he had in him not a little of +what endears so many a resident country gentleman to his neighbourhood. He +was head organiser rather than chief patron of village sports, of cricket +matches and foot races; and his house was a dispensary for the poor of the +parish. He established confidential relations between his house and the +Falstaff Inn over the way, regulating his servants' consumption of beer on +a strict but liberal plan of his own devising; but it is not for this +reason only that the successor of Mr. Edwin Trood--for such was the +veritable name of mine host of the "Falstaff" in Dickens's time--declares +that it was a bad day for the neighbourhood when Dickens was taken away +from it. In return, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm which surrounded +him in his own country, and Forster has described his astonishment at the +manifestation of it on the occasion of the wedding of the youngest +daughter of the house in 1860. And, indeed, he was born to be popular, and +specially among those by whom he was beloved as a friend or honoured as a +benefactor. + +But it was not for long intervals of either work or rest that Dickens was +to settle down in his pleasant country house, nor was he ever, except +quite at the last, to sit down under his own roof in peace and quiet, a +wanderer no more. Less than a year after he had taken up his residence for +the summer on Gad's Hill, his home, and that of his younger children, was +his wife's home no longer. The separation, which appears to have been +preparing itself for some, but no very long, time, took place in May, +1858, when, after an amicable arrangement, Mrs. Dickens left her husband, +who henceforth allowed her an ample separate maintenance, and occasionally +corresponded with her, but never saw her again. The younger children +remained in their father's house under the self-sacrificing and devoted +care of Mrs. Dickens's surviving sister, Miss Hogarth. Shortly afterwards, +Dickens thought it well, in printed words which may be left forgotten, to +rebut some slanderous gossip which, as the way of the world is, had +misrepresented the circumstances of this separation. The causes of the +event were an open secret to his friends and acquaintances. If he had ever +loved his wife with that affection before which so-called +incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition fade into nothingness, +there is no indication of it in any of his numerous letters addressed to +her. Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the direction of +that resignation which love and duty together made possible to David +Copperfield, or even that he remained in every way master of himself, as +many men have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded life and its +disappointments has never been written in history or figured in fiction. +It was not incumbent upon his faithful friend and biographer, and much +less can it be upon one whom nothing but a sincere admiration of Dickens's +genius entitles to speak of him at all, to declare the standard by which +the most painful transaction in his life is to be judged. I say the most +painful, for it is with a feeling akin to satisfaction that one reads, in +a letter three years afterwards to a lady in reference to her daughter's +wedding: "I want to thank you also for thinking of me on the occasion, but +I feel that I am better away from it. I should really have a misgiving +that I was a sort of a shadow on a young marriage, and you will understand +me when I say so, and no more." A shadow, too--who would deny it?--falls +on every one of the pictures in which the tenderest of modern humourists +has painted the simple joys and the sacred sorrows of that home life of +which to his generation he had become almost the poet and the prophet, +when we remember how he was himself neither blessed with its full +happiness nor capable of accepting with resignation the imperfection +inherent in it, as in all things human. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +LAST YEARS. + +[1858-1870.] + + +The last twelve years of Dickens's life were busy years, like the others; +but his activity was no longer merely the expression of exuberant force, +and long before the collapse came he had been repeatedly warned of the +risks he continued to defy. When, however, he first entered upon those +public readings, by persisting in which he indisputably hastened his end, +neither he nor his friends took into account the fear of bodily +ill-effects resulting from his exertions. Their misgivings had other +grounds. Of course, had there been any pressure of pecuniary difficulty or +need upon Dickens when he began, or when on successive occasions he +resumed, his public readings, there would be nothing further to be said. +But I see no suggestion of any such pressure. "My worldly circumstances," +he wrote before he had finally made up his mind to read in America, "are +very good. I don't want money. All my possessions are free and in the best +order. Still," he added, "at fifty-five or fifty-six, the likelihood of +making a very great addition to one's capital in half a year is an immense +consideration." Moreover, with all his love of doing as he chose, and his +sense of the value of such freedom to him as a writer, he was a man of +simple though liberal habits of life, with no taste for the gorgeous or +capricious extravagances of a Balzac or a Dumas, nor can he have been at +a loss how to make due provision for those whom in the course of nature he +would leave behind him. Love of money for its own sake, or for that of the +futilities it can purchase, was altogether foreign to his nature. At the +same time, the rapid making of large sums has potent attractions for most +men; and these attractions are perhaps strongest for those who engage in +the pursuit for the sake of the race as well as of the prize. Dickens's +readings were virtually something new; their success was not only all his +own, but unique and unprecedented--what nobody but himself ever had +achieved or ever could have achieved. Yet the determining motive--if I +read his nature rightly--was, after all, of another kind. "Two souls dwelt +in his breast;" and when their aspirations united in one appeal it was +irresistible. The author who craved for the visible signs of a sympathy +responding to that which he felt for his multitudes of readers, and the +actor who longed to impersonate creations already beings of flesh and +blood to himself, were both astir in him, and in both capacities he felt +himself drawn into the very publicity deprecated by his friends. He liked, +as one who knew him thoroughly said to me, to be face to face with his +public; and against this liking, which he had already indulged as fully as +he could without passing the boundaries between private and professional +life, arguments were in vain. It has been declared sheer pedantry to speak +of such boundaries; and to suggest that there is anything degrading in +paid readings such as those of Dickens would, on the face of it, be +absurd. On the other hand, the author who, on or off the stage, becomes +the interpreter of his writings to large audiences, more especially if he +does his best to stereotype his interpretation by constantly repeating it, +limits his own prerogative of being many things to many men; and where +the author of a work, more particularly of a work of fiction, adjusts it +to circumstances differing from those of its production, he allows the +requirements of the lesser art to prejudice the claims of the greater. + +Dickens cannot have been blind to these considerations; but to others his +eyes were never opened. He found much that was inspiriting in his success +as a reader, and this not only in the large sums he gained, or even in the +"roaring sea of response," to use his own fine metaphor, of which he had +become accustomed to "stand upon the beach." His truest sentiment as an +author was touched to the quick; and he was, as he says himself, "brought +very near to what he had sometimes dreamed might be his fame," when, at +York, a lady, whose face he had never seen, stopped him in the street, and +said to him, "Mr. Dickens, will you let me touch the hand that has filled +my house with many friends?" or when, at Belfast, he was almost +overwhelmed with entreaties "to shake hands, Misther Dickens, and God +bless you, sir; not ounly for the light you've been in mee house, sir--and +God love your face!--this many a year." On the other hand--and this, +perhaps, a nature like his would not be the quickest to perceive--there +was something vulgarising in the constant striving after immediate success +in the shape of large audiences, loud applause, and satisfactory receipts. +The conditions of the actor's art cannot forego these stimulants; and this +is precisely his disadvantage in comparison with artists who are able to +possess themselves in quiet. To me, at least, it is painful to find +Dickens jubilantly recording how at Dublin "eleven bank-notes were thrust +into the pay-box--Arthur saw them--at one time for eleven stalls;" how at +Edinburgh "neither Grisi, nor Jenny Lind, nor anything, nor anybody, +seems to make the least effect on the draw of the readings;" while, every +allowance being made, there is something almost ludicrous in the double +assertion, that "the most delicate audience I had ever seen in any +provincial place is Canterbury; but the audience with the greatest sense +of humour certainly is Dover." What subjects for parody Dickens would have +found in these innocent ecstasies if uttered by any other man! +Undoubtedly, this enthusiasm was closely connected with the very +thoroughness with which he entered into the work of his readings. "You +have no idea," he tells Forster, in 1867, "how I have worked at them. +Finding it necessary, as their reputation widened, that they should be +better than at first, _I have learnt them all_, so as to have no +mechanical drawback in looking after the words. I have tested all the +serious passion in them by everything I know; made the humorous points +much more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; cultivated a +self-possession not to be disturbed; and made myself master of the +situation." "From ten years ago to last night," he writes to his son from +Baltimore in 1868, "I have never read to an audience but I have watched +for an opportunity of striking out something better somewhere." The +freshness with which he returned night after night and season after season +to the sphere of his previous successes, was itself a genuine actor's +gift. "So real," he declares, "are my fictions to myself, that, after +hundreds of nights, I come with a feeling of perfect freshness to that +little red table, and laugh and cry with my hearers as if I had never +stood there before." + +Dickens's first public readings were given at Birmingham, during the +Christmas week of 1853-'54, in support of the new Midland Institute; but a +record--for the authenticity of which I cannot vouch--remains, that with +true theatrical instinct he, before the Christmas in question, gave a +trial reading of the _Christmas Carol_ to a smaller public audience at +Peterborough. He had since been repeatedly found willing to read for +benevolent purposes; and the very fact that it had become necessary to +decline some of these frequent invitations had again suggested the +possibility--which had occurred to him eleven years before--of meeting the +demand in a different way. Yet it may, after all, be doubted whether the +idea of undertaking an entire series of paid public readings would have +been carried out, had it not been for the general restlessness which had +seized upon Dickens early in 1858, when, moreover, he had no special task +either of labour or of leisure to absorb him, and when he craved for +excitement more than ever. To go home--in this springtime of 1858--was not +to find there the peace of contentment. "I must do _something_," he wrote +in March to his faithful counsellor, "or I shall wear my heart away. I can +see no better thing to do that is half so hopeful in itself, or half so +well suited to my restless state." + +So by April the die was cast, and on the 29th of that month he had entered +into his new relation with the public. One of the strongest and most +genuine impulses of his nature had victoriously asserted itself, and +according to his wont he addressed himself to his task with a relentless +vigour which flinched from no exertion. He began with a brief series at +St. Martin's Hall, and then, his invaluable friend Arthur Smith continuing +to act as his manager, he contrived to cram not less than eighty-seven +readings into three months and a half of travelling in the "provinces," +including Scotland and Ireland. A few winter readings in London, and a +short supplementary course in the country during October, 1859, completed +this first series. Already, in 1858, we find him, in a letter from +Ireland, complaining of the "tremendous strain," and declaring, "I seem to +be always either in a railway carriage, or reading, or going to bed. I get +so knocked up, whenever I have a minute to remember it, that then I go to +bed as a matter of course." But the enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed +him--I can testify to the thrill of excitement produced by his visit to +Cambridge, in October, 1859--repaid him for his fatigues. Scotland thawed +to him, and with Dublin--where his success was extraordinary--he was so +smitten as to think it at first sight "pretty nigh as big as Paris." In +return, the Boots at Morrison's expressed the general feeling in a +patriotic point of view: "'Whaat sart of a hoose, sur?' he asked me. +'Capital.' 'The Lard be praised, for the 'onor o' Dooblin.'" + +The books, or portions of books, to which he confined himself during this +first series of readings were few in number. They comprised the _Carol_ +and the _Chimes_, and two stories from earlier Christmas numbers of +_Household Words_--may the exclamation of the soft-hearted chambermaid at +the Holly Tree Inn, "It's a shame to part 'em!" never vanish from my +memory!--together with the episodic readings of the _Trial_ in _Pickwick_, +_Mrs. Gamp_, and _Paul Dombey_. Of these the _Pickwick_, which I heard +more than once, is still vividly present to me. The only drawback to the +complete enjoyment of it was the lurking fear that there had been some +tampering with the text, not to be condoned even in its author. But in the +way of assumption Charles Mathews the elder himself could have +accomplished no more Protean effort. The lack-lustre eye of Mr. Justice +Stareleigh, the forensic hitch of Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, and the hopeless +impotence of Mr. Nathaniel Winkle were alike incomparable. And if the +success of the impersonation of Mr. Samuel Weller was less +complete--although Dickens had formerly acted the character on an amateur +stage--the reason probably was that, by reason of his endless store of +ancient and modern instances, Sam had himself become a quasi-mythical +being, whom it was almost painful to find reproduced in flesh and blood. + +I have not hesitated to treat these readings by Dickens as if they had +been the performances of an actor; and the description would apply even +more strongly to his later readings, in which he seemed to make his points +in a more accentuated fashion than before. "His readings," says Mr. C. +Kent, in an interesting little book about them, "were, in the fullest +meaning of the words, singularly ingenious and highly-elaborated +histrionic performances." As such they had been prepared with a care such +as few actors bestow upon their parts, and--for the book was prepared not +less than the reading--not all authors bestow upon their plays. Now, the +art of reading, even in the case of dramatic works, has its own laws, +which even the most brilliant readers cannot neglect except at their +peril. A proper pitch has to be found, in the first instance, before the +exceptional passages can be, as it were, marked off from it; and the +absence of this ground-tone sometimes interfered with the total effect of +a reading by Dickens. On the other hand, the exceptional passages were, if +not uniformly, at least generally excellent; nor am I at all disposed to +agree with Forster in preferring, as a rule, the humorous to the pathetic. +At the same time, there was noticeable in these readings a certain +hardness which competent critics likewise discerned in Dickens's acting, +and which could not, at least in the former case, be regarded as an +ordinary characteristic of dilettanteism. The truth is that he isolated +his parts too sharply--a frequent fault of English acting, and one more +detrimental to the total effect of a reading than even to that of an acted +play. + +No sooner had the heaviest stress of the first series of readings ceased +than Dickens was once more at work upon a new fiction. The more immediate +purpose was to insure a prosperous launch to the journal which, in the +spring of 1859, took the place of _Household Words_. A dispute, painful in +its origin, but ending in an amicable issue, had resulted in the purchase +of that journal by Dickens; but already a little earlier he had--as he was +entitled to do--begun the new venture of _All the Year Round_, with which +_Household Words_ was afterwards incorporated. The first number, published +on April 30, contained the earliest instalment of _A Tale of Two Cities_, +which was completed by November 20 following. + +This story holds a unique place amongst the fictions of its author. +Perhaps the most striking difference between it and his other novels may +seem to lie in the all but entire absence from it of any humour or attempt +at humour; for neither the brutalities of that "honest tradesman," Jerry, +nor the laconisms of Miss Pross, can well be called by that name. Not that +his sources of humour were drying up, even though, about this time, he +contributed to an American journal a short "romance of the real world," +_Hunted Down_, from which the same relief is again conspicuously absent. +For the humour of Dickens was to assert itself with unmistakable force in +his next longer fiction, and was even before that, in some of his +occasional papers, to give delightful proofs of its continued vigour. In +the case of the _Tale of Two Cities_, he had a new and distinct design in +his mind which did not, indeed, exclude humour, but with which a liberal +indulgence in it must have seriously interfered. "I set myself," he +writes, "the little task of writing a picturesque story, rising in every +chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should +express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean, in +other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written, in place +of the bestiality that is written under that pretence, pounding the +characters out in its own mortar, and beating their own interests out of +them." He therefore renounced his more usual method in favour of one +probably less congenial to him. Yet, in his own opinion at least, he +succeeded so well in the undertaking, that when the story was near its end +he could venture to express a hope that it was "the best story he had +written." So much praise will hardly be given to this novel even by +admirers of the French art of telling a story succinctly, or by those who +can never resist a rather hysterical treatment of the French Revolution. + +In my own opinion _A Tale of Two Cities_ is a skilfully though not +perfectly constructed novel, which needed but little substantial +alteration in order to be converted into a not less effective stage-play. +And with such a design Dickens actually sent the proof-sheets of the book +to his friend Regnier, in the fearful hope that he might approve of the +project of its dramatisation for a French theatre. Cleverly or clumsily +adapted, the tale of the Revolution and its sanguinary vengeance was +unlikely to commend itself to the Imperial censorship; but an English +version was, I believe, afterwards very fairly successful on the boards of +the Adelphi, where Madame Celeste was certainly in her right place as +Madame Defarge, an excellent character for a melodrama, though rather +wearisome as she lies in wait through half a novel. + +The construction of this story is, as I have said, skilful but not +perfect. Dickens himself successfully defended his use of accident in +bringing about the death of Madame Defarge. The real objection to the +conduct of this episode, however, lies in the inadequacy of the +contrivance for leaving Miss Pross behind in Paris. Too much is also, I +think, made to turn upon the three words "and their +descendants"--non-essential in the original connexion--by which Dr. +Manette's written denunciation becomes fatal to those he loves. Still, the +general edifice of the plot is solid; its interest is, notwithstanding the +crowded background, concentrated with much skill upon a small group of +personages; and Carton's self-sacrifice, admirably prepared from the very +first, produces a legitimate tragic effect. At the same time the +novelist's art vindicates its own claims. Not only does this story contain +several narrative episodes of remarkable power--such as the flight from +Paris at the close, and the touching little incident of the seamstress, +told in Dickens's sweetest pathetic manner--but it is likewise enriched by +some descriptive pictures of unusual excellence: for instance, the sketch +of Dover in the good old smuggling times, and the mezzo-tint of the stormy +evening in Soho. Doubtless the increased mannerism of the style is +disturbing, and this not only in the high-strung French scenes. As to the +historical element in this novel, Dickens modestly avowed his wish that he +might by his story have been able "to add something to the popular and +picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can +hope to add anything to Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book." But if Dickens +desired to depict the noble of the _ancien régime_, either according to +Carlyle or according to intrinsic probability, he should not have +offered, in his Marquis, a type historically questionable, and unnatural +besides. The description of the Saint Antoine, before and during the +bursting of the storm, has in it more of truthfulness, or of the semblance +of truthfulness; and Dickens's perception of the physiognomy of the French +workman is, I think, remarkably accurate. Altogether, the book is an +extraordinary _tour de force_, which Dickens never repeated. + +The opening of a new story by Dickens gave the necessary _impetus_ to his +new journal at its earliest stage; nor was the ground thus gained ever +lost. Mr. W. H. Wills stood by his chief's side as of old, taking, more +especially in later years, no small share of responsibility upon him. The +prospectus of _All the Year Round_ had not in vain promised an identity of +principle in its conduct with that of its predecessor; in energy and +spirit it showed no falling off; and, though not in all respects, the +personality of Dickens made itself felt as distinctly as ever. Besides the +_Tale of Two Cities_ he contributed to it his story of _Great +Expectations_. Amongst his contributors Mr. Wilkie Collins took away the +breath of multitudes of readers; Mr. Charles Reade disported himself +amongst the facts which gave stamina to his fiction; and Lord Lytton made +a daring voyage into a mysterious country. Thither Dickens followed him, +for once, in his _Four Stories_, not otherwise noteworthy, and written in +a manner already difficult to discriminate from that of Mr. Wilkie +Collins. For the rest, the advice with which Dickens aided Lord Lytton's +progress in his _Strange Story_ was neither more ready nor more +painstaking than that which he bestowed upon his younger contributors, to +more than one of whom he generously gave the opportunity of publishing in +his journal a long work of fiction. Some of these younger writers were at +this period amongst his most frequent guests and associates; for nothing +more naturally commended itself to him than the encouragement of the +younger generation. + +But though longer imaginative works played at least as conspicuous a part +in the new journal as they had in the old, the conductor likewise +continued to make manifest his intention that the lesser contributions +should not be treated by readers or by writers as harmless necessary +"padding." For this purpose it was requisite not only that the choice of +subjects should be made with the utmost care, but also that the master's +hand should itself be occasionally visible. Dickens's occasional +contributions had been few and unimportant, till in a happy hour he began +a series of papers, including many of the pleasantest, as well as of the +mellowest, amongst the lighter productions of his pen. As usual, he had +taken care to find for this series a name which of itself went far to make +its fortune. + + "I am both a town and a country traveller, and am always on the road. + Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest + Brothers, and have rather a large connexion in the fancy goods way. + Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms + in Covent Garden, London--now about the city streets, now about the + country by-roads, seeing many little things, and some great things, + which, because they interest me, I think may interest others." + +The whole collection of these _Uncommercial Traveller_ papers, together +with the _Uncommercial Samples_ which succeeded them after Dickens's +return from America, and which begin with a graphic account of his +homeward voyage _Aboard Ship_, where the voice of conscience spoke in the +motion of the screw, amounts to thirty-seven articles, and spreads over a +period of nine years. They are necessarily of varying merit, but amongst +them are some which deserve a permanent place in our lighter literature. +Such are the description of the church-yards on a quiet evening in _The +City of the Absent_, the grotesque picture of loneliness in _Chambers_--a +favourite theme with Dickens--and the admirable papers on _Shy +Neighbourhoods_ and on _Tramps_. Others have a biographical interest, +though delightfully objective in treatment; yet others are mere fugitive +pieces; but there are few without some of the most attractive qualities of +Dickens's easiest style. + +Dickens contributed other occasional papers to his journal, some of which +may be forgotten without injury to his fame. Amongst these may be reckoned +the rather dreary _George Silverman's Explanation_ (1868), in which there +is nothing characteristic but a vivid picture of a set of ranters, led by +a clique of scoundrels; on the other hand, there will always be admirers +of the pretty _Holiday Romance_, published nearly simultaneously in +America and England, a nosegay of tales told by children, the only fault +of which is that, as with other children's nosegays, there is perhaps a +little too much of it. I have no room for helping to rescue from partial +oblivion an old friend, whose portrait has not, I think, found a home +amongst his master's collected sketches. Pincher's counterfeit has gone +astray, like _Pincher_ himself. Meanwhile, the special institution of the +Christmas number flourished in connexion with _All the Year Round_ down to +the year 1867, as it had during the last five years of _Household Words_. +It consisted, with the exception of the very last number, of a series of +short stories, in a framework of the editor's own devising. To the authors +of the stories, of which he invariably himself wrote one or more, he left +the utmost liberty, at times stipulating for nothing but that tone of +cheerful philanthropy which he had domesticated in his journal. In the +Christmas numbers, which gradually attained to such a popularity that of +one of the last something like a quarter of a million copies were sold, +Dickens himself shone most conspicuously in the introductory sections; and +some of these are to be reckoned amongst his very best descriptive +character-sketches. Already in _Household Words_ Christmas numbers the +introductory sketch of the _Seven Poor Travellers_ from Watt's Charity at +supper in the Rochester hostelry, and the excellent description of a +winter journey and sojourn at the _Holly Tree Inn_, with an excursus on +inns in general, had become widely popular. The _All the Year Round_ +numbers, however, largely augmented this success. After _Tom Tiddler's +Ground_, with the adventures of Miss Kitty Kimmeens, a pretty little +morality in miniature, teaching the same lesson as the vagaries of Mr. +Mopes the hermit, came _Somebody's Luggage_, with its exhaustive +disquisition on waiters; and then the memorable chirpings of _Mrs. +Lirriper_, in both _Lodgings_ and _Legacy_, admirable in the delicacy of +their pathos, and including an inimitable picture of London lodging-house +life. Then followed the _Prescriptions_ of _Dr. Marigold_, the eloquent +and sarcastic but tender-hearted Cheap Jack; and _Mugby Junction_, which +gave words to the cry of a whole nation of hungry and thirsty travellers. +In the tales and sketches contributed by him to the Christmas numbers, in +addition to these introductions, he at times gave the rein to his love for +the fanciful and the grotesque, which there was here no reason to keep +under. On the whole, written, as in a sense these compositions were, to +order, nothing is more astonishing in them than his continued freshness, +against which his mannerism is here of vanishing importance; and, +inasmuch as after issuing a last Christmas number of a different kind, +Dickens abandoned the custom when it had reached the height of popular +favour, and when manifold imitations had offered him the homage of their +flattery, he may be said to have withdrawn from this campaign in his +literary life with banners flying. + +In the year 1859 Dickens's readings had been comparatively few; and they +had ceased altogether in the following year, when the _Uncommercial +Traveller_ began his wanderings. The winter from 1859 to 1860 was his last +winter at Tavistock House; and, with the exception of his rooms in +Wellington Street, he had now no settled residence but Gad's Hill Place. +He sought its pleasant retreat about the beginning of June, after the new +experience of an attack of rheumatism had made him recognise "the +necessity of country training all through the summer." Yet such was the +recuperative power, or the indomitable self-confidence, of his nature, +that after he had in these summer months contributed some of the most +delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_ papers to his journal, we find him +already in August "prowling about, meditating a new book." + +It is refreshing to think of Dickens in this pleasant interval of country +life, before he had rushed once more into the excitement of his labours as +a public reader. We may picture him to ourselves, accompanied by his dogs, +striding along the country roads and lanes, exploring the haunts of the +country tramps, "a piece of Kentish road," for instance, "bordered on +either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and +the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on +this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing +steadily away to the ocean like a man's life. To gain the mile-stone here, +which the moss, primroses, violets, bluebells, and wild roses would soon +render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their +sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may." At the +foot of that hill, I fancy, lay Dullborough town half asleep in the summer +afternoon; and the river in the distance was that which bounded the +horizon of a little boy's vision "whose father's family name was Pirrip, +and whose Christian name was Philip, but whose infant tongue could make of +both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip." + +The story of Pip's adventures, the novel of _Great Expectations_, was +thought over in these Kentish perambulations between Thames and Medway +along the road which runs, apparently with the intention of running out to +sea, from Higham towards the marshes; in the lonely church-yard of Cooling +village by the thirteen little stone-lozenges, of which Pip counted only +five, now nearly buried in their turn by the rank grass; and in quiet +saunters through the familiar streets of Rochester, past the "queer" +Townhall; and through the "Vines" past the fine old Restoration House, +called in the book (by the name of an altogether different edifice) Satis +House. And the climax of the narrative was elaborated on a unique +steamboat excursion from London to the mouth of the Thames, broken by a +night at the "Ship and Lobster," an old riverside inn called "The Ship" in +the story. No wonder that Dickens's descriptive genius should become +refreshed by these studies of his subject, and that thus _Great +Expectations_ should have indisputably become one of the most picturesque +of his books. But it is something very much more at the same time. The +_Tale of Two Cities_ had as a story strongly seized upon the attention of +the reader. But in the earlier chapters of _Great Expectations_ every one +felt that Dickens was himself again. Since the Yarmouth scenes in _David +Copperfield_ he had written nothing in which description married itself to +sentiment so humorously and so tenderly. Uncouth, and slow, and +straightforward, and gentle of heart, like Mr. Peggotty, Joe Gargery is as +new a conception as he is a genuinely true one; nor is it easy to know +under what aspect to relish him most--whether disconsolate in his Sunday +clothes, "like some extraordinary bird, standing, as he did, speechless, +with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a +worm," or at home by his own fireside, winking at his little comrade, and, +when caught in the act by his wife, "drawing the back of his hand across +his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such occasions." Nor since +_David Copperfield_ had Dickens again shown such an insight as he showed +here into the world of a child's mind. "To be quite sure," he wrote to +Forster, "I had fallen into no unconscious repetitions, I read _David +Copperfield_ again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you +would hardly believe." His fears were unnecessary; for with all its charm +the history of Pip lacks the personal element which insures our sympathy +to the earlier story and to its hero. In delicacy of feeling, however, as +well as in humour of description, nothing in Dickens surpasses the earlier +chapters of _Great Expectations_; and equally excellent is the narrative +of Pip's disloyalty of heart toward his early friends, down to his +departure from the forge, a picture of pitiable selfishness almost +Rousseau-like in its fidelity to poor human nature; down to his comic +humiliation, when in the pride of his new position and his new clothes, +before "that unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy." The later and especially +the concluding portions of this novel contain much that is equal in power +to its opening; but it must be allowed that, before many chapters have +ended, a false tone finds its way into the story. The whole history of +Miss Havisham, and the crew of relations round the unfortunate creature, +is strained and unnatural, and Estella's hardness is as repulsive as that +of Edith Dombey herself. Mr. Jaggers and his house-keeper, and even Mr. +Wemmick, have an element of artificiality in them, whilst about the Pocket +family there is little, if anything at all, that is real. The story, +however, seems to recover itself as the main thread in its deftly-woven +texture is brought forward again: when on a dark, gusty night, ominous of +coming trouble, the catastrophe of Pip's expectations announces itself in +the return from abroad of his unknown benefactor, the convict whom he had +as a child fed on the marshes. The remainder of the narrative is +successful in conveying to the reader the sense of sickening anxiety which +fills the hero; the interest is skilfully sustained by the introduction of +a very strong situation--Pip's narrow escape out of the clutches of "Old +Orlick" in the lime-kiln on the marshes; and the climax is reached in the +admirably-executed narrative of the convict's attempt, with the aid of +Pip, to escape by the river. The actual winding-up of _Great Expectations_ +is not altogether satisfactory; but on the whole the book must be ranked +among the very best of Dickens's later novels, as combining, with the +closer construction and intenser narrative force common to several of +these, not a little of the delightfully genial humour of his earlier +works. + +Already, before _Great Expectations_ was completely published, Dickens had +given a few readings at the St. James's Hall, and by the end of October in +the same year, 1861, he was once more engaged in a full course of country +readings. They occupied him till the following January, only ten days +being left for his Christmas number, and a brief holiday for Christmas +itself; so close was the adjustment of time and work by this favourite of +fortune. The death of his faithful Arthur Smith befell most untowardly +before the country readings were begun, but their success was unbroken, +from Scotland to South Devon. The long-contemplated extract from +_Copperfield_ had at last been added to the list--a self-sacrifice _coram +publico_, hallowed by success--and another from _Nicholas Nickleby_, which +"went in the wildest manner." He was, however, nearly worn out with +fatigue before these winter readings were over, and was glad to snatch a +moment of repose before a short spring course in town began. Scarcely was +this finished, when he was coquetting in his mind with an offer from +Australia, and had already proposed to himself to throw in, as a piece of +work by the way, a series of papers to be called _The Uncommercial +Traveller Upside Down_. Meanwhile, a few readings for a charitable purpose +in Paris, and a short summer course at St. James's Hall, completed this +second series in the year 1863. + +Whatever passing thoughts overwork by day or sleeplessness at night may +have occasionally brought with them, Dickens himself would have been +strangely surprised, as no doubt would have been the great body of a +public to which he was by this time about the best known man in England, +had he been warned that weakness and weariness were not to be avoided even +by a nature endowed with faculties so splendid and with an energy so +conquering as his. He seemed to stand erect in the strength of his matured +powers, equal as of old to any task which he set himself, and exulting, +though with less buoyancy of spirit than of old, in the wreaths which +continued to strew his path. Yet already the ranks of his contemporaries +were growing thinner, while close to himself death was taking away members +of the generation before, and of that after, his own. Amongst them was his +mother--of whom his biography and his works have little to say or to +suggest--and his second son. Happy events, too, had in the due course of +things contracted the family circle at Gad's Hill. Of his intimates, he +lost, in 1863, Augustus Egg; and in 1864 John Leech, to whose genius he +had himself formerly rendered eloquent homage. + +A still older associate, the great painter Stanfield, survived till 1867. +"No one of your father's friends," Dickens then wrote to Stanfield's son, +"can ever have loved him more dearly than I always did, or can have better +known the worth of his noble character." Yet another friend, who, however, +so far as I can gather, had not at any time belonged to Dickens's most +familiar circle, had died on Christmas Eve, 1863--Thackeray, whom it had +for some time become customary to compare or contrast with him as his +natural rival. Yet in point of fact, save for the tenderness which, as +with all humourists of the highest order, was an important element in +their writings, and save for the influences of time and country to which +they were both subject, there are hardly two other amongst our great +humourists who have less in common. Their unlikeness shows itself, among +other things, in the use made by Thackeray of suggestions which it is +difficult to believe he did not in the first instance owe to Dickens. Who +would venture to call Captain Costigan a plagiarism from Mr. Snevellici, +or to affect that Wenham and Wagg were copied from Pyke and Pluck, or that +Major Pendennis--whose pardon one feels inclined to beg for the +juxtaposition--was founded upon Major Bagstock, or the Old Campaigner in +the _Newcomes_ on the Old Soldier in _Copperfield_? But that suggestions +were in these and perhaps in a few other instances derived from Dickens by +Thackeray for some of his most masterly characters, it would, I think, be +idle to deny. In any case, the style of these two great writers differed +as profoundly as their way of looking at men and things. Yet neither of +them lacked a thorough appreciation of the other's genius; and it is +pleasant to remember that, after paying in _Pendennis_ a tribute to the +purity of Dickens's books, Thackeray in a public lecture referred to his +supposed rival in a way which elicited from the latter the warmest of +acknowledgments. It cannot be said that the memorial words which, after +Thackeray's death, Dickens was prevailed upon to contribute to the +_Cornhill Magazine_ did more than justice to the great writer whom England +had just lost; but it is well that the kindly and unstinting tribute of +admiration should remain on record, to contradict any supposition that a +disagreement which had some years previously disturbed the harmony of +their intercourse, and of which the world had, according to its wont, made +the most, had really estranged two generous minds from one another. The +effort which on this occasion Dickens made is in itself a proof of his +kindly feeling towards Thackeray. Of Talfourd and Landor and Stanfield he +could write readily after their deaths, but he frankly told Mr. Wilkie +Collins that, "had he felt he could," he would most gladly have excused +himself from writing the "couple of pages" about Thackeray. + +Dickens, it should be remembered, was at no time a man of many friends. +The mere dalliance of friendship was foreign to one who worked so +indefatigably in his hours of recreation as well as of labour; and +fellowship in work of one kind or another seems to have been, in later +years at all events, the surest support to his intimacy. Yet he was most +easily drawn, not only to those who could help him, but to those whom he +could help in congenial pursuits and undertakings. Such was, no doubt, the +origin of his friendship in these later years with an accomplished French +actor on the English boards, whom, in a rather barren period of our +theatrical history, Dickens may have been justified in describing as "far +beyond any one on our stage," and who certainly was an "admirable artist." +In 1864 Mr. Fechter had taken the Lyceum, the management of which he was +to identify with a more elegant kind of melodrama than that long +domesticated lower down the Strand; and Dickens was delighted to bestow on +him counsel frankly sought and frankly given. As an author, too, he +directly associated himself with the art of his friend.[11] For I may +mention here by anticipation that the last of the _All the Year Round_ +Christmas numbers, the continuous story of _No Thoroughfare_, was written +by Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins in 1867, with a direct eye to its +subsequent adaptation to the stage, for which it actually was fitted by +Mr. Wilkie Collins in the following year. The place of its production, the +Adelphi, suited the broad effects and the rather conventional comic humour +of the story and piece. From America, Dickens watched the preparation of +the piece with unflagging interest; and his innate and irrepressible +genius for stage-management reveals itself in the following passage from a +letter written by him to an American friend soon after his return to +England: "_No Thoroughfare_ is very shortly coming out in Paris, where it +is now in active rehearsal. It is still playing here, but without Fechter, +who has been very ill. He and Wilkie raised so many pieces of stage-effect +here, that, unless I am quite satisfied with the report, I shall go over +and try my stage-managerial hand at the Vaudeville Theatre. I particularly +want the drugging and attempted robbery in the bedroom-scene at the Swiss +Inn to be done to the sound of a water-fall rising and falling with the +wind. Although in the very opening of that scene they speak of the +water-fall, and listen to it, nobody thought of its mysterious music. I +could make it, with a good stage-carpenter, in an hour." + +_Great Expectations_ had been finished in 1860, and already in the latter +part of 1861, the year which comprised the main portion of his second +series of readings, he had been thinking of a new story. He had even found +a title--the unlucky title which he afterwards adopted--but in 1862 the +tempting Australian invitation had been a serious obstacle in his way. "I +can force myself to go aboard a ship, and I can force myself to do at that +reading-desk what I have done a hundred times; but whether, with all this +unsettled, fluctuating distress in my mind, I could force an original book +out of it is another question." Nor was it the "unsettled, fluctuating +distress" which made it a serious effort for him to attempt another longer +fiction. Dickens shared with most writers the experience that both the +inventive power and the elasticity of memory decline with advancing years. +Already since the time when he was thinking of writing _Little Dorrit_ it +had become his habit to enter in a book kept for the purpose memoranda for +possible future use, hints for subjects of stories,[12] scenes, +situations, and characters; thoughts and fancies of all kinds; titles for +possible books. Of these _Somebody's Luggage_, _Our Mutual Friend_, and +_No Thoroughfare_--the last an old fancy revived--came to honourable use; +as did many names, both Christian and surnames, and combinations of both. +Thus, Bradley Headstone's _prænomen_ was derived directly from the lists +of the Education Department, and the Lammles and the Stiltstalkings, with +Mr. Merdle and the Dorrits, existed as names before the characters were +fitted to them. All this, though no doubt in part attributable to the +playful readiness of an observation never to be caught asleep, points in +the direction of a desire to be securely provided with an armoury of +which, in earlier days, he would have taken slight thought. + +Gradually--indeed, so far as I know, more gradually than in the case of +any other of his stories--he had built up the tale for which he had +determined on the title of _Our Mutual Friend_, and slowly, and without +his old self-confidence, he had, in the latter part of 1863, set to work +upon it. "I want to prepare it for the spring, but I am determined not to +begin to publish with less than four numbers done. I see my opening +perfectly, with the one main line on which the story is to turn, and if I +don't strike while the iron (meaning myself) is hot, I shall drift off +again, and have to go through all this uneasiness once more." For, +unfortunately, he had resolved on returning to the old twenty-number +measure for his new story. Begun with an effort, _Our Mutual Friend_--the +publication of which extended from May, 1864, to November, 1865--was +completed under difficulties, and difficulties of a kind hitherto unknown +to Dickens. In February, 1865, as an immediate consequence, perhaps, of +exposure at a time when depression of spirits rendered him less able than +usual to bear it, he had a severe attack of illness, of which Forster says +that it "put a broad mark between his past life and what remained to him +of the future." From this time forward he felt a lameness in his left +foot, which continued to trouble him at intervals during the remainder of +his life, and which finally communicated itself to the left hand. A +comparison of times, however, convinced Forster that the real origin of +this ailment was to be sought in general causes. + +In 1865, as the year wore on, and the pressure of the novel still +continued, he felt that he was "working himself into a damaged state," and +was near to that which has greater terrors for natures like his than for +more placid temperaments--breaking down. So, in May, he went first to the +sea-side and then to France. On his return (it was the 9th of June, the +date of his death five years afterwards) he was in the railway train which +met with a fearful accident at Staplehurst, in Kent. His carriage was the +only passenger-carriage in the train which, when the bridge gave way, was +not thrown over into the stream. He was able to escape out of the window, +to make his way in again for his brandy-flask and the MS. of a number of +_Our Mutual Friend_ which he had left behind him, to clamber down the +brickwork of the bridge for water, to do what he could towards rescuing +his unfortunate fellow-travellers, and to aid the wounded and the dying. +"I have," he wrote, in describing the scene, "a--I don't know what to call +it: constitutional, I suppose--presence of mind, and was not in the least +fluttered at the time.... But in writing these scanty words of +recollection I feel the shake, and am obliged to stop." Nineteen months +afterwards, when on a hurried reading tour in the North, he complains to +Miss Hogarth of the effect of the railway shaking which since the +Staplehurst accident "tells more and more." It is clear how serious a +shock the accident had caused. He never, Miss Hogarth thinks, quite +recovered it. Yet it might have acted less disastrously upon a system not +already nervously weakened. As evidence of the decline of Dickens's +nervous power, I hardly know whether it is safe to refer to the gradual +change in his handwriting, which in his last years is a melancholy study. + +All these circumstances should be taken into account in judging of +Dickens's last completed novel. The author would not have been himself had +he, when once fairly engaged upon his work, failed to feel something of +his old self-confidence. Nor was this feeling, which he frankly confessed +to Mr. Wilkie Collins, altogether unwarranted. _Our Mutual Friend_[13] is, +like the rest of Dickens's later writings, carefully and skilfully put +together as a story. No exception is to be taken to it on the ground that +the identity on which much of the plot hinges is long foreseen by the +reader; for this, as Dickens told his critics in his postscript, had been +part of his design, and was, in fact, considering the general nature of +the story, almost indispensable. The defect rather lies in the absence of +that element of uncertainty which is needed in order to sustain the +interest. The story is, no doubt, ingeniously enough constructed, but +admiration of an ingenious construction is insufficient to occupy the mind +of a reader through an inevitable disentanglement. Moreover, some of the +machinery, though cleverly contrived, cannot be said to work easily. Thus, +the _ruse_ of the excellent Boffin in playing the part of a skinflint +might pass as a momentary device, but its inherent improbability, together +with the likelihood of its leading to an untoward result, makes its +protraction undeniably tedious. It is not, however, in my opinion at +least, in the matter of construction that _Our Mutual Friend_ presents a +painful contrast with earlier works produced, like it, "on a large +canvas." The conduct of the story as a whole is fully vigorous enough to +enchain the attention; and in portions of it the hand of the master +displays its unique power. He is at his best in the whole of the +water-side scenes, both where "The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters" +(identified by zealous discoverers with a tavern called "The Two Brewers") +lies like an oasis in the midst of a desert of ill-favoured tidal +deposits, and where Rogue Riderhood has his lair at the lock higher up the +river. A marvellous union of observation and imagination was needed for +the picturing of a world in which this amphibious monster has his being; +and never did Dickens's inexhaustible knowledge of the physiognomy of the +Thames and its banks stand him in better stead than in these powerful +episodes. It is unfortunate, though in accordance with the common fate of +heroes and heroines, that Lizzie Hexham should, from the outset, have to +discard the colouring of her surroundings, and to talk the conventional +dialect as well as express the conventional sentiments of the heroic +world. Only at the height of the action she ceases to be commonplace, and +becomes entitled to be remembered amongst the true heroines of fiction. A +more unusual figure, of the half-pathetic, half-grotesque kind for which +Dickens had a peculiar liking, is Lizzie's friend, the doll's dressmaker, +into whom he has certainly infused an element of genuine sentiment; her +protector, Riah, on the contrary, is a mere stage-saint, though by this +character Dickens appears to have actually hoped to redeem the aspersions +he was supposed to have cast upon the Jews, as if Riah could have redeemed +Fagin, any more than Sheva redeemed Shylock. + +But in this book whole episodes and parts of the plot through which the +mystery of John Harmon winds its length along are ill-adapted for giving +pleasure to any reader. The whole Boffin, Wegg, and Venus business--if the +term may pass--is extremely wearisome; the character of Mr. Venus, in +particular, seems altogether unconnected or unarticulated with the general +plot, on which, indeed, it is but an accidental excrescence. In the Wilfer +family there are the outlines of some figures of genuine humour, but the +outlines only; nor is Bella raised into the sphere of the charming out of +that of the pert and skittish. A more ambitious attempt, and a more +noteworthy failure, was the endeavour to give to the main plot of this +novel such a satiric foil as the Circumlocution Office had furnished to +the chief action of _Little Dorrit_, in a caricature of society at large, +its surface varnish and its internal rottenness. The Barnacles, and those +who deemed it their duty to rally round the Barnacles, had, we saw, felt +themselves hard hit; but what sphere or section of society could feel +itself specially caricatured in the Veneerings, or in their +associates--the odious Lady Tippins, the impossibly brutal Podsnap, +Fascination Fledgeby, and the Lammles, a couple which suggests nothing but +antimony and the Chamber of Horrors? Caricature such as this, +representing no society that has ever in any part of the world pretended +to be "good," corresponds to the wild rhetoric of the superfluous Betty +Higden episode against the "gospel according to Podsnappery;" but it is, +in truth, satire from which both wit and humour have gone out. An angry, +often almost spasmodic, mannerism has to supply their place. Amongst the +personages moving in "society" are two which, as playing serious parts in +the progress of the plot, the author is necessarily obliged to seek to +endow with the flesh and blood of real human beings. Yet it is precisely +in these--the friends Eugene and Mortimer--that, in the earlier part of +the novel at all events, the constraint of the author's style seems least +relieved; the dialogues between these two Templars have an unnaturalness +about them as intolerable as euphuism or the effeminacies of the Augustan +age. It is true that, when the story reaches its tragic height, the +character of Eugene is borne along with it, and his affectations are +forgotten. But in previous parts of the book, where he poses as a wit, and +is evidently meant for a gentleman, he fails to make good his claims to +either character. Even the skilfully contrived contrast between the rivals +Eugene Wrayburn and the school-master, Bradley Headstone--through whom and +through whose pupil, Dickens, by-the-way, dealt another blow against a +system of mental training founded upon facts alone--fails to bring out the +conception of Eugene which the author manifestly had in his mind. Lastly, +the old way of reconciling dissonances--a marriage which "society" calls a +_mésalliance_--has rarely furnished a lamer ending than here; and, had the +unwritten laws of English popular fiction permitted, a tragic close would +have better accorded with the sombre hue of the most powerful portions of +this curiously unequal romance. + +The effort--for such it was--of _Our Mutual Friend_ had not been over for +more than a few months, when Dickens accepted a proposal for thirty +nights' readings from the Messrs. Chappell; and by April, 1866, he was +again hard at work, flying across the country into Lancashire and +Scotland, and back to his temporary London residence in Southwick Place, +Hyde Park. In any man more capable than Dickens of controlling the +restlessness which consumed him the acceptance of this offer would have +been incomprehensible; for his heart had been declared out of order by his +physician, and the patient had shown himself in some degree awake to the +significance of this opinion. But the readings were begun and accomplished +notwithstanding, though not without warnings, on which he insisted on +putting his own interpretation. Sleeplessness aggravated fatigue, and +stimulants were already necessary to enable him to do the work of his +readings without discomfort. Meanwhile, some weeks before they were +finished, he had been induced to enter into negotiations about a further +engagement to begin at the end of the year. Time was to be left for the +Christmas number, which this year could hardly find its scene anywhere +else than at a railway junction; and the readings were not to extend over +forty nights, which seem ultimately to have been increased to fifty. This +second series, which included a campaign in Ireland, brilliantly +successful despite snow and rain, and Fenians, was over in May. Then came +the climax, for America now claimed her share of the great author for her +public halls and chapels and lecture-theatres; and the question of the +summer and autumn was whether or not to follow the sound of the distant +dollar. It was closely debated between Dickens and his friend Forster and +Wills, and he describes himself as "tempest-tossed" with doubts; but his +mind had inclined in one direction from the first, and the matter was +virtually decided when it resolved to send a confidential agent to make +enquiries on the spot. Little imported another and grave attack in his +foot; the trusty Mr. Dolby's report was irresistible. Eighty readings +within half a year was the estimated number, with profits amounting to +over fifteen thousand pounds. The gains actually made were nearly five +thousand pounds in excess of this calculation. + +A farewell banquet, under the presidency of Lord Lytton, gave the +favourite author Godspeed on his journey to the larger half of his public; +on the 9th of November he sailed from Liverpool, and on the 19th landed at +Boston. The voyage, on which, with his old buoyancy, he had contrived to +make himself master of the modest revels of the saloon, seems to have done +him good, or at least to have made him, as usual, impatient to be at his +task. Barely arrived, he is found reporting himself "so well, that I am +constantly chafing at not having begun to-night, instead of this night +week." By December, however, he was at his reading-desk, first at Boston, +where he met with the warmest of welcomes, and then at New York, where +there was a run upon the tickets, which he described with his usual +excited delight. The enthusiasm of his reception by the American public +must have been heightened by the thought that it was now or never for them +to see him face to face, and, by-gones being by-gones, to testify to him +their admiration. But there may have been some foundation for his +discovery that some signs of agitation on his part were expected in +return, and "that it would have been taken as a suitable compliment if I +would stagger on the platform, and instantly drop, overpowered by the +spectacle before me." It was but a sad Christmas which he spent with his +faithful Dolby at their New York inn, tired, and with a "genuine American +catarrh upon him," of which he never freed himself during his stay in the +country. Hardly had he left the doctor's hands than he was about again, +reading in Boston and New York and their more immediate +neighbourhood--that is, within six or seven hours by railway--till +February; and then, in order to stimulate his public, beginning a series +of appearances at more distant places before returning to his +starting-points. His whole tour included, besides a number of New England +towns, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and in the north Cleveland +and Buffalo. Canada and the West were struck out of the programme, the +latter chiefly because exciting political matters were beginning to absorb +public attention. + +During these journeyings Dickens gave himself up altogether to the +business of his readings, only occasionally allowing himself to accept the +hospitality proffered him on every side. Thus only could he breast the +difficulties of his enterprise; for, as I have said, his health was never +good during the whole of his visit, and his exertions were severe, though +eased by the self-devotion of his attendants, of which, as of his constant +kindness, both serious and sportive, towards them it is touching to read. +Already in January he describes himself as not seldom "so dead beat" at +the close of a reading "that they lay me down on a sofa, after I have been +washed and dressed, and I lie there, extremely faint, for a quarter of an +hour," and as suffering from intolerable sleeplessness at night. His +appetite was equally disordered, and he lived mainly on stimulants. Why +had he condemned himself to such a life? + +When at last he could declare the stress of his work over he described +himself as "nearly used up. Climate, distance, catarrh, travelling, and +hard work have begun--I may say so, now they are nearly all over--to tell +heavily upon me. Sleeplessness besets me; and if I had engaged to go on +into May, I think I must have broken down." Indeed, but for his wonderful +energy and the feeling of exultation which is derived from a heavy task +nearly accomplished, he would have had to follow the advice of "Longfellow +and all the Cambridge men," and give in nearly at the last. But he +persevered through the farewell readings, both at Boston and at New York, +though on the night before the last reading in America he told Dolby that +if he "had to read but twice more, instead of once, he couldn't do it." +This last reading of all was given at New York on April 20, two days after +a farewell banquet at Delmonico's. It was when speaking on this occasion +that, very naturally moved by the unalloyed welcome which had greeted him +in whatever part of the States he had visited, he made the declaration +already mentioned, promising to perpetuate his grateful sense of his +recent American experiences. This apology, which was no apology, at least +remains one amongst many proofs of the fact that with Dickens kindness +never fell on a thankless soil. + +The merry month of May was still young in the Kentish fields and lanes +when the master of Gad's Hill Place was home again at last. "I had not +been at sea three days on the passage home," he wrote to his friend Mrs. +Watson, "when I became myself again." It was, however, too much when "a +'deputation'--two in number, of whom only one could get into my cabin, +while the other looked in at my window--came to ask me to read to the +passengers that evening in the saloon. I respectfully replied that sooner +than do it I would assault the captain and be put in irons." Alas! he was +already fast bound, by an engagement concluded soon after he had arrived +in Boston, to a final series of readings at home. "Farewell" is a +difficult word to say for any one who has grown accustomed to the +stimulating excitement of a public stage, and it is not wonderful that +Dickens should have wished to see the faces of his familiar friends--the +English public--once more. But the engagement to which he had set his hand +was for a farewell of a hundred readings, at the recompense of eight +thousand pounds, in addition to expenses and percentage. It is true that +he had done this before he had fully realized the effect of his American +exertions; but even so there was a terrible unwisdom in the promise. These +last readings--and he alone is, in common fairness, to be held responsible +for the fact--cut short a life from which much noble fruit might still +have been expected for our literature, and which in any case might have +been prolonged as a blessing beyond all that gold can buy to those who +loved him. + +Meanwhile he had allowed himself a short respite before resuming his +labours in October. It was not more, his friends thought, than he needed, +for much of his old buoyancy seemed to them to be wanting in him, except +when hospitality or the intercourse of friendship called it forth. What a +charm there still was in his genial humour his letters would suffice to +show. It does one good to read his description to his kind American +friends Mr. and Mrs. Fields of his tranquillity at Gad's Hill: "Divers +birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. The place is +lovely, and in perfect order. I have put five mirrors in the Swiss châlet +where I write, and they reflect and refract in all kinds of ways the +leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving +corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up amongst the branches of the +trees, and the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green +branches shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the +clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, +and indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most +delicious." + +Part of this rare leisure he generously devoted to the preparation for the +press of a volume of literary remains from the pen of an old friend. The +_Religious Opinions of Chauncey Hare Townshend_ should not be altogether +overlooked by those interested in Dickens, to whom the loose undogmatic +theology of his friend commended itself as readily as the sincere +religious feeling underlying it. I cannot say what answer Dickens would +have returned to an enquiry as to his creed, but the nature of his +religious opinions is obvious enough. Born in the Church of England, he +had so strong an aversion from what seemed to him dogmatism of any kind, +that he for a time--in 1843--connected himself with a Unitarian +congregation; and to Unitarian views his own probably continued during his +life most nearly to approach. He described himself as "morally wide +asunder from Rome," but the religious conceptions of her community cannot +have been a matter of anxious enquiry with him, while he was too +liberal-minded to be, unless occasionally, aggressive in his +Protestantism. For the rest, his mind, though imaginative, was without +mystical tendencies, while for the transitory superstitions of the day it +was impossible but that he should entertain the contempt which they +deserved. "Although," he writes-- + + "I regard with a hushed and solemn fear the mysteries between which, + and this state of existence, is interposed the barrier of the great + trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and, although + I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them, I + cannot reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking + of boards, and such like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and + pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to + understand." + +His piety was undemonstrative and sincere, as his books alone would +suffice to prove; and he seems to have sought to impress upon his children +those religious truths with the acceptance and practice of which he +remained himself content. He loved the New Testament, and had, after some +fashion of his own, paraphrased the Gospel narrative for the use of his +children; but he thought that "half the misery and hypocrisy of the +Christian world arises from a stubborn determination to refuse the New +Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament +into alliance with it--whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of +gnat-straining." Of Puritanism in its modern forms he was an +uncompromising, and no doubt a conscientious, opponent; and though, with +perfect sincerity, he repelled the charge that his attacks upon cant were +attacks upon religion, yet their _animus_ is such as to make the +misinterpretation intelligible. His Dissenting ministers are of the +_Bartholomew Fair_ species; and though, in his later books, a good +clergyman here and there makes his modest appearance, the balance can +hardly be said to be satisfactorily redressed. + +The performance of this pious office was not the only kind act he did +after his return from America. Of course, however, his own family was +nearest to his heart. No kinder or more judicious words were ever +addressed by a father to his children than those which, about this time, +he wrote to one of his sons, then beginning a successful career at +Cambridge, and to another--the youngest--who was setting forth for +Australia, to join an elder brother already established in that country. +"Poor Plorn," he afterward wrote, "is gone to Australia. It was a hard +parting at the last. He seemed to me to become once more my youngest and +favourite child as the day drew near, and I did not think I could have +been so shaken." + +In October his "farewell" readings began. He had never had his heart more +in the work than now. Curiously enough, not less than two proposals had +reached him during this autumn--one from Birmingham and the other from +Edinburgh--that he should allow himself to be put forward as a candidate +for Parliament; but he declined to entertain either, though in at least +one of the two cases the prospects of success would not have been small. +His views of political and parliamentary life had not changed since he had +written to Bulwer Lytton in 1865: "Would there not seem to be something +horribly rotten in the system of political life, when one stands amazed +how any man, not forced into it by his position, as you are, can bear to +live it?" Indeed, they had hardly changed since the days when he had come +into personal contact with them as a reporter. In public and in private he +had never ceased to ridicule our English system of party, and to express +his contempt for the Legislature and all its works. He had, however, +continued to take a lively interest in public affairs, and his letters +contain not a few shrewd remarks on both home and foreign questions. Like +most liberal minds of his age, he felt a warm sympathy for the cause of +Italy; and the English statesman whom he appears to have most warmly +admired was Lord Russell, in whose good intentions neither friends nor +adversaries were wont to lose faith. Meanwhile his Radicalism gradually +became of the most thoroughly independent type, though it interfered +neither with his approval of the proceedings in Jamaica as an example of +strong government, nor with his scorn of "the meeting of jawbones and +asses" held against Governor Eyre at Manchester. The political questions, +however, which really moved him deeply were those social problems to which +his sympathy for the poor had always directed his attention--the Poor-law, +temperance, Sunday observance, punishment and prisons, labour and strikes. +On all these heads sentiment guided his judgment, but he spared no pains +to convince himself that he was in the right; and he was always generous, +as when, notwithstanding his interest in _Household Words_, he declared +himself unable to advocate the repeal of the paper duty for a moment, "as +against the soap duty, or any other pressing on the mass of the poor." + +Thus he found no difficulty in adhering to the course he had marked out +for himself. The subject which now occupied him before all others was a +scheme for a new reading, with which it was his wish to vary and to +intensify the success of the series on which he was engaged. This was no +other than a selection of scenes from _Oliver Twist_, culminating in the +scene of the murder of Nancy by Sikes, which, before producing it in +public, he resolved to "try" upon a select private audience. The trial was +a brilliant success. "The public," exclaimed a famous actress who was +present, "have been looking out for a sensation these last fifty years or +so, and, by Heaven, they have got it!" Accordingly, from January, 1869, it +formed one of the most frequent of his readings, and the effort which it +involved counted for much in the collapse which was to follow. Never were +the limits between reading and acting more thoroughly effaced by Dickens, +and never was the production of an extraordinary effect more equally +shared by author and actor. But few who witnessed this extraordinary +performance can have guessed the elaborate preparation bestowed upon it, +which is evident from the following notes (by Mr. C. Kent) on the book +used in it by the reader: + + "What is as striking as anything in all this reading, however--that + is, in the reading copy of it now lying before us as we write--is the + mass of hints as to the by-play in the stage directions for himself, + so to speak, scattered up and down the margin. 'Fagin raised his right + hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air,' is there on page + 101 in print. Beside it, on the margin in MS., is the word '_Action_.' + Not a word of it was said. It was simply _done_. Again, immediately + below that, on the same page--Sikes _loquitur_: 'Oh! you haven't, + haven't you?' passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket + ('_Action_' again in MS. on the margin.) Not a word was said about the + pistol.... So again, afterwards, as a rousing self-direction, one sees + notified in MS. on page 107 the grim stage direction, '_Murder + coming!_'" + +The "Murder" was frequently read by Dickens not less than four times a +week during the early months of 1869, in which year, after beginning in +Ireland, he had been continually travelling to and fro between various +parts of Great Britain and town. Already in February the old trouble in +his foot had made itself felt, but, as usual, it had long been +disregarded. On the 10th of April he had been entertained at Liverpool, in +St. George's Hall, at a banquet presided over by Lord Dufferin, and in a +genial speech had tossed back the ball to Lord Houghton, who had +pleasantly bantered him for his unconsciousness of the merits of the House +of Lords. Ten days afterwards he was to read at Preston, but, feeling +uneasy about himself, had reported his symptoms to his doctor in London. +The latter hastened down to Preston, and persuaded Dickens to accompany +him back to town, where, after a consultation, it was determined that the +readings must be stopped for the current year, and that reading combined +with travelling must never be resumed. What his sister-in-law and daughter +feel themselves justified in calling "the beginning of the end" had come +at last. + +With his usual presence of mind Dickens at once perceived the imperative +necessity of interposing, "as it were, a fly-leaf in the book of my life, +in which nothing should be written from without for a brief season of a +few weeks." But he insisted that the combination of the reading and the +travelling was alone to be held accountable for his having found himself +feeling, "for the first time in my life, giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, +uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull of spirit." +Meanwhile, he for once kept quiet, first in London, and then at Gad's +Hill. "This last summer," say those who did most to make it bright for +him, "was a very happy one," and gladdened by the visits of many friends. +On the retirement, also on account of ill-health, from _All the Year +Round_ of his second self, Mr. W. H. Wills, he was fortunately able at +once to supply the vacant place by the appointment to it of his eldest +son, who seems to have inherited that sense of lucid order which was +amongst his father's most distinctive characteristics. He travelled very +little this year, though in September he made a speech at Birmingham on +behalf of his favourite Midland Institute, delivering himself, at its +conclusion, of an antithetical Radical commonplace, which, being +misreported or misunderstood, was commented upon with much unnecessary +wonderment. With a view to avoiding the danger of excessive fatigue, the +latter part of the year was chiefly devoted to writing in advance part of +his new book, which, like _Great Expectations_, was to grow up, and to be +better for growing up, in his own Kentish home, and almost within sound of +the bells of "Cloisterham" Cathedral. But the new book was never to be +finished. + +The first number of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ was not published till +one more short series of twelve readings, given in London during a period +extending from January to March, was at an end. He had obtained Sir Thomas +Watson's consent to his carrying out this wish, largely caused by the +desire to compensate the Messrs. Chappell in some measure for the +disappointment to which he had been obliged to subject them by the +interruption of his longer engagement. Thus, though the Christmas of 1869 +had brought with it another warning of trouble in the foot, the year 1870 +opened busily, and early in January Dickens established himself for the +season at 5 Hyde Park Place. Early in the month he made another speech at +Birmingham; but the readings were strictly confined to London. On the +other hand, it was not to be expected that the "Murder" would be excluded +from the list. It was read in January to an audience of actors and +actresses; and it is pleasant to think that he was able to testify to his +kindly feeling towards their profession on one of the last occasions when +he appeared on his own stage. "I set myself," he wrote, "to carrying out +of themselves and their observation those who were bent on watching how +the effects were got; and, I believe, I succeeded. Coming back to it +again, however, I feel it was madness ever to do it so continuously. My +ordinary pulse is seventy-two, and it runs up under this effort to one +hundred and twelve." Yet this fatal reading was repeated thrice more +before the series closed, and with even more startling results upon the +reader. The careful observations made by the physician, however, show that +the excitement of his last readings was altogether too great for any man +to have endured much longer. At last, on March 16, the night came which +closed fifteen years of personal relations between the English public and +its favourite author, such as are, after all, unparalleled in the history +of our literature. His farewell words were few and simple, and referred +with dignity to his resolution to devote himself henceforth exclusively to +his calling as an author, and to his hope that in but two short weeks' +time his audience "might enter, in their own homes, on a new series of +readings at which his assistance would be indispensable." + +Of the short time which remained to him his last book was the chief +occupation; and an association thus clings to the _Mystery of Edwin Drood_ +which would, in any case, incline us to treat this fragment--for it was to +be no more--with tenderness. One would, indeed, hardly be justified in +asserting that this story, like that which Thackeray left behind him in +the same unfinished state, bade fair to become a masterpiece in its +author's later manner; there is much that is forced in its humour, while +as to the working out of the chief characters our means of judgment are, +of course, incomplete. The outline of the design, on the other hand, +presents itself with tolerable clearness to the minds of most readers of +insight or experience, though the story deserves its name of a mystery, +instead of, like _Our Mutual Friend_, seeming merely to withhold a +necessary explanation. And it must be allowed few plots have ever been +more effectively laid than this, of which the untying will never be known. +Three such personages in relation to a deed of darkness as Jasper for its +contriver, Durden for its unconscious accomplice, and Deputy for its +self-invited witness, and all so naturally connecting themselves with the +locality of the perpetration of the crime, assuredly could not have been +brought together except by one who had gradually attained to mastership in +the adaptation of characters to the purposes of a plot. Still, the +strongest impression left upon the reader of this fragment is the evidence +it furnishes of Dickens having retained to the last powers which were most +peculiarly and distinctively his own. Having skilfully brought into +connexion, for the purposes of his plot, two such strangely-contrasted +spheres of life and death as the cathedral close at "Cloisterham" and an +opium-smoking den in one of the obscurest corners of London, he is +enabled, by his imaginative and observing powers, not only to _realise_ +the picturesque elements in both scenes, but also to convert them into a +twofold background, accommodating itself to the most vivid hues of human +passion. This is to bring out what he was wont to call "the romantic +aspect of familiar things." With the physiognomy of Cloisterham--otherwise +Rochester--with its cathedral, and its "monastery" ruin, and its "Minor +Canon Corner," and its "Nuns' House"--otherwise "Eastgate House," in the +High Street--he was, of course, closely acquainted; but he had never +reproduced its features with so artistic a cunning, and the Mystery of +Edwin Drood will always haunt Bishop Gundulph's venerable building and its +tranquil precincts. As for the opium-smoking, we have his own statement +that what he described he saw--"exactly as he had described it, penny +ink-bottle and all--down in Shadwell" in the autumn of 1869. "A couple of +the Inspectors of Lodging-houses knew the woman, and took me to her as I +was making a round with them to see for myself the working of Lord +Shaftesbury's Bill." Between these scenes John Jasper--a figure conceived +with singular force--moves to and fro, preparing his mysterious design. No +story of the kind ever began more finely; and we may be excused from +enquiring whether signs of diminished vigour of invention and freshness of +execution are to be found in other and less prominent portions of the +great novelist's last work. + +Before, in this year 1870, Dickens withdrew from London to Gad's Hill, +with the hope of there in quiet carrying his all but half-finished task to +its close, his health had not been satisfactory; he had suffered from time +to time in his foot, and his weary and aged look was observed by many of +his friends. He was able to go occasionally into society; though at the +last dinner-party which he attended--it was at Lord Houghton's, to meet +the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians--he had been unable to +mount above the dining-room floor. Already in March the Queen had found a +suitable opportunity for inviting him to wait upon her at Buckingham +Palace, when she had much gratified him by her kindly manner; and a few +days later he made his appearance at the levee. These acknowledgments of +his position as an English author were as they should be; no others were +offered, nor is it a matter of regret that there should have been no +titles to inscribe on his tomb. He was also twice seen on one of those +public occasions which no eloquence graced so readily and so pleasantly as +his: once in April, at the dinner for the Newsvenders' Charity, when he +spoke of the existence among his humble clients of that "feeling of +brotherhood and sympathy which is worth much to all men, or they would +herd with wolves;" and once in May--only a day or two before he went home +into the country--when, at the Royal Academy dinner, he paid a touching +tribute to the eminent painter, Daniel Maclise, who in the good old days +had been much like a brother to himself. Another friend and companion, +Mark Lemon, passed away a day or two afterwards; and with the most +intimate of all, his future biographer, he lamented the familiar faces of +their companions--not one of whom had passed his sixtieth year--upon which +they were not to look again. On the 30th of May he was once more at Gad's +Hill. + +Here he forthwith set to work on his book, taking walks as usual, though +of no very great length. On Thursday, the 9th of June, he had intended to +pay his usual weekly visit to the office of his journal, and accordingly, +on the 8th, devoted the afternoon as well as the morning to finishing the +sixth number of the story. When he came across to the house from the +châlet before dinner he seemed to his sister-in-law, who alone of the +family was at home, tired and silent, and no sooner had they sat down to +dinner than she noticed how seriously ill he looked. It speedily became +evident that a fit was upon him. "Come and lie down," she entreated. "Yes, +on the ground," he said, very distinctly--these were the last words he +spoke--and he slid from her arm and fell upon the floor. He was laid on a +couch in the room, and there he remained unconscious almost to the last. +He died at ten minutes past six on the evening of the 9th--by which time +his daughters and his eldest son had been able to join the faithful +watcher by his side; his sister and his son Henry arrived when all was +over. + +His own desire had been to be buried near Gad's Hill; though at one time +he is said to have expressed a wish to lie in a disused graveyard, which +is still pointed out, in a secluded corner in the moat of Rochester +Castle. Preparations had been made accordingly, when the Dean and Chapter +of Rochester urged a request that his remains might be placed in their +Cathedral. This was assented to; but at the last moment the Dean of +Westminster gave expression to a widespread wish that the great national +writer might lie in the national Abbey. There he was buried on June 14, +without the slightest attempt at the pomp which he had deprecated in his +will, and which he almost fiercely condemned in more than one of his +writings. "The funeral," writes Dean Stanley, whose own dust now mingles +with that of so many illustrious dead, "was strictly private. It took +place at an early hour in the summer morning, the grave having been dug in +secret the night before, and the vast solitary space of the Abbey was +occupied only by the small band of the mourners, and the Abbey clergy, +who, without any music except the occasional peal of the organ, read the +funeral service. For days the spot was visited by thousands. Many were the +tears shed by the poorer visitors. He rests beside Sheridan, Garrick, and +Henderson"--the first actor ever buried in the Abbey. Associations of +another kind cluster near; but his generous spirit would not have +disdained the thought that he would seem even in death the players' +friend. + +A plain memorial brass on the walls of Rochester Cathedral vindicates the +share which the ancient city and its neighbourhood will always have in his +fame. But most touching of all it is to think of him under the trees of +his own garden on the hill, in the pleasant home where, after so many +labours and so many wanderings, he died in peace, and as one who had +earned his rest. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE FUTURE OF DICKENS'S FAME. + + +There is no reason whatever to believe that in the few years which have +gone by since Dickens's death the delight taken in his works throughout +England and North America, as well as elsewhere, has diminished, or that +he is not still one of our few most popular writers. The mere fact that +his popularity has remained such since, nearly half a century ago, he, +like a beam of spring sunshine, first made the world gay, is a sufficient +indication of the influence which he must have exercised upon his age. In +our world of letters his followers have been many, though naturally enough +those whose original genius impelled them to follow their own course +soonest ceased to be his imitators. Amongst these I know no more signal +instance than the great novelist whose surpassing merits he had very +swiftly recognised in her earliest work. For though in the _Scenes of +Clerical Life_ George Eliot seems to be, as it were, hesitating between +Dickens and Thackeray as the models of her humorous writing, reminiscences +of the former are unmistakable in the opening of _Amos Barton_, in _Mr. +Gilfil's Love-Story_, in _Janet's Repentance_; and though it would be +hazardous to trace his influence in the domestic scenes in _Adam Bede_, +neither a Christmas exordium in one of the books of _The Mill on the +Floss_, nor the Sam Weller-like freshness of Bob Wakem in the same +powerful story, is altogether the author's own. Two of the most successful +Continental novelists of the present day have gone to school with Dickens: +the one the truly national writer whose _Debit and Credit_, a work largely +in the manner of his English model, has, as a picture of modern life, +remained unexcelled in German literature;[14] the other, the brilliant +Southerner, who may write as much of the _History of his Books_ as his +public may desire to learn, but who cannot write the pathos of Dickens +altogether out of _Jack_, or his farcical fun out of _Le Nabab_. And +again--for I am merely illustrating, not attempting to describe, the +literary influence of Dickens--who could fail to trace in the Californian +studies and sketches of Bret Harte elements of humour and of pathos, to +which that genuinely original author would be the last to deny that his +great English "master" was no stranger? + +Yet popularity and literary influence, however wide and however strong, +often pass away as they have come; and in no field of literature are there +many reputations which the sea of time fails before very long to submerge. +In prose fiction--a comparatively young literary growth--they are +certainly not the most numerous, perhaps because on works of this species +the manners and style of an age most readily impress themselves, rendering +them proportionately strange to the ages that come after. In the works of +even the lesser playwrights who pleased the liberal times of Elizabeth, +and in lyrics of even secondary merit that were admired by fantastic +Caroline cavaliers, we can still take pleasure. But who can read many of +the "standard" novels published as lately even as the days of George the +Fourth? The speculation is, therefore, not altogether idle, whether +Dickens saw truly when labouring, as most great men do labour, in the +belief that his work was not only for a day. Literary eminence was the +only eminence he desired, while it was one of the very healthiest elements +in his character, that whatever he was, he was thoroughly. He would not +have told any one, as Fielding's author told Mr. Booth at the +sponging-house, that romance-writing "is certainly the easiest work in the +world;" nor, being what he was, could he ever have found it such in his +own case. "Whoever," he declared, "is devoted to an art must be content to +give himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it." And not +only did he obey his own labour-laws, but in the details of his work as a +man of letters he spared no pains and no exercise of self-control. "I am," +he generously told a beginner, to whom he was counselling patient +endeavour, "an impatient and impulsive person myself, but it has been for +many years the constant effort of my life to practise at my desk what I +preach to you." Never, therefore has a man of letters had a better claim +to be judged by his works. As he expressly said in his will, he wished for +no other monument than his writings; and with their aid we, who already +belong to a new generation, and whose children will care nothing for the +gossip and the scandal of which he, like most popular celebrities, was in +his lifetime privileged or doomed to become the theme, may seek to form +some definite conception of his future place among illustrious Englishmen. + +It would, of course, be against all experience to suppose that to future +generations Dickens, as a writer, will be all that he was to his own. +Much that constitutes the subject, or at least furnishes the background, +of his pictures of English life, like the Fleet Prison and the Marshalsea, +has vanished, or is being improved off the face of the land. The form, +again, of Dickens's principal works may become obsolete, as it was in a +sense accidental. He was the most popular novelist of his day; but should +prose fiction, or even the full and florid species of it which has enjoyed +so long-lived a favour ever be out of season, the popularity of Dickens's +books must experience an inevitable diminution. And even before that day +arrives not all the works in a particular species of literature that may +to a particular age have seemed destined to live, will have been +preserved. Nothing is more surely tested by time than that originality +which is the secret of a writer's continuing to be famous, and continuing +to be read. + +Dickens was not--and to whom in these latter ages of literature could such +a term be applied?--a self-made writer, in the sense that he owed nothing +to those who had gone before him. He was most assuredly no classical +scholar--how could he have been? But I should hesitate to call him an +ill-read man, though he certainly was neither a great nor a catholic +reader, and though he could not help thinking about _Nicholas Nickleby_ +while he was reading the _Curse of Kehama_. In his own branch of +literature his judgment was sound and sure-footed. It was, of course, a +happy accident that as a boy he imbibed that taste for good fiction which +is a thing inconceivable to the illiterate. Sneers have been directed +against the poverty of his book-shelves in his earlier days of authorship; +but I fancy there were not many popular novelists in 1839 who would have +taken down with them into the country for a summer sojourn, as Dickens did +to Petersham, not only a couple of Scott's novels, but Goldsmith, Swift, +Fielding, Smollett, and the British Essayists; nor is there one of these +national classics--unless it be Swift--with whom Dickens's books or +letters fail to show him to have been familiar. Of Goldsmith's books, he +told Forster, in a letter which the biographer of Goldsmith modestly +suppressed, he "had no indifferent perception--to the best of his +remembrance--when little more than a child." He discusses with +understanding the relative literary merits of the serious and humorous +papers in _The Spectator_; and, with regard to another work of unique +significance in the history of English fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he +acutely observed that "one of the most popular books on earth has nothing +in it to make any one laugh or cry." "It is a book," he added, which he +"read very much." It may be noted, by-the-way, that he was an attentive +and judicious student of Hogarth; and that thus his criticisms of humorous +pictorial art rested upon as broad a basis of comparison as did his +judgment of his great predecessors in English humorous fiction. + +Amongst these predecessors it has become usual to assert that Smollett +exercised the greatest influence upon Dickens. It is no doubt true that in +David Copperfield's library Smollett's books are mentioned first, and in +the greatest number, that a vision of Roderick Random and Strap haunted +the very wicket-gate at Blunderstone, that the poor little hero's first +thought on entering the King's Bench prison was the strange company whom +Roderick met in the Marshalsea; and that the references to Smollett and +his books are frequent in Dickens's other books and in his letters. +Leghorn seemed to him "made illustrious" by Smollett's grave, and in a +late period of his life he criticises his chief fictions with admirable +justice. "_Humphry Clinker_," he writes, "is certainly Smollett's best. I +am rather divided between _Peregrine Pickle_ and _Roderick Random_, both +extraordinarily good in their way, which is a way without tenderness; but +you will have to read them both, and I send the first volume of +_Peregrine_ as the richer of the two." An odd volume of _Peregrine_ was +one of the books with which the waiter at the _Holly Tree Inn_ endeavoured +to beguile the lonely Christmas of the snowed-up traveller, but the latter +"knew every word of it already." In the _Lazy Tour_, "Thomas, now just +able to grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, was no bad +embodiment of Commodore Trunnion." I have noted, moreover, coincidences of +detail which bear witness to Dickens's familiarity with Smollett's works. +To Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion, as to Captain Cuttle, every +man was a "brother," and to the Commodore, as to Mr. Smallweed, the most +abusive substantive addressed to a woman admitted of intensification by +the epithet "brimstone." I think Dickens had not forgotten the opening of +the _Adventures of an Atom_ when he wrote a passage in the opening of his +own _Christmas Carol_; and that the characters of Tom Pinch and Tommy +Traddles--the former more especially--were not conceived without some +thought of honest Strap. Furthermore, it was Smollett's example that +probably suggested to Dickens the attractive jingle in the title of his +_Nicholas Nickleby_. But these are for the most part mere details. The +manner of Dickens as a whole resembles Fielding's more strikingly than +Smollett's, as it was only natural that it should. The irony of Smollett +is drier than was reconcilable with Dickens's nature; it is only in the +occasional extravagances of his humour that the former anticipates +anything in the latter, and it is only the coarsest scenes of Dickens's +earlier books--such as that between Noah, Charlotte, and Mrs. Sowerbery +in _Oliver Twist_--which recall the whole manner of his predecessor. They +resemble one another in their descriptive accuracy, and in the +accumulation of detail by which they produce instead of obscuring +vividness of impression; but it was impossible that Dickens should prefer +the general method of the novel of adventure pure and simple, such as +Smollett produced after the example of _Gil Blas_, to the less crude form +adopted by Fielding, who adhered to earlier and nobler models. With +Fielding's, moreover, Dickens's whole nature was congenial; they both had +that tenderness which Smollett lacked; and the circumstance that, of all +English writers of the past, Fielding's name alone was given by Dickens to +one of his sons, shows how, like so many of Fielding's readers, he had +learnt to love him with an almost personal affection. The very spirit of +the author of _Tom Jones_--that gaiety which, to borrow the saying of a +recent historian concerning Cervantes, renders even brutality agreeable, +and that charm of sympathetic feeling which makes us love those of his +characters which he loves himself--seem astir in some of the most +delightful passages of Dickens's most delightful books. So in _Pickwick_, +to begin with, in which, by the way, Fielding is cited with a twinkle of +the eye all his own, and in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, where a chapter opens +with a passage which is pure Fielding: + + "It was morning, and the beautiful Aurora, of whom so much hath been + written, said, and sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak + Miss Pecksniff's nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the goddess, in + her intercourse with the fair Cherry, to do so; or, in more prosaic + phrase, the tip of that feature in the sweet girl's countenance was + always very red at breakfast-time." + +Amongst the writers of Dickens's own age there were only two, or perhaps +three, who in very different degrees and ways exercised a noticeable +influence upon his writings. He once declared to Washington Irving that he +kept everything written by that delightful author upon "his shelves, and +in his thoughts, and in his heart of hearts." And, doubtless, in Dickens's +early days as an author the influence of the American classic may have +aided to stimulate the imaginative element in his English admirer's +genius, and to preserve him from a grossness of humour into which, after +the _Sketches by Boz_, he very rarely allowed himself to lapse. The two +other writers were Carlyle, and, as I have frequently noted in previous +chapters, the friend and fellow-labourer of Dickens's later manhood, Mr. +Wilkie Collins. It is no unique experience that the disciple should +influence the master; and in this instance, perhaps with the co-operation +of the examples of the modern French theatre, which the two friends had +studied in common, Mr. Wilkie Collins's manner had, I think, no small +share in bringing about a transformation in that of Dickens. His stories +thus gradually lost all traces of the older masters both in general method +and in detail; whilst he came to condense and concentrate his effects in +successions of skilfully-arranged scenes. Dickens's debt to Carlyle was, +of course, of another nature; and in his works the proofs are not few of +his readiness to accept the teachings of one whom he declared he would "go +at all times farther to see than any man alive." There was something +singular in the admiration these two men felt for one another; for +Carlyle, after an acquaintance of almost thirty years, spoke of Dickens as +"a most cordial, sincere, clear-sighted, quietly decisive, just, and +loving man;" and there is not one of these epithets but seems well +considered and well chosen. But neither Carlyle nor Dickens possessed a +moral quality omitted in this list, the quality of patience, which abhors +either "quietly" or loudly "deciding" a question before considering it +under all its aspects, and in a spirit of fairness to all sides. The +_Latter-Day Pamphlets_, to confine myself to them,[15] like so much of the +political philosophy, if it is to be dignified by that name, which in part +Dickens derived from them, were at the time effective strokes of satirical +invective; now, their edge seems blunt and their energy inflation. Take +the pamphlet on Model Prisons, with its summary of a theory which Dickens +sought in every way to enforce upon his readers; or again, that entitled +_Downing Street_, which settles the question of party government as a +question of the choice between Buffy and Boodle, or, according to Carlyle, +the Honourable Felix Parvulus and the Right Honourable Felicissimus Zero. +The corrosive power of such sarcasms may be unquestionable; but the angry +rhetoric pointed by them becomes part of the nature of those who +habitually employ its utterance in lieu of argument; and not a little of +the declamatory element in Dickens, which no doubt at first exercised its +effect upon a large number of readers, must be ascribed to his reading of +a great writer who was often very much more stimulative than nutritious. + +Something, then, he owed to other writers, but it was little indeed in +comparison with what he owed to his natural gifts. First amongst these, I +think, must be placed what may, in a word, be called his sensibility--that +quality of which humour, in the more limited sense of the word, and +pathos are the twin products. And in Dickens both these were paramount +powers, almost equally various in their forms and effective in their +operation. According to M. Taine, Dickens, whilst he excels in irony of a +particular sort, being an Englishman, is incapable of being gay. Such +profundities are unfathomable to the readers of _Pickwick_; though the +French critic may have generalised from Dickens's later writings only. His +pathos is not less true than various, for the gradations are marked +between the stern, tragic pathos of _Hard Times_, the melting pathos of +the _Old Curiosity Shop_, _Dombey and Son_, and _David Copperfield_, and +the pathos of helplessness which appeals to us in Smike and Jo. But this +sensibility would not have given us Dickens's gallery of living pictures +had it not been for the powers of imagination and observation which +enabled him spontaneously to exercise it in countless directions. To the +way in which his imagination enabled him to identify himself with the +figments of his own brain he frequently testified; Dante was not more +certain in his celestial and infernal topography than was Dickens as to +"every stair in the little mid-shipman's house," and as to "every young +gentleman's bedstead in Dr. Blimber's establishment." One particular class +of phenomena may be instanced instead of many, in the observation and +poetic reproduction of which his singular natural endowment continually +manifested itself--I mean those of the weather. It is not, indeed, often +that he rises to a fine image like that in the description of the night in +which Ralph Nickleby, ruined and crushed, slinks home to his death: + + "The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds + furiously and fast before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that + seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the others, + but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. + He often looked back at this, and more than once stopped to let it + pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward again it was still + behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral + train." + +But he again and again enables us to feel as if the Christmas morning on +which Mr. Pickwick ran gaily down the slide, or as if the "very quiet" +moonlit night in the midst of which a sudden sound, like the firing of a +gun or a pistol, startled the repose of Lincoln's Inn Fields, were not +only what we have often precisely experienced in country villages or in +London squares, but as if they were the very morning and the very night +which we _must_ experience, if we were feeling the glow of wintry +merriment, or the awful chill of the presentiment of evil in a dead hour. +In its lower form this combination of the powers of imagination and +observation has the rapidity of wit, and, indeed, sometimes is wit. The +gift of suddenly finding out what a man, a thing, a combination of man and +thing, is like--this, too, comes by nature; and there is something +electrifying in its sudden exercise, even on the most trivial occasions, +as when Flora, delighted with Little Dorrit's sudden rise to fortune, +requests to know all + + "about the good, dear, quiet little thing, and all the changes of her + fortunes, carriage people now, no doubt, and horses without number + most romantic, a coat of arms, of course, and wild beasts on their + hind legs, showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths + from ear to ear, good gracious!" + +But Nature, when she gifted Dickens with sensibility, observation, and +imagination, had bestowed upon him yet another boon in the quality which +seems more prominent than any other in his whole being. The vigour of +Dickens--a mental and moral vigour supported by a splendid physical +organism--was the parent of some of his foibles; amongst the rest, of his +tendency to exaggeration. No fault has been more frequently found with his +workmanship than this; nor can he be said to have defended himself very +successfully on this head when he declared that he did "not recollect ever +to have heard or seen the charge of exaggeration made against a feeble +performance, though, in its feebleness, it may have been most untrue." But +without this vigour he could not have been creative as he was; and in him +there were accordingly united with rare completeness a swift +responsiveness to the impulses of humour and pathos, an inexhaustible +fertility in discovering and inventing materials for their exercise, and +the constant creative desire to give to these newly-created materials a +vivid plastic form. + +And the mention of this last-named gift in Dickens suggests the query +whether, finally, there is anything in his _manner_ as a writer which may +prevent the continuance of his extraordinary popularity. No writer can be +great without a _manner_ of his own; and that Dickens had such a manner +his most supercilious censurer will readily allow. His terse narrative +power, often intensely humorous in its unblushing and unwinking gravity, +and often deeply pathetic in its simplicity, is as characteristic of his +manner as is the supreme felicity of phrase, in which he has no equal. As +to the latter, I should hardly know where to begin and where to leave off +were I to attempt to illustrate it. But, to take two instances of +different kinds of wit, I may cite a passage in Guster's narrative of her +interview with Lady Dedlock: "And so I took the letter from her, and she +said she had nothing to give me; and _I said I was poor myself, and +consequently wanted nothing_;" and, of a different kind, the account in +one of his letters of a conversation with Macready, in which the great +tragedian, after a solemn but impassioned commendation of his friend's +reading, "put his hand upon my breast and pulled out his +pocket-handkerchief, and _I felt as if I were doing somebody to his +Werner_." These, I think, were amongst the most characteristic merits of +his style. It also, and more especially in his later years, had its +characteristic faults. The danger of degenerating into mannerism is +incident to every original manner. There is mannerism in most of the great +English prose-writers of Dickens's age--in Carlyle, in Macaulay, in +Thackeray--but in none of them is there more mannerism than in Dickens +himself. In his earlier writings, in _Nicholas Nickleby_, for instance (I +do not, of course, refer to the Portsmouth boards), and even in _Martin +Chuzzlewit_, there is much staginess; but in his later works his own +mannerism had swallowed up that of the stage, and, more especially in +serious passages, his style had become what M. Taine happily characterises +as _le style tourmenté_. His choice of words remained throughout +excellent, and his construction of sentences clear. He told Mr. Wilkie +Collins that "underlining was not his nature;" and in truth he had no need +to emphasise his expressions, or to bid the reader "go back upon their +meaning." He recognised his responsibility, as a popular writer, in +keeping the vocabulary of the language pure; and in _Little Dorrit_ he +even solemnly declines to use the French word _trousseau_. In his +orthography, on the other hand, he was not free from Americanisms; and his +interpunctuation was consistently odd. But these are trifles; his more +important mannerisms were, like many really dangerous faults of style, +only the excess of characteristic excellences. Thus it was he who +elaborated with unprecedented effect that humorous species of paraphrase +which, as one of the most imitable devices of his style, has also been the +most persistently imitated. We are all tickled when Grip, the raven, +"issues orders for the instant preparation of innumerable kettles for +purposes of tea;" or when Mr. Pecksniff's eye is "piously upraised, with +something of that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a +domestic bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric +storm;" but in the end the device becomes a mere trick of circumlocution. +Another mannerism which grew upon Dickens, and was faithfully imitated by +several of his disciples, was primarily due to his habit of turning a +fact, fancy, or situation round on every side. This consisted in the +reiteration of a construction, or of part of a construction, in the +strained rhetorical fashion to which he at last accustomed us in spite of +ourselves, but to which we were loath to submit in his imitators. These +and certain other peculiarities, which it would be difficult to indicate +without incurring the charge of hypercriticism, hardened as the style of +Dickens hardened; and, for instance, in the _Tale of Two Cities_ his +mannerisms may be seen side by side in glittering array. By way of +compensation, the occasional solecisms and vulgarisms of his earlier style +(he only very gradually ridded himself of the cockney habit of punning) no +longer marred his pages; and he ceased to break or lapse occasionally, in +highly-impassioned passages, into blank verse. + +From first to last Dickens's mannerism, like everything which he made part +of himself, was not merely assumed on occasion, but was, so to speak, +absorbed into his nature. It shows itself in almost everything that he +wrote in his later years, from the most carefully-elaborated chapters of +his books down to the most deeply-felt passages of his most familiar +correspondence, in the midst of the most genuine pathos and most exuberant +humour of his books, and in the midst of the sound sense and unaffected +piety of his private letters. Future generations may, for this very +reason, be perplexed and irritated by what we merely stumbled at, and may +wish that what is an element hardly separable from many of Dickens's +compositions were away from them, as one wishes away from his signature +that horrible flourish which in his letters he sometimes represents +himself as too tired to append. + +But no distaste for his mannerisms is likely to obscure the sense of his +achievements in the branch of literature to which he devoted the full +powers of his genius and the best energies of his nature. He introduced, +indeed, no new species of prose fiction into our literature. In the +historical novel he made two far from unsuccessful essays, in the earlier +of which in particular--_Barnaby Rudge_--he showed a laudable desire to +enter into the spirit of a past age; but he was without the reading or the +patience of either the author of _Waverley_ or the author of _The +Virginians_, and without the fine historic enthusiasm which animates the +broader workmanship of _Westward Ho_. For the purely imaginative romance, +on the other hand, of which in some of his works Lord Lytton was the most +prominent representative in contemporary English literature, Dickens's +genius was not without certain affinities; but, to feel his full strength, +he needed to touch the earth with his feet. Thus it is no mere phrase to +say of him that he found the ideal in the real, and drew his inspirations +from the world around him. Perhaps the strongest temptation which ever +seemed likely to divert him from the sounder forms in which his +masterpieces were cast lay in the direction of the _novel with a purpose_, +the fiction intended primarily and above all things to promote the +correction of some social abuse, or the achievement of some social +reform. But in spite of himself, to whom the often voiceless cause of the +suffering and the oppressed was at all times dearer than any mere literary +success, he was preserved from binding his muse, as his friend Cruikshank +bound his art, handmaid in a service with which freedom was +irreconcilable. His artistic instinct helped him in this, and perhaps also +the consciousness that where, as in _The Chimes_ or in _Hard Times_, he +had gone furthest in this direction, there had been something jarring in +the result. Thus, under the influences described above, he carried on the +English novel mainly in the directions which it had taken under its early +masters, and more especially in those in which the essential attributes of +his own genius prompted him to excel. + +Amongst the elements on which the effect alike of the novelist's and of +the dramatist's work must, apart from style and diction, essentially +depend, that of construction is obviously one of the most significant. In +this Dickens was, in the earlier period of his authorship, very far from +strong. This was due in part to the accident that he began his literary +career as a writer of _Sketches_, and that his first continuous book, +_Pickwick_, was originally designed as little more than a string of such. +It was due in a still greater measure to the influence of those masters of +English fiction with whom he had been familiar from boyhood, above all to +Smollett. And though, by dint of his usual energy, he came to be able to +invent a plot so generally effective as that of _A Tale of Two Cities_, +or, I was about to say, of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, yet on this head +he had had to contend against a special difficulty; I mean, of course, the +publication of most of his books in monthly or even weekly numbers. In the +case of a writer both pathetic and humorous the serial method of +publication leads the public to expect its due allowance of both pathos +and humour every month or week, even if each number, to borrow a homely +simile applied in _Oliver Twist_ to books in general, need not contain +"the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers +of red and white in a side of streaky bacon." And again, as in a melodrama +of the old school, each serial division has, if possible, to close +emphatically, effectively, with a promise of yet stranger, more touching, +more laughable things to come. On the other hand, with this form of +publication repetition is frequently necessary by way of "reminder" to +indolent readers, whose memory needs refreshing after the long pauses +between the acts. Fortunately, Dickens abhorred living, as it were, from +hand to mouth, and thus diminished the dangers to which, I cannot help +thinking, Thackeray at times almost succumbed. Yet, notwithstanding, in +the arrangement of his incidents and the contrivance of his plots it is +often impossible to avoid noting the imperfection of the machinery, or at +least the traces of effort. I have already said under what influences, in +my opinion, Dickens acquired a constructive skill which would have been +conspicuous in most other novelists. + +If in the combination of parts the workmanship of Dickens was not +invariably of the best, on the other hand in the invention of those parts +themselves he excelled, his imaginative power and dramatic instinct +combining to produce an endless succession of effective scenes and +situations, ranging through almost every variety of the pathetic and the +humorous. In no direction was nature a more powerful aid to art with him +than in this. From his very boyhood he appears to have possessed in a +developed form what many others may possess in its germ, the faculty of +converting into a scene--putting, as it were, into a frame--personages +that came under his notice, and the background on which he saw them. Who +can forget the scene in _David Copperfield_ in which the friendless little +boy attracts the wonderment of the good people of the public-house +where--it being a special occasion--he has demanded a glass of their "very +best ale, with a head to it?" In the autobiographical fragment already +cited, where the story appears in almost the same words, Dickens exclaims: + + "Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire + Terrace. The landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar + window-frame; his wife, looking over the little half-door; and I, in + some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition." + +He saw the scene while he was an actor in it. Already the _Sketches by +Boz_ showed the exuberance of this power, and in his last years more than +one paper in the delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_ series proved it to +be as inexhaustible as ever, while the art with which it was exercised had +become more refined. Who has better described (for who was more sensitive +to it?) the mysterious influence of crowds, and who the pitiful pathos of +solitude? Who has ever surpassed Dickens in his representations, varied a +thousandfold, but still appealing to the same emotions, common to us all, +of the crises or turning-points of human life? Who has dwelt with a more +potent effect on that catastrophe which the drama of every human life must +reach; whose scenes of death in its pathetic, pitiful, reverend, terrible, +ghastly forms speak more to the imagination and more to the heart? There +is, however, one species of scenes in which the genius of Dickens seems to +me to exercise a still stronger spell--those which _precede_ a +catastrophe, which are charged like thunder-clouds with the coming storm. +And here the constructive art is at work; for it is the arrangement of the +incidents, past and to come, combined by anticipation in the mind of the +reader, which gives their extraordinary force to such scenes as the +nocturnal watching of Nancy by Noah, or Carker's early walk to the railway +station, where he is to meet his doom. Extremely powerful, too, in a +rather different way, is the scene in _Little Dorrit_, described in a word +or two, of the parting of Bar and Physician at dawn, after they have +"found out Mr. Merdle's complaint:" + + "Before parting, at Physician's door, they both looked up at the sunny + morning sky, into which the smoke of a few early fires, and the breath + and voices of a few early stirrers, were peacefully rising, and then + looked round upon the immense city and said: 'If all those hundreds + and thousands of beggared people who were yet asleep could only know, + as they two spoke, the ruin that impended over them, what a fearful + cry against one miserable soul would go up to Heaven!'" + +Nor is it awe only, but pity also, which he is able thus to move +beforehand, as in _Dombey and Son_, in the incomparable scenes leading up +to little Paul's death. + +More diverse opinions have been expressed as to Dickens's mastery of that +highest part of the novelist's art, which we call characterisation. +Undoubtedly, the characters which he draws are included in a limited +range. Yet I question whether their range can be justly termed narrow as +compared with that commanded by any other great English novelist except +Scott, or with those of many novelists of other literatures except Balzac. +But within his own range Dickens is unapproached. His novels do not +altogether avoid the common danger of uninteresting heroes and insipid +heroines; but only a very few of his heroes are conventionally declamatory +like Nicholas Nickleby, and few of his heroines simper sentimentally like +Rose Maylie. Nor can I for a moment assent to the condemnation which has +been pronounced upon all the female characters in Dickens's books, as more +or less feeble or artificial. At the same time it is true that from women +of a mightier mould Dickens's imagination turns aside; he could not have +drawn a Dorothea Casaubon any more than he could have drawn Romola +herself. Similarly, heroes of the chivalrous or magnanimous type, +representatives of generous effort in a great cause, will not easily be +met with in his writings: he never even essayed the picture of an artist +devoted to Art for her own sake. + +It suited the genius, and in later years perhaps the temper, of Dickens as +an author to leave out of sight those "public virtues" to which no man was +in truth less blind than himself, and to remain content with the +illustration of types of the private or domestic kind. We may cheerfully +take to us the censure that our great humourist was in nothing more +English than in this--that his sympathy with the affections of the hearth +and the home knew almost no bounds. A symbolisation of this may be found +in the honour which, from the _Sketches_ and _Pickwick_ onwards, through a +long series of Christmas books and Christmas numbers, Dickens, doubtless +very consciously, paid to the one great festival of English family life. +Yet so far am I from agreeing with those critics who think that he is +hereby lowered to the level of the poets of the teapot and the +plum-pudding, that I am at a loss how to express my admiration for this +side of his genius--tender with the tenderness of Cowper, playful with the +playfulness of Goldsmith, natural with the naturalness of the author of +_Amelia_. Who was ever more at home with children than he, and, for that +matter, with babies to begin with? Mr. Horne relates how he once heard a +lady exclaim: "Oh, do read to us about the baby; Dickens is capital at a +baby!" Even when most playful, most farcical concerning children, his fun +is rarely without something of true tenderness, for he knew the meaning of +that dreariest solitude which he has so often pictured, but nowhere, of +course, with a truthfulness going so straight to the heart as in _David +Copperfield_--the solitude of a child left to itself. Another wonderfully +true child-character is that of Pip, in _Great Expectations_, who is also, +as his years progress, an admirable study of boy-nature. For Dickens +thoroughly understood what that mysterious variety of humankind really is, +and was always, if one may so say, on the lookout for him. He knew him in +the brightness and freshness which makes true _ingénus_ of such delightful +characters (rare enough in fiction) as Walter Gay and Mrs. Lirriper's +grandson. He knew him in his festive mood--witness the amusing letter in +which he describes a water expedition at Eton with his son and two of his +irrepressible school-fellows. He knew him in his precocity--the boy of +about three feet high, at the "George and Vulture," "in a hairy cap and +fustian overalls, whose garb bespoke a laudable ambition to attain in time +the elevation of an hostler;" and the thing on the roof of the Harrisburg +coach, which, when the rain was over, slowly upreared itself, and +patronisingly piped out the enquiry: "Well, now, stranger, I guess you +find this a'most like an English arternoon, hey?" He knew the Gavroche who +danced attendance on Mr. Quilp at his wharf, and those strangest, but by +no means least true, types of all, the pupil-teachers in Mr. Fagin's +academy. + +But these, with the exception of the last-named, which show much shrewd +and kindly insight into the paradoxes of human nature, are, of course, +the mere _croquis_ of the great humourist's pencil. His men and women, and +the passions, the desires, the loves, and hatreds that agitate them, he +has usually chosen to depict on that background of domestic life which is +in a greater or less degree common to us all. And it is thus also that he +has secured to himself the vast public which vibrates very differently +from a mere class or section of society to the touch of a popular speaker +or writer. "The more," he writes, "we see of life and its brevity, and the +world and its varieties, the more we know that no exercise of our +abilities in any art, but the addressing of it to the great ocean of +humanity in which we are drops, and not to by-ponds (very stagnant) here +and there, ever can or ever will lay the foundations of an endurable +retrospect." The types of character which in his fictions he chiefly +delights in reproducing are accordingly those which most of us have +opportunities enough of comparing with the realities around us; and this +test, a sound one within reasonable limits, was the test he demanded. To +no other author were his own characters ever more real; and Forster +observes that "what he had most to notice in Dickens at the very outset of +his career was his indifference to any praise of his performances on the +merely literary side, compared with the higher recognition of them as bits +of actual life, with the meaning and purpose, on their part, and the +responsibility on his, of realities, rather than creations of fancy." It +is, then, the favourite growths of our own age and country for which we +shall most readily look in his works, and not look in vain: avarice and +prodigality; pride in all its phases; hypocrisy in its endless varieties, +unctuous and plausible, fawning and self-satisfied, formal and moral; and, +on the other side, faithfulness, simplicity, long-suffering patience, and +indomitable heroic good-humour. Do we not daily make room on the pavement +for Mr. Dombey, erect, solemn, and icy, along-side of whom in the road Mr. +Carter deferentially walks his sleek horse? Do we not know more than one +Anthony Chuzzlewit laying up money for himself and his son, and a curse +for both along with it; and many a Richard Carston, sinking, sinking, as +the hope grows feebler that Justice or Fortune will at last help one who +has not learnt how to help himself? And will not prodigals of a more +buoyant kind, like the immortal Mr. Micawber (though, maybe, with an +eloquence less ornate than his), when _their_ boat is on the shore and +_their_ bark is on the sea, become "perfectly business-like and perfectly +practical," and propose, in acknowledgment of a parting gift we had +neither hoped nor desired to see again, "bills" or, if we should prefer +it, "a bond, or any other description of security?" All this will happen +to us, as surely as we shall be buttonholed by Pecksniffs in a state of +philanthropic exultation; and watched round corners by 'umble but +observant Uriah Heeps; and affronted in what is best in us by the worst +hypocrite of all, the hypocrite of religion, who flaunts in our eyes his +greasy substitute for what he calls the "light of terewth." To be sure, +unless it be Mr. Chadband and those of his tribe, we shall find the +hypocrite and the man-out-at-elbows in real life less endurable than their +representatives in fiction; for Dickens well understood "that if you do +not administer a disagreeable character carefully, the public have a +decided tendency to think that the _story_ is disagreeable, and not merely +the fictitious form." His economy is less strict with characters of the +opposite class, true copies of Nature's own handiwork--the Tom Pinches and +Trotty Vecks and Clara Peggottys, who reconcile us with our kind, and Mr. +Pickwick himself, "a human being replete with benevolence," to borrow a +phrase from a noble passage in Dickens's most congenial predecessor. These +characters in Dickens have a warmth which only the creations of Fielding +and Smollett had possessed before, and which, like these old masters, he +occasionally carries to excess. At the other extreme stand those +characters in which the art of Dickens, always in union with the +promptings of his moral nature, illustrates the mitigating or redeeming +qualities observable even in the outcasts of our civilisation. To me his +figures of this kind, when they are not too intensely elaborated, are not +the least touching; and there is something as pathetic in the uncouth +convict Magwitch as in the consumptive crossing-sweeper Jo. + +As a matter of course it is possible to take exceptions of one kind or +another to some of the characters created by Dickens in so extraordinary a +profusion. I hardly know of any other novelist less obnoxious to the +charge of repeating himself; though, of course, many characters in his +earlier or shorter works contained in themselves the germs of later and +fuller developments. But Bob Sawyer and Dick Swiveller, Noah Claypole and +Uriah Heep are at least sufficiently independent variations on the same +themes. On the other hand, Filer and Cute in _The Chimes_ were the first +sketches of Gradgrind and Bounderby in _Hard Times_; and Clemency in _The +Battle of Life_ prefigures Peggotty in _David Copperfield_. No one could +seriously quarrel with such repetitions as these, and there are remarkably +few of them; for the fertile genius of Dickens took delight in the variety +of its creativeness, and, as if to exemplify this, there was no relation +upon the contrasted humours of which he better loved to dwell than that of +partnership. It has been seen how rarely his inventive power condescended +to supplement itself by what in the novel corresponds to the mimicry of +the stage, and what in truth is as degrading to the one as it is to the +other--the reproduction of originals _from real life_. On the other hand, +he carries his habit too far of making a particular phrase do duty as an +index of a character. This trick also is a trick of the stage, where it +often enough makes the judicious grieve. Many may be inclined to censure +it in Dickens as one of several forms of the exaggeration which is so +frequently condemned in him. There was no charge to which he was more +sensitive; and in the preface to _Martin Chuzzlewit_ he accordingly (not +for the first time) turned round upon the objectors, declaring roundly +that "what is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions is plain +truth to another;" and hinting a doubt "whether it is _always_ the writer +who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for +colour is a little dull." I certainly do not think that the term +"exaggerated" is correctly applied to such conventional characters of +sensational romance as Rosa Dartle, who has, as it were, lost her way into +_David Copperfield_, while Hortense and Madame Defarge seem to be in their +proper places in _Bleak House_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_. In his earlier +writings, and in the fresher and less overcharged serious parts of his +later books, he rarely if ever paints black in black; even the Jew Fagin +has a moment of relenting against the sleeping Oliver; he is not that +unreal thing, a "demon," whereas Sikes is that real thing, a brute. On the +other hand, certainly he at times makes his characters more laughable than +nature; few great humourists have so persistently sought to efface the +line which separates the barely possible from the morally probable. This +was, no doubt, largely due to his inclination towards the grotesque, +which a severer literary training might have taught him to restrain. Thus +he liked to introduce insane or imbecile personages into fiction, where, +as in real life, they are often dangerous to handle. It is to his sense of +the grotesque, rather than to any deep-seated satirical intention, and +certainly not to any want of reverence or piety in his very simple and +very earnest nature, that I would likewise ascribe the exaggeration and +unfairness of which he is guilty against Little Bethel and all its works. +But in this, as in other instances, no form of humour requires more +delicate handling than the grotesque, and none is more liable to cause +fatigue. Latterly, Dickens was always adding to his gallery of eccentric +portraits, and if inner currents may be traced by outward signs, it may be +worth while to apply the test of his _names_, which become more and more +odd as their owners deviate more and more from the path of nature. Who +more simply and yet more happily named than the leading members of the +Pickwick Club--from the poet, Mr. Snodgrass, to the sportsman, Mr. +Winkle--Nathaniel, not Daniel; but with Veneering and Lammle, and Boffin +and Venus, and Crisparkle and Grewgious--be they actual names or not--we +feel instinctively that we are in the region of the transnormal. + +Lastly, in their descriptive power and the faithfulness with which they +portray the life and ways of particular periods or countries, of special +classes, professions, or other divisions of mankind, the books of Dickens +are, again of course within their range, unequalled. He sought his +materials chiefly at home, though his letters from Italy and Switzerland +and America, and his French pictures in sketch and story, show how much +wider a field his descriptive powers might have covered. The _Sketches by +Boz_ and the _Pickwick Papers_ showed a mastery, unsurpassed before or +since, in the description of the life of English society in its middle and +lower classes, and in _Oliver Twist_ he lifted the curtain from some of +the rotten parts of our civilisation. This history of a work-house child +also sounded the note of that sympathy with the poor which gave to +Dickens's descriptions of their sufferings and their struggles a veracity +beyond mere accuracy of detail. He was still happier in describing their +household virtues, their helpfulness to one another, their compassion for +those who are the poorest of all--the friendless and the outcast--as he +did in his _Old Curiosity Shop_, and in most of his Christmas books. His +pictures of middle-class life abounded in kindly humour; but the humour +and pathos of poverty--more especially the poverty which has not yet lost +its self-respect--commended themselves most of all to his descriptive +power. Where, as in _Nicholas Nickleby_ and later works, he essayed to +describe the manners of the higher classes, he was, as a rule, far less +successful; partly because there was in his nature a vein of rebellion +against the existing system of society, so that, except in his latest +books, he usually approached a description of members of its dominant +orders with a satirical intention, or at least an undertone of bitterness. +At the same time I demur to the common assertion that Dickens could not +draw a real gentleman. All that can be said is that it very rarely suited +his purpose to do so, supposing the term to include manners as well as +feelings and actions; though Mr. Twemlow, in _Our Mutual Friend_, might be +instanced as a (perhaps rather conscious) exception of one kind, and Sir +Leicester Dedlock, in the latter part of _Bleak House_, as another. +Moreover, a closer examination of Lord Frederick Verisopht and Cousin +Feenix will show that, gull as the one and ninny as the other is, neither +has anything that can be called ungentlemanly about him; on the contrary, +the characters, on the whole, rather plead in favour of the advantage than +of the valuelessness of blue blood. As for Dickens's other noblemen, whom +I find enumerated in an American dictionary of his characters, they are +nearly all mere passing embodiments of satirical fancies, which pretend to +be nothing more. + +Another ingenious enthusiast has catalogued the numerous callings, +professions, and trades of the personages appearing in Dickens's works. I +cannot agree with the criticism that in his personages the man is apt to +become forgotten in the externals of his calling--the barrister's wig and +gown, as it were, standing for the barrister, and the beadle's cocked hat +and staff for the beadle. But he must have possessed in its perfection the +curious detective faculty of deducing a man's occupation from his manners. +To him nothing wore a neutral tint, and no man or woman was featureless. +He was, it should be remembered, always observing; half his life he was +afoot. When he undertook to describe any novel or unfamiliar kind of +manners, he spared no time or trouble in making a special study of his +subject. He was not content to know the haunts of the London thieves by +hearsay, or to read the history of opium-smoking and its effects in +Blue-books. From the office of his journal in London we find him starting +on these self-imposed commissions, and from his hotel in New York. The +whole art of descriptive reporting, which has no doubt produced a large +quantity of trashy writing, but has also been of real service in arousing +a public interest in neglected corners of our social life, was, if not +actually set on foot, at any rate re-invigorated and vitalised by him. No +one was so delighted to notice the oddities which habit and tradition +stereotype in particular classes of men. A complete natural history of +the country actor, the London landlady, and the British waiter might be +compiled from his pages. This power of observation and description +extended from human life to that of animals. His habits of life could not +but make him the friend of dogs, and there is some reason for a title +which was bestowed on him in a paper in a London magazine concerning his +own dogs--the Landseer of Fiction. His letters are full of delightful +details concerning these friends and companions, Turk, Linda, and the rest +of them; nor is the family of their fictitious counterparts, culminating +(intellectually) in Merrylegs, less numerous and delightful. Cats were +less congenial to Dickens, perhaps because he had no objection to changing +house; and they appear in his works in no more attractive form than as the +attendant spirits of Mrs. Pipchin and of Mr. Krook. But for the humours of +animals in general he had a wonderfully quick eye. Of his ravens I have +already spoken. The pony Whisker is the type of kind old gentlemen's +ponies. In one of his letters occurs an admirably droll description of the +pig-market at Boulogne; and the best unscientific description ever given +of a spider was imagined by Dickens at Broadstairs, when in his solitude +he thought + + "of taming spiders, as Baron Trenck did. There is one in my cell (with + a speckled body and twenty-two very decided knees) who seems to know + me." + +In everything, whether animate or inanimate, he found out at once the +characteristic feature, and reproduced it in words of faultless precision. +This is the real secret of his descriptive power, the exercise of which it +would be easy to pursue through many other classes of subjects. Scenery, +for its own sake, he rarely cared to describe; but no one better +understood how to reproduce the combined effect of scenery and weather on +the predisposed mind. Thus London and its river in especial are, as I have +said, haunted by the memory of Dickens's books. To me it was for years +impossible to pass near London Bridge at night, or to idle in the Temple +on summer days, or to frequent a hundred other localities on or near the +Thames, without instinctively recalling pictures scattered through the +works of Dickens--in this respect, also, a real _liber veritatis_. + +Thus, and in many ways which it would be labour lost to attempt to +describe, and by many a stroke or touch of genius which it would be idle +to seek to reproduce in paraphrase, the most observing and the most +imaginative of our English humourists revealed to us that infinite +multitude of associations which binds men together, and makes us members +one of another. But though observation and imagination might discern and +discover these associations, sympathy--the sympathy of a generous human +heart with humanity--alone could breathe into them the warmth of life. +Happily, to most men, there is one place consecrated above others to the +feelings of love and good-will; "that great altar where the worst among us +sometimes perform the worship of the heart, and where the best have +offered up such sacrifices and done such deeds of heroism as, chronicled, +would put the proudest temples of old time, with all their vaunting +annals, to the blush." It was thus that Dickens spoke of the sanctity of +_home_; and, English in many things, he was most English in that love of +home to which he was never weary of testifying. But, though the "pathway +of the sublime" may have been closed to him, he knew well enough that the +interests of a people and the interests of humanity are mightier than the +domestic loves and cares of any man; and he conscientiously addressed +himself, as to the task of his life, to the endeavour to knit humanity +together. The method which he, by instinct and by choice, more especially +pursued was that of seeking to show the "good in everything." This it is +that made him, unreasonably sometimes, ignobly never, the champion of the +poor, the helpless, the outcast. He was often tempted into a rhetoric too +loud and too shrill, into a satire neither fine nor fair; for he was +impatient, but not impatient of what he thought true and good. His +purpose, however, was worthy of his powers; nor is there recorded among +the lives of English men of letters any more single-minded in its aim, and +more successful in the pursuit of it, than his. He was much criticised in +his lifetime; and he will, I am well aware, be often criticised in the +future by keener and more capable judges than myself. They may miss much +in his writings that I find in them; but, unless they find one thing +there, it were better that they never opened one of his books. He has +indicated it himself when criticising a literary performance by a clever +writer: + + "In this little MS. everything is too much patronised and condescended + to, whereas the slightest touch of feeling for the rustic who is of + the earth earthy, or of sisterhood with the homely servant who has + made her face shine in her desire to please, would make a difference + that the writer can generally imagine without trying it. You don't + want any sentiment laboriously made out in such a thing. You don't + want any maudlin show of it. But you do want a pervading suggestion + that it is there." + +The sentiment which Dickens means is the salt which will give a fresh +savour of their own to his works so long as our language endures. + + +THE END. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] See _Idyll_. xv. 77. This discovery is not my own, but that of the +late Dr. Donaldson, who used to translate the passage accordingly with +great gusto. + +[2] For operas, as a form of _dramatic_ entertainment, Dickens seems +afterwards to have entertained a strong contempt, such as, indeed, it is +difficult for any man with a sense of humour wholly to avoid. + +[3] W. & D. Grant Brothers had their warehouse at the lower end of Cannon +Street, and their private house in Mosely Street. + +[4] As there is hardly a character in the whole world of fiction and the +drama without some sort of a literary predecessor, so Dickens may have +derived the first notion of Grip from the raven Ralpho--likewise the +property of an idiot--who frightened Roderick Random and Strap out of +their wits, and into the belief that he was the personage Grip so +persistently declared himself to be. + +[5] After dining at a party including the son of an eminent man of +letters, he notes in his _Remembrancer_ that he found the great man's son +"decidedly lumpish," and appends the reflexion, "Copyrights need be +hereditary, for genius isn't." + +[6] From a list of MSS. at South Kensington, kindly furnished me by Mr. R. +F. Sketchley, I find that Mr. R. H. Shepherd's _Bibliography of Dickens_ +is incomplete on this head. + +[7] By an odd coincidence, not less than four out of the six theatres +advertising their performances in this first number of the _Daily News_ +announce each a different adaptation of _The Cricket on the Hearth_. +Amongst the curiosities of the casts are observable: At the Adelphi, +Wright as Tilly Slowboy, and at the Haymarket Buckstone in the same +character, with William Farren as Caleb Plummer. The latter part is taken +at the Princess's by Compton, Mrs. Stirling playing Dot. At the Lyceum, +Mr., Mrs., and Miss Mary Keeley, and Mr. Emery, appear in the piece. + +[8] It is, perhaps, worth pointing out, though it is not surprising, that +Dickens had a strong sense of what I may call the poetry of the +railway-train. Of the effect of the weird _Signalman's Story_ in one of +his Christmas numbers it is not very easy to rid one's self. There are +excellent descriptions of the _rapidity_ of a railway journey in the first +chapter of _The Lazy Tour_, and in another _Household Words_ paper, called +_A Flight_. + +[9] Among these is Mr. Alexander Ireland, the author of the _Bibliography +of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt_, who has kindly communicated to me part of his +collections concerning the former. The tittle-tattle against Leigh Hunt +repeated by Lord Macaulay is, on the face of it, unworthy of notice. + +[10] _By Rail to Parnassus_, June 16, 1855. + +[11] One of the last things ever written by Dickens was a criticism of M. +Fechter's acting, intended to introduce him to the American public. A +false report, by-the-way, declared Dickens to have been the author of the +dramatic version of Scott's novel, which at Christmas, 1865-'66, was +produced at the Lyceum, under the title of _The Master of Ravenswood_; but +he allowed that he had done "a great deal towards and about the piece, +having an earnest desire to put Scott, for once, on the stage in his own +gallant manner." + +[12] Dickens undoubtedly had a genius for titles. Amongst some which he +suggested for the use of a friend and contributor to his journal are, +"_What will he do with it?_" and "_Can he forgive her?_" + +[13] This title has helped to extinguish the phrase of which it consists. +Few would now be found to agree with the last clause of Flora's +parenthesis in _Little Dorrit_: "Our mutual friend--too cold a word for +me; at least I don't mean that very proper expression, mutual friend." + +[14] In the last volume of his _magnum opus_ of historical fiction Gustav +Freytag describes "Boz" as, about the year 1846, filling with boundless +enthusiasm the hearts of young men and maidens in a small Silesian country +town. + +[15] The passage in _Oliver Twist_ (chapter xxxvii.) which illustrates the +maxim that "dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes are more questions +of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine," may, or may not, be a +reminiscence of _Sartor Resartus_, then (1838) first published in a +volume. + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. + + +The following Volumes are now ready: + + SAMUEL JOHNSON By LESLIE STEPHEN. + EDWARD GIBBON By J. 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The result of this plan is not + merely a great amount of new biographical detail, but a new sense, + efficacy, and feeling in the writings of the poet himself. + + * * * * * + + All that remains of Burns, the writings he has left, seem to us no + more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken + glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that + wanted all things for completeness--culture, leisure, true effort, + nay, even length of life. * * * There is something in his poems which + forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. * * * + The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the _rarest_, whether in + poetry or prose; but, at the same time, it is plain, and easily + recognized--his indisputable air of truth.--THOMAS CARLYLE. + + Burns is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom of + the people, and lived and died in an humble condition. He was born a + poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius alone is owing the + perpetuity of his fame. * * * Whatever be the faults or the defects of + the poetry of Burns--and no doubt it has many--it has, beyond all that + was ever written, this greatest of all merits, intense, + life-pervading, and life-breathing truth.--Professor WILSON + (_Christopher North_). + +PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. + +_Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on +receipt of the price._ + + + * * * * * + + +OLIVER GOLDSMITH. + + +POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. + + With a Biographical Memoir, and Notes on the Poems. Edited by BOLTON + CORNEY. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $3.00; Cloth, Gilt Edges, $3.75; + Turkey Morocco, Gilt Edges, $7.50. + +SELECT POEMS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH. + + Edited, with Notes, by WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M. Illustrated. 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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: Dickens + English Men of Letters + +Author: Adolphus William Ward + +Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36714] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKENS *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive.) + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p> </p><p> </p> + +<p class="center"><span class="giant">English Men of Letters</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY</span></p> + +<p> </p><p> </p><p> </p> + + +<p class="center"><span class="giant">DICKENS</span></p> +<p> </p> +<p class="center"><small>BY</small><br /> +<span class="large">ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD</span></p> +<p> </p> +<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/printer.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p> </p> +<p class="center">NEW YORK<br /> +HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS<br /> +FRANKLIN SQUARE</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p class="center"><span class="large">ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Edited by John Morley.</span></p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Johnson</span></td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td><td align="right">Leslie Stephen.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Gibbon</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">J. C. Morison.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Scott</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">R. H. Hutton.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Shelley</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">J. A. Symonds.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Hume</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">T. H. Huxley.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Goldsmith</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">William Black.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Defoe</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">William Minto.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Burns</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">J. C. Shairp.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Spenser</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">R. W. Church.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Thackeray</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Anthony Trollope.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Burke</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">John Morley.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Milton</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Mark Pattison.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Hawthorne</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Henry James, Jr.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Southey</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">E. Dowden.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Chaucer</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">A. W. Ward.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Bunyan</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">J. A. Froude.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Cowper</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Goldwin Smith.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Pope</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Leslie Stephen.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Byron</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">John Nichol.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Locke</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Thomas Fowler.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">F. Myers.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Dryden</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">G. Saintsbury.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Landor</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Sidney Colvin.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">De Quincey</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">David Masson.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Lamb</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Alfred Ainger.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Bentley</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">R. C. Jebb.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Dickens</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">A. W. Ward.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Gray</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">E. W. Gosse.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Swift</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Leslie Stephen.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sterne</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">H. D. Traill.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Macaulay</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">J. Cotter Morison.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Fielding</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Austin Dobson.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sheridan</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Mrs. Oliphant.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Addison</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">W. J. Courthope.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Bacon</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">R. W. Church.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Coleridge</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">H. D. Traill.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Sir Philip Sidney</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">J. A. Symonds.</td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Keats</span></td><td> </td><td align="right">Sidney Colvin.</td></tr></table> + +<p class="center">12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume.</p> +<p class="center"><i>Other volumes in preparation.</i></p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="giant">☞</span> <i>Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to +any part<br />of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price.</i></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + +<p><br />At the close of a letter addressed by Dickens to his friend John Forster, +but not to be found in the English editions of the <i>Life</i>, the writer adds +to his praises of the biography of Goldsmith these memorable words: “I +desire no better for my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the +control of my love of order, than such a biographer and such a critic.” +Dickens was a man of few close friendships—“his breast,” he said, “would +not hold many people”—but, of these friendships, that with Forster was +one of the earliest, as it was one of the most enduring. To Dickens, at +least, his future biographer must have been the embodiment of two +qualities rarely combined in equal measure—discretion and candour. In +literary matters his advice was taken almost as often as it was given, and +nearly every proof-sheet of nearly every work of Dickens passed through +his faithful helpmate’s hands. Nor were there many important decisions +formed by Dickens concerning himself in the course of his manhood to which +Forster was a stranger, though, unhappily, he more than once counselled in +vain.</p> + +<p>On Mr. Forster’s <i>Life of Charles Dickens</i>, together with the three +volumes of <i>Letters</i> collected by Dickens’s eldest daughter and his +sister-in-law—his “dearest and best friend”—it is superfluous to state +that the biographical portion of the following essay is mainly based. It +may be superfluous, but it cannot be considered impertinent, if I add that +the shortcomings of the <i>Life</i> have, in my opinion, been more frequently +proclaimed than defined; and that its merits are those of its author as +well as of its subject.</p> + +<p>My sincere thanks are due for various favours shown to me in connexion +with the production of this little volume by Miss<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> Hogarth, Mr. Charles +Dickens, Professor Henry Morley, Mr. Alexander Ireland, Mr. John Evans, +Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Britton. Mr. Evans has kindly enabled me to correct +some inaccuracies in Mr. Forster’s account of Dickens’s early Chatham days +on unimpeachable first-hand evidence. I also beg Captain and Mrs. Budden +to accept my thanks for allowing me to see Gad’s Hill Place.</p> + +<p>I am under special obligations to Mr. R. F. Sketchley, Librarian of the +Dyce and Forster Libraries at South Kensington, for his courtesy in +affording me much useful aid and information. With the kind permission of +Mrs. Forster, Mr. Sketchley enabled me to supplement the records of +Dickens’s life, in the period 1838-’41, from a hitherto unpublished +source—a series of brief entries by him in four volumes of <i>The Law and +Commercial Daily Remembrancer</i> for those years. These volumes formed no +part of the Forster bequest, but were added to it, under certain +conditions, by Mrs. Forster. The entries are mostly very brief; and +sometimes there are months without an entry. Many days succeed one another +with no other note than “Work.”</p> + +<p>Mr. R. H. Shepherd’s <i>Bibliography of Dickens</i> has been of considerable +service to me. May I take this opportunity of commending to my readers, as +a charming reminiscence of the connexion between <i>Charles Dickens and +Rochester</i>, Mr. Robert Langton’s sketches illustrating a paper recently +printed under that title?</p> + +<p>Last, not least, as the Germans say, I wish to thank my friend Professor +T. N. Toller for the friendly counsel which has not been wanting to me on +this, any more than on former occasions.</p> + +<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;">A. W. W.</span></p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td> </td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Preface</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Before “Pickwick”</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">From Success to Success</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Strange Lands</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">“David Copperfield”</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Changes</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">Last Years</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td></tr> +<tr><td> </td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a></td></tr> +<tr><td><span class="smcap">The Future of Dickens’s Fame</span></td><td align="right"><a href="#Page_192">192</a></td></tr></table> + + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h2>DICKENS.</h2> + +<p> </p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">BEFORE “PICKWICK.”</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">[1812-1836.]</span></p> + +<p><br />Charles Dickens, the eldest son, and the second of the eight children, of +John and Elizabeth Dickens, was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsea, on +Friday, February 7, 1812. His baptismal names were Charles John Huffham. +His father, at that time a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and employed in +the Portsmouth Dock-yard, was recalled to London when his eldest son was +only two years of age; and two years afterwards was transferred to +Chatham, where he resided with his family from 1816 to 1821. Thus Chatham, +and the more venerable city of Rochester adjoining, with their +neighbourhood of chalk hills and deep green lanes and woodland and +marshes, became, in the words of Dickens’s biographer, the birthplace of +his fancy. He looked upon himself as, to all intents and purposes, a +Kentish man born and bred, and his heart was always in this particular +corner of the incomparable county. Again and again, after Mr. Alfred +Jingle’s spasmodic eloquence had, in the very first number of <i>Pickwick</i>,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> +epitomised the antiquities and comforts of Rochester, already the scene of +one of the <i>Sketches</i>, Dickens returned to the local associations of his +early childhood. It was at Chatham that poor little David Copperfield, on +his solitary tramp to Dover, slept his Sunday night’s sleep “near a +cannon, happy in the society of the sentry’s footsteps;” and in many a +Christmas narrative or uncommercial etching the familiar features of town +and country, of road and river, were reproduced, before in <i>Great +Expectations</i> they suggested some of the most picturesque effects of his +later art, and before in his last unfinished romance his faithful fancy +once more haunted the well-known precincts. During the last thirteen years +of his life he was again an inhabitant of the loved neighbourhood where, +with the companions of his mirthful idleness, he had so often made +holiday; where, when hope was young, he had spent his honey-moon; and +whither, after his last restless wanderings, he was to return, to seek +such repose as he would allow himself, and to die. But, of course, the +daily life of the “very queer small boy” of that early time is only quite +incidentally to be associated with the grand gentleman’s house on Gad’s +Hill, where his father, little thinking that his son was to act over again +the story of Warren Hastings and Daylesford, had told him he might some +day come to live, if he were to be very persevering, and to work hard. The +family abode was in Ordnance (not St. Mary’s) Place, at Chatham, amidst +surroundings classified in Mr. Pickwick’s notes as “appearing to be +soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, offices, and dock-yard men.” But +though the half-mean, half-picturesque aspect of the Chatham streets may +already at an early age have had its fascination for Dickens, yet his +childish fancy was fed as fully as were his powers of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>observation. Having +learned reading from his mother, he was sent with his elder sister, Fanny, +to a day-school kept in Gibraltar Place, New Road, by Mr. William Giles, +the eldest son and namesake of a worthy Baptist minister, whose family had +formed an intimate acquaintance with their neighbours in Ordnance Row. The +younger Giles children were pupils at the school of their elder brother +with Charles and Fanny Dickens, and thus naturally their constant +playmates. In later life Dickens preserved a grateful remembrance, at +times refreshed by pleasant communications between the families, of the +training he had received from Mr. William Giles, an intelligent as well as +generous man, who, recognising his pupil’s abilities, seems to have +resolved that they should not lie fallow for want of early cultivation. +Nor does there appear to be the slightest reason for supposing that this +period of his life was anything but happy. For his sister Fanny he always +preserved a tender regard; and a touching little paper, written by him +after her death in womanhood, relates how the two children used to watch +the stars together, and make friends with one in particular, as belonging +to themselves. But obviously he did not lack playmates of his own sex; and +it was no doubt chiefly because his tastes made him disinclined to take +much part in the rougher sports of his school-fellows, that he found +plenty of time for amusing himself in his own way. And thus it came to +pass that already as a child he followed his own likings in the two +directions from which they were never very materially to swerve. He once +said of himself that he had been “a writer when a mere baby, an actor +always.”</p> + +<p>Of these two passions he could always, as a child and as a man, be “happy +with either,” and occasionally with both at the same time. In his tender +years he was taken<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> by a kinsman, a Sandhurst cadet, to the theatre, to +see the legitimate drama acted, and was disillusioned by visits behind the +scenes at private theatricals; while his own juvenile powers as a teller +of stories and singer of comic songs (he was possessed, says one who +remembers him, of a sweet treble voice) were displayed on domestic chairs +and tables, and then in amateur plays with his school-fellows. He also +wrote a—not strictly original—tragedy, which is missing among his +<i>Reprinted Pieces</i>. There is nothing unique in these childish doings, nor +in the circumstance that he was an eager reader of works of fiction; but +it is noteworthy that chief among the books to which he applied himself, +in a small neglected bookroom in his father’s house, were those to which +his allegiance remained true through much of his career as an author. +Besides books of travel, which he says had a fascination for his mind from +his earliest childhood, besides the “Arabian Nights” and kindred tales, +and the English Essayists, he read Fielding and Smollett, and Cervantes +and Le Sage, in all innocence of heart, as well as Mrs. Inchbald’s +collection of farces, in all contentment of spirit. Inasmuch as he was no +great reader in the days of his authorship, and had to go through hard +times of his own before, it was well that the literature of his childhood +was good of its kind, and that where it was not good it was at least gay. +Dickens afterwards made it an article of his social creed that the +imagination of the young needs nourishment as much as their bodies require +food and clothing; and he had reason for gratefully remembering that at +all events the imaginative part of his education had escaped neglect.</p> + +<p>But these pleasant early days came to a sudden end. In the year 1821 his +family returned to London, and soon his experiences of trouble began. +Misfortune pursued the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> elder Dickens to town, his salary having been +decreased already at Chatham in consequence of one of the early efforts at +economical reform. He found a shabby home for his family in Bayham Street, +Camden Town; and here, what with the pecuniary embarrassments in which he +was perennially involved, and what with the easy disposition with which he +was blessed by way of compensation, he allowed his son’s education to take +care of itself. John Dickens appears to have been an honourable as well as +a kindly man. His son always entertained an affectionate regard for him, +and carefully arranged for the comfort of his latter years; nor would it +be fair, because of a similarity in their experiences, and in the grandeur +of their habitual phraseology, to identify him absolutely with the +immortal Mr. Micawber. Still less, except in certain details of manner and +incident, can the character of the elder Dickens be thought to have +suggested that of the pitiful “Father of the Marshalsea,” to which prison, +almost as famous in English fiction as it is in English history, the +unlucky navy-clerk was consigned a year after his return to London.</p> + +<p>Every effort had been made to stave off the evil day; and little Charles, +whose eyes were always wide open, and who had begun to write descriptive +sketches of odd personages among his acquaintance, had become familiar +with the inside of a pawnbroker’s shop, and had sold the paternal +“library” piecemeal to the original of the drunken second-hand bookseller, +with whom David Copperfield dealt as Mr. Micawber’s representative. But +neither these sacrifices nor Mrs. Dickens’s abortive efforts at setting up +an educational establishment had been of avail. Her husband’s creditors +<i>would not</i> give him time; and a dark period began for the family, and +more especially for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> little eldest son, now ten years old, in which, +as he afterwards wrote, in bitter anguish of remembrance, “but for the +mercy of God, he might easily have become, for any care that was taken of +him, a little robber or a little vagabond.”</p> + +<p>Forster has printed the pathetic fragment of autobiography, communicated +to him by Dickens five-and-twenty years after the period to which it +refers, and subsequently incorporated with but few changes in the +<i>Personal History of David Copperfield</i>. Who can forget the thrill with +which he first learned the well-kept secret that the story of the solitary +child, left a prey to the cruel chances of the London streets, was an +episode in the life of Charles Dickens himself? Between fact and fiction +there was but a difference of names. Murdstone & Grinby’s wine warehouse +down in Blackfriars was Jonathan Warren’s blacking warehouse at Hungerford +Stairs, in which a place had been found for the boy by a relative, a +partner in the concern; and the bottles he had to paste over with labels +were in truth blacking-pots. But the menial work and the miserable pay, +the uncongenial companionship during worktime, and the speculative devices +of the dinner-hour were the same in each case. At this time, after his +family had settled itself in the Marshalsea, the haven open to the little +waif at night was a lodging in Little College Street, Camden Town, +presenting even fewer attractions than Mr. Micawber’s residence in Windsor +Terrace, and kept by a lady afterwards famous under the name of Mrs. +Pipchin. His Sundays were spent at home in the prison. On his urgent +remonstrance—“the first I had ever made about my lot”—concerning the +distance from his family at which he was left through the week, a back +attic was found for him in Lant Street, in the Borough, “where<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> Bob Sawyer +lodged many years afterwards;” and he now breakfasted and supped with his +parents in their apartment. Here they lived in fair comfort, waited upon +by a faithful “orfling,” who had accompanied the family and its fortunes +from Chatham, and who is said by Forster to have her part in the character +of the Marchioness. Finally, after the prisoner had obtained his +discharge, and had removed with his family to the Lant Street lodgings, a +quarrel occurred between the elder Dickens and his cousin, and the boy was +in consequence taken away from the business.</p> + +<p>He had not been ill-treated there; nor indeed is it ill-treatment which +leads to David Copperfield’s running away in the story. Nevertheless, it +is not strange that Dickens should have looked back with a bitterness very +unusual in him upon the bad old days of his childish solitude and +degradation. He never “forgot” his mother’s having wished him to remain in +the warehouse; the subject of his employment there was never afterwards +mentioned in the family; he could not bring himself to go near old +Hungerford Market so long as it remained standing; and to no human being, +not even to his wife, did he speak of this passage in his life until he +narrated it in the fragment of autobiography which he confided to his +trusty friend. Such a sensitiveness is not hard to explain; for no man is +expected to dilate upon the days “when he lived among the beggars in St. +Mary Axe,” and it is only the Bounderbies of society who exult, truly or +falsely, in the sordid memories of the time before they became rich or +powerful. And if the sharp experiences of his childhood might have ceased +to be resented by one whom the world on the whole treated so kindly, at +least they left his heart unhardened, and helped to make him ever tender +to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> the poor and weak, because he too had after a fashion “eaten his bread +with tears” when a puny child.</p> + +<p>A happy accident having released the David Copperfield of actual life from +his unworthy bondage, he was put in the way of an education such as at +that time was the lot of most boys of the class to which he belonged. “The +world has done much better since in that way, and will do far better yet,” +he writes at the close of his description of <i>Our School</i>, the “Wellington +House Academy,” situate near that point in the Hampstead Road where modest +gentility and commercial enterprise touch hands. Other testimony confirms +his sketch of the ignorant and brutal head-master; and doubtless this +worthy and his usher, “considered to know everything as opposed to the +chief who was considered to know nothing,” furnished some of the features +in the portraits of Mr. Creakle and Mr. Mell. But it has been very justly +doubted by an old school-fellow whether the statement “We were First Boy” +is to be regarded as strictly historical. If Charles Dickens, when he +entered the school, was “put into Virgil,” he was not put there to much +purpose. On the other hand, with the return of happier days had come the +resumption of the old amusements which were to grow into the occupations +of his life. A club was founded among the boys at Wellington House for the +express purpose of circulating short tales written by him, and he was the +manager of the private theatricals which they contrived to set on foot.</p> + +<p>After two or three years of such work and play it became necessary for +Charles Dickens once more to think of earning his bread. His father, who +had probably lost his official post at the time when, in Mr. Micawber’s +phrase, “hope sunk beneath the horizon,” was now seeking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>employment as a +parliamentary reporter, and must have rejoiced when a Gray’s Inn solicitor +of his acquaintance, attracted by the bright, clever looks of his son, +took the lad into his office as a clerk at a modest weekly salary. His +office associates here were perhaps a grade or two above those of the +blacking warehouse; but his danger now lay rather in the direction of the +vulgarity which he afterwards depicted in such samples of the profession +as Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling. He is said to have frequented, in company +with a fellow-clerk, one of the minor theatres, and even occasionally to +have acted there; and assuredly it must have been personal knowledge which +suggested the curiously savage description of <i>Private Theatres</i> in the +<i>Sketches by Boz</i>, the all but solitary <i>unkindly</i> reference to theatrical +amusements in his works. But whatever his experiences of this kind may +have been, he passed unscathed through them; and during the year and a +half of his clerkship picked up sufficient knowledge of the technicalities +of the law to be able to assail its enormities without falling into +rudimentary errors about it, and sufficient knowledge of lawyers and +lawyers’ men to fill a whole chamber in his gallery of characters.</p> + +<p>Oddly enough, it was, after all, the example of the father that led the +son into the line of life from which he was easily to pass into the career +where success and fame awaited him. The elder Dickens having obtained +employment as a parliamentary reporter for the <i>Morning Herald</i>, his son, +who was living with him in Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, resolved to +essay the same laborious craft. He was by this time nearly seventeen years +of age, and already we notice in him what were to remain, through life, +two of his most marked characteristics—strength of will, and a +determination, if he did a thing at all, to do it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> thoroughly. The art of +short-hand, which he now resolutely set himself to master, was in those +days no easy study, though, possibly, in looking back upon his first +efforts, David Copperfield overestimated the difficulties which he had +conquered with the help of love and Traddles. But Dickens, whose education +no Dr. Strong had completed, perceived that in order to succeed as a +reporter of the highest class he needed something besides the knowledge of +short-hand. In a word, he lacked reading; and this deficiency he set +himself to supply as best he could by a constant attendance at the British +Museum. Those critics who have dwelt on the fact that the reading of +Dickens was neither very great nor very extensive, have insisted on what +is not less true than obvious; but he had this one quality of the true +lover of reading, that he never professed a familiarity with that of which +he knew little or nothing. He continued his visits to the Museum, even +when in 1828 he had become a reporter in Doctors’ Commons. With this +occupation he had to remain as content as he could for nearly two years. +Once more David Copperfield, the double of Charles Dickens in his youth, +will rise to the memory of every one of his readers. For not only was his +soul seized with a weariness of Consistory, Arches, Delegates, and the +rest of it, to which he afterwards gave elaborate expression in his story, +but his heart was full of its first love. In later days he was not of +opinion that he had loved particularly wisely; but how well he had loved +is known to every one who after him has lost his heart to Dora. Nothing +came of the fancy, and in course of time he had composure enough to visit +the lady who had been its object in the company of his wife. He found that +Jip was stuffed as well as dead, and that Dora had faded into Flora; for +it was as such that, not very <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>chivalrously, he could bring himself to +describe her, for the second time, in <i>Little Dorrit</i>.</p> + +<p>Before at last he was engaged as a reporter on a newspaper, he had, and +not for a moment only, thought of turning aside to another profession. It +was the profession to which—uncommercially—he was attached during so +great a part of his life, that when he afterwards created for himself a +stage of his own, he seemed to be but following an irresistible +fascination. His best friend described him to me as “a born actor;” and +who needs to be told that the world falls into two divisions only—those +whose place is before the foot-lights, and those whose place is behind +them? His love of acting was stronger than himself; and I doubt whether he +ever saw a play successfully performed without longing to be in and of it. +“Assumption,” he wrote in after days to Lord Lytton, “has charms for me—I +hardly know for how many wild reasons—so delightful that I feel a loss +of, oh! I can’t say what exquisite foolery, when I lose a chance of being +some one in voice, etc., not at all like myself.” He loved the theatre and +everything which savoured of histrionics with an intensity not even to be +imagined by those who have never felt a touch of the same passion. He had +that “belief in a play” which he so pleasantly described as one of the +characteristics of his life-long friend, the great painter, Clarkson +Stanfield. And he had that unextinguishable interest in both actors and +acting which makes a little separate world of the “quality.” One of the +staunchest friendships of his life was that with the foremost English +tragedian of his age, Macready; one of the delights of his last years was +his intimacy with another well-known actor, the late Mr. Fechter. No +performer, however, was so obscure or so feeble as to be outside the pale +of his sympathy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> His books teem with kindly likenesses of all manner of +entertainers and entertainments—from Mr. Vincent Crummles and the more or +less legitimate drama, down to Mr. Sleary’s horse-riding and Mrs. Jarley’s +wax-work. He has a friendly feeling for Chops the dwarf, and for Pickleson +the giant; and in his own quiet Broadstairs he cannot help tumultuously +applauding a young lady “who goes into the den of ferocious lions, tigers, +leopards, etc., and pretends to go to sleep upon the principal lion, upon +which a rustic keeper, who speaks through his nose, exclaims, ‘Behold the +abazid power of woobad!’” He was unable to sit through a forlorn +performance at a wretched country theatre without longing to add a +sovereign to the four-and-ninepence which he had made out in the house +when he entered, and which “had warmed up in the course of the evening to +twelve shillings;” and in Bow Street, near his office, he was beset by +appeals such as that of an aged and greasy suitor for an engagement as +Pantaloon: “Mr. Dickens, you know our profession, sir—no one knows it +better, sir—there is no right feeling in it. I was Harlequin on your own +circuit, sir, for five-and-thirty years, and was displaced by a boy, +sir!—a boy!” Nor did his disposition change when he crossed the seas; the +streets he first sees in the United States remind him irresistibly of the +set-scene in a London pantomime; and at Verona his interest is divided +between <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> and the vestiges of an equestrian troupe in the +amphitheatre.</p> + +<p>What success Dickens might have achieved as an actor it is hardly to the +present purpose to inquire. A word will be said below of the success he +achieved as an amateur actor and manager, and in his more than +half-dramatic readings. But, the influence of early associations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> and +personal feelings apart, it would seem that the artists of the stage whom +he most admired were not those of the highest type. He was subdued by the +genius of Frédéric Lemaître, but blind and deaf to that of Ristori. “Sound +melodrama and farce” were the dramatic species which he affected, and in +which as a professional actor he might have excelled. His intensity might +have gone for much in the one, and his versatility and volubility for more +in the other; and in both, as indeed in any kind of play or part, his +thoroughness, which extended itself to every detail of performance or +make-up, must have stood him in excellent stead. As it was, he was +preserved for literature. But he had carefully prepared himself for his +intended venture, and when he sought an engagement at Covent Garden, a +preliminary interview with the manager was postponed only on account of +the illness of the applicant.</p> + +<p>Before the next theatrical season opened he had at last—in the year +1831—obtained employment as a parliamentary reporter, and after some +earlier engagements he became, in 1834, one of the reporting staff of the +famous Whig <i>Morning Chronicle</i>, then in its best days under the +editorship of Mr. John Black. Now, for the first time in his life, he had +an opportunity of putting forth the energy that was in him. He shrunk from +none of the difficulties which in those days attended the exercise of his +craft. They were thus depicted by himself, when a few years before his +death he “held a brief for his brothers” at the dinner of the Newspaper +Press Fund: “I have often transcribed for the printer from my short-hand +notes important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was +required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely +compromising; writing on the palm<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> of my hand, by the light of a dark +lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, and +through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen +miles an hour.... I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back +row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my +feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, +where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep kept in waiting, +say, until the woolsack might want restuffing. Returning home from excited +political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do +verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle +known in this country. I have been in my time belated on miry by-roads, +towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless +carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back +in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments +by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest +of hearts I ever knew.” Thus early had Dickens learnt the secret of +throwing himself into any pursuit once taken up by him, and of half +achieving his task by the very heartiness with which he set about it. When +at the close of the parliamentary session of the year 1836 his labours as +a reporter came to an end, he was held to have no equal in the gallery. +During this period his naturally keen powers of observation must have been +sharpened and strengthened, and that quickness of decision acquired which +constitutes, perhaps, the most valuable lesson that journalistic practice +of any kind can teach to a young man of letters. To Dickens’s experience +as a reporter may likewise be traced no small part of his political creed, +in which there was a good deal of infidelity; or, at all events, his +determined <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>contempt for the parliamentary style proper, whether in the +mouth of “Thisman” or of “Thatman,” and his rooted dislike of the +“cheap-jacks” and “national dustmen” whom he discerned among our orators +and legislators. There is probably no very great number of Members of +Parliament who are heroes to those who wait attendance on their words. +Moreover, the period of Dickens’s most active labours as a reporter was +one that succeeded a time of great political excitement; and when men wish +thankfully to rest after deeds, words are in season.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, very tentatively and with a very imperfect consciousness of the +significance for himself of his first steps on a slippery path, Dickens +had begun the real career of his life. It has been seen how he had been a +writer as a “baby,” as a school-boy, and as a lawyer’s clerk, and the time +had come when, like all writers, he wished to see himself in print. In +December, 1833, the <i>Monthly Magazine</i> published a paper which he had +dropped into its letter-box, and with eyes “dimmed with joy and pride” the +young author beheld his first-born in print. The paper, called <i>A Dinner +at Poplar Walk</i>, was afterwards reprinted in the <i>Sketches by Boz</i> under +the title of <i>Mr. Minns and his Cousin</i>, and is laughable enough. His +success emboldened him to send further papers of a similar character to +the same magazine, which published ten contributions of his by February, +1835. That which appeared in August, 1834, was the first signed “Boz,” a +nickname given by him in his boyhood to a favourite brother. Since Dickens +used this signature not only as the author of the <i>Sketches</i> and a few +other minor productions, but also as “editor” of the <i>Pickwick Papers</i>, it +is not surprising that, especially among his admirers on the Continent and +in America, the name should have clung to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> him so tenaciously. It was on +a steamboat near Niagara that he heard from his state-room a gentleman +complaining to his wife: “Boz keeps himself very close.”</p> + +<p>But the <i>Monthly Magazine</i>, though warmly welcoming its young +contributor’s lively sketches, could not afford to pay for them. He was +therefore glad to conclude an arrangement with Mr. George Hogarth, the +conductor of the <i>Evening Chronicle</i>, a paper in connexion with the great +morning journal on the reporting staff of which he was engaged. He had +gratuitously contributed a sketch to the evening paper as a personal +favour to Mr. Hogarth, and the latter readily proposed to the proprietors +of the <i>Morning Chronicle</i> that Dickens should be duly remunerated for +this addition to his regular labours. With a salary of seven instead of, +as heretofore, five guineas a week, and settled in chambers in Furnival’s +Inn—one of those old legal inns which he loved so well—he might already +in this year, 1835, consider himself on the high-road to prosperity. By +the beginning of 1836 the <i>Sketches by Boz</i> printed in the <i>Evening +Chronicle</i> were already numerous enough, and their success was +sufficiently established to allow of his arranging for their +republication. They appeared in two volumes, with etchings by Cruikshank, +and the sum of a hundred and fifty pounds was paid to him for the +copyright. The stepping-stones had been found and passed, and on the last +day of March, which saw the publication of the first number of the +<i>Pickwick Papers</i>, he stood in the field of fame and fortune. Three days +afterwards Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, the eldest daughter of the +friend who had so efficiently aided him in his early literary ventures. +Mr. George Hogarth’s name thus links together the names of two masters of +English fiction; for Lockhart speaks of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> him when a writer to the signet +in Edinburgh as one of the intimate friends of Scott. Dickens’s +apprenticeship as an author was over almost as soon as it was begun; and +he had found the way short from obscurity to the dazzling light of +popularity. As for the <i>Sketches by Boz</i>, their author soon repurchased +the copyright for more than thirteen times the sum which had been paid to +him for it.</p> + +<p>In their collected form these <i>Sketches</i> modestly described themselves as +“illustrative of every-day life and every-day people.” Herein they only +prefigured the more famous creations of their writer, whose genius was +never so happy as when lighting up, now the humorous, now what he chose to +term the romantic, side of familiar things. The curious will find little +difficulty in tracing in these outlines, often rough and at times coarse, +the groundwork of more than one finished picture of later date. Not a few +of the most peculiar features of Dickens’s humour are already here, +together with not a little of his most characteristic pathos. It is true +that in these early <i>Sketches</i> the latter is at times strained, but its +power is occasionally beyond denial, as, for instance, in the brief +narrative of the death of the hospital patient. On the other hand, the +humour—more especially that of the <i>Tales</i>—is not of the most refined +sort, and often degenerates in the direction of boisterous farce. The +style, too, though in general devoid of the pretentiousness which is the +bane of “light” journalistic writing, has a taint of vulgarity about it, +very pardonable under the circumstances, but generally absent from +Dickens’s later works. Weak puns are not unfrequent; and the diction but +rarely reaches that exquisite felicity of comic phrase in which <i>Pickwick</i> +and its successors excel. For the rest, Dickens’s favourite passions and +favourite aversions alike reflect<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> themselves here in small. In the +description of the election for beadle he ridicules the tricks and the +manners of political party-life, and his love of things theatrical has its +full freshness upon it—however he may pretend at Astley’s that his +“histrionic taste is gone,” and that it is the audience which chiefly +delights him. But of course the gift which these <i>Sketches</i> pre-eminently +revealed in their author was a descriptive power that seemed to lose sight +of nothing characteristic in the object described, and of nothing humorous +in an association suggested by it. Whether his theme was street or river, +a Christmas dinner or the extensive groves of the illustrious dead (the +old clothes shops in Monmouth Street), he reproduced it in all its shades +and colours, and under a hundred aspects, fanciful as well as real. How +inimitable, for instance, is the sketch of “the last cab-driver, and the +first omnibus cad,” whose earlier vehicle, the omnipresent “red cab,” was +not the gondola, but the very fire-ship of the London streets.</p> + +<p>Dickens himself entertained no high opinion of these youthful efforts; and +in this he showed the consciousness of the true artist, that masterpieces +are rarely thrown off at hazard. But though much of the popularity of the +<i>Sketches</i> may be accounted for by the fact that commonplace people love +to read about commonplace people and things, the greater part of it is due +to genuine literary merit. The days of half-price in theatres have +followed the days of coaching; “Honest Tom” no more paces the lobby in a +black coat with velvet facings and cuffs, and a D’Orsay hat; the Hickses +of the present time no longer quote “Don Juan” over boarding-house +dinner-tables; and the young ladies in Camberwell no longer compare young +men in attitudes to Lord Byron, or to “Satan”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> Montgomery. But the +<i>Sketches by Boz</i> have survived their birth-time; and they deserve to be +remembered among the rare instances in which a young author has no sooner +begun to write than he has shown a knowledge of his real strength. As yet, +however, this sudden favourite of the public was unaware of the range to +which his powers were to extend, and of the height to which they were to +mount.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS.</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">[1836-1841.]</span></p> + +<p><br />Even in those years of which the record is brightest in the story of his +life, Charles Dickens, like the rest of the world, had his share of +troubles—troubles great and small, losses which went home to his heart, +and vexations manifold in the way of business. But in the history of his +early career as an author the word failure has no place.</p> + +<p>Not that the <i>Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club</i>, published as they +were in monthly numbers, at once took the town by storm; for the public +needed two or three months to make up its mind that “Boz” was equal to an +effort considerably in advance of his <i>Sketches</i>. But when the popularity +of the serial was once established, it grew with extraordinary rapidity +until it reached an altogether unprecedented height. He would be a bold +man who should declare that its popularity has very materially diminished +at the present day. Against the productions of <i>Pickwick</i>, and of other +works of amusement of which it was the prototype, Dr. Arnold thought +himself bound seriously to contend among the boys of Rugby; and twenty +years later young men at the university talked nothing but <i>Pickwick</i>, and +quoted nothing but <i>Pickwick</i>, and the wittiest of undergraduates set the +world at large<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> an examination paper in <i>Pickwick</i>, over which pretentious +half-knowledge may puzzle, unable accurately to “describe the common +Profeel-machine,” or to furnish a satisfactory definition of “a red-faced +Nixon.” No changes in manners and customs have interfered with the hold of +the work upon nearly all classes of readers at home; and no translation +has been dull enough to prevent its being relished even in countries where +all English manners and customs must seem equally uninteresting or equally +<ins class="correction" title="original: absurb">absurd</ins>.</p> + +<p>So extraordinary has been the popularity of this more than thrice +fortunate book, that the wildest legends have grown up as to the history +of its origin. The facts, however, as stated by Dickens himself, are few +and plain. Attracted by the success of the <i>Sketches</i>, Messrs. Chapman & +Hall proposed to him that he should write “something” in monthly numbers +to serve as a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by the comic +draughtsman, Mr. R. Seymour; and either the publishers or the artist +suggested as a kind of leading notion, the idea of a “Nimrod Club” of +unlucky sportsmen. The proposition was at Dickens’s suggestion so modified +that the plates were “to arise naturally out of the text,” the range of +the latter being left open to him. This explains why the rather artificial +machinery of a club was maintained, and why Mr. Winkle’s misfortunes by +flood and field hold their place by the side of the philanthropical +meanderings of Mr. Pickwick and the amorous experiences of Mr. Tupman. An +original was speedily found for the pictorial presentment of the hero of +the book, and a felicitous name for him soon suggested itself. Only a +single number of the serial had appeared when Mr. Seymour’s own hand put +an end to his life. It is well known that among the applicants for the +vacant office of illustrator of the <i>Pickwick Papers</i> was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> Thackeray—the +senior of Dickens by a few months—whose style as a draughtsman would have +been singularly unsuited to the adventures and the gaiters of Mr. +Pickwick. Finally, in no altogether propitious hour for some of Dickens’s +books, Mr. Hablot Browne (“Phiz”) was chosen as illustrator. Some happy +hits—such as the figure of Mr. Micawber—apart, the illustrations of +Dickens by this artist, though often both imaginative and effective, are +apt, on the one hand, to obscure the author’s fidelity to nature, and on +the other, to intensify his unreality. <i>Oliver Twist</i>, like the +<i>Sketches</i>, was illustrated by George Cruikshank, a pencil humourist of no +common calibre, but as a rule ugly with the whole virtuous intention of +his heart. Dickens himself was never so well satisfied with any +illustrator as with George Cattermole (<i>alias</i> “Kittenmoles”), a +connection of his by marriage, who co-operated with Hablot Browne in +<i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>; in his latest works he resorted to the aid of +younger artists, whose reputation has since justified his confidence. The +most congenial of the pictorial interpreters of Dickens, in his brightest +and freshest humour, was his valued friend John Leech, whose services, +together occasionally with those of Doyle, Frank Stone, and Tenniel, as +well as of his faithful Stanfield and Maclise, he secured for his +Christmas books.</p> + +<p>The <i>Pickwick Papers</i>, of which the issue was completed by the end of +1837, brought in to Dickens a large sum of money, and after a time a +handsome annual income. On the whole this has remained the most general +favourite of all his books. Yet it is not for this reason only that +<i>Pickwick</i> defies criticism, but also because the circumstances under +which the book was begun and carried on make it preposterous to judge it +by canons applicable to its author’s subsequent fictions. As the serial +proceeded,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the interest which was to be divided between the inserted +tales, some of which have real merit, and the framework, was absorbed by +the latter. The rise in the style of the book can almost be measured by +the change in the treatment of its chief character, Mr. Pickwick himself. +In a later preface, Dickens endeavoured to illustrate this change by the +analogy of real life. The truth, of course, is that it was only as the +author proceeded that he recognised the capabilities of the character, and +his own power of making it, and his book with it, truly lovable as well as +laughable. Thus, on the very same page in which Mr. Pickwick proves +himself a true gentleman in his leave-taking from Mr. Nupkins, there +follows a little bit of the idyl between Sam and the pretty housemaid, +written with a delicacy that could hardly have been suspected in the +chronicler of the experiences of Miss Jemima Evans or of Mr. Augustus +Cooper. In the subsequent part of the main narrative will be found +exemplified nearly all the varieties of pathos of which Dickens was +afterwards so repeatedly to prove himself master, more especially, of +course, in those prison scenes for which some of our older novelists may +have furnished him with hints. Even that subtle species of humour is not +wanting which is content to miss its effect with the less attentive +reader; as in this passage concerning the ruined cobbler’s confidences to +Sam in the Fleet:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The cobbler paused to ascertain what effect his story had produced on +Sam; but finding that he had dropped asleep, knocked the ashes out of +his pipe, <i>sighed</i>, put it down, drew the bedclothes over his head, +and went to sleep too.”</p></div> + +<p>Goldsmith himself could not have put more of pathos and more of irony into +a single word.</p> + +<p>But it may seem out of place to dwell upon details such<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> as this in view +of the broad and universally acknowledged comic effects of this +masterpiece of English humour. Its many genuinely comic characters are as +broadly marked as the heroes of the least refined of sporting novels, and +as true to nature as the most elaborate products of Addison’s art. The +author’s humour is certainly not one which eschews simple in favour of +subtle means, or which is averse from occasional desipience in the form of +the wildest farce. Mrs. Leo Hunter’s garden-party—or rather “public +breakfast”—at The Den, Eatanswill; Mr. Pickwick’s nocturnal descent, +through three gooseberry-bushes and a rose-tree, upon the virgin soil of +Miss Tomkins’s establishment for young ladies; the <i>supplice d’un homme</i> +of Mr. Pott; Mr. Weller junior’s love-letter, with notes and comments by +Mr. Weller senior, and Mr. Weller senior’s own letter of affliction +written by somebody else; the footmen’s “swarry” at Bath, and Mr. Bob +Sawyer’s bachelors’ party in the Borough—all these and many other scenes +and passages have in them that jovial element of exaggeration which nobody +mistakes and nobody resents. Whose duty is it to check the volubility of +Mr. Alfred Jingle, or to weigh the heaviness, <i>quot libras</i>, of the Fat +Boy? Every one is conscious of the fact that in the contagious high +spirits of the author lies one of the chief charms of the book. Not, +however, that the effect produced is obtained without the assistance of a +very vigilant art. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the character +which is upon the whole the most brilliant of the many brilliant additions +which the author made to his original group of personages. If there is +nothing so humorous in the book as Sam Weller, neither is there in it +anything more pathetic than the relation between him and his master. As +for Sam Weller’s style of speech, scant justice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> was done to it by Mr. +Pickwick when he observed to Job Trotter, “My man is in the right, +although his mode of expressing his opinion is somewhat homely, and +occasionally incomprehensible.” The fashion of Sam’s gnomic philosophy is +at least as old as Theocritus;<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a> but the special impress which he has +given to it is his own, rudely foreshadowed, perhaps, in some of the +apophthegms of his father. Incidental Sam Wellerisms in <i>Oliver Twist</i> and +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> show how enduring a hold the whimsical fancy had taken +of its creator. For the rest, the freshness of the book continues the same +to the end; and farcical as are some of the closing scenes—those, for +instance, in which a chorus of coachmen attends the movements of the elder +Mr. Weller—there is even here no straining after effect. An exception +might perhaps be found in the catastrophe of the Shepherd, which is +coarsely contrived; but the fun of the character is in itself neither +illegitimate nor unwholesome. It will be observed below that it is the +constant harping on the same string, the repeated picturing of +professional preachers of religion as gross and greasy scoundrels, which +in the end becomes offensive in Dickens.</p> + +<p>On the whole, no hero has ever more appropriately bidden farewell to his +labours than Mr. Pickwick in the words which he uttered at the table of +the ever-hospitable Mr. Wardle at the Adelphi.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘I shall never regret,’ said Mr. Pickwick, in a low voice—‘I shall +never regret having devoted the greater part of two years to mixing +with different varieties and shades of human character; frivolous as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> +my pursuit of novelty may appear to many. Nearly the whole of my +previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of +wealth, numerous scenes of which I had no previous conception have +dawned upon me—I hope to the enlargement of my mind, and to the +improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I +trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be +other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection to me in the +decline of life. God bless you all.’”</p></div> + +<p>Of course Mr. Pickwick “filled and drained a bumper” to the sentiment. +Indeed, it “snoweth” in this book “of meat and drink.” Wine, ale, and +brandy abound there, and viands to which ample justice is invariably +done—even under Mr. Tupman’s <ins class="correction" title="original: hear-trending">heart-rending</ins> circumstances at the (now, +alas! degenerate) Leather Bottle. Something of this is due to the times in +which the work was composed, and to the class of readers for which we may +suppose it in the first instance to have been intended; but Dickens, +though a temperate man, loved the paraphernalia of good cheer, besides +cherishing the associations which are inseparable from it. At the same +time, there is a little too much of it in the <i>Pickwick Papers</i>, however +well its presence may consort with the geniality which pervades them. It +is difficult to turn any page of the book without chancing on one of those +supremely felicitous phrases in the ready mintage of which Dickens at all +times excelled. But its chief attraction lies in the spirit of the +whole—that spirit of true humour which calls forth at once merriment, +good-will, and charity.</p> + +<p>In the year 1836, which the commencement of the <i>Pickwick Papers</i> has made +memorable in the history of English literature, Dickens was already in the +full tide of authorship. In February, 1837, the second number of +<i>Bentley’s Miscellany</i>, a new monthly magazine which he had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>undertaken to +edit, contained the opening chapters of his story of <i>Oliver Twist</i>. +Shortly before this, in September and December, 1836, he had essayed two +of the least ambitious branches of dramatic authorship. The acting of +Harley, an admirable dry comedian, gave some vitality to <i>The Strange +Gentleman</i>, a “comic burletta,” or farce, in two acts, founded upon the +tale in the <i>Sketches</i> called <i>The Great Winglebury Duel</i>. It ran for +seventy nights at Drury Lane, and, in its author’s opinion, was “the best +thing Harley did.” But the adaptation has no special feature +distinguishing it from the original, unless it be the effective bustle of +the opening. <i>The Village Coquettes</i>, an operetta represented at the St. +James’s Theatre, with music by Hullah, was an equally unpretending effort. +In this piece Harley took one part, that of “a very small farmer with a +very large circle of intimate friends,” and John Parry made his <i>début</i> on +the London stage in another. To quote any of the songs in this operetta +would be very unfair to Dickens.<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> He was not at all depressed by the +unfavourable criticisms which were passed upon his libretto, and against +which he had to set the round declaration of Braham, that there had been +“no such music since the days of Shiel, and no such piece since <i>The +Duenna</i>.” As time went on, however, he became anything but proud of his +juvenile productions as a dramatist, and strongly objected to their +revival. His third and last attempt of this kind, a farce called <i>The +Lamplighter</i>, which he wrote for Covent Garden in 1838, was never acted, +having been withdrawn by Macready’s wish; and in 1841 Dickens converted it +into a story printed among the <i>Picnic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Papers</i>, a collection generously +edited by him for the benefit of the widow and children of a publisher +towards whom he had little cause for personal gratitude. His friendship +for Macready kept alive in him for some time the desire to write a comedy +worthy of so distinguished an actor; and, according to his wont, he had +even chosen beforehand for the piece a name which he was not to +forget—<i>No Thoroughfare</i>. But the genius of the age, an influence which +is often stronger than personal wishes or inclinations, diverted him from +dramatic composition. He would have been equally unwilling to see +mentioned among his literary works the <i>Life of Grimaldi</i>, which he merely +edited, and which must be numbered among forgotten memorials of forgotten +greatness.</p> + +<p>To the earlier part of 1838 belong one or two other publications, which +their author never cared to reprint. The first of these, however, a short +pamphlet entitled <i>Sunday under Three Heads</i>, is not without a certain +biographical interest. This little book was written with immediate +reference to a bill “for the better observance of the Sabbath,” which the +House of Commons had recently thrown out by a small majority; and its +special purpose was the advocacy of Sunday excursions, and harmless Sunday +amusements, in lieu of the alternate gloom and drunkenness distinguishing +what Dickens called a London <i>Sunday as it is</i>. His own love of fresh air +and brightness intensified his hatred of a formalism which shuts its ears +to argument. In the powerful picture of a Sunday evening in London, +“gloomy, close, and stale,” which he afterwards drew in <i>Little Dorrit</i>, +he almost seems to hold Sabbatarianism and the weather responsible for one +another. When he afterwards saw a Parisian Sunday, he thought it “not +comfortable,” so that, like others who hate bigotry, he may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> perhaps have +come to recognise the difficulty of arranging an English <i>Sunday as it +might be made</i>. On the other hand, he may have remembered his youthful +fancy of the good clergyman encouraging a game of cricket after church, +when thirty years later, writing from Edinburgh, he playfully pictured the +counterpart of <i>Sunday as Sabbath bills would have it</i>: describing how +“the usual preparations are making for the band in the open air in the +afternoon, and the usual pretty children (selected for that purpose) are +at this moment hanging garlands round the Scott monument preparatory to +the innocent Sunday dance round that edifice with which the diversions +invariably close.” The <i>Sketches of Young Gentlemen</i>, published in the +same year, are little if at all in advance of the earlier <i>Sketches by +Boz</i>, and were evidently written to order. He finished them in precisely a +fortnight, and noted in his diary that “one hundred and twenty-five pounds +for such a book, without any name to it, is pretty well.” The <i>Sketches of +Young Couples</i>, which followed as late as 1840, have the advantage of a +facetious introduction, suggested by her Majesty’s own announcement of her +approaching marriage. But the life has long gone out of these +pleasantries, as it has from others of the same cast, in which many a +mirthful spirit, forced to coin its mirth into money, has ere now spent +itself.</p> + +<p>It was the better fortune of Dickens to be able almost from the first to +keep nearly all his writings on a level with his powers. He never made a +bolder step forwards than when, in the very midst of the production of +<i>Pickwick</i>, he began his first long continuous story, the <i>Adventures of +Oliver Twist</i>. Those who have looked at the MS. of this famous novel will +remember the vigour of the handwriting, and how few, in comparison with +his later<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> MSS., are the additions and obliterations which it exhibits. +But here and there the writing shows traces of excitement; for the +author’s heart was in his work, and much of it, contrary to his later +habit, was written at night. No doubt he was upheld in the labour of +authorship by something besides ambition and consciousness of strength. +<i>Oliver Twist</i> was certainly written <i>with a purpose</i>, and with one that +was afterwards avowed. The author intended to put before his readers—“so +long as their speech did not offend the ear”—a picture of “dregs of +life,” hitherto, as he believed, never exhibited by any novelist in their +loathsome reality. Yet the old masters of fiction, Fielding in particular, +as well as the old master of the brush whom Dickens cites (Hogarth), had +not shrunk from the path which their disciple now essayed. Dickens, +however, was naturally thinking of his own generation, which had already +relished <i>Paul Clifford</i>, and which was not to be debarred from exciting +itself over <i>Jack Sheppard</i>, begun before <i>Oliver Twist</i> had been +completed, and in the self-same magazine. Dickens’s purpose was an honest +and a praiseworthy one. But the most powerful and at the same time the +most lovable element in his genius suggested the silver lining to the +cloud. To that unfailing power of sympathy which was the mainspring of +both his most affecting and his most humorous touches, we owe the +redeeming features in his company of criminals; not only the devotion and +the heroism of Nancy, but the irresistible vivacity of the Artful Dodger, +and the good-humour of Charley Bates, which moved Talfourd to “plead as +earnestly in mitigation of judgment” against him as ever he had done “at +the bar for any client he most respected.” Other parts of the story were +less carefully tempered. Mr. Fang, the police-magistrate, appears to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> have +been a rather hasty portrait of a living original; and the whole picture +of Bumble and Bumbledom was certainly a caricature of the working of the +new Poor-law, confounding the question of its merits and demerits with +that of its occasional maladministration. On the other hand, a vein of +truest pathos runs through the whole of poor Nancy’s story, and adds to +the effect of a marvellously powerful catastrophe. From Nancy’s interview +with Rose at London Bridge to the closing scenes—the flight of Sikes, his +death at Jacob’s Island, and the end of the Jew—the action has an +intensity rare in the literature of the terrible. By the side of this +genuine tragic force, which perhaps it would be easiest to parallel from +some of the “low” domestic tragedy of the Elizabethans, the author’s comic +humour burst forth upon the world in a variety of entirely new types: +Bumble and his partner; Noah Claypole, complete in himself, but full of +promise for Uriah Heep; and the Jew, with all the pupils and supporters of +his establishment of technical education. Undeniably the story of <i>Oliver +Twist</i> also contains much that is artificial and stilted, with much that +is weak and (the author of <i>Endymion</i> is to be thanked for the word) +“gushy.” Thus, all the Maylie scenes, down to the last in which Oliver +discreetly “glides” away from the lovers, are barely endurable. But, +whatever its shortcomings, <i>Oliver Twist</i> remains an almost unique example +of a young author’s brilliant success in an enterprise of complete novelty +and extreme difficulty. Some of its situations continue to exercise their +power even over readers already familiarly acquainted with them; and some +of its characters will live by the side of Dickens’s happiest and most +finished creations. Even had a sapient critic been right who declared, +during the progress of the story, that Mr. Dickens appeared to have +worked<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> out “the particular vein of humour which had hitherto yielded so +much attractive metal,” it would have been worked out to some purpose. +After making his readers merry with <i>Pickwick</i>, he had thrilled them with +<i>Oliver Twist</i>; and by the one book as by the other he had made them think +better of mankind.</p> + +<p>But neither had his vein been worked out, nor was his hand content with a +single task. In April, 1838, several months before the completion of +<i>Oliver Twist</i>, the first number of <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> appeared; and +while engaged upon the composition of these books he contributed to +<i>Bentley’s Miscellany</i>, of which he retained the editorship till the early +part of 1839, several smaller articles. Of these, the <i>Mudfog Papers</i> have +been recently thought worth reprinting; but even supposing the satire +against the Association for the Advancement of Everything to have not yet +altogether lost its savour, the fun of the day before yesterday refuses to +be revived. <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, published in twenty numbers, was the +labour of many months, but was produced under so great a press of work +that during the whole time of publication Dickens was never a single +number in advance. Yet, though not one of the most perfect of his books, +it is indisputably one of the most thoroughly original, and signally +illustrates the absurdity of recent attempts to draw a distinction between +the imaginative romance of the past and the realistic novel of the +present. Dickens was never so strong as when he produced from the real; +and in this instance—starting, no doubt, with a healthy prejudice—so +carefully had he inspected the neighbourhood of the Yorkshire schools, of +which Dotheboys Hall was to be held up as the infamous type, that there +seems to be no difficulty in identifying the site of the very school +itself; while the Portsmouth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> Theatre is to the full as accurate a study +as the Yorkshire school. So, again, as every one knows, the Brothers +Cheeryble were real personages well known in Manchester,<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> where even the +original of Tim Linkinwater still survives in local remembrance. On the +other hand, with how conscious a strength has the author’s imaginative +power used and transmuted his materials: in the Squeers family creating a +group of inimitable grotesqueness; in their humblest victim Smike giving +one of his earliest pictures of those outcasts whom he drew again and +again with such infinite tenderness; and in Mr. Vincent Crummles and his +company, including the Phenomenon, establishing a jest, but a kindly one, +for all times! In a third series of episodes in this book, it is +universally agreed that the author has no less conspicuously failed. +Dickens’s first attempt to picture the manners and customs of the +aristocracy certainly resulted in portraying some very peculiar people. +Lord Frederick Verisopht, indeed—who is allowed to redeem his character +in the end—is not without touches resembling nature.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘I take an interest, my lord,’ said Mrs. Wititterly, with a faint +smile, ‘such an interest in the drama.’</p> + +<p>“‘Ye-es. It’s very interasting,’ replied Lord Frederick.</p> + +<p>“‘I’m always ill after Shakspeare,’ said Mrs. Wititterly. ‘I scarcely +exist the next day. I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, +my lord, and Shakspeare is such a delicious creature.’</p> + +<p>“‘Ye-es,’ replied Lord Frederick. ‘He was a clayver man.’”</p></div> + +<p>But Sir Mulberry Hawk is a kind of scoundrel not frequently met with in +polite society; his henchmen Pluck and Pyke have the air of “followers of +Don John,” and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> the enjoyments of the “trainers of young noblemen and +gentlemen” at Hampton races, together with the riotous debauch which +precedes the catastrophe, seem taken direct from the transpontine stage. +The fact is that Dickens was here content to draw his vile seducers and +wicked orgies just as commonplace writers had drawn them a thousand times +before, and will draw them a thousand times again. Much of the hero’s talk +is of the same conventional kind. On the other hand, nothing could be more +genuine than the flow of fun in this book, which finds its outlet in the +most unexpected channels, but nowhere so resistlessly as in the +invertebrate talk of Mrs. Nickleby. For her Forster discovered a literary +prototype in a character of Miss Austen’s; but even if Mrs. Nickleby was +founded on Miss Bates, in <i>Emma</i>, she left her original far behind. Miss +Bates, indeed, is verbose, roundabout, and parenthetic; but the widow +never deviates into coherence.</p> + +<p><i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> shows the comic genius of its author in full activity, +and should be read with something of the buoyancy of spirit in which it +was written, and not with a callousness capable of seeing in so amusing a +scamp as Mr. Mantalini one of Dickens’s “monstrous failures.” At the same +time this book displays the desire of the author to mould his manner on +the old models. The very title has a savour of Smollett about it; the +style has more than one reminiscence of him, as well as of Fielding and of +Goldsmith; and the general method of the narrative resembles that of our +old novelists and their Spanish and French predecessors. Partly for this +reason, and partly, no doubt, because of the rapidity with which the story +was written, its construction is weaker than is usual even with Dickens’s +earlier works. Coincidences are repeatedly employed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> to help on the +action; and the <i>dénoûment</i>, which, besides turning Mr. Squeers into a +thief, reveals Ralph Nickleby as the father of Smike, is oppressively +complete. As to the practical aim of the novel, the author’s word must be +taken for the fact that “Mr. Squeers and his school were faint and feeble +pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they +should be deemed impossible.” The exposure, no doubt, did good in its way, +though perhaps Mr. Squeers, in a more or less modified form, has proved a +tougher adversary to overcome than Mrs. Gamp.</p> + +<p>During these years Dickens was chiefly resident in the modest locality of +Doughty Street, whither he had moved his household from the “three rooms,” +“three storeys high,” in Furnival’s Inn, early in 1837. It was not till +the end of 1839 that he took up his abode, further west, in a house which +he came to like best among all his London habitations, in Devonshire +Terrace, Regent’s Park. His town life was, however, varied by long +rustications at Twickenham and at Petersham, and by sojourns at the +sea-side, of which he was a most consistent votary. He is found in various +years of his life at Brighton, Dover, and Bonchurch—where he liked his +neighbours better than he liked the climate; and in later years, when he +had grown accustomed to the Continent, he repeatedly domesticated himself +at Boulogne. But already in 1837 he had discovered the little sea-side +village, as it then was, which for many years afterwards became his +favourite holiday retreat, and of which he would be the <i>genius loci</i>, +even if he had not by a special description immortalised <i>Our English +Watering-place</i>. Broadstairs—whose afternoon tranquillity even to this +day is undisturbed except by the Ethiopians on their tramp from Margate to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>Ramsgate—and its constant visitor, are thus described in a letter +written to an American friend in 1843: “This is a little fishing-place; +intensely quiet; built on a cliff, whereon—in the centre of a tiny +semicircular bay—our house stands; the sea rolling and dashing under the +windows. Seven miles out are the Goodwin Sands (you’ve heard of the +Goodwin Sands?), whence floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if +they were carrying on intrigues with the servants. Also there is a big +light-house called the North Foreland on a hill beyond the village, a +severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy floaters, and +stares grimly out upon the sea. Under the cliff are rare good sands, where +all the children assemble every morning and throw up impossible +fortifications, which the sea throws down again at high-water. Old +gentlemen and ancient ladies flirt after their own manner in two +reading-rooms and on a great many scattered seats in the open air. Other +old gentlemen look all day through telescopes and never see anything. In a +bay-window in a one-pair sits, from nine o’clock to one, a gentleman with +rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought +he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz.”</p> + +<p>Not a few houses at Broadstairs may boast of having been at one time or +another inhabited by him and his. Of the long-desired Fort House, however, +which local perverseness triumphantly points out as the original of <i>Bleak +House</i> (no part even of <i>Bleak House</i> was written there, though part of +<i>David Copperfield</i> was), he could not obtain possession till 1850. As +like Bleak House as it is like Chesney Wold, it stands at the very highest +end of the place, looking straight out to sea, over the little harbour and +its two colliers, with a pleasant stretch of cornfields leading along the +cliff towards the light-house which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> Dickens promised Lord Carlisle should +serve him as a night-light. But in 1837 Dickens was content with narrower +quarters. The “long small procession of sons” and daughters had as yet +only begun with the birth of his eldest boy. His life was simple and full +of work, and occasional sea-side or country quarters, and now and then a +brief holiday tour, afforded the necessary refreshment of change. In 1837 +he made his first short trip abroad, and in the following year, +accompanied by Mr. Hablot Browne, he spent a week of enjoyment in +Warwickshire, noting in his <i>Remembrancer</i>: “Stratford; Shakspeare; the +birthplace; visitors, scribblers, old woman (query whether she knows what +Shakspeare did), etc.” Meanwhile, among his truest home enjoyments were +his friendships. They were few in number, mostly with men for whom, after +he had once taken them into his heart, he preserved a life-long regard. +Chief of all these were John Forster and Daniel Maclise, the high-minded +painter, to whom we owe a charming portrait of his friend in this youthful +period of his life. Losing them, he afterwards wrote when absent from +England, was “like losing my arms and legs, and dull and tame I am without +you.” Besides these, he was at this time on very friendly terms with +William Harrison Ainsworth, who succeeded him in the editorship of the +<i>Miscellany</i>, and concerning whom he exclaimed in his <i>Remembrancer</i>: +“Ainsworth has a fine heart.” At the close of 1838, Dickens, Ainsworth, +and Forster constituted themselves a club called the Trio, and afterwards +the Cerberus. Another name frequent in the <i>Remembrancer</i> entries is that +of Talfourd, a generous friend, in whom, as Dickens finely said after his +death, “the success of other men made as little change as his own.” All +these, together with Stanfield, the Landseers, Douglas Jerrold, Macready, +and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> others less known to fame, were among the friends and associates of +Dickens’s prime. The letters, too, remaining from this part of Dickens’s +life, have all the same tone of unaffected frankness. With some of his +intimate friends he had his established epistolary jokes. Stanfield, the +great marine painter, he pertinaciously treated as a “very salt” +correspondent, communications to whom, as to a “block-reeving, +main-brace-splicing, lead-heaving, ship-conning, stun’sail-bending, +deck-swabbing son of a sea-cook,” needed garnishing with the obscurest +technicalities and strangest oaths of his element. (It is touching to turn +from these friendly buffooneries to a letter written by Dickens many years +afterward—in 1867—and mentioning a visit to “poor dear Stanfield,” when +“it was clear that the shadow of the end had fallen on him.... It happened +well that I had seen, on a wild day at Tynemouth, a remarkable sea effect, +of which I wrote a description to him, and he had kept it under his +pillow.”) Macready, after his retirement from the stage, is bantered on +the score of his juvenility with a pertinacity of fun recalling similar +whimsicalities of Charles Lamb’s; or the jest is changed, and the great +London actor in his rural retreat is depicted in the character of a +country gentleman strange to the wicked ways of the town. As in the case +of many delightful letter-writers, the charm of Dickens as a correspondent +vanishes so soon as he becomes self-conscious. Even in his letters to Lady +Blessington and Mrs. Watson, a striving after effect is at times +perceptible; the homage rendered to Lord John Russell is not offered with +a light hand; on the contrary, when writing to Douglas Jerrold, Dickens is +occasionally so intent upon proving himself a sound Radical that his +vehemence all but passes into a shriek.</p> + +<p>In these early years, at all events, Dickens was happy in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> the society of +his chosen friends. His favourite amusements were a country walk or ride +with Forster, or a dinner at Jack Straw’s Castle with him and Maclise. He +was likewise happy at home. Here, however, in the very innermost circle of +his affections, he had to suffer the first great personal grief of his +life. His younger sister-in-law, Miss Mary Hogarth, had accompanied him +and his wife into their new abode in Doughty Street, and here, in May, +1837, she died, at the early age of seventeen. No sorrow seems ever to +have touched the heart and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens +like that for the loss of this dearly-loved girl, “young, beautiful, and +good.” “I can solemnly say,” he wrote to her mother a few months after her +death, “that, waking or sleeping, I have never lost the recollection of +our hard trial and sorrow, and I feel that I never shall.” “If,” ran part +of his first entry in the Diary which he began on the first day of the +following year, “she were with us now, the same winning, happy, amiable +companion, sympathising with all my thoughts and feelings more than any +one I knew ever did or will, I think I should have nothing to wish for but +a continuance of such happiness. But she is gone, and pray God I may one +day, through his mercy, rejoin her.” It was not till, in after years, it +became necessary to abandon the project, that he ceased to cherish the +intention of being buried by her side, and through life the memory of her +haunted him with strange vividness. At the Niagara Falls, when the +spectacle of Nature in her glory had produced in him, as he describes it, +a wondrously tranquil and happy peace of mind, he longed for the presence +of his dearest friends, and “I was going to add, what would I give if the +dear girl, whose ashes lie in Kensal Green, had lived to come so far along +with us; but she has been here<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> many times, I doubt not, since her sweet +face faded from my earthly sight.” “After she died,” he wrote to her +mother in May, 1843, “I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and +always with a kind of quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that +I never lay down at night without a hope of the vision coming back in one +shape or other. And so it did.” Once he dreamt of her, when travelling in +Yorkshire; and then, after an interval of many months, as he lay asleep +one night at Genoa, it seemed to him as if her spirit visited him and +spoke to him in words which he afterwards precisely remembered, when he +had awaked, with the tears running down his face. He never forgot her, and +in the year before he died he wrote to his friend: “She is so much in my +thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful and have greatly +prospered in anything, that the recollection of her is an essential part +of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as the beating of my +heart is!” In a word, she was the object of the one great imaginative +passion of his life. Many have denied that there is any likeness to nature +in the fictitious figure in which, according to the wont of imaginative +workers, he was irresistibly impelled to embody the sentiment with which +she inspired him; but the sentiment itself became part of his nature, and +part of his history. When in writing the <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i> he +approached the death of Little Nell, he shrunk from the task: “Dear Mary +died yesterday, when I think of this sad story.”</p> + +<p>The <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i> has long been freed from the encumbrances which +originally surrounded it, and there is little except biographical interest +in the half-forgotten history of <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i>. Early in the +year 1840, his success and confidence in his powers induced<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> him to +undertake an illustrated weekly journal, in which he depended solely on +his own name, and, in the first instance, on his own efforts, as a writer. +Such was his trust in his versatility that he did not think it necessary +even to open with a continuous story. Perhaps the popularity of the +<i>Pickwick Papers</i> encouraged him to adopt the time-honoured device of +wrapping up several tales in one. In any case, his framework was in the +present instance too elaborate to take hold of the public mind, while the +characters introduced into it possessed little or nothing of the freshness +of their models in the <i>Tatler</i> and the <i>Spectator</i>. In order to +re-enforce Master Humphrey, the deaf gentleman, and the other original +members of his benevolent conclave, he hereupon resorted to a natural, but +none the less unhappy, expedient. Mr. Pickwick was revived, together with +Sam Weller and his parent; and a Weller of the third generation was +brought on the stage in the person of a precocious four-year-old, +“standing with his little legs very wide apart as if the top-boots were +familiar to them, and actually winking upon the house-keeper with his +infant eye, in imitation of his grandfather.” A laugh may have been raised +at the time by this attempt, from which, however, every true Pickwickian +must have turned sadly away. Nor was there much in the other contents of +these early numbers to make up for the disappointment. As, therefore, +neither “Master Humphrey’s Clock” nor “Mr. Weller’s Watch” seemed to +promise any lasting success, it was prudently determined that the story of +the <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>, of which the first portion had appeared in the +fourth number of the periodical, should run on continuously; and when this +had been finished, a very short “link” sufficed to introduce another +story, <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> the close of which <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i> +likewise stopped.</p> + +<p>In the <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>, though it abounds in both grotesquely +terrible and boisterously laughable effects, the key-note is that of an +idyllic pathos. The sense of this takes hold of the reader at the very +outset, as he lingers over the picture, with which the first chapter +concludes, of little Nell asleep through the solitary night in the +curiosity-dealer’s warehouse. It retains possession of him as he +accompanies the innocent heroine through her wanderings, pausing with her +in the church-yard where all is quiet save the cawing of the satirical +rooks, or in the school-master’s cottage by the open window, through which +is borne upon the evening air the distant hum of the boys at play upon the +green, while the poor school-master holds in his hand the small cold one +of the little scholar that has fallen asleep. Nor is it absent to the last +when Nell herself lies at rest in her little bed. “Her little bird—a poor +slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed—was stirring +nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute +and motionless forever.” The hand which drew Little Nell afterwards formed +other figures not less affecting, but none so essentially poetic. Like +many such characters, this requires, for its full appreciation, a certain +tension of the mind; and those who will not, or cannot, pass in some +measure out of themselves, will be likely to tire of the conception, or to +declare its execution artificial. Curiously enough, not only was Little +Nell a favourite of Landor, a poet and critic utterly averse from +meretricious art, but she also deeply moved the sympathy of Lord Jeffrey, +who at least knew his own mind, and spoke it in both praise and blame. As +already stated, Dickens only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> with difficulty brought himself to carry his +story to its actual issue, though it is hard to believe that he could ever +have intended a different close from that which he gave to it. His whole +heart was in the story, nor could he have consoled himself by means of an +ordinary happy ending.</p> + +<p>Dickens’s comic humour never flowed in a pleasanter vein than in the <i>Old +Curiosity Shop</i>, and nowhere has it a more exquisite element of pathos in +it. The shock-headed, red-cheeked Kit is one of the earliest of those +ungainly figures who speedily find their way into our affections—the odd +family to which Mr. Toots, Tom Pinch, Tommy Traddles, and Joe Gargery +alike belong. But the triumph of this serio-comic form of art in the <i>Old +Curiosity Shop</i> is to be found in the later experiences of Dick Swiveller, +who seems at first merely a more engaging sample of the Bob Sawyer +species, but who ends by endearing himself to the most thoughtless +laugher. Dick Swiveller and his protégée have gained a lasting place among +the favourite characters of English fiction, and the privations of the +Marchioness have possibly had a result which would have been that most +coveted by Dickens—that of helping towards the better treatment of a +class whose lot is among the dust and ashes, too often very bitter ashes, +of many households. Besides these, the story contains a variety of +incidental characters of a class which Dickens never grew weary of drawing +from the life. Messrs. Codlin, Short, and Company, and the rest of the +itinerant showmen, seem to have come straight from the most real of +country fairs; and if ever a <i>troupe</i> of comedians deserved pity on their +wanderings through a callous world, it was the most diverting and the most +dismal of all the mountebanks that gathered round the stew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> of tripe in +the kitchen of The Jolly Sandboys—Jerry’s performing dogs.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘Your people don’t usually travel in character, do they?’ said Short, +pointing to the dresses of the dogs. ‘It must come expensive if they do.’</p> + +<p>“‘No,’ replied Jerry—‘no, it’s not the custom with us. But we’ve been +playing a little on the road to-day, and we come out with a new +wardrobe at the races, so I didn’t think it worth while to stop to +undress. Down, Pedro!’”</p></div> + +<p>In addition to these public servants we have a purveyor of diversion—or +instruction—of an altogether different stamp. “Does the caravan look as +if <i>it</i> know’d em?” indignantly demands the proprietress of Jarley’s +wax-work, when asked whether she is acquainted with the men of the Punch +show. She too is drawn, or moulded, in the author’s most exuberant style +of fun, together with <i>her</i> company, in which “all the gentlemen were very +pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards, and all the ladies were +miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all the gentlemen were looking +intensely nowhere, and staring with extraordinary earnestness at nothing.”</p> + +<p>In contrast with these genial products of observation and humour stand the +grotesquely hideous personages who play important parts in the machinery +of the story, the vicious dwarf Quilp and the monstrous virago Sally +Brass. The former is among the most successful attempts of Dickens in a +direction which was full of danger for him, as it is for all writers; the +malevolent little demon is so blended with his surroundings—the +description of which forms one of the author’s most telling pictures of +the lonely foulnesses of the river-side—that his life seems natural in +its way, and his death a most appropriate ending to it. Sally Brass, +“whose accomplishments were all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> of a masculine and strictly legal kind,” +is less of a caricature, and not without a humorously redeeming point of +feminine weakness; yet the end of her and her brother is described at the +close of the book with almost tragic earnestness. On the whole, though the +poetic sympathy of Dickens when he wrote this book was absorbed in the +character of his heroine, yet his genius rarely asserted itself after a +more diversified fashion.</p> + +<p>Of <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, though in my opinion an excellent book after its kind, +I may speak more briefly. With the exception of <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, it +was Dickens’s only attempt in the historical novel. In the earlier work +the relation between the foreground and background of the story is +skilfully contrived, and the colouring of the whole, without any elaborate +attempt at accurate fidelity, has a generally true and harmonious effect. +With the help of her portrait by a painter (Mr. Frith) for whose pictures +Dickens had a great liking, Dolly Varden has justly taken hold of the +popular fancy as a charming type of a pretty girl of a century ago. And +some of the local descriptions in the early part of the book are hardly +less pleasing: the Temple in summer, as it was before the charm of +Fountain Court was destroyed by its guardians; and the picturesque +comforts of the Maypole Inn, described beforehand, by way of contrast to +the desecration of its central sanctuary. The intrigue of the story is +fairly interesting in itself, and the gentlemanly villain who plays a +principal part in it, though, as usual, over-elaborated, is drawn with +more skill than Dickens usually displays in such characters. After the +main interest of the book has passed to the historical action of the +George Gordon riots, the story still retains its coherence, and, a few +minor improbabilities apart, is successfully conducted to its close. No +historical novel can<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> altogether avoid the banalities of the species; and +though Dickens, like all the world, had his laugh at the late Mr. G. P. R. +James, he is constrained to introduce the historical hero of the tale, +with his confidential adviser, and his attendant, in the familiar guise of +three horsemen. As for Lord George Gordon himself, and the riots of which +the responsibility remains inseparable from his unhappy memory, the +representation of them in the novel sufficiently accords both with poetic +probability and with historical fact. The poor lord’s evil genius, indeed, +Gashford—who has no historical original—tries the reader’s sense of +verisimilitude rather hard; such converts are uncommon except among +approvers. The Protestant hangman, on the other hand, has some slight +historical warranty; but the leading part which he is made to play in the +riots, and his resolution to go any lengths “in support of the great +Protestant principle of hanging,” overshoot the mark. It cannot be said +that there is any substantial exaggeration in the description of the +riots; thus, the burning of the great distiller’s house in Holborn is a +well-authenticated fact; and there is abundant vigour in the narrative. +Repetition is unavoidable in treating such a theme, but in <i>Barnaby Rudge</i> +it is not rendered less endurable by mannerism, nor puffed out with +rhetoric.</p> + +<p>One very famous character in this story was, as personages in historical +novels often are, made up out of two originals.<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a> This was Grip the +Raven, who, after seeing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> the idiot hero of the tale safe through his +adventures, resumed his addresses on the subject of the kettle to the +horses in the stable; and who, “as he was a mere infant when Barnaby was +gray, has very probably gone on talking to the present time.” In a later +preface to <i>Barnaby Rudge</i>, Dickens, with infinite humour, related his +experiences of the two originals in question, and how he had been +ravenless since the mournful death before the kitchen fire of the second +of the pair, the <i>Grip</i> of actual life. This occurred in the house at +Devonshire Terrace, into which the family had moved two years before (in +1839).</p> + +<p>As Dickens’s fame advanced his circle of acquaintances was necessarily +widened; and in 1841 he was invited to visit Edinburgh, and to receive +there the first great tribute of public recognition which had been paid to +him. He was entertained with great enthusiasm at a public banquet, voted +the freedom of the city, and so overwhelmed with hospitalities that, +notwithstanding his frank pleasure in these honours, he was glad to make +his escape at last, and refreshed himself with a tour in the Highlands. +These excitements may have intensified in him a desire which had for some +time been active in his mind, and which in any case would have been kept +alive by an incessant series of invitations. He had signed an agreement +with his publishers for a new book before this desire took the shape of an +actual resolution. There is no great difficulty in understanding why +Dickens made up his mind to go to America, and thus to interrupt for the +moment a course of life and work which was fast leading him on to great +heights of fame and fortune. The question of international copyright alone +would hardly have induced him to cross the seas. Probably he felt +instinctively that to see men and cities was part of the training as well +as of the recreation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> which his genius required. Dickens was by nature one +of those artists who when at work always long to be in sympathy with their +public, and to know it to be in sympathy with them. And hitherto he had +not met more than part of his public of readers face to face.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">STRANGE LANDS.</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">[1842-1847.]</span></p> + +<p><br />A journey across the Atlantic in midwinter is no child’s-play even at the +present day, when, bad though their passage may have been, few people +would venture to confess doubts, as Dickens did, concerning the safety of +such a voyage by steam in heavy weather. The travellers—for Dickens was +accompanied by his wife—had an exceptionally rough crossing, the horrors +of which he has described in his <i>American Notes</i>. His powers of +observation were alive in the midst of the lethargy of sea-sickness, and +when he could not watch others he found enough amusement in watching +himself. At last, on January 28, 1842, they found themselves in Boston +harbour. Their stay in the United States lasted about four months, during +which time they saw Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, +Richmond, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Buffalo. Then they passed by +Niagara into Canada, and after a pleasant visit to Montreal, diversified +by private theatricals with the officers there, were safe at home again in +July.</p> + +<p>Dickens had met with an enthusiastic welcome in every part of the States +where he had not gone out of the way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> of it; in New York, in particular, +he had been fêted, with a fervour unique even in the history of American +enthusiasms, under the resounding title of “the Guest of the Nation.” +Still, even this imposed no moral obligation upon him to take the advice +tendered to him in America, and to avoid writing about that country—“we +are so very suspicious.” On the other hand, whatever might be his +indignation at the obstinate unwillingness of the American public to be +moved a hair’s-breadth by his championship of the cause of international +copyright,<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a> this failure could not, in a mind so reasonable as his, have +outweighed the remembrance of the kindness shown to him and to his fame. +But the truth seems to be that he had, if not at first, at least very +speedily, taken a dislike to American ways which proved too strong for him +to the last. In strange lands, most of all in a country which, like the +United States, is not in the least ashamed to be what it is, travellers +are necessarily at the outset struck by details; and Dickens’s habit of +minute observation was certain not to let him lose many of them. He was +neither long enough in the country to study very closely, nor was it in +his way to ponder very deeply, the problems involved in the existence of +many of the institutions with which he found fault. Thus, he was indignant +at the sight of slavery, and even ventured to “tell a piece of his mind” +on the subject to a judge in the South; but when, twenty years later, the +great struggle came, at the root of which this question lay, his +sympathies were with the cause of disunion and slavery in its conflict +with the “mad and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> villanous” North. In short, his knowledge of America +and its affairs was gained in such a way and under such circumstances as +to entitle him, if he chose, to speak to the vast public which he +commanded as an author of men and manners as observed by him; but he had +no right to judge the destinies and denounce the character of a great +people on evidence gathered in the course of a holiday tour.</p> + +<p>Nor, indeed, did the <i>American Notes</i>, published by him after his return +home, furnish any serious cause of offence. In an introductory chapter, +which was judiciously suppressed, he had taken credit for the book as not +having “a grain of any political ingredient in its whole composition.” +Indeed, the contents were rather disappointing from their meagreness. The +author showed good taste in eschewing all reference to his personal +reception, and good judgment in leaving the copyright question +undiscussed. But though his descriptions were as vivid as usual—whether +of the small steamboat, “of about half a pony power,” on the Connecticut +river, or of the dismal scenery on the Mississippi, “great father of +rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him!”—and +though some of the figure-sketches were touched off with the happiest of +hands, yet the public, even in 1842, was desirous to learn something more +about America than this. It is true that Dickens had, with his usual +conscientiousness, examined and described various interesting public +institutions in the States—prisons, asylums, and the like; but the book +was not a very full one; it was hardly anything but a sketch-book, with +more humour, but with infinitely less poetic spirit, than the +<i>Sketch-book</i> of the illustrious American author whose friendship had been +one of the chief personal gains of Dickens’s journey.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>The <i>American Notes</i>, for which the letters to Forster had furnished ample +materials, were published in the year of Dickens’s return, after he had +refreshed himself with a merry Cornish trip in the company of his old +friend, and his two other intimates, “Stanny” and “Mac.” But he had not +come home, as he had not gone out, to be idle. On the first day of the +following year, 1843, appeared the first number of the story which was to +furnish the real <i>casus discriminis</i> between Dickens and the enemies, as +well no doubt as a very large proportion of the friends, whom he had left +behind him across the water. The American scenes in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> +did not, it is true, begin till the fifth number of the story; nor is it +probable from the accounts of the sale, which was much smaller than +Dickens had expected, that these particular episodes at first produced any +strong feeling in the English public. But the merits of the book gradually +obtained for it a popularity at home which has been surpassed by that of +but one or two other of Dickens’s works; and in proportion to this +popularity was the effect exercised by its American chapters. What that +effect has been, it would be hypocrisy to question.</p> + +<p>Dickens, it is very clear, had been unable to resist the temptation of at +once drawing upon the vast addition to his literary capital as a +humourist. That the satire of many of the American scenes in <i>Martin +Chuzzlewit</i> is, as satire, not less true than telling, it needs but a +small acquaintance with American journalism and oratory even at the +present day to perceive; and the heartrending history of Eden, as a type +of some of the settlements “vaunted in England as a mine of Golden Hope,” +at least had the warrant of something more than hearsay and a look in +passing. Nor, as has already been observed, would it have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> been in +accordance either with human nature, or with the fitness of things, had +Dickens allowed his welcome in America to become to him (as he termed it +in the suppressed Preface to the <i>Notes</i>) “an iron muzzle disguised +beneath a flower or two.” But the frankness, to say the least, of the +mirror into which he now invited his late hosts to gaze was not likely to +produce grateful compliments to its presenter, nor was the effect softened +by the despatch with which this <i>souvenir</i> of the “guest of the nation” +was pressed upon its attention. No doubt it would have been easy to +reflect that only the evil, not the good, sides of social life in America +were held up to derision and contempt, and that an honourable American +journalist had no more reason to resent the portraiture of Mr. Jefferson +Brick than a virtuous English paterfamilias had to quarrel with that of +Mr. Pecksniff. Unfortunately, offence is usually taken where offence is +meant; and there can be little doubt as to the <i>animus</i> with which Dickens +had written. Only two months after landing at Boston Dickens had declared +to Macready, that “however much he liked the ingredients of this great +dish, he could not but say that the dish itself went against the grain +with him, and that he didn’t like it.” It was not, and could not be, +pleasant for Americans to find the “<i>New York Sewer</i>, in its twelfth +thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their +names printed,” introduced as the first expression of “the bubbling +passions of their country;” or to be certified, apropos of a conversation +among American “gentlemen” after dinner, that dollars, and dollars only, +at the risk of honesty and honour, filled their souls. “No satirist,” +Martin Chuzzlewit is told by a candid and open-minded American, “could, I +believe, breathe this air.” But satire in such passages as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> these borders +too closely on angry invective; and neither the irresistible force nor the +earnest pathos of the details which follow can clear away the suspicion +that at the bottom lay a desire to depreciate. Nor was the general effect +of the American episodes in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> materially modified by +their conclusion, to which, with the best of intentions, the author could +not bring himself to give a genuinely complimentary turn. The Americans +did not like all this, and could not be expected to like it. The tone of +the whole satire was too savage, and its tenor was too hopelessly +one-sided, for it to pass unresented; while much in it was too near the +truth to glance off harmless. It is well known that in time Dickens came +himself to understand this. Before quitting America, in 1868, he declared +his intention to publish in every future edition of his <i>American Notes</i> +and <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> his testimony to the magnanimous cordiality of his +second reception in the States, and to the amazing changes for the better +which he had seen everywhere around him during his second sojourn in the +country. But it is not likely that the postscript, all the more since it +was added under circumstances so honourable to both sides, has undone, or +will undo, the effect of the text. Very possibly the Americans may, in the +eyes of the English people as well as in their own, cease to be chargeable +with the faults and foibles satirised by Dickens; but the satire itself +will live, and will continue to excite laughter and loathing, together +with the other satire of the powerful book to which it belongs.</p> + +<p>For in none of his books is that power, which at times filled their author +himself with astonishment, more strikingly and abundantly revealed than in +<i>The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit</i>. Never was his inventive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> +force more flexible and more at his command; yet none of his books cost +him more hard work. The very names of hero and novel were only the final +fortunate choice out of a legion of notions; though “Pecksniff” as well as +“Charity” and “Mercy” (“not unholy names, I hope,” said Mr. Pecksniff to +Mrs. Todgers) were first inspirations. The MS. text too is full of the +outward signs of care. But the author had his reward in the general +impression of finish which is conveyed by this book as compared with its +predecessors; so that <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> may be described as already one +of the masterpieces of Dickens’s maturity as a writer. Oddly enough, the +one part of the book which moves rather heavily is the opening chapter, an +effort in the mock-heroic, probably suggested by the author’s eighteenth +century readings.</p> + +<p>A more original work, however, than <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> was never +composed, or one which more freshly displays the most characteristic +qualities of its author’s genius. Though the actual construction of the +story is anything but faultless—for what could be more slender than the +thread by which the American interlude is attached to the main action, or +more wildly improbable than the hazardous stratagem of old Martin upon +which that action turns?—yet it is so contrived as to fulfil the author’s +avowed intention of exhibiting under various forms the evil and the folly +of selfishness. This vice is capable of both serious and comic treatment, +and commended itself in each aspect to Dickens as being essentially +antagonistic to his moral and artistic ideals of human life. A true comedy +of humours thus unfolded itself with the progress of his book, and one for +which the types had not been fetched from afar: “Your homes the scene; +yourselves the actors here,” had been the motto which he had at first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> +intended to put upon his title-page. Thus, while in “the old-established +firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son” selfishness is cultivated as a growth +excellent in itself, and the son’s sentiment, “Do other men, for they +would do you,” is applauded by his admiring father, in young Martin the +vice rather resembles a weed strong and rank, yet not so strong but that +it gives way at last before a manly endeavour to uproot it. The character +of the hero, though very far from heroic, is worked out with that reliance +upon the fellow-feeling of candid readers which in our great novelists of +the eighteenth century has obtained sympathy for much less engaging +personages. More especially is the young man’s loss of self-respect in the +season of his solitary wretchedness depicted with admirable feeling. It +would not, I think, be fanciful to assert that in this story Dickens has +with equal skill distinguished between two species of unselfishness. Mark +Tapley’s is the actively unselfish nature, and though his reiteration of +his guiding motive is wearisome and occasionally absurd, yet the power of +coming out jolly under unpropitious circumstances is a genuinely English +ideal of manly virtue. Tom Pinch’s character, on the other hand, is +unselfish from innate sweetness; and never has the art of Dickens drawn a +type which, while closely approaching the border-line of the grotesque, is +yet so charmingly true to nature.</p> + +<p>Grotesque characters proper are numerous enough in this book, but all the +others pale before the immortal presence of Mrs. Gamp. She had been traced +to an original in real life, but her literary right to stand on her own +legs has been most properly vindicated against any supposition of likeness +to the different type, the subject of Leigh Hunt’s <i>Monthly Nurse</i>—a +paper, by-the-way, distinguished by shrewdness as well as feeling. +Imagination has never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> taken bolder flights than those requisite for the +development of Mrs. Gamp’s mental processes:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘And which of all them smoking monsters is the Ankworks boat, I +wonder? Goodness me!’ cried Mrs. Gamp.</p> + +<p>“‘What boat did you want?’ asked Ruth.</p> + +<p>“‘The Ankworks package,’ Mrs. Gamp replied. ‘I will not deceive you, +my sweet. Why should I?’</p> + +<p>“‘That is the Antwerp packet in the middle,’ said Ruth.</p> + +<p>“‘And I wish it was in Jonadge’s belly, I do!’ cried Mrs. Gamp, +appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in this miraculous +aspiration.”</p></div> + +<p>A hardly inferior exertion of creative power was needed in order to fix in +distinct forms the peculiarities of her diction, nay, to sustain the +unique rhythm of her speech:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘I says to Mrs. Harris,’ Mrs. Gamp continued, ‘only t’ other day, the +last Monday fortnight as ever dawned upon this Piljian’s Projiss of a +mortal wale; I says to Mrs. Harris, when she says to me, “Years and +our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us all”—“Say not the words, +Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to be continual friends, for sech is not +the case.”’”</p></div> + +<p>Yet the reality of Mrs. Gamp has been acknowledged to be such that she has +been the death of her sisterhood in a great part (to say the least) of our +hospital wards and sick-rooms; and as for her oddities of tongue, they +are, with the exception of her boldest figures, but the glorified type of +all the utterances heard to this day from charwomen, laundresses, and +single gentlemen’s house-keepers. Compared with her, even her friend and +patron, Mr. Mould, and her admirer, Mr. Bailey, and in other parts of the +book the low company at Todgers’s and the fine company at Mr. Tigg +Montague’s sink into insignificance. The aged Chuffey is a grotesque study +of a very different kind, of which the pathos never loses itself in +exaggeration. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> for Pecksniff, he is as far out of the range of +grotesque as, except when moralising over the banisters at Todgers’s, he +is out of that of genial characters. He is the richest comic type, while +at the same time one of the truest, among the innumerable reproductions in +English imaginative literature of our favourite national vice—hypocrisy. +His friendliness is the very quintessence of falsehood: “Mr. Pinch,” he +cries to poor Tom over the currant-wine and captain’s biscuits, “if you +spare the bottle, we shall quarrel!” His understanding with his daughters +is the very perfection of guile, for they confide in him, even when +ignorant of his intentions, because of their certainty “that in all he +does he has his purpose straight and full before him.” And he is a man who +understands the times as well as the land in which he lives; for, as M. +Taine has admirably pointed out, where Tartuffe would have been full of +religious phrases, Pecksniff presents himself as a humanitarian +philosopher. Comic art has never more successfully fulfilled its highest +task after its truest fashion than in this picture of the rise and fall of +a creature who never ceases to be laughable, and yet never ceases to be +loathsome. Nothing is wanting in this wonderful book to attest the +exuberance of its author’s genius. The kindly poetic spirit of the +Christmas books breathes in sweet Ruth Pinch; and the tragic power of the +closing chapters of <i>Oliver Twist</i> is recalled by the picture of Jonas +before and after his deed of blood. I say nothing of merely descriptive +passages, though in none of his previous stories had Dickens so completely +mastered the secret of describing scenery and weather in their relation to +his action or his characters.</p> + +<p><i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> ran its course of twenty monthly numbers; but already +a week or two before the appearance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> of the first of these, Dickens had +bestowed upon the public, young and old, the earliest of his delightful +<i>Christmas Books</i>. Among all his productions perhaps none connected him so +closely, and as it were personally, with his readers. Nor could it well +have been otherwise; since nowhere was he so directly intent upon +promoting kindliness of feeling among men—more especially good-will, +founded upon respect, towards the poor. Cheerfulness was, from his point +of view, twin-sister to charity; and sulkiness, like selfishness, +belonged, as an appropriate ort, to the dust-heap of “Tom Tiddler’s +Ground.” What more fit than that he should mingle such sentiments as these +with the holly and the mistletoe of the only English holiday in which +remains a vestige of religious and poetic feeling? Beyond all doubt there +is much that is tedious in the <i>cultus</i> of Father Christmas, and there was +yet more in the days when the lower classes in England had not yet come to +look upon a sufficiency of periodical holidays as part of their democratic +inheritance. But that Dickens should constitute himself its chief minister +and interpreter was nothing but fit. Already one of the <i>Sketches</i> had +commended a Christmas-dinner at which a seat is not denied even to “poor +Aunt Margaret;” and Mr. Pickwick had never been more himself than in the +Christmas game of Blind-man’s-buff at Dingley Dell, in which “the poor +relations caught the people who they thought would like it,” and, when the +game flagged, “got caught themselves.” But he now sought to reach the +heart of the subject; and the freshness of his fancy enabled him +delightfully to vary his illustrations of a text of which it can do no man +harm to be reminded in as well as out of season.</p> + +<p>Dickens’s Christmas books were published in the Christmas seasons of +1843-1846, and of 1848. If the palm is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> to be granted to any one among +them above its fellows, few readers would hesitate, I think, to declare +themselves in favour of <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>, as tender and +delicate a domestic idyl as any literature can boast. But the informing +spirit proper of these productions, the desire to stir up a feeling of +benevolence, more especially towards the poor and lowly, nowhere shows +itself more conspicuously than in the earliest, <i>A Christmas Carol in +Prose</i>, and nowhere more combatively than in the second in date, the +“Goblin Story” of <i>The Chimes</i>. Of the former its author declared that he +“wept and laughed and wept again” over it, “and excited himself in a most +extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking thereof he walked +about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a night, +when all the sober folks had gone to bed.” Simple in its romantic design +like one of Andersen’s little tales, the <i>Christmas Carol</i> has never lost +its hold upon a public in whom it has called forth Christmas thoughts +which do not all centre on “holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, +geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, +puddings, fruit, and punch;” and the Cratchit household, with Tiny Tim, +who did not die, are living realities even to those who have not seen Mr. +Toole—an actor after Dickens’s own heart—as the father of the family, +shivering in his half-yard of comforter.</p> + +<p>In <i>The Chimes</i>, composed in self-absorbed solitude at Genoa, he imagined +that “he had written a tremendous book, and knocked the <i>Carol</i> out of the +field.” Though the little work failed to make “the great uproar” he had +confidently anticipated, its purpose was certainly unmistakable; but the +effect of hard exaggerations such as Mr. Filer and Alderman Cute, and of a +burlesque absurdity<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> like Sir Joseph Bowley, was too dreary to be +counteracted by the more pleasing passages of the tale. In his novel <i>Hard +Times</i> Dickens afterwards reproduced some of the ideas, and repeated some +of the artistic mistakes, to be found in <i>The Chimes</i>, though the design +of the later work was necessarily of a more mixed kind. The Christmas book +has the tone of a <i>doctrinaire</i> protest against <i>doctrinaires</i>, and, as +Forster has pointed out, is manifestly written under the influence of +Carlyle. But its main doctrine was one which Dickens lost no opportunity +of proclaiming, and which here breaks forth in the form of an indignant +appeal by Richard Fern, the outlaw in spite of himself: “Gentlefolks, be +not hard upon the poor!” No feeling was more deeply rooted in Dickens’s +heart than this; nor could he forbear expressing it by invective and +satire as well as by humorous and pathetic pictures of his clients, among +whom Trotty Veck too takes a representative place.</p> + +<p><i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>, as a true work of art, is not troubled about +its moral, easily though half-a-dozen plain morals might be drawn from it; +a purer and more lightsome creation of the fancy has never been woven out +of homespun materials. Of the same imaginative type, though not executed +with a fineness so surpassing, is <i>The Battle of Life</i>, the treatment of a +fancy in which Dickens appears to have taken great pleasure. Indeed, he +declared that he was “thoroughly wretched at having to use the idea for so +short a story.” As it stands, it is a pretty idyl of resignation, very +poetical in tone as well as in conception, though here and there, +notwithstanding the complaint just quoted, rather lengthy. It has been +conjectured, with much probability, that the success which had attended +dramatic versions of Dickens’s previous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Christmas books caused “those +admirable comedians, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley,” to be in his mind “when he drew +the charming characters of Britain and Clemency Newcome.” At all events +the pair serve as good old bits of English pottery to relieve the delicate +Sèvres sentiment of Grace and Marion. In the last of Dickens’s Christmas +books, <i>The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain</i>, he returns once more to +a machinery resembling those of the earliest. But the fancy on which the +action turns is here more forced, and the truth which it illustrates is +after all only a half-truth, unless taken as part of the greater truth, +that the moral conditions of man’s life are more easily marred than +mended. Once more the strength of the book lies in its humorous side. The +picture of the good Milly’s humble protégés, the Tetterby family, is to +remind us that happiness consists precisely in that which the poor and the +rich may alike obtain, but which it is so difficult for the poor, amidst +their shifts and shabbiness, to keep fresh and green. Even without the +evil influence of an enchanted chemist, it is hard enough for the Mrs. +Tetterbys of real life always to be ministering angels to their families; +for the hand of every little Tetterby not occasionally to be against the +other little Tetterbys, and even for a devoted Johnny’s temper never to +rise against Moloch. All the more is that to be cherished in the poor +which makes them love one another.</p> + +<p>More than one of these Christmas books, both the humour and the sentiment +of which are so peculiarly English, was written on foreign soil. Dickens’s +general conceptions of life, not less than his literary individuality, had +been formed before he became a traveller and sojourner in foreign lands. +In Italy, as elsewhere, a man will, in a sense, find only what he takes +there. At all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> events the changed life brought with it for Dickens, though +not at once, a refreshment and a brief repose which invigorated him for +some of the truest efforts of his genius. His resolution to spend some +time on the Continent had not been taken rashly, although it was at least +hastened by business disappointments. He seems at this time, as was +virtually inevitable, to have seen a good deal of society in London, and +more especially to have become a welcome guest of Lady Blessington and +Count d’Orsay at Gore House. Moreover, his services were beginning to be +occasionally claimed as a public speaker; and altogether he must have +found more of his time than he wished slipping through his hands. Lastly, +he very naturally desired to see what was to be seen, and to enjoy what +was to be enjoyed, by one gifted with a sleepless observation and animated +by a genuine love of nature and art. The letters, public and private, +which he wrote from Italy, are not among the most interesting productions +of his pen; even his humour seems now and then ill at ease in them, and +his descriptive power narrow in its range. His eyes were occasionally +veiled, as are those of most travellers in quest of “first impressions.” +Thus I cannot but think his picture of Naples inadequate, and that of its +population unjust. Again, although he may have told the truth in asserting +that the Eternal City, at first sight, “looked like—I am half afraid to +write the word—like <span class="smcap">London</span>,” and although his general description of Rome +has been pronounced correct by competent judgment, yet it is impossible to +ignore in it the undertone of Bow Bells. On the other hand, not even in +his newspaper letters can he be said to fall into affectation; his +impressions are never given pretentiously, and are accordingly seldom +altogether worthless; while his criticisms of works<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> of art, when offered, +are candid and shrewd, besides being invariably his own.</p> + +<p>Thus, there was never anything truer in its way than the account which he +gave to Maclise of his first impressions a few days after his arrival at +Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where he found himself settled with his family +in July, 1844. He re-christened his abode, the Villa Bagnerello (“it +sounds romantic, but Signor Banderello is a butcher hard by”), “the Pink +Jail.” Here, with abundance of space and time, and with a view from his +writing-table of “the sea, the mountains, the washed-out villas, the +vineyards, the blistering hot fort, with a sentry on the drawbridge +standing in a bit of shadow no broader than his own musket, and the sky,” +he began his <i>villeggiatura</i>, and resolving not to know, or to be known +where it could be helped, looked round him at his leisure. This looking +round very naturally took up some time; for the circuit of Dickens’s daily +observation was unusually wide. Soon he was seeking winter-quarters in +Genoa it self, and by October was established in the Palazzo Peschiere, +situate on a height within the walls of the city, and overlooking the +whole of it, with the harbour and the sea beyond. “There is not in Italy, +they say (and I believe them), a lovelier residence.” Even here, however, +among fountains and frescoes, it was some time before he could set +steadily to work at his Christmas story. At last the bells of Genoa chimed +a title for it into his restless ears; and, though longing with a nostalgy +that was specially strong upon him at periods of mental excitement for his +nightly walks in the London streets, he settled down to his task. I have +already described the spirit in which he executed it. No sooner was the +writing done than the other half of his double artist-nature was seized +with <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span>another craving. The rage which possesses authors to read their +writings aloud to sympathizing ears, if such can be found, is a well-worn +theme of satire; but in Dickens the actor was almost as strong as the +author, and he could not withstand the desire to interpret in person what +he had written, and to watch its effect with his own eyes and ears. In the +first days of November, therefore, he set off from Genoa, and made his way +home by Bologna, Venice, Milan, and the Simplon Pass. Of this journey his +<i>Pictures from Italy</i> contains the record, including a chapter about +Venice, pitched in an unusually poetic key. But not all the memories of +all the Doges could have stayed the execution of his set purpose. On the +30th of November he reached London, and on the 2d of December he was +reading the <i>Chimes</i>, from the proofs, to the group of friends +immortalised in Maclise’s inimitable sketch. Three days afterwards the +reading was repeated to a slightly different audience; and, indeed, it +would seem, from an enthusiastic postscript to a letter addressed to his +wife, that he had read at least part of the book to Macready on the night +before that of the first conclave. The distance was no doubt wide between +the intimacy of these friendly readings and the stormy seas of public +audiences; but, however unconsciously, the first step had been taken. It +may be worth noticing, in connexion with this, that the scheme of a +private dramatic performance, which was to occupy much of Dickens’s +“leisure” in the year following, was proposed for the first time on the +occasion of the first reading of the <i>Chimes</i>. Before Christmas he was +back again in his “Italian bowers.” If the strain of his effort in writing +the <i>Chimes</i> had been severe, the holiday which followed was long. In the +later winter and early spring of 1845 he and the ladies of his family saw +Rome and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> Naples, and in June their Italian life came to an end, and they +were in London before the close of the month. Projects of work remained in +abeyance until the absorbing fancy of a private play had been realised +with an earnestness such as only Dickens could carry into his amusements, +and into this particular amusement above all others. The play was <i>Every +Man in his Humour</i>; the theatre, the little house in Dean Street, of whose +chequered fortunes no theatrical history has succeeded in exhausting the +memories; and the manager was, of course, “Bobadil,” as Dickens now took +to signing himself. His joking remark to Macready, that he “thought of +changing his present mode of life, and was open to an engagement,” was +after all not so very wide of the mark. According to the inevitable rule +in such things, he and his friends—among whom Mark Lemon, Douglas +Jerrold, and Forster were conspicuous—were “induced” to repeat their +performance at a larger house for a public charity, and later in the year +they played <i>The Elder Brother</i> for Miss Fanny Kelly’s benefit. Leigh +Hunt, whose opinion, however, could hardly fail to be influenced by the +circumstances under which Ben Jonson’s comedy was afterwards performed by +the amateurs, and who was no longer the youthful Draco of the <i>News</i>, +afterwards spoke very highly of Dickens’s Bobadil. It had “a spirit in it +of intellectual apprehension beyond anything the existing stage has +shown.” His acting in the farce which followed Leigh Hunt thought +“throughout admirable; quite rich and filled up.”</p> + +<p>Christmas, 1845, had passed, and <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i> had graced +the festival, when an altogether new chapter in Dickens’s life seemed +about to open for him. The experience through which he now passed was one +on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> which his biographer, for reasons easy to guess, has touched very +slightly, while his <i>Letters</i> throw no additional light on it at all. Most +people, I imagine, would decline to pronounce upon the qualifications +requisite in an editor of a great political journal. Yet, literary power +of a kind which acts upon the multitude rapidly and powerfully, habits of +order so confirmed as to have almost become second nature, and an interest +in the affairs of the nation fed by an ardent enthusiasm for its +welfare—these would seem to go some way towards making up the list. Of +all these qualifications Dickens at various times gave proof, and they +sufficed in later years to make him the successful conductor of a weekly +journal which aimed at the enlightenment hardly less than at the +entertainment of no inconsiderable portion of the British public. But, in +the first place, political journalism proper is a craft of which very few +men have been known to become masters by intuition, and Dickens had as yet +had no real experience of it. His zealous efforts as a reporter can hardly +be taken into account here. He had for a short time edited a miscellany of +amusement, and had failed to carry beyond a beginning the not very +carefully considered scheme of another. Recently, he had resumed the old +notion of <i>Master Humphrey’s Clock</i> in a different shape; but nothing had +come of his projected cheap weekly paper for the present, while its title, +“<i>The Cricket</i>,” was reserved for a different use. Since his reporting +days he had, however, now and then appeared among the lighter combatants +of political literature. In 1841 he had thrown a few squibs in the +<i>Examiner</i> at Sir Robert Peel and the Tories; and from about the same date +he had, besides occasionally contributing to the literary and theatrical +columns of the same weekly journal, now and then discussed in it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>subjects +of educational or other general interest.<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a> Finally, it is stated by +Forster that in 1844, when the greatest political struggle of the last +generation was approaching its climax, Dickens contributed some articles +to the <i>Morning Chronicle</i> which attracted attention and led to +negotiations with the editor that arrived at no positive result. If these +contributions treated any political questions whatever, they were, with +the exception of the few <i>Examiner</i> papers, and of the letters to the +<i>Daily News</i> to be mentioned in this chapter, the only articles of this +kind which, to my knowledge, he ever wrote.</p> + +<p>For, from first to last, whether in the days when Oliver Twist suffered +under the maladministration of the Poor-law, or in those when Arthur +Clennam failed to make an impression upon the Circumlocution Office, +politics were with Dickens a sentiment rather than a study or a pursuit. +With his habits of application and method, it might have taken but a very +short time for him to train himself as a politician; but this short time +never actually occurred. There is, however, no reason to suppose that +when, in 1841, a feeler was put out by some more or less influential +persons at Reading, with regard to his willingness to be nominated for the +representation of that borough, he had any reason for declining the +proposal besides that which he stated in his replies. He could not afford +the requisite expense; and he was determined not to forfeit his +independence through accepting Government—by which I hope he means Whig +party—aid for meeting the cost of the contest. Still, in 1845, though +slack of faith in the “people who govern us,” he had not yet become the +irreclaimable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> political sceptic of later days; and without being in any +way bound to the Whigs, he had that general confidence in Lord John +Russell which was all they could expect from their irregular followers. As +yet, however, he had shown no sign of any special aptitude or inclination +for political work, though if he addressed himself to questions affecting +the health and happiness of the humbler classes, he was certain to bring +to them the enthusiasm of a genuine sympathy. And a question of this kind +was uppermost in Englishmen’s minds in this year 1845, when at last the +time was drawing near for the complete abolition of the tax upon the +staple article of the poor man’s daily food.</p> + +<p>The establishment of a new London morning paper, on the scale to which +those already in existence had attained, was a serious matter in itself; +but it seems to have been undertaken in no spirit of diffidence by the +projectors and first proprietors of the <i>Daily News</i>. With the early +history of the experiment I cannot here concern myself; it is, however, an +open secret that the rate of expenditure of the new journal was at first +on a most liberal, not to say lavish, scale, and that the losses of the +proprietors were for many years very large indeed. Established on those +principles of Radicalism which, on the whole, it has in both good and evil +times consistently maintained, the <i>Daily News</i> was to rise superior to +the opportunism, if not to the advertisements, of the <i>Times</i>, and to +outstrip the cautious steps of the Whig <i>Morning Chronicle</i>. Special +attention was to be given to those industrial enterprises with which the +world teemed in that speculative age, and no doubt also to those social +questions affecting the welfare and elevation of the masses and the +relations between employers and employed, which were attracting more and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +more of the public attention. But in the first instance the actual +political situation would oblige the new journal to direct the greater +part of its energies to one particular question, which had, in truth, +already been threshed out by the organs of public opinion, and as to which +the time for action had at last arrived. No Liberal journal projected in +1845, and started early in 1846, could fail to concentrate its activity +for a time upon the question of the Corn-laws, to which the session of +1846 was to give the death-blow.</p> + +<p>It is curious enough, on opening the first number of the <i>Daily News</i>, +dated January 21, 1846, to find one’s self transplanted into the midst of +one of the most memorable episodes of our more recent political history. +The very advertisements of subscriptions to the Anti-Corn-law League, with +the good old Manchester names figuring conspicuously among them, have a +historic interest; and the report of a disputation on free-trade at +Norwich, in which all the hits are made by Mr. Cobden, another report of a +great London meeting on the same subject, and some verses concerning the +people’s want of its bread, probably written by Mr. Charles Mackay, occupy +an entire page of the paper. Railway news and accounts of railway meetings +fill about the same space; while the foreign news is extremely meagre. +There remain the leading articles, four in number—of which three are on +the burning question of the day—and the first of a series of <i>Travelling +Letters Written on the Road, by Charles Dickens</i> (the Avignon chapter in +the <i>Pictures from Italy</i>.)<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a> The hand of the editor is traceable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> only +in this <i>feuilleton</i> and in the opening article of the new paper. On +internal evidence I conclude that this article, which has little to +distinguish it from similar manifestoes, unless it be a moderation of tone +that would not have suited Captain Shandon, was not written by Dickens +alone or unassisted. But his hand is traceable in the concluding +paragraphs, which contain the following wordy but spirited assertion of a +cause that Dickens lost no opportunity of advocating:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“We seek, so far as in us lies, to elevate the character of the Public +Press in England. We believe it would attain a much higher position, +and that those who wield its powers would be infinitely more respected +as a class, and an important one, if it were purged of a disposition +to sordid attacks <i>upon itself</i>, which only prevails in England and +America. We discern nothing in the editorial plural that justifies a +gentleman, or body of gentlemen, in discarding a gentleman’s +forbearance and responsibility, and venting ungenerous spleen against +a rival, by a perversion of a great power—a power, however, which is +only great so long as it is good and honest. The stamp on newspapers +is not like the stamp on universal medicine-bottles, which licenses +anything, however false and monstrous; and we are sure this misuse of +it, in any notorious case, not only offends and repels right-minded +men in that particular instance, but naturally, though unjustly, +involves the whole Press, as a pursuit or profession, in the feeling +so awakened, and places the character of all who are associated with +it at a great disadvantage.</p> + +<p>“Entering on this adventure of a new daily journal in a spirit of +honourable competition and hope of public usefulness, we seek, in our +new station, at once to preserve our own self-respect, and to be +respected, for ourselves and for it, by our readers. Therefore, we<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> +beg them to receive, in this our first number, the assurance that no +recognition or interchange of trade abuse, by us, shall be the +destruction of either sentiment; and that we intend proceeding on our +way, and theirs, without stooping to any such flowers by the +roadside.”</p></div> + +<p>I am unable to say how many days it was after the appearance of this first +number that Dickens, or the proprietors of the journal, or, as seems most +likely, both sides simultaneously, began to consider the expediency of +ending the connexion between them. He was “revolving plans for quitting +the paper” on January 30, and resigned his editorship on February 9 +following. In the interval, with the exception of two or three more of the +<i>Travelling Letters</i>, very few signs of his hand appear in the journal. +The number of January 24, however, contains an editorial contribution, in +the shape of “a new song, but an old story,” concerning <i>The British +Lion</i>, his accomplishment of eating Corn-law Leagues, his principal +keeper, <i>Wan Humbug</i>, and so forth. This it would be cruel to unearth. A +more important indication of a line of writing that his example may have +helped to domesticate in the <i>Daily News</i> appears in the number of +February 4, which contains a long letter, with his signature, urging the +claims of Ragged Schools, and giving a graphic account of his visit to one +in Saffron Hill. After he had placed his resignation in the hands of the +proprietors, and was merely holding on at his post till the time of his +actual withdrawal, he was naturally not anxious to increase the number of +his contributions. The <i>Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers</i>—which appeared +on February 14—is, of course, an echo of the popular cry of the day; but +the subtler pathos of Dickens never found its way into his verse. The most +important, and so far as I know, the last, of his contributions to the +<i>Daily News</i>, consisted of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> a series of three letters (March 9, 13, and +16) on capital punishment. It was a question which much occupied him at +various times of his life, and on which it cannot be shown that he really +changed his opinions. The letters in the <i>Daily News</i>, based in part on +the arguments of one of the ablest men of his day, the “unlucky” Mr. +Wakefield, are an interesting contribution to the subject; and the first +of them, with its Hogarthian sketch of the temptation and fall of Thomas +Hocker, Sunday-school teacher and murderer, would be worth reprinting as +an example of Dickens’s masterly use of the argument <i>ex concreto</i>.</p> + +<p>The few traditions which linger in the <i>Daily News</i> office concerning +Dickens as editor of the paper, agree with the conjecture that his labours +on its behalf were limited, or very nearly so, to the few pieces +enumerated above. Of course there must have been some inevitable business; +but of this much may have been taken off his hands by his sub-editor, Mr. +W. H. Wills, who afterwards became his <i>alter ego</i> at the office of his +own weekly journal and his intimate personal friend. In the days of the +first infancy of the <i>Daily News</i>, Mr. Britton, the present publisher of +that journal, was attached to the editor as his personal office attendant; +and he remembers very vividly what little there can have been to remember +about Dickens’s performance of his functions. His habit, following a +famous precedent, was to make up for coming late—usually about half-past +ten <span class="smcaplc">P.M.</span>—by going away early—usually not long after midnight. There were +frequently sounds of merriment, if not of modest revelry, audible from the +little room at the office in Lombard Street, where the editor sat in +conclave with Douglas Jerrold and one or two other intimates. Mr. Britton +is not sure that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> work did not sometimes begin <i>after the editor had +left</i>; but at all events he cannot recollect that Dickens ever wrote +anything at the office—that he ever, for instance, wrote about a debate +that had taken place in Parliament on the same night. And he sums up his +reminiscences by declaring his conviction that Dickens was “not a +newspaper man, at least not when in ‘the chair.’” And so Dickens seems on +this occasion to have concluded; for when, not long after quitting the +paper, he republished with additions the <i>Travelling Letters</i> which during +his conduct of it had been its principal ornaments, he spoke of “a brief +mistake he had made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between +himself and his readers, and departing for a moment from his old +pursuits.” He had been virtually out of “the chair” almost as soon as he +had taken it. His successor, but only for a few months, was his friend +Forster.</p> + +<p>Never has captive released made a more eager or a better use of his +recovered freedom. Before the summer had fairly set in Dickens had let his +house, and was travelling with his family up the Rhine towards +Switzerland. This was, I think, Dickens’s only passage through Germany, +which in language and literature remained a <i>terra incognita</i> to him, +while in various ways so well known to his friendly rivals, Lord Lytton +and Thackeray. He was on the track of poor Thomas Hood’s old journeyings, +whose facetious recollections of Rhineland he had some years before +reviewed in a spirit of admiration rather for the author than for the +book, funny as it is. His point of destination was Lausanne, where he had +resolved to establish his household for the summer, and where by the +middle of June they were most agreeably settled in a little villa or +cottage which did not belie its name of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> Rosemont, and from which they +looked upon the lake and the mighty Alpine chain beyond. If Rome had +reminded Dickens of London, the green woods near Lausanne recalled to him +his Kentish glades; but he had the fullest sense and the truest enjoyment +of the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, and lost no opportunity of becoming +acquainted with them. Thus his letters contain an admirable description +(not untinged with satire) of a trip to the Great St. Bernard and its +convent, many years afterwards reproduced in one of the few enjoyable +chapters of the Second Part of <i>Little Dorrit</i>. More interesting, however, +because more characteristic, is the freshness and candour with which in +Switzerland, where by most English visitors the native inhabitants are +“taken for granted,” he set himself to observe, and, so far as he could, +to appreciate, the people among whom he was a temporary resident. His +solutions of some of the political difficulties, which were mostly +connected with religious differences, at that time rife in Switzerland, +are palpably one-sided. But the generosity of spirit which reveals itself +in his kindly recognition of the fine qualities of the people around him +is akin to what was best and noblest in Dickens.</p> + +<p>He had, at the same time, been peculiarly fortunate in finding at Lausanne +a circle of pleasant acquaintances, to whom he dedicated the Christmas +book which he wrote among the roses and the foliage of his lake-side +cottage. Of course <i>The Battle of Life</i> was read aloud by its author to so +kindly an audience. The day of parting, however, soon came; on the 16th of +November <i>paterfamilias</i> had his “several tons of luggage, other tons of +servants, and other tons of children,” in travelling order, and soon had +safely stowed them away at Paris “in the most preposterous house in the +world. The like of it cannot, and so far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> as my knowledge goes, does not, +exist in any other part of the globe. The bedrooms are like opera-boxes; +the dining-rooms, staircases, and passages quite inexplicable. The +dining-room”—which in another letter he describes as “mere midsummer +madness”—“is a sort of cavern, painted (ceiling and all) to represent a +grove, with unaccountable bits of looking-glass sticking in among the +branches of the trees. There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room, but +it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints in a +telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery.” Here, with the +exception of two brief visits to England, paid before his final departure, +he spent three months, familiarising himself for the first time of his +life with the second of his “Two Cities.”</p> + +<p>Dickens came to know the French language well enough to use it with ease, +if not with elegance; and he lost no opportunity, it need hardly be said, +of resorting to the best of schools for the purpose. Macready, previously +addressed from “Altorf,” had made him acquainted with Regnier, of the +Théâtre Français, who in his turn had introduced him to the greenroom of +the house of Molière. Other theatres were diligently visited by him and +Forster, when the latter arrived on a visit; and celebrities were polite +and hospitable to their distinguished English <i>confrère</i>. With these, +however, Dickens was not cosmopolitan enough to consort except in passing; +the love of literary society <i>because</i> it is literary society was at no +time one of his predilections or foibles. The streets of Paris were to him + +more than its <i>salons</i>, more even than its theatres. They are so to a +larger number of Englishmen than that which cares to confess it, but +Dickens would have been the last to disown the impeachment. They were the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> +proper sphere for his powers of humorous observation, as he afterwards +showed in more than one descriptive paper as true to life as any of his +London <i>Sketches</i>. And, moreover, he <i>needed</i> the streets for the work +which he had in hand. <i>Dombey and Son</i> had been begun at Rosemont, and the +first of its twenty monthly numbers had been published in October, 1846. +No reader of the book is likely to forget how, after writing the chapter +which relates the death of little Paul, Dickens during the greater part of +the night wandered restlessly with a heavy heart about the Paris streets. +Sooner, however, than he had intended, his residence abroad had to come to +a close; and early in 1847 he and his family were again in London.</p> + +<p><i>Dombey and Son</i> has, perhaps, been more criticised than any other amongst +the stories of its author; and yet it certainly is not the one which has +been least admired, or least loved. Dickens himself, in the brief preface +which he afterwards prefixed to the story, assumed a half-defiant air +which sits ill upon the most successful author, but which occasionally he +was tempted to assume. Before condescending to defend the character of Mr. +Dombey as in accordance with both probability and experience, he “made so +bold as to believe that the faculty (or the habit) of correctly observing +the characters of men is a rare one.” Yet, though the drawing of this +character is only one of the points which have been objected against the +story, not only did the book at the time of publication far surpass its +predecessor in popularity, but it has, I believe, always preserved to +itself a special congregation of enthusiastic admirers. Manifestly, this +novel is one of its author’s most ambitious endeavours. In it, more +distinctly even than in <i>Chuzzlewit</i>, he has chosen for his theme one of +the chief vices of human nature, and has striven to show<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> what pride +cannot achieve, what it cannot conquer, what it cannot withstand. This +central idea gives to the story, throughout a most varied succession of +scenes, a unity of action to be found in few of Dickens’s earlier works. +On the other hand, <i>Dombey and Son</i> shares with these earlier productions, +and with its successor, <i>David Copperfield</i>, the freshness of invention +and spontaneous flow of both humour and pathos which at times are wanting +in the more powerfully conceived and more carefully constructed romances +of Dickens’s later years. If there be any force at all in the common +remark that the most interesting part of the book ends together with the +life of little Paul, the censure falls upon the whole design of the +author. Little Paul, in something besides the ordinary meaning of the +words, was born to die; and though, like the writer, most readers may have +dreaded the hour which was to put an end to that frail life, yet in this +case there could be no question—such as was possible in the story of +Little Nell—of any other issue. Indeed, deep as is the pathos of the +closing scene, its beauty is even surpassed by those which precede it. In +death itself there is release for a child as for a man, and for those +sitting by the pillow of the patient; but it is the gradual approach of +death which seems hardest of all for the watchers to bear; it is the +sinking of hope which seems even sadder than its extinction. What old +fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so +visibly expressed in him, so plainly seen by so many people? Every heart +is softened and every eye dimmed as the innocent child passes on his way +to his grave. The hand of God’s angel is on him; he is no longer +altogether of this world. The imagination which could picture and present +this mysterious haze of feeling, through which the narrative moves,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> half +like a reality, half like a dream, is that of a true poet, and of a great +one.</p> + +<p>What even the loss of his son could not effect in Mr. Dombey is to be +accomplished in the progress of the story by a yet stronger agency than +sorrow. His pride is to be humbled to the dust, where he is to be sought +and raised up by the love of his despised and ill-used daughter. Upon the +relations between this pair, accordingly, it was necessary for the author +to expend the greatest care, and upon the treatment of those relations the +criticism to which the character of Mr. Dombey has been so largely +subjected must substantially turn. The unfavourable judgments passed upon +it have, in my opinion, not been altogether unjust. The problem obviously +was to show how the father’s cold indifference towards the daughter +gradually becomes jealousy, as he finds that upon her is concentrated, +first, the love of his innocent little son, and then that of his haughty +second wife; and how hereupon this jealousy deepens into hate. But, unless +we are to suppose that Mr. Dombey hated his daughter from the first, the +disfavour shown by him on her account to young Walter Gay remains without +adequate explanation. His dislike of Florence is not manifestly founded +upon his jealousy of what Mrs. Chick calls her brother’s “infatuation” for +her; and the main motives at work in the unhappy man are either not very +skilfully kept asunder, or not very intelligibly intermixed. Nor are the +later stages of the relations between father and daughter altogether +satisfactorily conceived. The momentary yielding of Mr. Dombey, after his +“coming home” with his new wife, is natural and touching; but his threat +to visit his daughter with the consequences of her step-mother’s conduct +is sheer brutality. The passage in which Mr. Dombey’s ultimatum to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> Mrs. +Dombey is conveyed by him in her presence through a third person is so +artificial as to fall not very far short of absurdity. The closing scene +which leads to the flight of Florence is undeniably powerful; but it is +the development of the relations between the pair in which the art of the +author is in my judgment occasionally at fault.</p> + +<p>As to the general effect of the latter part of the story—or rather of its +main plot—which again has been condemned as melodramatic and unnatural, a +distinction should be drawn between its incidents and its characters. +Neither Edith Dombey nor Mr. Carker is a character of real life. The pride +of the former comes very near to bad breeding, and her lapses into +sentiment seem artificial lapses. How differently Thackeray would have +managed the “high words” between her and her frivolous mother! how +differently, for that matter, he <i>has</i> managed a not altogether dissimilar +scene in the <i>Newcomes</i> between Ethel Newcome and old Lady Kew! As for Mr. +Carker, with his white teeth and glistening gums, who calls his unhappy +brother “Spaniel,” and contemplates a life of sensual ease in Sicily, he +has the semi-reality of the stage. Possibly the French stage had helped to +suggest the <i>scène de la pièce</i> between the fugitives at Dijon—an +effective situation, but one which many a novelist might have worked out +not less skilfully than Dickens. His own master-hand, however, re-asserts +itself in the wondrously powerful narrative of Carker’s flight and death. +Here again he excites terror—as in the same book he had evoked pity—by +foreshadowing, without prematurely revealing, the end. We know what the +morning is to bring which rises in awful tranquillity over the victim of +his own sins; and, as in Turner’s wild but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> powerful picture, the engine +made by the hand of man for peaceful purposes seems a living agent of +wrath.<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a></p> + +<p>No other of Dickens’s books is more abundantly stocked than this with +genuinely comic characters; but nearly all of them, in accordance with the +pathetic tone which is struck at the outset, and which never dies out till +the story has run its course, are in a more subdued strain of humour. Lord +Jeffrey was, I think, warranted in his astonishment that Dickens should +devote so much pains to characters like Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox. Probably +the habit remained with him from his earliest times of authorship, when he +had not always distinguished very accurately between the humorous and the +<i>bizarre</i>. But Polly and the Toodles household, Mrs. Pipchin and her +“select infantine boarding-house,” and the whole of Doctor Blimber’s +establishment, from the Doctor himself down to Mr. Toots, and up again, in +the scale of intellect, to Mr. Feeder, B.A., are among the most admirable +of all the great humourist’s creations. Against this ample provision for +her poor little brother’s nursing and training Florence has to set but her +one Susan Nipper; but she is a host in herself, an absolutely original +character among the thousands of <i>soubrettes</i> that are known to comedy and +fiction, and one of the best tonic mixtures ever composed out of much +humour and not a few grains of pathos. Her tartness has a cooling flavour +of its own; but it is the Mrs. Pipchinses only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> upon whom she acts, as +their type acted upon her, “like early gooseberries.” Of course she has a +favourite figure of speech belonging to herself, which rhetoricians would +probably class among the figures “working by surplusage:”</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, +Mrs. Richards, but that’s no reason why I need offer ’em the whole +set.’”</p></div> + +<p>Dickens was to fall very largely into this habit of “labelling” his +characters, as it has been called, by particular tricks or terms of +speech; and there is a certain excess in this direction already in <i>Dombey +and Son</i>, where not only Miss Nipper and Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots, but +Major Bagstock too and Cousin Feenix, are thus furnished forth. But the +invention is still so fresh and the play of humour so varied, that this +mannerism cannot be said as yet seriously to disturb them. A romantic +charm of a peculiar kind clings to honest Captain Cuttle and the quaint +home over which he mounts guard during the absence of its owner. The +nautical colouring and concomitant fun apart—for only Smollett could have +drawn Jack Bunsby’s fellow, though the character in his hands would have +been differently accentuated—Dickens has never approached more nearly to +the manner of Sir Walter Scott than in this singularly attractive part of +his book. Elsewhere the story passes into that sphere of society in +describing which Dickens was, as a novelist, rarely very successful. But +though Edith is cold and unreal, there is, it cannot be denied, human +nature in the pigments and figments of her hideous old mother; and, to +outward appearance at all events, the counterparts of her apoplectic +admirer, Major Bagstock, still pace those pavements and promenades which +it suits them to frequent. Cousin Feenix is likewise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> very far from +impossible, and is besides extremely delightful—and a good fellow too at +bottom, so that the sting of the satire is here taken away. On the other +hand, the meeting between the <i>sacs et parchemins</i> at Mr. Dombey’s house +is quite out of focus.</p> + +<p>The book has other heights and depths, and pleasant and unpleasant parts +and passages. But enough has been said to recall the exuberant creative +force, and the marvellous strength of pathos and humour which <i>Dombey and +Son</i> proves that Dickens, now near the very height of his powers as a +writer of fiction, possessed. In one of his public readings many years +afterwards, when he was reciting the adventures of Little Dombey, he +narrates that “a very good fellow,” whom he noticed in the stalls, could +not refrain from wiping the tears out of his eyes as often as he thought +that Toots was coming on. And just as Toots had become a reality to this +good fellow, so Toots and Toots’s little friend, and divers other +personages in this story, have become realities to half the world that +reads the English tongue, and to many besides. What higher praise could be +given to this wonderful book? Of all the works of its author none has more +powerfully and more permanently taken hold of the imagination of its +readers. Though he conjured up only pictures familiar to us from the +aspect of our own streets and our own homes, he too wielded a wizard’s +wand.</p> + +<p>After the success of <i>Dombey</i> it might have seemed that nothing further +was wanting to crown the prosperity of Dickens’s literary career. While +the publication of this story was in progress he had concluded +arrangements for the issue of his collected writings, in a cheap edition, +which began in the year 1847, and which he dedicated “to the English +people, in whose approval, if the books be true<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> in spirit, they will +live, and out of whose memory, if they be false, they will very soon die.” +He who could thus proudly appeal to posterity was already, beyond all +dispute, the people’s chosen favourite among its men of letters. That +position he was not to lose so long as he lived; but even at this time the +height had not been reached to which (in the almost unanimous judgment of +those who love his writings) he was in his next work to attain.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">“DAVID COPPERFIELD.”</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">[1847-1851.]</span></p> + +<p><br />The five years, reckoned roughly, from the beginning of 1847 to the close +of 1851, were most assuredly the season in which the genius of Dickens +produced its richest and rarest fruit. When it opened he was still at work +upon <i>Dombey and Son</i>; towards its end he was already engaged upon the +earliest portions of <i>Bleak House</i>. And it was during the interval that he +produced a book cherished by himself with an affection differing in kind, +as well as in degree, from the common fondness of an author for his +literary offspring, and a pearl without a peer amongst the later fictions +of our English school—<i>David Copperfield</i>. To this period also belong, it +is true, not a few lesser productions of the same ready pen; for the last +of his Christmas books was written in 1848, and in 1850 his weekly +periodical, <i>Household Words</i>, began to run its course. There was much +play too in these busy years, but all more or less of the kind which his +good-humoured self-irony afterwards very correctly characterised:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘Play!’ said Thomas Idle. ‘Here is a man goes systematically tearing +himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant course of +training, as if he were always under articles to fight a match for the +champion’s belt, and he calls it “Play.” Play!’ <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>exclaimed Thomas +Idle, scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air; ‘you can’t +play. You don’t know what it is. You make work of everything!’”</p></div> + +<p>“A man,” added the same easy philosopher, “who can do nothing by halves +appears to me to be a fearful man.” And as at all times in Dickens’s life, +so most emphatically in these years when his physical powers seemed ready +to meet every demand, and the elasticity of his mind seemed equal to every +effort, he did nothing by halves. Within this short space of time not only +did he write his best book, and conduct a weekly journal of solid merit +through its most trying stage, but he also established his reputation as +one of the best “unpolitical” speakers in the country; and as an amateur +actor and manager successfully weathered what may be called three +theatrical seasons, to the labours and glories of which it would be +difficult to find a parallel even in the records of that most exacting of +all social amusements. One likes to think of him in these years of +vigorous manhood, no longer the fair youth with the flowing locks of +Maclise’s charming portrait, but not yet, I suppose, altogether the +commanding and rather stern presence of later years. Mr. Frith’s portrait +was not painted till 1859, by which time the face occasionally had a more +set expression, and the entire personality a more weather-beaten +appearance, than this well-known picture suggests. But even eight years +before this date, when Dickens was acting in Lord Lytton’s comedy the part +of a young man of <i>mode</i>, Mr. Sala’s well-known comparison of his outward +man to “some prosperous sea-captain home from a sea-voyage,” was thought +applicable to him by another shrewd observer, Mr. R. H. Horne, who says +that, fashionable “make-up” notwithstanding, “he presented a figure that +would have made a good portrait of a Dutch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> privateer after having taken a +capital prize.” And in 1856 Ary Scheffer, to whom when sitting for his +portrait he had excused himself for being a difficult subject, “received +the apology as strictly his due, and said, with a vexed air, ‘At this +moment, <i>mon cher</i> Dickens, you look more like an energetic Dutch admiral +than anything else;’ for which I apologised again.” In 1853, in the +sympathetic neighbourhood of Boulogne, he was “growing a mustache,” and, +by 1856, a beard of the <i>Henri Quatre</i> type had been added; but even +before that time we may well believe that he was, as Mr. Sala says, “one +of the few men whose individuality was not effaced by the mournful +conventionality of evening-dress.” Even in morning-dress he unconsciously +contrived, born actor as he was, to have something unusual about him; and, +if report speaks the truth, even at the sea-side, when most prodigal of +ease, he was careful to dress the character.</p> + +<p>The five years of which more especially I am speaking brought him +repeatedly face to face with the public, and within hearing of the +applause that was becoming more and more of a necessity to him. They were +thus unmistakably amongst the very happiest years of his life. The shadow +that was to fall upon his home can hardly yet have been visible even in +the dim distance. For this the young voices were too many and too fresh +around him behind the garden-wall in Devonshire Terrace, and amongst the +autumnal corn on the cliffs at Broadstairs. “They are all in great force,” +he writes to his wife, in September, 1850, and “much excited with the +expectation of receiving you on Friday;” and I only wish I had space to +quote the special report sent on this occasion to the absent mother +concerning her precocious three-year-old. What sorrowful experiences he in +these years underwent were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> such as few men escape amongst the chances of +life. In 1848 he lost the sister who had been the companion of his +earliest days, and three years later his father, whom he had learned to +respect as well as love. Not long afterwards his little Dora, the youngest +of his flock, was suddenly taken from him. Meanwhile, his old friends +clung to him. Indeed, I never heard that he lost the affection of any one +who had been attached to him; and though the circle of his real intimates +was never greatly widened, yet he was on friendly or even familiar terms +with many whose names belong to the history of their times. Amongst these +were the late Lord Lytton—then Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton—whose splendid +abilities were still devoted mainly to literary labours, and between whom +and Dickens there were more points of contrast than might at first sight +appear. Of Thackeray, too, he seems to have been coming to know more; and +with Leech, more especially during a summer sojourn of both their families +at Bonchurch, in 1849, he grew intimate. Mr. Monckton Milnes—then, and +since as Lord Houghton, <i>semper amicus, semper hospes</i> both to successful +merit and to honest endeavour—Lord Carlisle, and others who adorned the +great world under more than one of its aspects, were, of course, welcome +friends and acquaintances; and even Carlyle occasionally found his way to +the house of his staunch admirer, though he might declare that he was, in +the language of Mr. Peggotty’s house-keeper, “a lorn lone creature, and +everything went contrairy with him.”</p> + +<p>It is not very easy to describe the personal habits of a man who is found +seeing the spring in at Brighton and the autumn out at Broadstairs, and in +the interval “strolling” through the chief towns of the kingdom at the +head of a large company of ladies and gentlemen, according to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> the +description which he put into Mrs. Gamp’s mouth, “with a great box of +papers under his arm, a-talking to everybody wery indistinct, and exciting +of himself dreadful.” But since under ordinary circumstances he made, even +in outward matters and arrangements of detail, a home for himself wherever +he was, and as a rule cared little for the society of companions whose +ideas and ways of life were foreign to his own, certain habits had become +second nature to him, and to others he adhered with sophistical tenacity. +He was an early riser, if for no other reason, because every man in whose +work imagination plays its part must sometimes be alone; and Dickens has +told us that there was to him something incomparably solemn in the still +solitude of the morning. But it was only exceptionally, and when +hard-pressed by the necessities of his literary labours, that he wrote +before breakfast; in general he was contented with the ordinary working +hours of the morning, not often writing after luncheon, and, except in +early life, never in the evening. Ordinarily, when engaged on a work of +fiction, he considered three of his not very large MS. pages a good, and +four an excellent, day’s work; and, while very careful in making his +corrections clear and unmistakable, he never rewrote what a morning’s +labour had ultimately produced. On the other hand, he was frequently slow +in beginning a story, being, as he himself says, affected by something +like despondency at such times, or, as he elsewhere humorously puts it, +“going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go about +and about his sugar before he touches it.” A temperate liver, he was at +the same time a zealous devotee of bodily exercise. He had not as yet +given up riding, and is found, in 1848, spending the whole of a March day, +with Forster, Leech, and Mark Lemon, in riding<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> over every part of +Salisbury Plain. But walking exercise was at once his forte and his +fanaticism. He is said to have constructed for himself a theory that, to +every portion of the day given to intellectual labour should correspond an +equal number of hours spent in walking; and frequently, no doubt, he gave +up his morning’s chapter before he had begun it, “entirely persuading +himself that he was under a moral obligation” to do his twenty miles on +the road. By day he found in the London thoroughfares stimulative variety, +and at a later date he states it to be “one of his fancies that even his +idlest walk must have its appointed destination;” and by night, in seasons +of intellectual excitement, he found in these same streets the refreshment +of isolation among crowds. But the walks he loved best were long stretches +on the cliffs or across the downs by the sea, where, following the track +of his “breathers,” one half expects to meet him coming along against the +wind at four and a half miles an hour, the very embodiment of energy and +brimful of life.</p> + +<p>And besides this energy he carried with him, wheresoever he pitched his +tent, what was the second cause of his extraordinary success in so much of +the business of life as it fell to him to perform. He hated disorder as +Sir Artegal hated injustice; and if there was anything against which he +took up his parable with burning indignation, it was slovenliness, and +half-done work, and “shoddiness” of all kinds. His love of order made him +always the most regular of men. “Everything with him,” Miss Hogarth told +me, “went as by clock-work; his movements, his absences from home, and the +times of his return were all fixed beforehand, and it was seldom that he +failed to adhere to what he had fixed.” Like most men endowed with a +superfluity of energy, he prided himself on his punctuality.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> He could not +live in a room or in a house till he had put every piece of furniture into +its proper place, nor could he begin to work till all his writing-gear was +at hand, with no item missing or misplaced. Yet he did not, like so many, +combine with these habits and tendencies a saving disposition. “No man,” +he said of himself, “attaches less importance to the possession of money, +or less disparagement to the want of it, than I do.” His circumstances, +though easy, were never such as to warrant a display to which, perhaps, +certain qualities of his character might have inclined him; even at a much +later date he described himself—rather oddly, perhaps—as “a man of +moderate savings, always supporting a very expensive public position.” +But, so far as I can gather, he never had a reasonable want which he could +not and did not satisfy, though at the same time he cared for very few of +the pursuits or amusements that are apt to drain much larger resources +than his. He never had to think twice about country or sea-side quarters; +wherever it might suit his purpose or fancy to choose them, at one of his +south-coast haunts or, for his wife’s health, at Malvern, thither he went; +and when the whim seized him for a trip <i>en garçon</i> to any part of England +or to Paris, he had only to bid the infallible Anne pack his trunk. He was +a provident as well as an affectionate father; but the cost of educating +his numerous family seems to have caused him no serious anxiety. In 1849 +he sent his eldest son to Eton. And while he had sworn a kind of +<i>vendetta</i> against begging-letter writers, and afterwards used to parry +the attacks of his pertinacious enemies by means of carefully-prepared +written forms, his hand seems to have been at all times open for charity.</p> + +<p>Some of these personal characteristics of Dickens were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> to be brought out +with remarkable vividness during the period of his life which forms the +special subject of the present chapter. Never was he more thoroughly +himself than as a theatrical manager and actor, surrounded by congenial +associates. He starred it to his heart’s content at the country seat of +his kind Lausanne friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watson. But the first occasion on +which he became publicly known in both the above-mentioned capacities was +the reproduction of the amateur performance of <i>Every Man in his Humour</i>. +This time the audiences were to be in Manchester and Liverpool, where it +was hoped that a golden harvest might be reaped for Leigh Hunt, who was at +that time in sore straits. As it chanced, a civil-list pension was just +about this time—1847—conferred upon the most unaffectedly graceful of +all modern writers of English verse. It was accordingly resolved to divert +part of the proceeds of the undertaking in favour of a worthy playwright, +the author of <i>Paul Pry</i>. The comedy was acted with brilliant success at +Manchester, on July 26, and at Liverpool two days later; and then the +“managerial miseries,” which Dickens had enjoyed with his whole heart and +soul, were over for the nonce. Already, however, in the following year, +1848, an excellent reason was found for their recommencement; and nine +performances of Ben Jonson’s play, this time alternated with <i>The Merry +Wives of Windsor</i>, were given by Dickens’s “company of amateurs”—the +expression is his own—at the Haymarket, and in the theatres of five of +the largest towns in the kingdom, for the benefit of Sheridan Knowles. +Nothing could have been more honourable than Dickens’s readiness to serve +the interests of an actor with whom, but for his own generous temper, he +would only a few months before have been involved in a wordy quarrel. In +<i>The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Merry Wives</i>, the manager acted Justice Shallow to Mark Lemon’s +Falstaff. Dame Quickly was played by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who speedily +became a favourite correspondent of Dickens. But the climax of these +excitements arrived in the year of wonders, 1851, when, with a flourish of +trumpets resounding through the world of fashion as well as of letters, +the comedy <i>Not so Bad as We Seem</i>, written for the occasion by Bulwer +Lytton, was performed under Dickens’s management at Devonshire House, in +the presence of the Queen, for the benefit of the Guild of Literature and +Art. The object was a noble one, though the ultimate result of the scheme +has been an almost pitiable failure; and nothing was spared, by the host +or the actors, to make the effect worthy of it. While some of the most +popular men of letters took parts in the clever and effective play, its +scenery was painted by some of the most eminent among the English artists. +Dickens was fired by the ardour of the enterprise, and, proceeding on his +principle that the performance could not possibly “be a success if the +smallest pepper-corn of arrangement were omitted,” covered himself and his +associates with glory. From Devonshire House play and theatre were +transferred to the Hanover Square Rooms, where the farce of <i>Mr. +Nightingale’s Diary</i> was included in the performance, of which some vivid +reminiscences have been published by one of the few survivors of that +noble company, Mr. R. H. Horne. Other accounts corroborate his +recollections of the farce, which was the triumph of “gag,” and would have +been reckoned a masterpiece in the old <i>commedia dell’ arte</i>. The +characters played by Dickens included Sam Weller turned waiter; a voluble +barrister by the name of Mr. Gabblewig; a hypochondriac suffering from a +prescription of mustard and milk; the Gampish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> mother of a charity-boy +(Mr. Egg); and her brother, a stone-deaf old sexton, who appeared to be +“at least ninety years of age.” The last-named assumption seems to have +been singularly effective:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“After repeated shoutings (‘It’s of no use whispering to me, young +man’) of the word ‘buried’—‘<i>Brewed!</i> Oh yes, sir, I have brewed many +a good gallon of ale in my time. The last batch I brewed, sir, was +finer than all the rest—the best ale ever brewed in the county. It +used to be called in our parts here “Samson with his hair on!” in +allusion’—here his excitement shook the tremulous frame into coughing +and wheezing—‘in allusion to its great strength.’ He looked from face +to face to see if his feat was duly appreciated, and his venerable +jest understood by those around; and then, softly repeating, with a +glimmering smile, ‘in allusion to its great strength,’ he turned +about, and made his exit, like one moving towards his own grave while +he thinks he is following the funeral of another.”</p></div> + +<p>From London the company travelled into the country, where their series of +performances was not closed till late in the succeeding year, 1852. +Dickens was from first to last the manager, and the ruling spirit of the +undertaking. Amongst his latest recruits Mr. Wilkie Collins is specially +mentioned by Forster. The acquaintance which thus began soon ripened into +a close and lasting friendship, and became, with the exception of that +with Forster himself, the most important of all Dickens’s personal +intimacies for the history of his career as an author.</p> + +<p>Speech-making was not in quite the same sense, or to quite the same +degree, as amateur acting and managing, a voluntary labour on Dickens’s +part. Not that he was one of those to whom the task of occasionally +addressing a public audience is a pain or even a burden. Indeed, he was a +born orator; for he possessed both that strong and elastic imaginative +power which enables a man to place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> himself at once in sympathy with his +audience, and that gift of speech, pointed, playful, and where necessary +impetuous, which pleads well in any assembly for any cause. He had +moreover the personal qualifications of a handsome manly presence, a +sympathetic eye, and a fine flexible voice, which, as his own hints on +public speaking show, he managed with care and intelligence. He had, he +says, “fought with beasts (oratorically) in divers arenas.” But though a +speaker in whom ease bred force, and force ease, he was the reverse of a +mere builder of phrases and weaver of periods. “Mere holding forth,” he +declared, “I utterly detest, abominate, and abjure.” His innate hatred of +talk for mere talk’s sake had doubtless been intensified by his early +reporting experiences, and by what had become his stereotyped notion of +our parliamentary system. At the Administration Reform meeting in 1855 he +stated that he had never before attended a public meeting. On the other +hand, he had been for already several years in great request for meetings +of a different kind, concerned with the establishment or advancement of +educational or charitable institutions in London and other great towns of +the country. His addresses from the chair were often of remarkable +excellence; and this not merely because crowded halls and increased +subscription-lists were their concomitants, and because the happiness of +his humour—never out of season, and even on such occasions often +singularly prompt—sent every one home in good spirits. In these now +forgotten speeches on behalf of Athenæums and Mechanics’ Institutes, or of +actors’ and artists’ and newsmen’s charities, their occasional advocate +never appears occasional. Instead of seeming to have just mastered his +brief while the audience was taking its seats, or to have become for the +first time deeply interested<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> in his subject in the interval between his +soup and his speech, the cause which Dickens pleads never has in him +either an imperfectly informed or a half-indifferent representative. +Amongst many charming illustrations of a vein of oratory in which he has +been equalled by very few if by any public men of his own or the +succeeding generation, I will instance only one address, though it belongs +to a considerably later date than the time of <i>David Copperfield</i>. +Nothing, however, that Dickens has ever written—not even <i>David +Copperfield</i> itself—breathes a tenderer sympathy for the weakness of +unprotected childhood than the beautiful little speech delivered by him on +February 9, 1858, on behalf of the London Hospital for Sick Children. +Beginning with some touches of humour concerning the spoilt children of +the rich, the orator goes on to speak of the “spoilt children” of the +poor, illustrating with concrete directness both the humorous and the +pathetic side of his subject, and after a skilfully introduced sketch of +the capabilities and wants of the “infant institution” for which he +pleads, ending with an appeal, founded on a fancy of Charles Lamb, to the +support of the “dream-children” belonging to each of his hearers: “the +dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might +have had, the child you certainly have been.” This is true eloquence, of a +kind which aims at something besides opening purse-strings. In 1851 he had +spoken in the same vein of mixed humour and pathos on behalf of his +clients, the poor actors, when, unknown to him, a little child of his own +was lying dead at home. But in these years of his life, as indeed at all +times, his voice was at the service of such causes as had his sympathy; it +was heard at Birmingham, at Leeds, at Glasgow; distance was of little +moment to his energetic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> nature; and as to trouble, how could he do +anything by halves?</p> + +<p>There was yet a third kind of activity, distinct from that of literary +work pure and simple, in which Dickens in these years for the first time +systematically engaged. It has been seen how he had long cherished the +notion of a periodical conducted by himself, and marked by a unity of +design which should make it in a more than ordinary sense his own paper. +With a genius like his, which attached itself to the concrete, very much +depended at the outset upon the choice of a title. <i>The Cricket</i> could not +serve again, and for some time the notion of an omnipresent <i>Shadow</i>, with +something, if possible, tacked to it “expressing the notion of its being +cheerful, useful, and always welcome,” seemed to promise excellently. For +a rather less ambitious design, however, a rather less ambitious title was +sought, and at last fortunately found, in the phrase, rendered proverbial +by Shakspeare, “<i>Household Words</i>.” “We hope,” he wrote a few weeks before +the first number appeared, on March 30, 1850, “to do some solid good, and +we mean to be as cheery and pleasant as we can.” But <i>Household Words</i>, +which in form and in cost was to be a paper for the multitude, was to be +something more than agreeable and useful and cheap. It was to help in +casting out the many devils that had taken up their abode in popular +periodical literature, the “bastards of the Mountain,” and the foul fiends +who dealt in infamous scurrility, and to do this with the aid of a charm +more potent than the most lucid argument and the most abundant facts. “In +the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor,” says +the <i>Preliminary Word</i> in the first number, “we would tenderly cherish +that light of fancy which is inherent in the human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> breast.” To this +purpose it was the editor’s constant and deliberate endeavour to bind his +paper. “<span class="smcap">Keep ‘Household Words’ imaginative!</span>” is the “solemn and continual +Conductorial Injunction” which three years after the foundation of the +journal he impresses, with the artful aid of capitals, upon his faithful +coadjutor, Mr. W. H. Wills. In his own contributions he was not forgetful +of this maxim, and the most important of them, the serial story, <i>Hard +Times</i>, was written with the express intention of pointing it as a moral.</p> + +<p>There are, I suppose, in addition to the many mysterious functions +performed by the editor of a literary journal, two of the very highest +significance; in the first place, the choice of his contributors, and +then, if the expression may be used, the management of them. In both +respects but one opinion seems to exist of Dickens’s admirable qualities +as an editor. Out of the many contributors to <i>Household Words</i>, and its +kindred successor, <i>All the Year Round</i>—some of whom are happily still +among living writers—it would be invidious to select for mention a few in +proof of the editor’s discrimination. But it will not be forgotten that +the first number of the earlier journal contained the beginning of a tale +by Mrs. Gaskell, whose name will long remain a household word in England, +both North and South. And a periodical could hardly be deemed one-sided +which included among its contributors scholars and writers of the +distinction belonging to the names of Forster and Mr. Henry Morley, +together with humorous observers of men and things such as Mr. Sala and +Albert Smith. On the other hand, <i>Household Words</i> had what every literary +journal ought to have, an individuality of its own; and this individuality +was, of course, that of its editor. The mannerisms of Dickens’s style +afterwards came to be <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>imitated by some among his contributors; but the +general unity perceptible in the journal was the natural and legitimate +result of the fact that it stood under the independent control of a +vigorous editor, assisted by a sub-editor—Mr. W. H. Wills—of rare +trustworthiness. Dickens had a keen eye for selecting subjects from a +definite field, a ready skill for shaping, if necessary, the articles +accepted by him, and a genius for providing them with expressive and +attractive titles. Fiction and poetry apart, these articles have mostly a +social character or bearing, although they often deviate into the pleasant +paths of literature or art; and usually, but by no means always, the +scenes or associations with which they connect themselves are of England, +English.</p> + +<p>Nothing could surpass the unflagging courtesy shown by Dickens towards his +contributors, great or small, old or new, and his patient interest in +their endeavours, while he conducted <i>Household Words</i>, and afterwards +<i>All the Year Round</i>. Of this there is evidence enough to make the records +of the office in Wellington Street a pleasant page in the history of +journalism. He valued a good workman when he found him, and was far too +reasonable and generous to put his own stamp upon all the good metal that +passed through his hands. Even in his Christmas Numbers he left the utmost +possible freedom to his associates. Where he altered or modified it was as +one who had come to know the pulse of the public; and he was not less +considerate with novices, than he was frank and explicit with experts, in +the writer’s art. The articles in his journal being anonymous, he was not +tempted to use names as baits for the public, though many who wrote for +him were men or women of high literary reputation. And he kept his doors +open. While some editors deem it their duty to ward off would-be +contributors, as some ministers of state<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> think it theirs to get rid of +deputations, Dickens sought to ignore instead of jealously guarding the +boundaries of professional literature. Nothing in this way ever gave him +greater delight than to have welcomed and published several poems sent to +him under a feigned name, but which he afterwards discovered to be the +first-fruits of the charming poetical talent of Miss Adelaide Procter, the +daughter of his old friend “Barry Cornwall.”</p> + +<p>In the preparation of his own papers, or of those which, like the +Christmas Numbers, he composed conjointly with one or more of his +familiars, he spared no labour and thought no toil too great. At times, of +course, he, like all periodical writers who cannot be merry every +Wednesday or caustic every Saturday, felt the pressure of the screw. “As +to two comic articles,” he exclaims on one occasion, “or two any sort of +articles, out of me, that’s the intensest extreme of no-goism.” But, as a +rule, no great writer ever ran more gaily under his self-imposed yoke. His +“Uncommercial Travels,” as he at a later date happily christened them, +familiarised him with whatever parts or aspects of London his long walks +had still left unexplored; and he was as conscientious in hunting up the +details of a complicated subject as in finding out the secrets of an +obscure pursuit or trade. Accomplished antiquarians and “commissioners” +assisted him in his labours; but he was no <i>roi fainéant</i> on the editorial +sofa which he so complacently describes. Whether he was taking <i>A Walk in +a Workhouse</i>, or knocking at the door of another with the supernumerary +waifs in Whitechapel, or <i>On</i> (night) <i>Duty with Inspector Field</i> among +the worst of the London slums, he was always ready to see with his own +eyes; after which the photographic power of his pen seemed always capable +of doing the rest. Occasionally he treats topics more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> properly +journalistic, but he is most delightful when he takes his ease in his +<i>English</i> or his <i>French Watering-place</i>, or carries his readers with him +on <i>A Flight to Paris</i>, bringing before them, as it were, in breathless +succession, every inch of the familiar journey. Happiest of all is he +when, with his friend Mr. Wilkie Collins—this, however, not until the +autumn of 1857—he starts on <i>The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices</i>, the +earlier chapters of which furnish some of the best specimens of his most +humorous prose. Neither at the same time does he forget himself to enforce +the claim of his journal to strengthen the imaginary side of literature. +In an assumed character he allows a veteran poet to carry him <i>By Rail to +Parnassus</i>, and even good-humouredly banters an old friend, George +Cruikshank, for having committed <i>Frauds on the Fairies</i> by re-editing +legendary lore with the view of inculcating the principle of total +abstinence.</p> + +<p>Such, then, were some of the channels in which the intense mental and +physical energy of Dickens found a congenial outlet in these busy years. +Yet in the very midst of this multifarious activity the mysterious and +controlling power of his genius enabled him to collect himself for the +composition of a work of fiction which, as I have already said, holds, and +will always continue to hold, a place of its own among its works. “Of all +my books,” he declares, “I like this the best. It will be easily believed +that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can +ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond +parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child—and his name is +<span class="smcap">David Copperfield</span>!” He parted from the story with a pang, and when in +after life he returned to its perusal, he was hardly able to master the +emotions which it recalled; perhaps even he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> hardly knew what the effort +of its production had cost him.</p> + +<p>The first number of <i>David Copperfield</i> was published in May, 1849—the +last in November, 1850. To judge from the difficulty which Dickens found +in choosing a title for his story—of which difficulty plentiful evidence +remains in MS. at South Kensington—he must have been fain to delay longer +even than usual on the threshold. In the end the name of the hero evolved +itself out of a series of transformations, from Trotfield and Trotbury to +Copperboy, Copperstone—“Copperfull” being reserved as a <i>lectio varians</i> +for Mrs. Crupp—and <i>Copperfield</i>. Then at last the pen could fall +seriously to work, and, proceeding slowly at first—for the first page of +the MS. contains a great number of alterations—dip itself now into black, +now into blue ink, and in a small writing, already contrasting with the +bolder hand of earlier days, produce page upon page of an incomparable +book. No doubt what so irresistibly attracted Dickens to <i>David +Copperfield</i>, and what has since fascinated many readers, more or less +conscious of the secret of the charm, is the autobiographical element in +the story. Until the publication of Forster’s <i>Life</i> no reader of +<i>Copperfield</i> could be aware of the pang it must have cost Dickens to lay +bare, though to unsuspecting eyes, the story of experiences which he had +hitherto kept all but absolutely secret, and to which his own mind could +not recur without a quivering sensitiveness. No reader could trace, as the +memory of Dickens always must have traced, some of the most vivid of those +experiences, imbued though they were with the tints of a delightfully +playful humor, in the doings and dealings of Mr. Wilkins Micawber, whose +original, by a strange coincidence, was passing tranquilly away out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> +life, while his comic counterpart was blossoming into a whimsical +immortality. And no reader could divine, what very probably even the +author may hardly have ventured to confess to himself, that in the lovely +little idyl of the loves of Doady and Dora—with Jip, as Dora’s father +might have said, intervening—there were, besides the reminiscences of an +innocent juvenile amour, the vestiges of a man’s unconfessed though not +altogether unrepressed disappointment—the sense that “there was always +something wanting.” But in order to be affected by a personal or +autobiographical element in a fiction or poem, it is by no means necessary +to be aware of its actual bearing and character, or even of its very +existence. <i>Amelia</i> would gain little by illustrative notes concerning the +experiences of the first Mrs. Fielding. To excite in a work of fiction the +peculiar kind of interest of which I am speaking the existence of an +autobiographical substratum need not be apparent in it, nor need its +presence be even suspected. Enough, if it be <i>there</i>. But it had far +better be away altogether, unless the novelist has so thoroughly fused +this particular stream of metal with the mass filling his mould that the +result is an integral artistic whole. Such was, however, the case with +<i>David Copperfield</i>, which of all Dickens’s fictions is on the whole the +most perfect as a work of art. Personal reminiscences which lay deep in +the author’s breast are, as effects, harmonised with local associations +old and new. Thus, Yarmouth, painted in the story with singular poetic +truthfulness, had only quite recently been seen by Dickens for the first +time, on a holiday trip. His imagination still subdued to itself all the +elements with which he worked; and, whatever may be thought of the +construction of this story, none of his other books equals it in that +harmony of tone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> which no artist can secure unless by recasting all his +materials.</p> + +<p>As to the construction of <i>David Copperfield</i>, however, I frankly confess +that I perceive no serious fault in it. It is a story with a plot, and not +merely a string of adventures and experiences, like little Davy’s old +favourites upstairs at Blunderstone. In the conduct of this plot blemishes +may here and there occur. The boy’s flight from London, and the direction +which it takes, are insufficiently accounted for. A certain amount of +obscurity, as well perhaps as of improbability, pervades the relations +between Uriah and the victim, round whom the unspeakably slimy thing +writhes and wriggles. On the other hand, the mere conduct of the story has +much that is beautiful in it. Thus, there is real art in the way in which +the scene of Barkis’s death—written with admirable moderation—prepares +for the “greater loss” at hand for the mourning family. And in the entire +treatment of his hero’s double love story Dickens has, to my mind, avoided +that discord which, in spite of himself, jars upon the reader both in +<i>Esmond</i> and in <i>Adam Bede</i>. The best constructed part of <i>David +Copperfield</i> is, however, unmistakably the story of Little Emily and her +kinsfolk. This is most skilfully interwoven with the personal experiences +of David, of which—except in its very beginnings—it forms no integral +part; and throughout the reader is haunted by a presentiment of the coming +catastrophe, though unable to divine the tragic force and justice of its +actual accomplishment. A touch altered here and there in Steerforth, with +the Rosa Dartle episode excluded or greatly reduced, and this part of +<i>David Copperfield</i> might challenge comparison as to workmanship with the +whole literature of modern fiction.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>Of the idyl of Davy and Dora what shall I say? Its earliest stages are +full of the gayest comedy. What, for instance, could surpass the history +of the picnic—where was it? perhaps it was near Guildford. At that feast +an imaginary rival, “Red Whisker,” made the salad—how could they eat +it?—and “voted himself into the charge of the wine-cellar, which he +constructed, <i>being an ingenious beast</i>, in the hollow trunk of a tree.” +Better still are the backward ripples in the course of true love; best of +all the deep wisdom of Miss Mills, in whose nature mental trial and +suffering supplied, in some measure, the place of years. In the narrative +of the young house-keeping David’s real trouble is most skilfully mingled +with the comic woes of the situation; and thus the idyl almost +imperceptibly passes into the last phase, where the clouds dissolve in a +rain of tears. The genius which conceived and executed these closing +scenes was touched by a pity towards the fictitious creatures of his own +imagination, which melted his own heart; and thus his pathos is here +irresistible.</p> + +<p>The inventive power of Dickens in none of his other books indulged itself +so abundantly in the creation of eccentric characters, but neither was it +in any so admirably tempered by taste and feeling. It contains no +character which could strictly be called grotesque, unless it be little +Miss Mowcher. Most of her outward peculiarities Dickens had copied from a +living original; but receiving a remonstrance from the latter, he +good-humouredly altered the use he had intended to make of the character, +and thereby spoiled what there was in it—not much, in my opinion—to +spoil. Mr. Dick belongs to a species of eccentric personages—mad people, +in a word—for which Dickens as a writer had a curious liking; but though<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> +there is consequently no true humour in this character, it helps to bring +out the latent tenderness in another. David’s Aunt is a figure which none +but a true humourist such as Sterne or Dickens could have drawn, and she +must have sprung from the author’s brain armed <i>cap-à-pie</i> as she appeared +in her garden before his little double. Yet even Miss Betsey Trotwood was +not altogether a creation of the fancy, for at Broadstairs the locality is +still pointed out where the “one great outrage of her life” was daily +renewed. In the other chief characters of this story the author seems to +rely entirely on natural truthfulness. He must have had many opportunities +of noting the ways of seamen and fishermen, but the occupants of the old +boat near Yarmouth possess the typical characteristics with which the +experience and the imagination of centuries have agreed to credit the +“salt” division of mankind. Again, he had had his own experience of +shabby-genteel life, and of the struggle which he had himself seen a happy +and a buoyant temperament maintaining against a sea of trouble. But Mr. +Micawber, whatever features may have been transferred to him, is the type +of a whole race of men who will not vanish from the face of the earth so +long as the hope which lives eternal in the human breast is only +temporarily suspended by the laws of debtor and creditor, and is always +capable of revival with the aid of a bowl of milk-punch. A kindlier and a +merrier, a more humorous and a more genuine character was never conceived +than this; and if anything was wanted to complete the comicality of the +conception, it was the wife of his bosom with the twins at her own, and +her mind made up <i>not</i> to desert Mr. Micawber. Delightful too in his way, +though of a class more common in Dickens, is Tommy Traddles, the genial +picture of whose married life in chambers in Gray’s Inn,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> with the dearest +girl in the world and her five sisters, including the beauty, on a visit, +may have been suggested by kindly personal reminiscences of youthful days. +In contrast to these characters, the shambling, fawning, villanous +hypocrisy of Uriah Heep is a piece of intense and elaborate workmanship, +almost cruelly done without being overdone. It was in his figures of +hypocrites that Dickens’s satirical power most diversely displayed itself; +and by the side of Uriah Heep in this story, literally so in the +prison-scene at the close, stands another species of the race, the valet +Littimer, a sketch which Thackeray himself could not have surpassed.</p> + +<p>Thus, then, I must leave the book, with its wealth of pathos and humour, +with the glow of youth still tinging its pages, but with the gentler mood +of manhood pervading it from first to last. The <i>reality</i> of <i>David +Copperfield</i> is, perhaps, the first feature in it likely to strike the +reader new to its charms; but a closer acquaintance will produce, and +familiarity will enhance, the sense of its wonderful <i>art</i>. Nothing will +ever destroy the popularity of a work of which it can truly be said that, +while offering to his muse a gift not less beautiful than precious, its +author put into it his life’s blood.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">CHANGES.</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">[1852-1858.]</span></p> + +<p><br />I have spoken of both the intellectual and the physical vigour of Charles +Dickens as at their height in the years of which the most enduring fruit +was the most delightful of all his fictions. But there was no break in his +activity after the achievement of this or any other of his literary +successes, and he was never harder at work than during the seven years of +which I am about to speak, although in this period also occasionally he +was to be found hard at play. Its beginning saw him settled in his new and +cheerfully-furnished abode at Tavistock House, of which he had taken +possession in October, 1851. At its close he was master of the country +residence which had been the dream of his childhood, but he had become a +stranger to that tranquillity of mind without which no man’s house is +truly his home. Gradually, but surely, things had then, or a little +before, come to such a pass that he wrote to his faithful friend: “I am +become incapable of rest. I am quite confident I should rust, break, and +die, if I spared myself. Much better to die, doing. What I am in that way +Nature made me first, and my way of life has of late, alas! confirmed.” +Early in 1852 the youngest of his children had been born to him—the boy +whose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> babyhood once more revived in him a tenderness the depth of which +no eccentric humours and fantastic <i>sobriquets</i> could conceal. In May, +1858, he had separated from the mother of his children; and though +self-sacrificing affection was at hand to watch over them and him, yet +that domestic life of which he had become the prophet and poet to hundreds +of thousands was in its fairest and fullest form at an end for himself.</p> + +<p>In the earlier of these years Dickens’s movements were still very much of +the same kind, and varied much after the same fashion, as in the period +described in my last chapter. In 1852 the series of amateur performances +in the country was completed; but time was found for a summer residence in +Camden Crescent, Dover. During his stay there, and during most of his +working hours in this and the following year—the spring of which was +partly spent at Brighton—he was engaged upon his new story, <i>Bleak +House</i>, published in numbers dating from March, 1852, to September, 1853. +“To let you into a secret,” he had written to his lively friend, Miss Mary +Boyle, from Dover, “I am not quite sure that I ever did like, or ever +shall like, anything quite so well as <i>Copperfield</i>. But I foresee, I +think, some very good things in <i>Bleak House</i>.” There is no reason to +believe that, by the general public, this novel was at the time of its +publication a whit less favourably judged or less eagerly read than its +predecessor. According to the author’s own testimony it “took +extraordinarily, especially during the last five or six months” of its +issue, and “retained its immense circulation from the first, beating dear +old <i>Copperfield</i> by a round ten thousand or more.” To this day the book +has its staunch friends, some of whom would perhaps be slow to confess by +which of the elements in the story they are most forcibly attracted.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> On +the other hand, <i>Bleak House</i> was probably the first of Dickens’s works +which furnished a suitable text to a class of censors whose precious balms +have since descended upon his head with constant reiteration. The power of +amusing being graciously conceded to the “man of genius,” his book was +charged with “absolute want of construction,” and with being a +heterogeneous compound made up of a meagre and melodramatic story, and a +number of “odd folks that have to do with a long Chancery suit.” Of the +characters themselves it was asserted that, though in the main excessively +funny, they were more like caricatures of the stage than studies from +nature. Some approval was bestowed upon particular figures, but rather as +types of the influence of externals than as real individualities; and +while the character of the poor crossing-sweeper was generously praised, +it was regretted that Dickens should never have succeeded in drawing “a +man or woman whose lot is cast among the high-born or wealthy.” He +belonged, unfortunately, “in literature to the same class as his +illustrator, Hablot Browne, in design, though he far surpasses the +illustrator in range and power.” In other words, he was essentially a +caricaturist.</p> + +<p>As applied to <i>Bleak House</i>, with which I am at present alone concerned, +this kind of censure was in more ways than one unjust. So far as +constructive skill was concerned, the praise given by Forster to <i>Bleak +House</i> may be considered excessive; but there can be no doubt that, as +compared, not with <i>Pickwick</i> and <i>Nickleby</i>, but with its immediate +predecessor, <i>David Copperfield</i>, this novel exhibits a decided advance in +that respect. In truth, Dickens in <i>Bleak House</i> for the first time +emancipated himself from that form of novel which, in accordance with his +great eighteenth-century favourites, he had hitherto more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> or less +consciously adopted—the novel of adventure, of which the person of the +hero, rather than the machinery of the plot, forms the connecting element. +It may be that the influence of Mr. Wilkie Collins was already strong upon +him, and that the younger writer, whom Dickens was about this time +praising for his unlikeness to the “conceited idiots who suppose that +volumes are to be tossed off like pancakes,” was already teaching +something to, as well as learning something from, the elder. It may also +be that the criticism which as editor of <i>Household Words</i> Dickens was now +in the habit of judiciously applying to the fictions of others, +unconsciously affected his own methods and processes. Certain it is that +from this point of view <i>Bleak House</i> may be said to begin a new series +among his works of fiction. The great Chancery suit and the fortunes of +those concerned in it are not a disconnected background from which the +mystery of Lady Dedlock’s secret stands forth in relief; but the two main +parts of the story are skilfully interwoven as in a Spanish double-plot. +Nor is the success of the general action materially affected by the +circumstance that the tone of Esther Summerson’s diary is not altogether +true. At the same time there is indisputably some unevenness in the +construction of <i>Bleak House</i>. It drags, and drags very perceptibly, in +some of its earlier parts. On the other hand, the interest of the reader +is strongly revived when that popular favourite, Mr. Inspector Bucket, +appears on the scene, and when, more especially in the admirably vivid +narrative of Esther’s journey with the detective, the nearness of the +catastrophe exercises its exciting influence. Some of the machinery, +moreover—such as the Smallweed family’s part in the plot—is tiresome; +and particular incidents are intolerably horrible or absurd—such as on +the one hand the spontaneous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> combustion (which is proved possible by the +analogy of historical facts!), and on the other the intrusion of the +oil-grinding Mr. Chadband into the solemn presence of Sir Leicester +Dedlock’s grief. But in general the parts of the narrative are well knit +together; and there is a subtle skill in the way in which the two main +parts of the story converge towards their common close.</p> + +<p>The idea of making an impersonal object like a great Chancery suit the +centre round which a large and manifold group of characters revolves, +seems to savour of a drama rather than of a story. No doubt the theme +suggested itself to Dickens with a very real purpose, and on the basis of +facts which he might well think warranted him in his treatment of it; for, +true artist though he was, the thought of exposing some national defect, +of helping to bring about some real reform, was always paramount in his +mind over any mere literary conception. <i>Primâ facie</i>, at least, and with +all due deference to Chancery judges and eminent silk gowns like Mr. +Blowers, the length of Chancery suits was a real public grievance, as well +as a frequent private calamity. But even as a mere artistic notion the +idea of Jarndyce <i>v.</i> Jarndyce as diversely affecting those who lived by +it, those who rebelled against it, those who died of it, was, in its way, +of unique force; and while Dickens never brought to any other of his +subjects so useful a knowledge of its external details—in times gone by +he had served a “Kenge and Carboys” of his own—hardly any one of those +subjects suggested so wide a variety of aspects for characteristic +treatment.</p> + +<p>For never before had his versatility in drawing character filled his +canvas with so multitudinous and so various a host of personages. The +legal profession, with its servitors and hangers-on of every degree, +occupies the centre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> of the picture. In this group no figure is more +deserving of admiration than that of Mr. Tulkinghorn, the eminently +respectable family solicitor, at whose very funeral, by a four-wheeled +affliction, the good-will of the aristocracy manifests itself. We learn +very little about him, and probably care less; but he interests us +precisely as we should be interested by the real old family lawyer, about +whom we might know and care equally little, were we to find him alone in +the twilight, drinking his ancient port in his frescoed chamber in those +fields where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop. (Mr. +Forster, by-the-way, omitted to point out to his readers, what the piety +of American research has since put on record, that Mr. Tulkinghorn’s house +was a picture of the biographer’s own residence.) The portrait of Mr. +Vholes, who supports an unassailable but unenviable professional +reputation for the sake of “the three dear girls at home,” and a father +whom he has to support “in the Vale of Taunton,” is less attractive; but +nothing could be more in its place in the story than the clammy tenacity +of this legal ghoul and his “dead glove.” Lower down in the great system +of the law we come upon Mr. Guppy and his fellows, the very quintessence +of cockney vulgarity, seasoned with a flavour of legal sharpness without +which the rankness of the mixture would be incomplete. To the legal group +Miss Flite, whose original, if I remember right, used to haunt the Temple +as well as the precincts of the Chancery courts, may likewise be said to +belong. She is quite legitimately introduced into the story—which cannot +be said of all Dickens’s madmen—because her madness associates itself +with its main theme.</p> + +<p>Much admiration has been bestowed upon the figures of an eccentric by or +under plot in this story, in which the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> family of the Jellybys and the +august Mr. Turveydrop are, actively, or by passive endurance, engaged. The +philanthropic section of <i>le monde où l’on s’ennuie</i> has never been +satirised more tellingly, and, it must be added, more bitterly. Perhaps at +the time of the publication of <i>Bleak House</i> the activity of our Mrs. +Jellybys took a wider and more cosmopolitan sweep than in later days; for +we read at the end of Esther’s diary how Mrs. Jellyby “has been +disappointed in Borrioboola Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence +of the King of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody—who survived the +climate—for rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in +Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more +correspondence than the old one.” But Mrs. Jellyby’s interference in the +affairs of other people is after all hurtful only because in busying +herself with theirs she forgets her own. The truly offensive benefactress +of her fellow-creatures is Mrs. Pardiggle, who, maxim in mouth and tract +in hand, turns everything she approaches to stone. Among her victims are +her own children, including Alfred, aged five, who has been induced to +take an oath “never to use tobacco in any form.”</p> + +<p>The particular vein of feeling that led Dickens to the delineation of +these satirical figures was one which never ran dry with him, and which +suggested some forcible-feeble satire in his very last fiction. I call it +a vein of feeling only; for he could hardly have argued in cold blood that +the efforts which he ridicules were not misrepresented as a whole by his +satire. When poor Jo on his death-bed is “asked whether he ever knew a +prayer,” and replies that he could never make anything out of those spoken +by the gentlemen who “came down Tom-all-Alone’s a-prayin’,” but who +“mostly sed as the t’other wuns prayed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> wrong,” the author brings a charge +which he might not have found it easy to substantiate. Yet—with the +exception of such isolated passages—the figure of Jo is in truth one of +the most powerful protests that have been put forward on behalf of the +friendless outcasts of our streets. Nor did the romantic element in the +conception interfere with the effect of the realistic. If Jo, who seems at +first to have been intended to be one of the main figures of the story, is +in Dickens’s best pathetic manner, the Bagnet family is in his happiest +vein of quiet humour. Mr. Inspector Bucket, though not altogether free +from mannerism, well deserves the popularity which he obtained. For this +character, as the pages of <i>Household Words</i> testify, Dickens had made +many studies in real life. The detective police-officer had at that time +not yet become a standing figure of fiction and the drama, nor had the +detective of real life begun to destroy the illusion.</p> + +<p><i>Bleak House</i> was least of all among the novels hitherto published by its +author obnoxious to the charge persistently brought against him, that he +was doomed to failure in his attempts to draw characters taken from any +but the lower spheres of life—in his attempts, in short, to draw ladies +and gentlemen. To begin with, one of the most interesting characters in +the book—indeed, in its relation to the main idea of the story, the most +interesting of all—is the youthful hero, if he is to be so called, +Richard Carson. From the very nature of the conception the character is +passive only; but the art and feeling are in their way unsurpassed with +which the gradual collapse of a fine nature is here exhibited. Sir +Leicester Dedlock, in some measure intended as a type of his class, has +been condemned as wooden and unnatural; and no doubt the machinery of that +part of the story in which he is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>concerned creaks before it gets under +way. On the other hand, after the catastrophe has overwhelmed him and his +house, he becomes a really fine picture, unmarred by any Grandisonianisms +in either thought or phrase, of a true gentleman, bowed but not warped by +distress. Sir Leicester’s relatives, both dead and living; Volumnia’s +sprightly ancestress on the wall, and that “fair Dedlock” herself; the +whole cousinhood, debilitated and otherwise, but of one mind on such +points as William Buffy’s blameworthy neglect of his duty <i>when in +office</i>; all these make up a very probable picture of a house great +enough—or thinking itself great enough—to look at the affairs of the +world from the family point of view. In Lady Dedlock alone a failure must +be admitted; but she, with her wicked double, the uncanny French maid +Hortense, exists only for the sake of the plot.</p> + +<p>With all its merits, <i>Bleak House</i> has little of that charm which belongs +to so many of Dickens’s earlier stories, and to <i>David Copperfield</i> above +all. In part, at least, this may be due to the excessive severity of the +task which Dickens had set himself in <i>Bleak House</i>; for hardly any other +of his works is constructed on so large a scale, or contains so many +characters organically connected with the progress of its plot; and in +part, again, to the half-didactic, half-satirical purport of the story, +which weighs heavily on the writer. An overstrained tone announces itself +on the very first page; an opening full of power—indeed, of genius—but +pitched in a key which we feel at once will not, without effort, be +maintained. On the second page the prose has actually become verse; or how +else can one describe part of the following apostrophe?</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“‘This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its +blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> in +every mad-house, and its dead in every church-yard; which has its +ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing +and begging through the round of every man’s acquaintance; which gives +to moneyed might the means abundantly of wearing out the right; which +so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain +and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its +practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the +warning, “Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come +here!”’”</p></div> + +<p>It was possibly with some thought of giving to <i>Bleak House</i> also, though +in a different way, the close relation to his experiences of living men to +which <i>David Copperfield</i> had owed so much, that Dickens introduced into +it two <i>portraits</i>. Doubtless, at first, his intention had by no means +gone so far as this. His constant counsellor always disliked his mixing up +in his fictitious characters any personal reminiscences of particular men, +experience having shown that in such cases the whole character came out +<i>more like</i> than the author was aware. Nor can Dickens himself have failed +to understand how such an experiment is always tempting, and always +dangerous; how it is often irreconcilable with good feeling, and quite as +often with good taste. In <i>Bleak House</i>, however, it occurred to him to +introduce likenesses of two living men, both more or less well known to +the public and to himself; and both of individualities too clearly marked +for a portrait, or even a caricature, of either to be easily mistaken. Of +that art of mystification which the authors of both English and French +<i>romans à clef</i> have since practised with so much transient success, he +was no master, and fortunately so; for what could be more ridiculous than +that the reader’s interest in a character should be stimulated, first, by +its being evidently the late Lord P-lm-rst-n or the P—— of O——, and +then by its being no less evidently somebody<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> else? It should be added +that neither of the two portrait characters in <i>Bleak House</i> possesses the +least importance for the conduct of the story, so that there is nothing to +justify their introduction except whatever excellence may belong to them +in themselves.</p> + +<p>Lawrence Boythorn is described by Mr. Sydney Colvin as drawn from Walter +Savage Landor with his intellectual greatness left out. It was, of course, +unlikely that his intellectual greatness should be left in, the intention +obviously being to reproduce what was eccentric in the ways and manner, +with a suggestion of what was noble in the character, of Dickens’s famous +friend. Whether, had he attempted to do so, Dickens could have drawn a +picture of the whole Landor, is another question. Landor, who could put +into a classic dialogue that sense of the <i>naïf</i> to which Dickens is +generally a stranger, yet passionately admired the most <i>sentimental</i> of +all his young friend’s poetic figures; and it might almost be said that +the intellectual natures of the two men were drawn together by the force +of contrast. They appear to have first become intimate with one another +during Landor’s residence at Bath—which began in 1837—and they +frequently met at Gore House. At a celebration of the poet’s birthday in +his lodgings at Bath, so Forster tells us in his biography of Landor, “the +fancy which took the form of Little Nell in the <i>Curiosity Shop</i> first +dawned on the genius of its creator.” In Landor’s spacious mind there was +room for cordial admiration of an author the bent of whose genius differed +widely from that of his own; and he could thus afford to sympathise with +his whole heart in a creation which men of much smaller intellectual build +have pronounced mawkish and unreal. Dickens afterwards gave to one of his +sons the names of Walter Landor; and when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> the old man died at last, +<i>after</i> his godson, paid him an eloquent tribute of respect in <i>All the +Year Round</i>. In this paper the personal intention of the character of +Boythorn is avowed by implication; but though Landor esteemed and loved +Dickens, it might seem matter for wonder, did not eccentrics after all +sometimes cherish their own eccentricity, that his irascible nature failed +to resent a rather doubtful compliment. For the character of Boythorn is +whimsical rather than, in any but the earlier sense of the word, humorous. +But the portrait, however imperfect, was in this instance, beyond all +doubt, both kindly meant and kindly taken; though it cannot be said to +have added to the attractions of the book into which it is introduced.</p> + +<p>While no doubt ever existed as to this likeness, the case may not seem so +clear with regard to the original of Harold Skimpole. It would be far more +pleasant to pass by without notice the controversy—if controversy it can +be called—which this character provoked; but a wrong done by one eminent +man of letters to another, however unforeseen its extent may have been, +and however genuine the endeavour to repair its effect, becomes part of +literary history. That the original of Harold Skimpole was Leigh Hunt +cannot reasonably be called into question. This assertion by no means +precludes the possibility, or probability, that a second original +suggested certain features in the portrait. Nor does it contradict the +substantial truthfulness of Dickens’s own statement, published in <i>All the +Year Round</i> after Leigh Hunt’s death, on the appearance of the new edition +of the <i>Autobiography</i> with Thornton Hunt’s admirable introduction. While, +Dickens then wrote, “he yielded to the temptation of too often making the +character speak like his old friend,” yet “he no more thought, God forgive +him! that the admired original would ever be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> charged with the imaginary +vices of the fictitious creature, than he had himself ever thought of +charging the blood of Desdemona and Othello on the innocent Academy model +who sat for Iago’s leg in the picture. Even as to the mere occasional +manner,” he declared that he had “altered the whole of that part of the +text, when two intimate friends of Leigh Hunt—both still +living—discovered too strong a resemblance to his ‘way.’” But, while +accepting this statement, and suppressing a regret that after discovering +the dangerous closeness of the resemblance Dickens should have, quite at +the end of the story, introduced a satirical reference to Harold +Skimpole’s autobiography—Leigh Hunt’s having been published only a year +or two before—one must confess that the explanation only helps to prove +the rashness of the offence. While intending the portrait to keep its own +secret from the general public, Dickens at the same time must have wished +to gratify a few keen-sighted friends. In March, 1852, he writes to +Forster, evidently in reference to the apprehensions of his correspondent: +“Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him singularly unlike the +great original.” The “great original” was a man for whom, both before and +after this untoward incident in the relations between them, Dickens +professed a warm regard, and who, to judge from the testimony of those who +knew him well,<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> and from his unaffected narrative of his own life, +abundantly deserved it. A perusal of Leigh Hunt’s <i>Autobiography</i> suffices +to show that he used to talk in Skimpole’s manner, and even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> to write in +it; that he was at one period of his life altogether ignorant of money +matters, and that he cultivated cheerfulness on principle. But it likewise +shows that his ignorance of business was acknowledged by him as a +misfortune in which he was very far from exulting. “Do I boast of this +ignorance?” he writes. “Alas! I have no such respect for the pedantry of +absurdity as that. I blush for it, and I only record it out of a sheer +painful movement of conscience, as a warning to those young authors who +might be led to look upon such folly as a fine thing, which at all events +is what I never thought it myself.” On the other hand, as his son showed, +his cheerfulness, which was not inconsistent with a natural proneness to +intervals of melancholy, rested on grounds which were the result of a fine +as well as healthy morality. “The value of cheerful opinions,” he wrote, +in words embodying a moral that Dickens himself was never weary of +enforcing, “is inestimable; they will retain a sort of heaven round a man, +when everything else might fail him, and consequently they ought to be +religiously inculcated upon his children.” At the same time, no quality +was more conspicuous in his life than his readiness for hard work, even +under the most depressing circumstances; and no feature was more marked in +his moral character than his conscientiousness. “In the midst of the +sorest temptations,” Dickens wrote of him, “he maintained his honesty +unblemished by a single stain; and in all public and private transactions +he was the very soul of truth and honour.” To mix up with the outward +traits of such a man the detestable obliquities of Harold Skimpole was an +experiment paradoxical even as a mere piece of character-drawing. The +merely literary result is a failure, while a wound was needlessly +inflicted, if not upon Leigh Hunt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> himself, at least upon all who +cherished his friendship or good name. Dickens seems honestly and deeply +to have regretted what he had done, and the extremely tasteful little +tribute to Leigh Hunt’s poetic gifts which, some years before the death of +the latter, Dickens wrote for <i>Household Words</i>,<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a> must have partaken of +the nature of an <i>amende honorable</i>. Neither his subsequent repudiation of +unfriendly intentions, nor his earlier exertions on Leigh Hunt’s behalf, +are to be overlooked, but they cannot undo a mistake which forms an +unfortunate incident in Dickens’s literary life, singularly free though +that life, as a whole, is from the miseries of personal quarrels, and all +the pettinesses with which the world of letters is too familiar.</p> + +<p>While Dickens was engaged upon a literary work such as would have absorbed +the intellectual energies of most men, he not only wrote occasionally for +his journal, but also dictated for publication in it, the successive +portions of a book altogether outside his usual range of authorship. This +was <i>A Child’s History of England</i>, the only one of his works that was not +written by his own hand. A history of England, written by Charles Dickens +for his own or any one else’s children, was sure to be a different work +from one written under similar circumstances by Mr. Freeman or the late M. +Guizot. The book, though it cannot be called a success, is, however, by no +means devoid of interest. Just ten years earlier he had written, and +printed, a history of England for the benefit of his eldest son, then a +hopeful student of the age of five, which was composed, as he informed +Douglas Jerrold at the time, “in the exact spirit” of that advanced +politician’s paper, “for I don’t know what I should do if he were to get +hold of any Conservative or High Church notions; and the best<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> way of +guarding against any such horrible result is, I take it, to wring the +parrots’ necks in his very cradle.” The <i>Child’s History of England</i> is +written in the same spirit, and illustrates more directly, and, it must be +added, more coarsely, than any of Dickens’s other works his hatred of +ecclesiasticism of all kinds. Thus, the account of Dunstan is pervaded by +a prejudice which is the fruit of anything but knowledge; Edward the +Confessor is “the dreary old” and “the maudlin Confessor;” and the Pope +and what belongs to him are treated with a measure of contumely which +would have satisfied the heart of Leigh Hunt himself. To be sure, if King +John is dismissed as a “miserable brute,” King Henry the Eighth is not +more courteously designated as a “blot of blood and grease upon the +history of England.” On the other hand, it could hardly be but that +certain passages of the national story should be well told by so great a +master of narrative; and though the strain in which parts of the history +of Charles the Second are recounted strikes one as hardly suitable to the +young, to whom irony is in general <i>caviare</i> indeed, yet there are touches +both in the story of “this merry gentleman”—a designation which almost +recalls Fagin—and elsewhere in the book not unworthy of its author. Its +patriotic spirit is quite as striking as its Radicalism; and vulgar as +some of its expressions must be called, there is a pleasing glow in the +passage on King Alfred, which declares the “English-Saxon” character to +have been “the greatest character among the nations of the earth;” and +there is a yet nobler enthusiasm, such as it would indeed be worth any +writer’s while to infuse into the young, in the passionate earnestness +with which, by means of the story of Agincourt, the truth is enforced that +“nothing can make war otherwise than horrible.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>This book must have been dictated, and some at least of the latter portion +of <i>Bleak House</i> written, at Boulogne, where, after a spring sojourn at +Brighton, Dickens spent the summer of 1853, and where were also passed the +summers of 1854 and 1856. Boulogne, where Le Sage’s last years were spent, +was <i>Our French Watering-place</i>, so graphically described in a paper in +<i>Household Words</i> as a companion picture to the old familiar Broadstairs. +The family were comfortably settled on a green hill-side close to the +town, “in a charming garden in a very pleasant country,” with “excellent +light wines on the premises, French cookery, millions of roses, two +cows—for milk-punch—vegetables cut for the pot, and handed in at the +kitchen window; five summer-houses, fifteen fountains—with no water in +’em—and thirty-seven clocks—keeping, as I conceive, Australian time, +having no reference whatever to the hours on this side of the globe.” The +energetic owner of the Villa des Moulineaux was the “M. Loyal Devasseur” +of <i>Our French Watering-place</i>—jovial, convivial, genial, sentimental too +as a Buonapartist and a patriot. In 1854 the same obliging personage +housed the Dickens family in another abode, at the top of the hill, close +to the famous Napoleonic column; but in 1856 they came back to the +Moulineaux. The former year had been an exciting one for Englishmen in +France, with royal visits to and fro to testify to the <i>entente cordiale</i> +between the governments. Dickens, notwithstanding his humorous assertions, +was only moderately touched by the Sebastopol fever; but when a concrete +problem came before him in the shape of a festive demonstration, he +addressed himself to it with the irrepressible ardour of the born +stage-manager. “In our own proper illumination,” he writes, on the +occasion of the Prince Consort’s visit to the camp at Boulogne, “I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> laid +on all the servants, all the children now at home, all the visitors, one +to every window, with everything ready to light up on the ringing of a big +dinner-bell by your humble correspondent. St. Peter’s on Easter Monday was +the result.”</p> + +<p>Of course, at Boulogne, Dickens was cut off neither from his business nor +from his private friends. His hospitable invitations were as urgent to his +French villa in the summer as to his London house in the winter, and on +both sides of the water the <i>Household Words</i> familiars were as sure of a +welcome from their chief. During his absences from London he could have +had no trustier lieutenant than Mr. W. H. Wills, with whom, being always +ready to throw himself into a part, he corresponded in an amusing +paragraphed, semi-official style. And neither in his working nor in his +leisure hours had he by this time any more cherished companion than Mr. +Wilkie Collins, whose progress towards brilliant success he was watching +with the keenest and kindliest interest. With him and his old friend +Augustus Egg, Dickens, in October, 1853, started on a tour to Switzerland +and Italy, in the course of which he saw more than one old friend, and +revisited more than one known scene—ascending Vesuvius with Mr. Layard +and drinking punch at Rome with David Roberts. It would be absurd to make +any lofty demands upon the brief records of a holiday journey; and, for my +part, I would rather think of Dickens assiduous over his Christmas number +at Rome and at Venice, than weigh his moralisings about the electric +telegraph running through the Coliseum. His letters written to his wife +during this trip are bright and gay, and it was certainly no roving +bachelor who “kissed almost all the children he encountered in remembrance +of the sweet faces” of his own, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> “talked to all the mothers who +carried them.” By the middle of December the travellers were home again, +and before the year was out he had read to large audiences at Birmingham, +on behalf of a public institution, his favourite Christmas stories of <i>The +Christmas Carol</i> and <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>. As yet, however, his +mind was not seriously intent upon any labours but those proper to his +career as an author, and the year 1854 saw, between the months of April +and August, the publication in his journal of a new story, which is among +the most characteristic, though not among the most successful, of his +works of fiction.</p> + +<p>In comparison with most of Dickens’s novels, <i>Hard Times</i> is contained +within a narrow compass; and this, with the further necessity of securing +to each successive small portion of the story a certain immediate degree +of effectiveness, accounts, in some measure, for the peculiarity of the +impression left by this story upon many of its readers. Short as the story +relatively is, few of Dickens’s fictions were elaborated with so much +care. He had not intended to write a new story for a twelvemonth, when, as +he says, “the idea laid hold of him by the throat in a very violent +manner,” and the labour, carried on under conditions of peculiar +irksomeness, “used him up” after a quite unaccustomed fashion. The book +thus acquired a precision of form and manner which commends it to the +French school of criticism rather than to lovers of English humour in its +ampler forms and more flowing moods. At the same time the work has its +purpose so visibly imprinted on its front, as almost to forbid our +regarding it in the first instance apart from the moral which avowedly it +is intended to inculcate. This moral, by no means new with Dickens, has +both a negative and a positive side.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> “Do not harden your hearts,” is the +negative injunction, more especially do not harden them against the +promptings of that human kindness which should draw together man and man, +old and young, rich and poor; and keep your sympathies fresh by bringing +nourishment to them through channels which prejudice or short-sightedness +would fain narrow or stop up. This hortatory purpose assumes the form of +invective and even of angry menace; and “utilitarian economists, skeletons +of school-masters, commissioners of facts, genteel and used-up infidels, +gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds,” are warned: “The poor you +have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the +utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives, so much +in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is +utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand +face to face, reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.”</p> + +<p>No authority, however eminent, not even Mr. Ruskin’s, is required to teach +reflecting minds the infinite importance of the principles which <i>Hard +Times</i> was intended to illustrate. Nor is it of much moment whether the +illustrations are always exact; whether the “commissioners of facts” have +reason to protest that the unimaginative character of their processes does +not necessarily imply an unimaginative purpose in their ends; whether +there is any actual Coketown in existence within a hundred miles of +Manchester; or whether it suffices that “everybody knew what was meant, +but every cotton-spinning town said it was the other cotton-spinning +town.” The chief personal grievance of Stephen Blackpool has been removed +or abated, but the “muddle” is not yet altogether cleared up which +prevents the nation and the “national dustmen,”<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> its law-givers, from +impartially and sympathetically furthering the interest of all classes. In +a word, the moral of <i>Hard Times</i> has not yet lost its force, however +imperfect or unfair the method may have been in which it is urged in the +book.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, however, a work of art with a didactic purpose is only too +often prone to exaggerate what seems of special importance for the purpose +in question, and to heighten contrasts which seem likely to put it in the +clearest light. “Thomas Gradgrind, sir”—who announces himself with +something of the genuine Lancashire roll—and his system are a sound and a +laughable piece of satire, to begin with, only here and there marred by +the satirist’s imperfect knowledge of the details which he caricatures. +The “Manchester School,” which the novel strives to expose, is in itself +to a great extent a figment of the imagination, which to this day serves +to round many a hollow period in oratory and journalism. Who, it may +fairly be asked, were the parliamentary politicians satirized in the +member for Coketown, deaf and blind to any consideration but the +multiplication-table? But in any case the cause hardly warrants one of its +consequences as depicted in the novel—the utter brutalization of a stolid +nature like “the Whelp’s.” When Gradgrind’s son is about to be shipped +abroad out of reach of the penalties of his crime, he reminds his father +that he merely exemplifies the statistical law that “so many people out of +so many will be dishonest.” When the virtuous Bitzer is indignantly asked +whether he has a heart, he replies that he is physiologically assured of +the fact; and to the further inquiry whether this heart of his is +accessible to compassion, makes answer that “it is accessible to reason, +and to nothing else.” These returnings of Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> upon +himself savour of the moral justice represented by Gratiano in the fourth +act. So, again, Coketown, with its tall chimneys and black river, and its +thirteen religious denominations, to which whoever else belonged the +working-men did <i>not</i>, is no perverse contradiction of fact. But the +influence of Coketown, or of a whole wilderness of Coketowns, cannot +justly be charged with a tendency to ripen such a product as Josiah +Bounderby, who is not only the “bully of humanity,” but proves to be a +mean-spirited impostor in his pretensions to the glory of self-help. In +short, <i>Hard Times</i> errs by its attempt to prove too much.</p> + +<p>Apart, however, from the didactic purposes which overburden it, the pathos +and humour of particular portions of this tale appear to me to have been +in no wise overrated. The domestic tragedy of Stephen and Rachael has a +subdued intensity of tenderness and melancholy of a kind rare with +Dickens, upon whom the example of Mrs. Gaskell in this instance may not +have been without its influence. Nor is there anything more delicately and +at the same time more appropriately conceived in any of his works than +poor Rachael’s dominion over the imagination as well as over the +affections of her noble-minded and unfortunate lover: “As the shining +stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the +rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.” The +love-story of poor Louisa is of a different kind, and more wordy in the +telling; yet here also the feelings painted are natural and true. The +humorous interest is almost entirely concentrated upon the company of +horse-riders; and never has Dickens’s extraordinary power of humorous +observation more genially asserted itself. From Mr. Sleary—“thtout man, +game-eye”—and his protagonist, Mr. E.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> W. B. Childers, who, when he shook +his long hair, caused it to “shake all at once,” down to Master +Kidderminster, who used to form the apex of the human pyramids, and “in +whose young nature there was an original flavour of the misanthrope,” +these honest equestrians are more than worthy to stand by the side of Mr. +Vincent Crummles and his company of actors; and the fun has here, in +addition to the grotesqueness of the earlier picture, a mellowness of its +own. Dickens’s comic genius was never so much at its ease and so +inexhaustible in ludicrous fancies as in the depiction of such groups as +this; and the horse-riders, skilfully introduced to illustrate a truth, +wholesome if not novel, would have insured popularity to a far less +interesting and to a far less powerful fiction.</p> + +<p>The year after that which saw the publication of <i>Hard Times</i> was one in +which the thoughts of most Englishmen were turned away from the problems +approached in that story. But if the military glories of 1854 had not +aroused in him any very exuberant enthusiasm, the reports from the Crimea +in the ensuing winter were more likely to appeal to his patriotism as well +as to his innate impatience of disorder and incompetence. In the first +instance, however, he contented himself with those grumblings to which, as +a sworn foe of red tape and a declared disbeliever in our parliamentary +system, he might claim to have a special right; and he seems to have been +too restless in and about himself to have entered very closely into the +progress of public affairs. The Christmas had been a merry one at +Tavistock House; and the amateur theatricals of its juvenile company had +passed through a most successful season. Their history has been written by +one of the performers—himself not the least distinguished of the company, +since it was he who, in Dickens’s house, caused<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> Thackeray to roll off his +seat in a fit of laughter. Dickens, who with Mark Lemon disported himself +among these precocious minnows, was, as our chronicler relates, like +Triplet, “author, manager, and actor too,” organiser, deviser, and +harmoniser of all the incongruous assembled elements; it was he “who +improvised costumes, painted and corked our innocent cheeks, and suggested +all the most effective business of the scene.” But, as was usual with him, +the transition was rapid from play to something very like earnest; and +already, in June, 1855, the Tavistock House theatre produced Mr. Wilkie +Collins’s melodrama of <i>The Light-house</i>, which afterwards found its way +to the public stage. To Dickens, who performed in it with the author, it +afforded “scope for a piece of acting of great power,” the old sailor +Aaron Gurnock, which by its savage picturesqueness earned a tribute of +recognition from Carlyle. No less a hand than Stanfield painted the +scenery, and Dickens himself, besides writing the prologue, introduced +into the piece a ballad called <i>The Story of the Wreck</i>, a not +unsuccessful effort in Cowper’s manner. At Christmas, 1856-’57, there +followed <i>The Frozen Deep</i>, another melodrama by the same author; and by +this time the management of his private theatricals had become to Dickens +a serious business, to be carried on seriously for its own sake. “It was +to him,” he wrote, “like writing a book in company;” and his young people +might learn from it “that kind of humility which is got from the earned +knowledge that whatever the right hand finds to do must be done with the +heart in it, and in a desperate earnest.” <i>The Frozen Deep</i> was several +times repeated, on one occasion for the benefit of the daughter of the +recently deceased Douglas Jerrold; but by the end of January the little +theatre was finally broken up; and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> though Dickens spent one more winter +season at Tavistock House, the shadow was then already falling upon his +cheerful home.</p> + +<p>In the midst of his children’s Christmas gaieties of the year 1855 Dickens +had given two or three public readings to “wonderful audiences” in various +parts of the country. A trip to Paris with Mr. Wilkie Collins had +followed, during which, as he wrote home, he was wandering about Paris all +day, dining at all manner of places, and frequenting the theatres at the +rate of two or three a night. “I suppose,” he adds, with pleasant +self-irony, “as an old farmer said of Scott, I am ‘makin’ mysel’’ all the +time; but I seem to be rather a free-and-easy sort of superior vagabond.” +And in truth a roving, restless spirit was strong upon him in these years. +Already, in April, he speaks of himself as “going off; I don’t know where +or how far, to ponder about I don’t know what.” France, Switzerland, +Spain, Constantinople, in Mr. Layard’s company, had been successively in +his thoughts, and, for aught he knew, Greenland and the North Pole might +occur to him next. At the same time he foresaw that the end of it all +would be his shutting himself up in some out-of-the-way place of which he +had not yet thought, and going desperately to work there.</p> + +<p>Before, however, these phantasmagoric schemes had subsided into the quiet +plan of an autumn visit to Folkestone, followed during the winter and +spring by a residence at Paris, he had at least found a subject to ponder +on, which was to suggest an altogether novel element in his next work of +fiction. I have said that though, like the majority of his +fellow-countrymen, Dickens regarded our war with Russia as inevitable, yet +his hatred of all war, and his impatience of the exaggerations of passion +and sentiment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> which all war produces, had preserved him from himself +falling a victim to their contagion. On the other hand, when in the winter +of 1854-’55 the note of exultation in the bravery of our soldiers in the +Crimea began to be intermingled with complaints against the grievously +defective arrangements for their comfort and health, and when these +complaints, stimulated by the loud-voiced energy of the press, and +extending into censures upon the whole antiquated and perverse system of +our army administration, speedily swelled into a roar of popular +indignation, sincere conviction ranged him on the side of the most +uncompromising malcontents. He was at all times ready to give vent to that +antipathy against officialism which is shared by so large a number of +Englishmen. Though the son of a dock-yard official, he is found roundly +asserting that “more obstruction of good things and patronage of bad +things has been committed in the dock-yards—as in everything connected +with the misdirection of the navy—than in every other branch of the +public service put together, including”—the particularisation is +hard—“even the Woods and Forests.” He had listened, we may be sure, to +the scornful denunciations launched by the prophet of the <i>Latter-Day +Pamphlets</i> against Downing Street and all its works, and to the +proclamation of the great though rather vague truth that “reform in that +Downing Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were +worth all others.” And now the heart-rending sufferings of multitudes of +brave men had brought to light, in one department of the public +administration, a series of complications and perversities which in the +end became so patent to the Government itself that they had to be roughly +remedied in the very midst of the struggle. The cry for administrative +reform, which arose in the year 1855,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> however crude the form it +frequently took, was in itself a logical enough result of the situation; +and there is no doubt that the angriness of the complaint was intensified +by the attitude taken up in the House of Commons by the head of the +Government towards the pertinacious politician who made himself the +mouthpiece of the extreme demands of the feeling outside. Mr. Layard was +Dickens’s valued friend; and the share is thus easily explained +which—against his otherwise uniform practice of abstaining from public +meetings—the most popular writer of the day took in the Administrative +Reform meetings, held in Drury Lane Theatre, on June 27, 1855. The speech +which he delivered on this occasion, and which was intended to aid in +forcing the “whole question” of Administrative Reform upon the attention +of an unwilling Government, possesses no value whatever in connexion with +its theme, though of course it is not devoid of some smart and telling +hits. Not on the platform, but at his desk as an author, was Dickens to do +real service to the cause of administrative efficiency. For whilst +invective of a general kind runs off like water from the rock of usage, +even Circumlocution Offices are not insensible to the acetous force of +satire.</p> + +<p>Dickens’s caricature of British officialism formed the most generally +attractive element in the story of <i>Little Dorrit</i>—originally intended to +be called <i>Nobody’s Fault</i>—which he published in monthly numbers, from +December, 1855, that year, to June, 1857. He was solemnly taken to task +for his audacity by the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, which reproached him for his +persistent ridicule of “the institutions of the country, the laws, the +administration, in a word, the government under which we live.” His +“charges” were treated as hardly seriously meant, but as worthy of severe +reprobation, because likely to be seriously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> taken by the poor, the +uneducated, and the young. And the caricaturist, besides being reminded of +the names of several eminent public servants, was specially requested to +look, as upon a picture contrasting with his imaginary Circumlocution +Office, upon the Post Office, or—for <ins class="correction" title="original: the the">the</ins> choice offered was not more +extensive—upon the London police, so liberally praised by himself in his +own journal. The delighted author of <i>Little Dorrit</i> replied to this not +very skilful diatribe in a short and spirited rejoinder in <i>Household +Words</i>. In this he judiciously confined himself to refuting an unfounded +incidental accusation in the Edinburgh article, and to dwelling, as upon a +“Curious Misprint,” upon the indignant query: “How does he account for the +career of <i>Mr. Rowland Hill</i>?” whose name, as an example of the ready +intelligence of the Circumlocution Office, was certainly an odd <i>erratum</i>. +Had he, however, cared to make a more general reply to the main article of +the indictment, he might have pointed out that, as a matter of fact, our +official administrative machinery <i>had</i> recently broken down in one of its +most important branches, and that circumlocution in the literal sense of +the word—circumlocution between department and department, or office and +office—had been one of the principal causes of the collapse. The general +drift of the satire was, therefore, in accordance with fact, and the +satire itself salutary in its character. To quarrel with it for not taking +into consideration what might be said on the other side, was to quarrel +with the method of treatment which satire has at all times considered +itself entitled to adopt; while to stigmatise a popular book as likely to +mislead the ill-informed, was to suggest a restraint which would have +deprived wit and humour of most of their opportunities of rendering +service to either a good or an evil cause.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>A far more legitimate exception has been taken to these Circumlocution +Office episodes as defective in art by the very reason of their being +exaggerations. Those best acquainted with the interiors of our government +offices may be right in denying that the Barnacles can be regarded as an +existing type. Indeed, it would at no time have been easy to point to any +office quite as labyrinthine, or quite as bottomless, as that permanently +presided over by Mr. Tite Barnacle; to any chief secretary or commissioner +so absolutely wooden of fibre as he; or to any private secretary so +completely absorbed in his eye-glass as Barnacle junior. But as satirical +figures they one and all fulfil their purpose as thoroughly as the picture +of the official sanctum itself, with its furniture “in the higher official +manner,” and its “general bamboozling air of how not to do it.” The only +question is, whether satire which, if it is to be effective, must be of a +piece and in its way exaggerated, is not out of place in a pathetic and +humorous fiction, where, like a patch of too diverse a thread, it +interferes with the texture into which it is introduced. In themselves +these passages of <i>Little Dorrit</i> deserve to remain unforgotten amongst +the masterpieces of literary caricature; and there is, I do not hesitate +to say, something of Swiftian force in their grotesque embodiment of a +popular current of indignation. The mere name of the Circumlocution Office +was a stroke of genius, one of those phrases of Dickens which Professor +Masson justly describes as, whether exaggerated or not, “efficacious for +social reform.” As usual, Dickens had made himself well acquainted with +the formal or outside part of his subject; the very air of Whitehall seems +to gather round us as Mr. Tite Barnacle, in answer to a persistent +enquirer who “wants to know” the position of a particular matter,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> +concedes that it “may have been, in the course of official business, +referred to the Circumlocution Office for its consideration,” and that +“the department may have either originated, or confirmed, a minute on the +subject.” In the <i>Household Words</i> paper called <i>A Poor Man’s Tale of a +Patent</i> (1850) will be found a sufficiently elaborate study for Mr. +Doyce’s experiences of the government of his country, as wrathfully +narrated by Mr. Meagles.</p> + +<p>With the exception of the Circumlocution Office passages—adventitious as +they are to the progress of the action—<i>Little Dorrit</i> exhibits a +palpable falling-off in inventive power. Forster illustrates by a striking +fac-simile the difference between the “labour and pains” of the author’s +short notes for <i>Little Dorrit</i> and the “lightness and confidence of +handling” in what hints he had jotted down for <i>David Copperfield</i>. +Indeed, his “tablets” had about this time begun to be an essential part of +his literary equipment. But in <i>Little Dorrit</i> there are enough internal +signs of, possibly unconscious, lassitude. The earlier, no doubt, is, in +every respect, the better part of the book; or, rather, the later part +shows the author wearily at work upon a canvas too wide for him, and +filling it up with a crowd of personages in whom it is difficult to take +much interest. Even Mr. Merdle and his catastrophe produce the effect +rather of a ghastly allegory than of an “extravagant conception,” as the +author ironically called it in his preface, derived only too directly from +real life. In the earlier part of the book, in so far as it is not once +again concerned with enforcing the moral of <i>Hard Times</i> in a different +way, by means of Mrs. Clennam and her son’s early history, the humour of +Dickens plays freely over the figure of the Father of the Marshalsea. It +is a psychological masterpiece in its way; but the revolting selfishness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> +of Little Dorrit’s father is not redeemed artistically by her own +long-suffering; for her pathos lacks the old irresistible ring. Doubtless +much in this part of the story—the whole episode, for instance, of the +honest turnkey—is in the author’s best manner. But, admirable as it is, +this new picture of prison-life and prison-sentiment has an undercurrent +of bitterness, indeed, almost of contemptuousness, foreign to the best +part of Dickens’s genius. This is still more perceptible in a figure not +less true to life than the Father of the Marshalsea himself—Flora, the +overblown flower of Arthur Clennam’s boyish love. The humour of the +conception is undeniable, but the whole effect is cruel; and, though +greatly amused, the reader feels almost as if he were abetting a +profanation. Dickens could not have become what he is to the great +multitude of his readers had he, as a humourist, often indulged in this +cynical mood.</p> + +<p>There is in general little in the characters of this fiction to compensate +for the sense of oppression from which, as he follows the slow course of +its far from striking plot, the reader finds it difficult to free himself. +A vein of genuine humour shows itself in Mr. Plornish, obviously a +favourite of the author’s, and one of those genuine working-men, as rare +in fiction as on the stage, where Mr. Toole has reproduced the species; +but the relation between Mr. and Mrs. Plornish is only a fainter revival +of that between Mr. and Mrs. Bagney. Nor is there anything fresh or novel +in the characters belonging to another social sphere. Henry Gowan, +apparently intended as an elaborate study in psychology, is only a very +tedious one; and his mother at Hampton Court, whatever phase of a +dilapidated aristocracy she may be intended to caricature, is merely +ill-bred. As for Mrs. General, she is so sorry a burlesque that she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> could +not be reproduced without extreme caution even on the stage—to the +reckless conventionalities of which, indeed, the whole picture of the +Dorrit family as <i>nouveaux riches</i> bears a striking resemblance. There is, +on the contrary, some good caricature, which, in one instance at least, +was thought transparent by the knowing, in the <i>silhouettes</i> of the great +Mr. Merdle’s professional guests; but these are, like the Circumlocution +Office puppets, satiric sketches, not the living figures of creative +humour.</p> + +<p>I have spoken of this story with a censure which may be regarded as +exaggerated in its turn. But I well remember, at the time of its +publication in numbers, the general consciousness that <i>Little Dorrit</i> was +proving unequal to the high-strung expectations which a new work by +Dickens then excited in his admirers, both young and old. There were new +and striking features in it, with abundant comic and serious effect, but +there was no power in the whole story to seize and hold, and the feeling +could not be escaped that the author was not at his best. And Dickens was +not at his best when he wrote <i>Little Dorrit</i>. Yet while nothing is more +remarkable in the literary career of Dickens than this apparently speedy +decline of his power, nothing is more wonderful in it than the degree to +which he righted himself again, not, indeed, with his public, for the +public never deserted its favourite, but with his genius.</p> + +<p>A considerable part of <i>Little Dorrit</i> must have been written in Paris, +where, in October, after a quiet autumn at Folkestone, Dickens had taken a +family apartment in the Avenue des Champs Élysées, “about half a quarter +of a mile above Franconi’s.” Here, after his fashion, he lived much to +himself, his family, and his guests, only occasionally finding his way +into a literary or artistic <i>salon</i>; but he sat for his portrait to both +Ary and Henri Scheffer,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> and was easily persuaded to read his <i>Cricket on +the Hearth</i> to an audience in the atelier. Macready and Mr. Wilkie Collins +were in turn the companions of many “theatrical and lounging” evenings. +Intent as Dickens now had become upon the technicalities of his own form +of composition, this interest must have been greatly stimulated by the +frequent comparison of modern French plays, in most of which nicety of +construction and effectiveness of situation have so paramount a +significance. At Boulogne, too, Mr. Wilkie Collins was a welcome summer +visitor. And in the autumn the two friends started on the <i>Lazy Tour of +Two Idle Apprentices</i>. It came to an untimely end as a pedestrian +excursion, but the record of it is one of the pleasantest memorials of a +friendship which brightened much of Dickens’s life and intensified his +activity in work as well as in pleasure.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Thomas Idle” had indeed a busy time of it in this year 1857. The +publication of <i>Little Dorrit</i> was not finished till June, and in August +we find him, between a reading and a performance of <i>The Frozen Deep</i> at +Manchester—then in the exciting days of the great Art Exhibition—thus +describing to Macready his way of filling up his time: “I hope you have +seen my tussle with the <i>Edinburgh</i>. I saw the chance last Friday week, as +I was going down to read the <i>Carol</i> in St. Martin’s Hall. Instantly +turned to, then and there, and wrote half the article, flew out of bed +early next morning, and finished it by noon. Went down to Gallery of +Illustration (we acted that night), did the day’s business, corrected the +proofs in Polar costume in dressing-room, broke up two numbers of +<i>Household Words</i> to get it out directly, played in <i>Frozen Deep</i> and +<i>Uncle John</i>, presided at supper of company, made no end of speeches, went +home and gave in completely for four hours,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> then got sound asleep, and +next day was as fresh as you used to be in the far-off days of your lusty +youth.” It was on the occasion of the readings at St. Martin’s Hall, for +the benefit of Douglas Jerrold’s family, that the thought of giving +readings for his own benefit first suggested itself to Dickens; and, as +will be seen, by April, 1858, the idea had been carried into execution, +and a new phase of life had begun for him. And yet at this very time, when +his home was about to cease being in the fullest sense a home to Dickens, +by a strange irony of fortune, he had been enabled to carry out a +long-cherished fancy and to take possession, in the first instance as a +summer residence, of the house on Gad’s Hill, of which a lucky chance had +made him the owner rather more than a twelvemonth before.</p> + +<p>“My little place,” he wrote in 1858, to his Swiss friend Cerjat, “is a +grave red-brick house (time of George the First, I suppose), which I have +added to and stuck bits upon in all manner of ways, so that it is as +pleasantly irregular, and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas, +as the most hopeful man could possibly desire. It is on the summit of +Gad’s Hill. The robbery was committed before the door, on the man with the +treasure, and Falstaff ran away from the identical spot of ground now +covered by the room in which I write. A little rustic ale-house, called +‘The Sir John Falstaff,’ is over the way—has been over the way ever +since, in honour of the event.... The whole stupendous property is on the +old Dover road....”</p> + +<p>Among “the blessed woods and fields” which, as he says, had done him “a +world of good,” in a season of unceasing bodily and mental unrest, the +great English writer had indeed found a habitation fitted to become +inseparable from his name and fame. It was not till rather later, in 1860, +that, after the sale of Tavistock House, Gad’s Hill<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Place became his +regular abode, a London house being only now and then taken for the +season, while furnished rooms were kept at the office in Wellington Street +for occasional use. And it was only gradually that he enlarged and +improved his Kentish place so as to make it the pretty and comfortable +country-house which at the present day it appears to be; constructing, in +course of time, the passage under the high-road to the shrubbery, where +the Swiss châlet given to him by Mr. Fechter was set up, and building the +pretty little conservatory, which, when completed, he was not to live many +days to enjoy. But an old-fashioned, homely look, free from the slightest +affectation of quietness, belonged to Gad’s Hill Place, even after all +these alterations, and belongs to it even at this day, when Dickens’s +solid old-fashioned furniture has been changed. In the pretty little front +hall still hangs the illuminated tablet recalling the legend of Gad’s +Hill; and on the inside panels of the library door remain the facetious +sham book-titles: “Hudson’s <i>Complete Failure</i>,” and “<i>Ten Minutes in +China</i>,” and “Cats’ <i>Lives</i>” and, on a long series of leather backs, +“Hansard’s <i>Guide to Refreshing Sleep</i>.” The rooms are all of a modest +size, and the bedrooms—amongst them Dickens’s own—very low; but the +whole house looks thoroughly habitable, while the views across the +cornfields at the back are such as in their undulation of soft outline are +nowhere more pleasant than in Kent. Rochester and the Medway are near, +even for those who do not—like Dickens and his dogs—count a stretch past +three or four “mile-stones on the Dover road” as the mere beginning of an +afternoon’s walk. At a distance little greater there are in one direction +the green glades of Cobham Park, with Chalk and Gravesend beyond; and in +another the flat country towards the Thames, with its abundance of +market-gardens.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> There, too, are the marshes on the border of which lie +the massive ruin of Cooling Castle, the refuge of the Lollard martyr who +was <i>not</i> concerned in the affair on Gad’s Hill, and Cooling Church and +church-yard, with the quaint little gravestones in the grass. London and +the office were within easy reach, and Paris itself was, for practical +purposes, not much farther away, so that, in later days at all events, +Dickens found himself “crossing the Channel perpetually.”</p> + +<p>The name of Dickens still has a good sound in and about Gad’s Hill. He was +on very friendly terms with some families whose houses stand near to his +own; and though nothing was farther from his nature, as he says, than to +“wear topboots” and play the squire, yet he had in him not a little of +what endears so many a resident country gentleman to his neighbourhood. He +was head organiser rather than chief patron of village sports, of cricket +matches and foot races; and his house was a dispensary for the poor of the +parish. He established confidential relations between his house and the +Falstaff Inn over the way, regulating his servants’ consumption of beer on +a strict but liberal plan of his own devising; but it is not for this +reason only that the successor of Mr. Edwin Trood—for such was the +veritable name of mine host of the “Falstaff” in Dickens’s time—declares +that it was a bad day for the neighbourhood when Dickens was taken away +from it. In return, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm which surrounded +him in his own country, and Forster has described his astonishment at the +manifestation of it on the occasion of the wedding of the youngest +daughter of the house in 1860. And, indeed, he was born to be popular, and +specially among those by whom he was beloved as a friend or honoured as a +benefactor.</p> + +<p>But it was not for long intervals of either work or rest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> that Dickens was +to settle down in his pleasant country house, nor was he ever, except +quite at the last, to sit down under his own roof in peace and quiet, a +wanderer no more. Less than a year after he had taken up his residence for +the summer on Gad’s Hill, his home, and that of his younger children, was +his wife’s home no longer. The separation, which appears to have been +preparing itself for some, but no very long, time, took place in May, +1858, when, after an amicable arrangement, Mrs. Dickens left her husband, +who henceforth allowed her an ample separate maintenance, and occasionally +corresponded with her, but never saw her again. The younger children +remained in their father’s house under the self-sacrificing and devoted +care of Mrs. Dickens’s surviving sister, Miss Hogarth. Shortly afterwards, +Dickens thought it well, in printed words which may be left forgotten, to +rebut some slanderous gossip which, as the way of the world is, had +misrepresented the circumstances of this separation. The causes of the +event were an open secret to his friends and acquaintances. If he had ever +loved his wife with that affection before which so-called +incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition fade into nothingness, +there is no indication of it in any of his numerous letters addressed to +her. Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the direction of +that resignation which love and duty together made possible to David +Copperfield, or even that he remained in every way master of himself, as +many men have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded life and its +disappointments has never been written in history or figured in fiction. +It was not incumbent upon his faithful friend and biographer, and much +less can it be upon one whom nothing but a sincere admiration of Dickens’s +genius entitles to speak of him at all, to declare the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> standard by which +the most painful transaction in his life is to be judged. I say the most +painful, for it is with a feeling akin to satisfaction that one reads, in +a letter three years afterwards to a lady in reference to her daughter’s +wedding: “I want to thank you also for thinking of me on the occasion, but +I feel that I am better away from it. I should really have a misgiving +that I was a sort of a shadow on a young marriage, and you will understand +me when I say so, and no more.” A shadow, too—who would deny it?—falls +on every one of the pictures in which the tenderest of modern humourists +has painted the simple joys and the sacred sorrows of that home life of +which to his generation he had become almost the poet and the prophet, +when we remember how he was himself neither blessed with its full +happiness nor capable of accepting with resignation the imperfection +inherent in it, as in all things human.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">LAST YEARS.</span></p> +<p class="center"><span class="large">[1858-1870.]</span></p> + +<p><br />The last twelve years of Dickens’s life were busy years, like the others; +but his activity was no longer merely the expression of exuberant force, +and long before the collapse came he had been repeatedly warned of the +risks he continued to defy. When, however, he first entered upon those +public readings, by persisting in which he indisputably hastened his end, +neither he nor his friends took into account the fear of bodily +ill-effects resulting from his exertions. Their misgivings had other +grounds. Of course, had there been any pressure of pecuniary difficulty or +need upon Dickens when he began, or when on successive occasions he +resumed, his public readings, there would be nothing further to be said. +But I see no suggestion of any such pressure. “My worldly circumstances,” +he wrote before he had finally made up his mind to read in America, “are +very good. I don’t want money. All my possessions are free and in the best +order. Still,” he added, “at fifty-five or fifty-six, the likelihood of +making a very great addition to one’s capital in half a year is an immense +consideration.” Moreover, with all his love of doing as he chose, and his +sense of the value of such freedom to him as a writer, he was a man of +simple though liberal habits of life, with no taste for the gorgeous or +capricious <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>extravagances of a Balzac or a Dumas, nor can he have been at +a loss how to make due provision for those whom in the course of nature he +would leave behind him. Love of money for its own sake, or for that of the +futilities it can purchase, was altogether foreign to his nature. At the +same time, the rapid making of large sums has potent attractions for most +men; and these attractions are perhaps strongest for those who engage in +the pursuit for the sake of the race as well as of the prize. Dickens’s +readings were virtually something new; their success was not only all his +own, but unique and unprecedented—what nobody but himself ever had +achieved or ever could have achieved. Yet the determining motive—if I +read his nature rightly—was, after all, of another kind. “Two souls dwelt +in his breast;” and when their aspirations united in one appeal it was +irresistible. The author who craved for the visible signs of a sympathy +responding to that which he felt for his multitudes of readers, and the +actor who longed to impersonate creations already beings of flesh and +blood to himself, were both astir in him, and in both capacities he felt +himself drawn into the very publicity deprecated by his friends. He liked, +as one who knew him thoroughly said to me, to be face to face with his +public; and against this liking, which he had already indulged as fully as +he could without passing the boundaries between private and professional +life, arguments were in vain. It has been declared sheer pedantry to speak +of such boundaries; and to suggest that there is anything degrading in +paid readings such as those of Dickens would, on the face of it, be +absurd. On the other hand, the author who, on or off the stage, becomes +the interpreter of his writings to large audiences, more especially if he +does his best to stereotype his interpretation by constantly repeating it, +limits his own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> prerogative of being many things to many men; and where +the author of a work, more particularly of a work of fiction, adjusts it +to circumstances differing from those of its production, he allows the +requirements of the lesser art to prejudice the claims of the greater.</p> + +<p>Dickens cannot have been blind to these considerations; but to others his +eyes were never opened. He found much that was inspiriting in his success +as a reader, and this not only in the large sums he gained, or even in the +“roaring sea of response,” to use his own fine metaphor, of which he had +become accustomed to “stand upon the beach.” His truest sentiment as an +author was touched to the quick; and he was, as he says himself, “brought +very near to what he had sometimes dreamed might be his fame,” when, at +York, a lady, whose face he had never seen, stopped him in the street, and +said to him, “Mr. Dickens, will you let me touch the hand that has filled +my house with many friends?” or when, at Belfast, he was almost +overwhelmed with entreaties “to shake hands, Misther Dickens, and God +bless you, sir; not ounly for the light you’ve been in mee house, sir—and +God love your face!—this many a year.” On the other hand—and this, +perhaps, a nature like his would not be the quickest to perceive—there +was something vulgarising in the constant striving after immediate success +in the shape of large audiences, loud applause, and satisfactory receipts. +The conditions of the actor’s art cannot forego these stimulants; and this +is precisely his disadvantage in comparison with artists who are able to +possess themselves in quiet. To me, at least, it is painful to find +Dickens jubilantly recording how at Dublin “eleven bank-notes were thrust +into the pay-box—Arthur saw them—at one time for eleven stalls;” how at +Edinburgh “neither Grisi, nor Jenny Lind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> nor anything, nor anybody, +seems to make the least effect on the draw of the readings;” while, every +allowance being made, there is something almost ludicrous in the double +assertion, that “the most delicate audience I had ever seen in any +provincial place is Canterbury; but the audience with the greatest sense +of humour certainly is Dover.” What subjects for parody Dickens would have +found in these innocent ecstasies if uttered by any other man! +Undoubtedly, this enthusiasm was closely connected with the very +thoroughness with which he entered into the work of his readings. “You +have no idea,” he tells Forster, in 1867, “how I have worked at them. +Finding it necessary, as their reputation widened, that they should be +better than at first, <i>I have learnt them all</i>, so as to have no +mechanical drawback in looking after the words. I have tested all the +serious passion in them by everything I know; made the humorous points +much more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; cultivated a +self-possession not to be disturbed; and made myself master of the +situation.” “From ten years ago to last night,” he writes to his son from +Baltimore in 1868, “I have never read to an audience but I have watched +for an opportunity of striking out something better somewhere.” The +freshness with which he returned night after night and season after season +to the sphere of his previous successes, was itself a genuine actor’s +gift. “So real,” he declares, “are my fictions to myself, that, after +hundreds of nights, I come with a feeling of perfect freshness to that +little red table, and laugh and cry with my hearers as if I had never +stood there before.”</p> + +<p>Dickens’s first public readings were given at Birmingham, during the +Christmas week of 1853-’54, in support of the new Midland Institute; but a +record—for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> authenticity of which I cannot vouch—remains, that with +true theatrical instinct he, before the Christmas in question, gave a +trial reading of the <i>Christmas Carol</i> to a smaller public audience at +Peterborough. He had since been repeatedly found willing to read for +benevolent purposes; and the very fact that it had become necessary to +decline some of these frequent invitations had again suggested the +possibility—which had occurred to him eleven years before—of meeting the +demand in a different way. Yet it may, after all, be doubted whether the +idea of undertaking an entire series of paid public readings would have +been carried out, had it not been for the general restlessness which had +seized upon Dickens early in 1858, when, moreover, he had no special task +either of labour or of leisure to absorb him, and when he craved for +excitement more than ever. To go home—in this springtime of 1858—was not +to find there the peace of contentment. “I must do <i>something</i>,” he wrote +in March to his faithful counsellor, “or I shall wear my heart away. I can +see no better thing to do that is half so hopeful in itself, or half so +well suited to my restless state.”</p> + +<p>So by April the die was cast, and on the 29th of that month he had entered +into his new relation with the public. One of the strongest and most +genuine impulses of his nature had victoriously asserted itself, and +according to his wont he addressed himself to his task with a relentless +vigour which flinched from no exertion. He began with a brief series at +St. Martin’s Hall, and then, his invaluable friend Arthur Smith continuing +to act as his manager, he contrived to cram not less than eighty-seven +readings into three months and a half of travelling in the “provinces,” +including Scotland and Ireland. A few winter readings in London, and a +short supplementary course<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> in the country during October, 1859, completed +this first series. Already, in 1858, we find him, in a letter from +Ireland, complaining of the “tremendous strain,” and declaring, “I seem to +be always either in a railway carriage, or reading, or going to bed. I get +so knocked up, whenever I have a minute to remember it, that then I go to +bed as a matter of course.” But the enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed +him—I can testify to the thrill of excitement produced by his visit to +Cambridge, in October, 1859—repaid him for his fatigues. Scotland thawed +to him, and with Dublin—where his success was extraordinary—he was so +smitten as to think it at first sight “pretty nigh as big as Paris.” In +return, the Boots at Morrison’s expressed the general feeling in a +patriotic point of view: “‘Whaat sart of a hoose, sur?’ he asked me. +‘Capital.’ ‘The Lard be praised, for the ’onor o’ Dooblin.’”</p> + +<p>The books, or portions of books, to which he confined himself during this +first series of readings were few in number. They comprised the <i>Carol</i> +and the <i>Chimes</i>, and two stories from earlier Christmas numbers of +<i>Household Words</i>—may the exclamation of the soft-hearted chambermaid at +the Holly Tree Inn, “It’s a shame to part ’em!” never vanish from my +memory!—together with the episodic readings of the <i>Trial</i> in <i>Pickwick</i>, +<i>Mrs. Gamp</i>, and <i>Paul Dombey</i>. Of these the <i>Pickwick</i>, which I heard +more than once, is still vividly present to me. The only drawback to the +complete enjoyment of it was the lurking fear that there had been some +tampering with the text, not to be condoned even in its author. But in the +way of assumption Charles Mathews the elder himself could have +accomplished no more Protean effort. The lack-lustre eye of Mr. Justice +Stareleigh, the forensic hitch of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, and the hopeless +impotence of Mr. Nathaniel Winkle were alike incomparable. And if the +success of the impersonation of Mr. Samuel Weller was less +complete—although Dickens had formerly acted the character on an amateur +stage—the reason probably was that, by reason of his endless store of +ancient and modern instances, Sam had himself become a quasi-mythical +being, whom it was almost painful to find reproduced in flesh and blood.</p> + +<p>I have not hesitated to treat these readings by Dickens as if they had +been the performances of an actor; and the description would apply even +more strongly to his later readings, in which he seemed to make his points +in a more accentuated fashion than before. “His readings,” says Mr. C. +Kent, in an interesting little book about them, “were, in the fullest +meaning of the words, singularly ingenious and highly-elaborated +histrionic performances.” As such they had been prepared with a care such +as few actors bestow upon their parts, and—for the book was prepared not +less than the reading—not all authors bestow upon their plays. Now, the +art of reading, even in the case of dramatic works, has its own laws, +which even the most brilliant readers cannot neglect except at their +peril. A proper pitch has to be found, in the first instance, before the +exceptional passages can be, as it were, marked off from it; and the +absence of this ground-tone sometimes interfered with the total effect of +a reading by Dickens. On the other hand, the exceptional passages were, if +not uniformly, at least generally excellent; nor am I at all disposed to +agree with Forster in preferring, as a rule, the humorous to the pathetic. +At the same time, there was noticeable in these readings a certain +hardness which competent critics likewise discerned in Dickens’s acting, +and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> which could not, at least in the former case, be regarded as an +ordinary characteristic of dilettanteism. The truth is that he isolated +his parts too sharply—a frequent fault of English acting, and one more +detrimental to the total effect of a reading than even to that of an acted +play.</p> + +<p>No sooner had the heaviest stress of the first series of readings ceased +than Dickens was once more at work upon a new fiction. The more immediate +purpose was to insure a prosperous launch to the journal which, in the +spring of 1859, took the place of <i>Household Words</i>. A dispute, painful in +its origin, but ending in an amicable issue, had resulted in the purchase +of that journal by Dickens; but already a little earlier he had—as he was +entitled to do—begun the new venture of <i>All the Year Round</i>, with which +<i>Household Words</i> was afterwards incorporated. The first number, published +on April 30, contained the earliest instalment of <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, +which was completed by November 20 following.</p> + +<p>This story holds a unique place amongst the fictions of its author. +Perhaps the most striking difference between it and his other novels may +seem to lie in the all but entire absence from it of any humour or attempt +at humour; for neither the brutalities of that “honest tradesman,” Jerry, +nor the laconisms of Miss Pross, can well be called by that name. Not that +his sources of humour were drying up, even though, about this time, he +contributed to an American journal a short “romance of the real world,” +<i>Hunted Down</i>, from which the same relief is again conspicuously absent. +For the humour of Dickens was to assert itself with unmistakable force in +his next longer fiction, and was even before that, in some of his +occasional papers, to give delightful proofs of its continued vigour. In +the case of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> the <i>Tale of Two Cities</i>, he had a new and distinct design in +his mind which did not, indeed, exclude humour, but with which a liberal +indulgence in it must have seriously interfered. “I set myself,” he +writes, “the little task of writing a picturesque story, rising in every +chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should +express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean, in +other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written, in place +of the bestiality that is written under that pretence, pounding the +characters out in its own mortar, and beating their own interests out of +them.” He therefore renounced his more usual method in favour of one +probably less congenial to him. Yet, in his own opinion at least, he +succeeded so well in the undertaking, that when the story was near its end +he could venture to express a hope that it was “the best story he had +written.” So much praise will hardly be given to this novel even by +admirers of the French art of telling a story succinctly, or by those who +can never resist a rather hysterical treatment of the French Revolution.</p> + +<p>In my own opinion <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i> is a skilfully though not +perfectly constructed novel, which needed but little substantial +alteration in order to be converted into a not less effective stage-play. +And with such a design Dickens actually sent the proof-sheets of the book +to his friend Regnier, in the fearful hope that he might approve of the +project of its dramatisation for a French theatre. Cleverly or clumsily +adapted, the tale of the Revolution and its sanguinary vengeance was +unlikely to commend itself to the Imperial censorship; but an English +version was, I believe, afterwards very fairly successful on the boards of +the Adelphi, where Madame Celeste was certainly in her right place as +Madame Defarge, an excellent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> character for a melodrama, though rather +wearisome as she lies in wait through half a novel.</p> + +<p>The construction of this story is, as I have said, skilful but not +perfect. Dickens himself successfully defended his use of accident in +bringing about the death of Madame Defarge. The real objection to the +conduct of this episode, however, lies in the inadequacy of the +contrivance for leaving Miss Pross behind in Paris. Too much is also, I +think, made to turn upon the three words “and their +descendants”—non-essential in the original connexion—by which Dr. +Manette’s written denunciation becomes fatal to those he loves. Still, the +general edifice of the plot is solid; its interest is, notwithstanding the +crowded background, concentrated with much skill upon a small group of +personages; and Carton’s self-sacrifice, admirably prepared from the very +first, produces a legitimate tragic effect. At the same time the +novelist’s art vindicates its own claims. Not only does this story contain +several narrative episodes of remarkable power—such as the flight from +Paris at the close, and the touching little incident of the seamstress, +told in Dickens’s sweetest pathetic manner—but it is likewise enriched by +some descriptive pictures of unusual excellence: for instance, the sketch +of Dover in the good old smuggling times, and the mezzo-tint of the stormy +evening in Soho. Doubtless the increased mannerism of the style is +disturbing, and this not only in the high-strung French scenes. As to the +historical element in this novel, Dickens modestly avowed his wish that he +might by his story have been able “to add something to the popular and +picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can +hope to add anything to Mr. Carlyle’s wonderful book.” But if Dickens +desired to depict the noble of the <i>ancien régime</i>, either according to +Carlyle or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> according to intrinsic probability, he should not have +offered, in his Marquis, a type historically questionable, and unnatural +besides. The description of the Saint Antoine, before and during the +bursting of the storm, has in it more of truthfulness, or of the semblance +of truthfulness; and Dickens’s perception of the physiognomy of the French +workman is, I think, remarkably accurate. Altogether, the book is an +extraordinary <i>tour de force</i>, which Dickens never repeated.</p> + +<p>The opening of a new story by Dickens gave the necessary <i>impetus</i> to his +new journal at its earliest stage; nor was the ground thus gained ever +lost. Mr. W. H. Wills stood by his chief’s side as of old, taking, more +especially in later years, no small share of responsibility upon him. The +prospectus of <i>All the Year Round</i> had not in vain promised an identity of +principle in its conduct with that of its predecessor; in energy and +spirit it showed no falling off; and, though not in all respects, the +personality of Dickens made itself felt as distinctly as ever. Besides the +<i>Tale of Two Cities</i> he contributed to it his story of <i>Great +Expectations</i>. Amongst his contributors Mr. Wilkie Collins took away the +breath of multitudes of readers; Mr. Charles Reade disported himself +amongst the facts which gave stamina to his fiction; and Lord Lytton made +a daring voyage into a mysterious country. Thither Dickens followed him, +for once, in his <i>Four Stories</i>, not otherwise noteworthy, and written in +a manner already difficult to discriminate from that of Mr. Wilkie +Collins. For the rest, the advice with which Dickens aided Lord Lytton’s +progress in his <i>Strange Story</i> was neither more ready nor more +painstaking than that which he bestowed upon his younger contributors, to +more than one of whom he generously gave the opportunity of publishing in +his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> journal a long work of fiction. Some of these younger writers were at +this period amongst his most frequent guests and associates; for nothing +more naturally commended itself to him than the encouragement of the +younger generation.</p> + +<p>But though longer imaginative works played at least as conspicuous a part +in the new journal as they had in the old, the conductor likewise +continued to make manifest his intention that the lesser contributions +should not be treated by readers or by writers as harmless necessary +“padding.” For this purpose it was requisite not only that the choice of +subjects should be made with the utmost care, but also that the master’s +hand should itself be occasionally visible. Dickens’s occasional +contributions had been few and unimportant, till in a happy hour he began +a series of papers, including many of the pleasantest, as well as of the +mellowest, amongst the lighter productions of his pen. As usual, he had +taken care to find for this series a name which of itself went far to make +its fortune.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I am both a town and a country traveller, and am always on the road. +Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest +Brothers, and have rather a large connexion in the fancy goods way. +Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms +in Covent Garden, London—now about the city streets, now about the +country by-roads, seeing many little things, and some great things, +which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.”</p></div> + +<p>The whole collection of these <i>Uncommercial Traveller</i> papers, together +with the <i>Uncommercial Samples</i> which succeeded them after Dickens’s +return from America, and which begin with a graphic account of his +homeward voyage <i>Aboard Ship</i>, where the voice of conscience spoke in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> the +motion of the screw, amounts to thirty-seven articles, and spreads over a +period of nine years. They are necessarily of varying merit, but amongst +them are some which deserve a permanent place in our lighter literature. +Such are the description of the church-yards on a quiet evening in <i>The +City of the Absent</i>, the grotesque picture of loneliness in <i>Chambers</i>—a +favourite theme with Dickens—and the admirable papers on <i>Shy +Neighbourhoods</i> and on <i>Tramps</i>. Others have a biographical interest, +though delightfully objective in treatment; yet others are mere fugitive +pieces; but there are few without some of the most attractive qualities of +Dickens’s easiest style.</p> + +<p>Dickens contributed other occasional papers to his journal, some of which +may be forgotten without injury to his fame. Amongst these may be reckoned +the rather dreary <i>George Silverman’s Explanation</i> (1868), in which there +is nothing characteristic but a vivid picture of a set of ranters, led by +a clique of scoundrels; on the other hand, there will always be admirers +of the pretty <i>Holiday Romance</i>, published nearly simultaneously in +America and England, a nosegay of tales told by children, the only fault +of which is that, as with other children’s nosegays, there is perhaps a +little too much of it. I have no room for helping to rescue from partial +oblivion an old friend, whose portrait has not, I think, found a home +amongst his master’s collected sketches. Pincher’s counterfeit has gone +astray, like <i>Pincher</i> himself. Meanwhile, the special institution of the +Christmas number flourished in connexion with <i>All the Year Round</i> down to +the year 1867, as it had during the last five years of <i>Household Words</i>. +It consisted, with the exception of the very last number, of a series of +short stories, in a framework of the editor’s own devising. To the authors +of the stories, of which he invariably himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> wrote one or more, he left +the utmost liberty, at times stipulating for nothing but that tone of +cheerful philanthropy which he had domesticated in his journal. In the +Christmas numbers, which gradually attained to such a popularity that of +one of the last something like a quarter of a million copies were sold, +Dickens himself shone most conspicuously in the introductory sections; and +some of these are to be reckoned amongst his very best descriptive +character-sketches. Already in <i>Household Words</i> Christmas numbers the +introductory sketch of the <i>Seven Poor Travellers</i> from Watt’s Charity at +supper in the Rochester hostelry, and the excellent description of a +winter journey and sojourn at the <i>Holly Tree Inn</i>, with an excursus on +inns in general, had become widely popular. The <i>All the Year Round</i> +numbers, however, largely augmented this success. After <i>Tom Tiddler’s +Ground</i>, with the adventures of Miss Kitty Kimmeens, a pretty little +morality in miniature, teaching the same lesson as the vagaries of Mr. +Mopes the hermit, came <i>Somebody’s Luggage</i>, with its exhaustive +disquisition on waiters; and then the memorable chirpings of <i>Mrs. +Lirriper</i>, in both <i>Lodgings</i> and <i>Legacy</i>, admirable in the delicacy of +their pathos, and including an inimitable picture of London lodging-house +life. Then followed the <i>Prescriptions</i> of <i>Dr. Marigold</i>, the eloquent +and sarcastic but tender-hearted Cheap Jack; and <i>Mugby Junction</i>, which +gave words to the cry of a whole nation of hungry and thirsty travellers. +In the tales and sketches contributed by him to the Christmas numbers, in +addition to these introductions, he at times gave the rein to his love for +the fanciful and the grotesque, which there was here no reason to keep +under. On the whole, written, as in a sense these compositions were, to +order, nothing is more astonishing in them than his continued freshness, +against<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> which his mannerism is here of vanishing importance; and, +inasmuch as after issuing a last Christmas number of a different kind, +Dickens abandoned the custom when it had reached the height of popular +favour, and when manifold imitations had offered him the homage of their +flattery, he may be said to have withdrawn from this campaign in his +literary life with banners flying.</p> + +<p>In the year 1859 Dickens’s readings had been comparatively few; and they +had ceased altogether in the following year, when the <i>Uncommercial +Traveller</i> began his wanderings. The winter from 1859 to 1860 was his last +winter at Tavistock House; and, with the exception of his rooms in +Wellington Street, he had now no settled residence but Gad’s Hill Place. +He sought its pleasant retreat about the beginning of June, after the new +experience of an attack of rheumatism had made him recognise “the +necessity of country training all through the summer.” Yet such was the +recuperative power, or the indomitable self-confidence, of his nature, +that after he had in these summer months contributed some of the most +delightful <i>Uncommercial Traveller</i> papers to his journal, we find him +already in August “prowling about, meditating a new book.”</p> + +<p>It is refreshing to think of Dickens in this pleasant interval of country +life, before he had rushed once more into the excitement of his labours as +a public reader. We may picture him to ourselves, accompanied by his dogs, +striding along the country roads and lanes, exploring the haunts of the +country tramps, “a piece of Kentish road,” for instance, “bordered on +either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and +the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on +this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> stealing +steadily away to the ocean like a man’s life. To gain the mile-stone here, +which the moss, primroses, violets, bluebells, and wild roses would soon +render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their +sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may.” At the +foot of that hill, I fancy, lay Dullborough town half asleep in the summer +afternoon; and the river in the distance was that which bounded the +horizon of a little boy’s vision “whose father’s family name was Pirrip, +and whose Christian name was Philip, but whose infant tongue could make of +both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip.”</p> + +<p>The story of Pip’s adventures, the novel of <i>Great Expectations</i>, was +thought over in these Kentish perambulations between Thames and Medway +along the road which runs, apparently with the intention of running out to +sea, from Higham towards the marshes; in the lonely church-yard of Cooling +village by the thirteen little stone-lozenges, of which Pip counted only +five, now nearly buried in their turn by the rank grass; and in quiet +saunters through the familiar streets of Rochester, past the “queer” +Townhall; and through the “Vines” past the fine old Restoration House, +called in the book (by the name of an altogether different edifice) Satis +House. And the climax of the narrative was elaborated on a unique +steamboat excursion from London to the mouth of the Thames, broken by a +night at the “Ship and Lobster,” an old riverside inn called “The Ship” in +the story. No wonder that Dickens’s descriptive genius should become +refreshed by these studies of his subject, and that thus <i>Great +Expectations</i> should have indisputably become one of the most picturesque +of his books. But it is something very much more at the same time. The +<i>Tale of Two Cities</i> had as a story strongly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> seized upon the attention of +the reader. But in the earlier chapters of <i>Great Expectations</i> every one +felt that Dickens was himself again. Since the Yarmouth scenes in <i>David +Copperfield</i> he had written nothing in which description married itself to +sentiment so humorously and so tenderly. Uncouth, and slow, and +straightforward, and gentle of heart, like Mr. Peggotty, Joe Gargery is as +new a conception as he is a genuinely true one; nor is it easy to know +under what aspect to relish him most—whether disconsolate in his Sunday +clothes, “like some extraordinary bird, standing, as he did, speechless, +with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a +worm,” or at home by his own fireside, winking at his little comrade, and, +when caught in the act by his wife, “drawing the back of his hand across +his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such occasions.” Nor since +<i>David Copperfield</i> had Dickens again shown such an insight as he showed +here into the world of a child’s mind. “To be quite sure,” he wrote to +Forster, “I had fallen into no unconscious repetitions, I read <i>David +Copperfield</i> again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you +would hardly believe.” His fears were unnecessary; for with all its charm +the history of Pip lacks the personal element which insures our sympathy +to the earlier story and to its hero. In delicacy of feeling, however, as +well as in humour of description, nothing in Dickens surpasses the earlier +chapters of <i>Great Expectations</i>; and equally excellent is the narrative +of Pip’s disloyalty of heart toward his early friends, down to his +departure from the forge, a picture of pitiable selfishness almost +Rousseau-like in its fidelity to poor human nature; down to his comic +humiliation, when in the pride of his new position and his new clothes, +before “that unlimited miscreant, Trabb’s boy.” The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> later and especially +the concluding portions of this novel contain much that is equal in power +to its opening; but it must be allowed that, before many chapters have +ended, a false tone finds its way into the story. The whole history of +Miss Havisham, and the crew of relations round the unfortunate creature, +is strained and unnatural, and Estella’s hardness is as repulsive as that +of Edith Dombey herself. Mr. Jaggers and his house-keeper, and even Mr. +Wemmick, have an element of artificiality in them, whilst about the Pocket +family there is little, if anything at all, that is real. The story, +however, seems to recover itself as the main thread in its deftly-woven +texture is brought forward again: when on a dark, gusty night, ominous of +coming trouble, the catastrophe of Pip’s expectations announces itself in +the return from abroad of his unknown benefactor, the convict whom he had +as a child fed on the marshes. The remainder of the narrative is +successful in conveying to the reader the sense of sickening anxiety which +fills the hero; the interest is skilfully sustained by the introduction of +a very strong situation—Pip’s narrow escape out of the clutches of “Old +Orlick” in the lime-kiln on the marshes; and the climax is reached in the +admirably-executed narrative of the convict’s attempt, with the aid of +Pip, to escape by the river. The actual winding-up of <i>Great Expectations</i> +is not altogether satisfactory; but on the whole the book must be ranked +among the very best of Dickens’s later novels, as combining, with the +closer construction and intenser narrative force common to several of +these, not a little of the delightfully genial humour of his earlier +works.</p> + +<p>Already, before <i>Great Expectations</i> was completely published, Dickens had +given a few readings at the St. James’s Hall, and by the end of October in +the same year, 1861,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> he was once more engaged in a full course of country +readings. They occupied him till the following January, only ten days +being left for his Christmas number, and a brief holiday for Christmas +itself; so close was the adjustment of time and work by this favourite of +fortune. The death of his faithful Arthur Smith befell most untowardly +before the country readings were begun, but their success was unbroken, +from Scotland to South Devon. The long-contemplated extract from +<i>Copperfield</i> had at last been added to the list—a self-sacrifice <i>coram +publico</i>, hallowed by success—and another from <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, which +“went in the wildest manner.” He was, however, nearly worn out with +fatigue before these winter readings were over, and was glad to snatch a +moment of repose before a short spring course in town began. Scarcely was +this finished, when he was coquetting in his mind with an offer from +Australia, and had already proposed to himself to throw in, as a piece of +work by the way, a series of papers to be called <i>The Uncommercial +Traveller Upside Down</i>. Meanwhile, a few readings for a charitable purpose +in Paris, and a short summer course at St. James’s Hall, completed this +second series in the year 1863.</p> + +<p>Whatever passing thoughts overwork by day or sleeplessness at night may +have occasionally brought with them, Dickens himself would have been +strangely surprised, as no doubt would have been the great body of a +public to which he was by this time about the best known man in England, +had he been warned that weakness and weariness were not to be avoided even +by a nature endowed with faculties so splendid and with an energy so +conquering as his. He seemed to stand erect in the strength of his matured +powers, equal as of old to any task which he set himself, and exulting, +though with less<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> buoyancy of spirit than of old, in the wreaths which +continued to strew his path. Yet already the ranks of his contemporaries +were growing thinner, while close to himself death was taking away members +of the generation before, and of that after, his own. Amongst them was his +mother—of whom his biography and his works have little to say or to +suggest—and his second son. Happy events, too, had in the due course of +things contracted the family circle at Gad’s Hill. Of his intimates, he +lost, in 1863, Augustus Egg; and in 1864 John Leech, to whose genius he +had himself formerly rendered eloquent homage.</p> + +<p>A still older associate, the great painter Stanfield, survived till 1867. +“No one of your father’s friends,” Dickens then wrote to Stanfield’s son, +“can ever have loved him more dearly than I always did, or can have better +known the worth of his noble character.” Yet another friend, who, however, +so far as I can gather, had not at any time belonged to Dickens’s most +familiar circle, had died on Christmas Eve, 1863—Thackeray, whom it had +for some time become customary to compare or contrast with him as his +natural rival. Yet in point of fact, save for the tenderness which, as +with all humourists of the highest order, was an important element in +their writings, and save for the influences of time and country to which +they were both subject, there are hardly two other amongst our great +humourists who have less in common. Their unlikeness shows itself, among +other things, in the use made by Thackeray of suggestions which it is +difficult to believe he did not in the first instance owe to Dickens. Who +would venture to call Captain Costigan a plagiarism from Mr. Snevellici, +or to affect that Wenham and Wagg were copied from Pyke and Pluck, or that +Major Pendennis—whose pardon one feels inclined to beg for the +juxtaposition—was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> founded upon Major Bagstock, or the Old Campaigner in +the <i>Newcomes</i> on the Old Soldier in <i>Copperfield</i>? But that suggestions +were in these and perhaps in a few other instances derived from Dickens by +Thackeray for some of his most masterly characters, it would, I think, be +idle to deny. In any case, the style of these two great writers differed +as profoundly as their way of looking at men and things. Yet neither of +them lacked a thorough appreciation of the other’s genius; and it is +pleasant to remember that, after paying in <i>Pendennis</i> a tribute to the +purity of Dickens’s books, Thackeray in a public lecture referred to his +supposed rival in a way which elicited from the latter the warmest of +acknowledgments. It cannot be said that the memorial words which, after +Thackeray’s death, Dickens was prevailed upon to contribute to the +<i>Cornhill Magazine</i> did more than justice to the great writer whom England +had just lost; but it is well that the kindly and unstinting tribute of +admiration should remain on record, to contradict any supposition that a +disagreement which had some years previously disturbed the harmony of +their intercourse, and of which the world had, according to its wont, made +the most, had really estranged two generous minds from one another. The +effort which on this occasion Dickens made is in itself a proof of his +kindly feeling towards Thackeray. Of Talfourd and Landor and Stanfield he +could write readily after their deaths, but he frankly told Mr. Wilkie +Collins that, “had he felt he could,” he would most gladly have excused +himself from writing the “couple of pages” about Thackeray.</p> + +<p>Dickens, it should be remembered, was at no time a man of many friends. +The mere dalliance of friendship was foreign to one who worked so +indefatigably in his hours of recreation as well as of labour; and +fellowship<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> in work of one kind or another seems to have been, in later +years at all events, the surest support to his intimacy. Yet he was most +easily drawn, not only to those who could help him, but to those whom he +could help in congenial pursuits and undertakings. Such was, no doubt, the +origin of his friendship in these later years with an accomplished French +actor on the English boards, whom, in a rather barren period of our +theatrical history, Dickens may have been justified in describing as “far +beyond any one on our stage,” and who certainly was an “admirable artist.” +In 1864 Mr. Fechter had taken the Lyceum, the management of which he was +to identify with a more elegant kind of melodrama than that long +domesticated lower down the Strand; and Dickens was delighted to bestow on +him counsel frankly sought and frankly given. As an author, too, he +directly associated himself with the art of his friend.<a name='fna_11' id='fna_11' href='#f_11'><small>[11]</small></a> For I may +mention here by anticipation that the last of the <i>All the Year Round</i> +Christmas numbers, the continuous story of <i>No Thoroughfare</i>, was written +by Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins in 1867, with a direct eye to its +subsequent adaptation to the stage, for which it actually was fitted by +Mr. Wilkie Collins in the following year. The place of its production, the +Adelphi, suited the broad effects and the rather conventional comic humour +of the story and piece. From America, Dickens<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> watched the preparation of +the piece with unflagging interest; and his innate and irrepressible +genius for stage-management reveals itself in the following passage from a +letter written by him to an American friend soon after his return to +England: “<i>No Thoroughfare</i> is very shortly coming out in Paris, where it +is now in active rehearsal. It is still playing here, but without Fechter, +who has been very ill. He and Wilkie raised so many pieces of stage-effect +here, that, unless I am quite satisfied with the report, I shall go over +and try my stage-managerial hand at the Vaudeville Theatre. I particularly +want the drugging and attempted robbery in the bedroom-scene at the Swiss +Inn to be done to the sound of a water-fall rising and falling with the +wind. Although in the very opening of that scene they speak of the +water-fall, and listen to it, nobody thought of its mysterious music. I +could make it, with a good stage-carpenter, in an hour.”</p> + +<p><i>Great Expectations</i> had been finished in 1860, and already in the latter +part of 1861, the year which comprised the main portion of his second +series of readings, he had been thinking of a new story. He had even found +a title—the unlucky title which he afterwards adopted—but in 1862 the +tempting Australian invitation had been a serious obstacle in his way. “I +can force myself to go aboard a ship, and I can force myself to do at that +reading-desk what I have done a hundred times; but whether, with all this +unsettled, fluctuating distress in my mind, I could force an original book +out of it is another question.” Nor was it the “unsettled, fluctuating +distress” which made it a serious effort for him to attempt another longer +fiction. Dickens shared with most writers the experience that both the +inventive power and the elasticity of memory decline with advancing years. +Already since the time when he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> was thinking of writing <i>Little Dorrit</i> it +had become his habit to enter in a book kept for the purpose memoranda for +possible future use, hints for subjects of stories,<a name='fna_12' id='fna_12' href='#f_12'><small>[12]</small></a> scenes, +situations, and characters; thoughts and fancies of all kinds; titles for +possible books. Of these <i>Somebody’s Luggage</i>, <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, and +<i>No Thoroughfare</i>—the last an old fancy revived—came to honourable use; +as did many names, both Christian and surnames, and combinations of both. +Thus, Bradley Headstone’s <i>prænomen</i> was derived directly from the lists +of the Education Department, and the Lammles and the Stiltstalkings, with +Mr. Merdle and the Dorrits, existed as names before the characters were +fitted to them. All this, though no doubt in part attributable to the +playful readiness of an observation never to be caught asleep, points in +the direction of a desire to be securely provided with an armoury of +which, in earlier days, he would have taken slight thought.</p> + +<p>Gradually—indeed, so far as I know, more gradually than in the case of +any other of his stories—he had built up the tale for which he had +determined on the title of <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, and slowly, and without +his old self-confidence, he had, in the latter part of 1863, set to work +upon it. “I want to prepare it for the spring, but I am determined not to +begin to publish with less than four numbers done. I see my opening +perfectly, with the one main line on which the story is to turn, and if I +don’t strike while the iron (meaning myself) is hot, I shall drift off +again, and have to go through all this uneasiness once more.” For, +unfortunately, he had resolved on returning to the old twenty-number +measure for his new story. Begun with an effort,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>—the +publication of which extended from May, 1864, to November, 1865—was +completed under difficulties, and difficulties of a kind hitherto unknown +to Dickens. In February, 1865, as an immediate consequence, perhaps, of +exposure at a time when depression of spirits rendered him less able than +usual to bear it, he had a severe attack of illness, of which Forster says +that it “put a broad mark between his past life and what remained to him +of the future.” From this time forward he felt a lameness in his left +foot, which continued to trouble him at intervals during the remainder of +his life, and which finally communicated itself to the left hand. A +comparison of times, however, convinced Forster that the real origin of +this ailment was to be sought in general causes.</p> + +<p>In 1865, as the year wore on, and the pressure of the novel still +continued, he felt that he was “working himself into a damaged state,” and +was near to that which has greater terrors for natures like his than for +more placid temperaments—breaking down. So, in May, he went first to the +sea-side and then to France. On his return (it was the 9th of June, the +date of his death five years afterwards) he was in the railway train which +met with a fearful accident at Staplehurst, in Kent. His carriage was the +only passenger-carriage in the train which, when the bridge gave way, was +not thrown over into the stream. He was able to escape out of the window, +to make his way in again for his brandy-flask and the MS. of a number of +<i>Our Mutual Friend</i> which he had left behind him, to clamber down the +brickwork of the bridge for water, to do what he could towards rescuing +his unfortunate fellow-travellers, and to aid the wounded and the dying. +“I have,” he wrote, in describing the scene, “a—I don’t know what to call +it: constitutional, I suppose—presence of mind, and was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> in the least +fluttered at the time.... But in writing these scanty words of +recollection I feel the shake, and am obliged to stop.” Nineteen months +afterwards, when on a hurried reading tour in the North, he complains to +Miss Hogarth of the effect of the railway shaking which since the +Staplehurst accident “tells more and more.” It is clear how serious a +shock the accident had caused. He never, Miss Hogarth thinks, quite +recovered it. Yet it might have acted less disastrously upon a system not +already nervously weakened. As evidence of the decline of Dickens’s +nervous power, I hardly know whether it is safe to refer to the gradual +change in his handwriting, which in his last years is a melancholy study.</p> + +<p>All these circumstances should be taken into account in judging of +Dickens’s last completed novel. The author would not have been himself had +he, when once fairly engaged upon his work, failed to feel something of +his old self-confidence. Nor was this feeling, which he frankly confessed +to Mr. Wilkie Collins, altogether unwarranted. <i>Our Mutual Friend</i><a name='fna_13' id='fna_13' href='#f_13'><small>[13]</small></a> is, +like the rest of Dickens’s later writings, carefully and skilfully put +together as a story. No exception is to be taken to it on the ground that +the identity on which much of the plot hinges is long foreseen by the +reader; for this, as Dickens told his critics in his postscript, had been +part of his design, and was, in fact, considering the general nature of +the story, almost indispensable. The defect rather lies in the absence of +that element of uncertainty which is needed in order to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> sustain the +interest. The story is, no doubt, ingeniously enough constructed, but +admiration of an ingenious construction is insufficient to occupy the mind +of a reader through an inevitable disentanglement. Moreover, some of the +machinery, though cleverly contrived, cannot be said to work easily. Thus, +the <i>ruse</i> of the excellent Boffin in playing the part of a skinflint +might pass as a momentary device, but its inherent improbability, together +with the likelihood of its leading to an untoward result, makes its +protraction undeniably tedious. It is not, however, in my opinion at +least, in the matter of construction that <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> presents a +painful contrast with earlier works produced, like it, “on a large +canvas.” The conduct of the story as a whole is fully vigorous enough to +enchain the attention; and in portions of it the hand of the master +displays its unique power. He is at his best in the whole of the +water-side scenes, both where “The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters” +(identified by zealous discoverers with a tavern called “The Two Brewers”) +lies like an oasis in the midst of a desert of ill-favoured tidal +deposits, and where Rogue Riderhood has his lair at the lock higher up the +river. A marvellous union of observation and imagination was needed for +the picturing of a world in which this amphibious monster has his being; +and never did Dickens’s inexhaustible knowledge of the physiognomy of the +Thames and its banks stand him in better stead than in these powerful +episodes. It is unfortunate, though in accordance with the common fate of +heroes and heroines, that Lizzie Hexham should, from the outset, have to +discard the colouring of her surroundings, and to talk the conventional +dialect as well as express the conventional sentiments of the heroic +world. Only at the height of the action she ceases to be commonplace, and +becomes entitled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> to be remembered amongst the true heroines of fiction. A +more unusual figure, of the half-pathetic, half-grotesque kind for which +Dickens had a peculiar liking, is Lizzie’s friend, the doll’s dressmaker, +into whom he has certainly infused an element of genuine sentiment; her +protector, Riah, on the contrary, is a mere stage-saint, though by this +character Dickens appears to have actually hoped to redeem the aspersions +he was supposed to have cast upon the Jews, as if Riah could have redeemed +Fagin, any more than Sheva redeemed Shylock.</p> + +<p>But in this book whole episodes and parts of the plot through which the +mystery of John Harmon winds its length along are ill-adapted for giving +pleasure to any reader. The whole Boffin, Wegg, and Venus business—if the +term may pass—is extremely wearisome; the character of Mr. Venus, in +particular, seems altogether unconnected or unarticulated with the general +plot, on which, indeed, it is but an accidental excrescence. In the Wilfer +family there are the outlines of some figures of genuine humour, but the +outlines only; nor is Bella raised into the sphere of the charming out of +that of the pert and skittish. A more ambitious attempt, and a more +noteworthy failure, was the endeavour to give to the main plot of this +novel such a satiric foil as the Circumlocution Office had furnished to +the chief action of <i>Little Dorrit</i>, in a caricature of society at large, +its surface varnish and its internal rottenness. The Barnacles, and those +who deemed it their duty to rally round the Barnacles, had, we saw, felt +themselves hard hit; but what sphere or section of society could feel +itself specially caricatured in the Veneerings, or in their +associates—the odious Lady Tippins, the impossibly brutal Podsnap, +Fascination Fledgeby, and the Lammles, a couple which suggests nothing but +antimony and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Chamber of Horrors? Caricature such as this, +representing no society that has ever in any part of the world pretended +to be “good,” corresponds to the wild rhetoric of the superfluous Betty +Higden episode against the “gospel according to Podsnappery;” but it is, +in truth, satire from which both wit and humour have gone out. An angry, +often almost spasmodic, mannerism has to supply their place. Amongst the +personages moving in “society” are two which, as playing serious parts in +the progress of the plot, the author is necessarily obliged to seek to +endow with the flesh and blood of real human beings. Yet it is precisely +in these—the friends Eugene and Mortimer—that, in the earlier part of +the novel at all events, the constraint of the author’s style seems least +relieved; the dialogues between these two Templars have an unnaturalness +about them as intolerable as euphuism or the effeminacies of the Augustan +age. It is true that, when the story reaches its tragic height, the +character of Eugene is borne along with it, and his affectations are +forgotten. But in previous parts of the book, where he poses as a wit, and +is evidently meant for a gentleman, he fails to make good his claims to +either character. Even the skilfully contrived contrast between the rivals +Eugene Wrayburn and the school-master, Bradley Headstone—through whom and +through whose pupil, Dickens, by-the-way, dealt another blow against a +system of mental training founded upon facts alone—fails to bring out the +conception of Eugene which the author manifestly had in his mind. Lastly, +the old way of reconciling dissonances—a marriage which “society” calls a +<i>mésalliance</i>—has rarely furnished a lamer ending than here; and, had the + +unwritten laws of English popular fiction permitted, a tragic close would +have better accorded with the sombre hue of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> the most powerful portions of +this curiously unequal romance.</p> + +<p>The effort—for such it was—of <i>Our Mutual Friend</i> had not been over for +more than a few months, when Dickens accepted a proposal for thirty +nights’ readings from the Messrs. Chappell; and by April, 1866, he was +again hard at work, flying across the country into Lancashire and +Scotland, and back to his temporary London residence in Southwick Place, +Hyde Park. In any man more capable than Dickens of controlling the +restlessness which consumed him the acceptance of this offer would have +been incomprehensible; for his heart had been declared out of order by his +physician, and the patient had shown himself in some degree awake to the +significance of this opinion. But the readings were begun and accomplished +notwithstanding, though not without warnings, on which he insisted on +putting his own interpretation. Sleeplessness aggravated fatigue, and +stimulants were already necessary to enable him to do the work of his +readings without discomfort. Meanwhile, some weeks before they were +finished, he had been induced to enter into negotiations about a further +engagement to begin at the end of the year. Time was to be left for the +Christmas number, which this year could hardly find its scene anywhere +else than at a railway junction; and the readings were not to extend over +forty nights, which seem ultimately to have been increased to fifty. This +second series, which included a campaign in Ireland, brilliantly +successful despite snow and rain, and Fenians, was over in May. Then came +the climax, for America now claimed her share of the great author for her +public halls and chapels and lecture-theatres; and the question of the +summer and autumn was whether or not to follow the sound of the distant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +dollar. It was closely debated between Dickens and his friend Forster and +Wills, and he describes himself as “tempest-tossed” with doubts; but his +mind had inclined in one direction from the first, and the matter was +virtually decided when it resolved to send a confidential agent to make +enquiries on the spot. Little imported another and grave attack in his +foot; the trusty Mr. Dolby’s report was irresistible. Eighty readings +within half a year was the estimated number, with profits amounting to +over fifteen thousand pounds. The gains actually made were nearly five +thousand pounds in excess of this calculation.</p> + +<p>A farewell banquet, under the presidency of Lord Lytton, gave the +favourite author Godspeed on his journey to the larger half of his public; +on the 9th of November he sailed from Liverpool, and on the 19th landed at +Boston. The voyage, on which, with his old buoyancy, he had contrived to +make himself master of the modest revels of the saloon, seems to have done +him good, or at least to have made him, as usual, impatient to be at his +task. Barely arrived, he is found reporting himself “so well, that I am +constantly chafing at not having begun to-night, instead of this night +week.” By December, however, he was at his reading-desk, first at Boston, +where he met with the warmest of welcomes, and then at New York, where +there was a run upon the tickets, which he described with his usual +excited delight. The enthusiasm of his reception by the American public +must have been heightened by the thought that it was now or never for them +to see him face to face, and, by-gones being by-gones, to testify to him +their admiration. But there may have been some foundation for his +discovery that some signs of agitation on his part were expected in +return, and “that it would have been taken as a suitable compliment if I +would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> stagger on the platform, and instantly drop, overpowered by the +spectacle before me.” It was but a sad Christmas which he spent with his +faithful Dolby at their New York inn, tired, and with a “genuine American +catarrh upon him,” of which he never freed himself during his stay in the +country. Hardly had he left the doctor’s hands than he was about again, +reading in Boston and New York and their more immediate +neighbourhood—that is, within six or seven hours by railway—till +February; and then, in order to stimulate his public, beginning a series +of appearances at more distant places before returning to his +starting-points. His whole tour included, besides a number of New England +towns, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and in the north Cleveland +and Buffalo. Canada and the West were struck out of the programme, the +latter chiefly because exciting political matters were beginning to absorb +public attention.</p> + +<p>During these journeyings Dickens gave himself up altogether to the +business of his readings, only occasionally allowing himself to accept the +hospitality proffered him on every side. Thus only could he breast the +difficulties of his enterprise; for, as I have said, his health was never +good during the whole of his visit, and his exertions were severe, though +eased by the self-devotion of his attendants, of which, as of his constant +kindness, both serious and sportive, towards them it is touching to read. +Already in January he describes himself as not seldom “so dead beat” at +the close of a reading “that they lay me down on a sofa, after I have been +washed and dressed, and I lie there, extremely faint, for a quarter of an +hour,” and as suffering from intolerable sleeplessness at night. His +appetite was equally disordered, and he lived mainly on stimulants. Why +had he condemned himself to such a life?</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>When at last he could declare the stress of his work over he described +himself as “nearly used up. Climate, distance, catarrh, travelling, and +hard work have begun—I may say so, now they are nearly all over—to tell +heavily upon me. Sleeplessness besets me; and if I had engaged to go on +into May, I think I must have broken down.” Indeed, but for his wonderful +energy and the feeling of exultation which is derived from a heavy task +nearly accomplished, he would have had to follow the advice of “Longfellow +and all the Cambridge men,” and give in nearly at the last. But he +persevered through the farewell readings, both at Boston and at New York, +though on the night before the last reading in America he told Dolby that +if he “had to read but twice more, instead of once, he couldn’t do it.” +This last reading of all was given at New York on April 20, two days after +a farewell banquet at Delmonico’s. It was when speaking on this occasion +that, very naturally moved by the unalloyed welcome which had greeted him +in whatever part of the States he had visited, he made the declaration +already mentioned, promising to perpetuate his grateful sense of his +recent American experiences. This apology, which was no apology, at least +remains one amongst many proofs of the fact that with Dickens kindness +never fell on a thankless soil.</p> + +<p>The merry month of May was still young in the Kentish fields and lanes +when the master of Gad’s Hill Place was home again at last. “I had not +been at sea three days on the passage home,” he wrote to his friend Mrs. +Watson, “when I became myself again.” It was, however, too much when “a +‘deputation’—two in number, of whom only one could get into my cabin, +while the other looked in at my window—came to ask me to read to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> the +passengers that evening in the saloon. I respectfully replied that sooner +than do it I would assault the captain and be put in irons.” Alas! he was +already fast bound, by an engagement concluded soon after he had arrived +in Boston, to a final series of readings at home. “Farewell” is a +difficult word to say for any one who has grown accustomed to the +stimulating excitement of a public stage, and it is not wonderful that +Dickens should have wished to see the faces of his familiar friends—the +English public—once more. But the engagement to which he had set his hand +was for a farewell of a hundred readings, at the recompense of eight +thousand pounds, in addition to expenses and percentage. It is true that +he had done this before he had fully realized the effect of his American +exertions; but even so there was a terrible unwisdom in the promise. These +last readings—and he alone is, in common fairness, to be held responsible +for the fact—cut short a life from which much noble fruit might still +have been expected for our literature, and which in any case might have +been prolonged as a blessing beyond all that gold can buy to those who +loved him.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile he had allowed himself a short respite before resuming his +labours in October. It was not more, his friends thought, than he needed, +for much of his old buoyancy seemed to them to be wanting in him, except +when hospitality or the intercourse of friendship called it forth. What a +charm there still was in his genial humour his letters would suffice to +show. It does one good to read his description to his kind American +friends Mr. and Mrs. Fields of his tranquillity at Gad’s Hill: “Divers +birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. The place is +lovely, and in perfect order. I have put five mirrors in the Swiss châlet +where I write, and they reflect and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> refract in all kinds of ways the +leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving +corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up amongst the branches of the +trees, and the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green +branches shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the +clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, +and indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most +delicious.”</p> + +<p>Part of this rare leisure he generously devoted to the preparation for the +press of a volume of literary remains from the pen of an old friend. The +<i>Religious Opinions of Chauncey Hare Townshend</i> should not be altogether +overlooked by those interested in Dickens, to whom the loose undogmatic +theology of his friend commended itself as readily as the sincere +religious feeling underlying it. I cannot say what answer Dickens would +have returned to an enquiry as to his creed, but the nature of his +religious opinions is obvious enough. Born in the Church of England, he +had so strong an aversion from what seemed to him dogmatism of any kind, +that he for a time—in 1843—connected himself with a Unitarian +congregation; and to Unitarian views his own probably continued during his +life most nearly to approach. He described himself as “morally wide +asunder from Rome,” but the religious conceptions of her community cannot +have been a matter of anxious enquiry with him, while he was too +liberal-minded to be, unless occasionally, aggressive in his +Protestantism. For the rest, his mind, though imaginative, was without +mystical tendencies, while for the transitory superstitions of the day it +was impossible but that he should entertain the contempt which they +deserved. “Although,” he writes—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>“I regard with a hushed +and solemn fear the mysteries between which, and this state of existence, is interposed the barrier of the great +trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and, although +I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them, I +cannot reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking +of boards, and such like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and +pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to +understand.”</p></div> + +<p>His piety was undemonstrative and sincere, as his books alone would +suffice to prove; and he seems to have sought to impress upon his children +those religious truths with the acceptance and practice of which he +remained himself content. He loved the New Testament, and had, after some +fashion of his own, paraphrased the Gospel narrative for the use of his +children; but he thought that “half the misery and hypocrisy of the +Christian world arises from a stubborn determination to refuse the New +Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament +into alliance with it—whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of +gnat-straining.” Of Puritanism in its modern forms he was an +uncompromising, and no doubt a conscientious, opponent; and though, with +perfect sincerity, he repelled the charge that his attacks upon cant were +attacks upon religion, yet their <i>animus</i> is such as to make the +misinterpretation intelligible. His Dissenting ministers are of the +<i>Bartholomew Fair</i> species; and though, in his later books, a good +clergyman here and there makes his modest appearance, the balance can +hardly be said to be satisfactorily redressed.</p> + +<p>The performance of this pious office was not the only kind act he did +after his return from America. Of course, however, his own family was +nearest to his heart. No kinder or more judicious words were ever +addressed by a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> father to his children than those which, about this time, +he wrote to one of his sons, then beginning a successful career at +Cambridge, and to another—the youngest—who was setting forth for +Australia, to join an elder brother already established in that country. +“Poor Plorn,” he afterward wrote, “is gone to Australia. It was a hard +parting at the last. He seemed to me to become once more my youngest and +favourite child as the day drew near, and I did not think I could have +been so shaken.”</p> + +<p>In October his “farewell” readings began. He had never had his heart more +in the work than now. Curiously enough, not less than two proposals had +reached him during this autumn—one from Birmingham and the other from +Edinburgh—that he should allow himself to be put forward as a candidate +for Parliament; but he declined to entertain either, though in at least +one of the two cases the prospects of success would not have been small. +His views of political and parliamentary life had not changed since he had +written to Bulwer Lytton in 1865: “Would there not seem to be something +horribly rotten in the system of political life, when one stands amazed +how any man, not forced into it by his position, as you are, can bear to +live it?” Indeed, they had hardly changed since the days when he had come +into personal contact with them as a reporter. In public and in private he +had never ceased to ridicule our English system of party, and to express +his contempt for the Legislature and all its works. He had, however, +continued to take a lively interest in public affairs, and his letters +contain not a few shrewd remarks on both home and foreign questions. Like +most liberal minds of his age, he felt a warm sympathy for the cause of +Italy; and the English statesman whom he appears to have most warmly +admired was Lord Russell, in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> whose good intentions neither friends nor +adversaries were wont to lose faith. Meanwhile his Radicalism gradually +became of the most thoroughly independent type, though it interfered +neither with his approval of the proceedings in Jamaica as an example of +strong government, nor with his scorn of “the meeting of jawbones and +asses” held against Governor Eyre at Manchester. The political questions, +however, which really moved him deeply were those social problems to which +his sympathy for the poor had always directed his attention—the Poor-law, +temperance, Sunday observance, punishment and prisons, labour and strikes. +On all these heads sentiment guided his judgment, but he spared no pains +to convince himself that he was in the right; and he was always generous, +as when, notwithstanding his interest in <i>Household Words</i>, he declared +himself unable to advocate the repeal of the paper duty for a moment, “as +against the soap duty, or any other pressing on the mass of the poor.”</p> + +<p>Thus he found no difficulty in adhering to the course he had marked out +for himself. The subject which now occupied him before all others was a +scheme for a new reading, with which it was his wish to vary and to +intensify the success of the series on which he was engaged. This was no +other than a selection of scenes from <i>Oliver Twist</i>, culminating in the +scene of the murder of Nancy by Sikes, which, before producing it in +public, he resolved to “try” upon a select private audience. The trial was +a brilliant success. “The public,” exclaimed a famous actress who was +present, “have been looking out for a sensation these last fifty years or +so, and, by Heaven, they have got it!” Accordingly, from January, 1869, it +formed one of the most frequent of his readings, and the effort which it +involved counted for much in the collapse which was to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> follow. Never were +the limits between reading and acting more thoroughly effaced by Dickens, +and never was the production of an extraordinary effect more equally +shared by author and actor. But few who witnessed this extraordinary +performance can have guessed the elaborate preparation bestowed upon it, +which is evident from the following notes (by Mr. C. Kent) on the book +used in it by the reader:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“What is as striking as anything in all this reading, however—that +is, in the reading copy of it now lying before us as we write—is the +mass of hints as to the by-play in the stage directions for himself, +so to speak, scattered up and down the margin. ‘Fagin raised his right +hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air,’ is there on page +101 in print. Beside it, on the margin in MS., is the word ‘<i>Action</i>.’ +Not a word of it was said. It was simply <i>done</i>. Again, immediately +below that, on the same page—Sikes <i>loquitur</i>: ‘Oh! you haven’t, +haven’t you?’ passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket +(‘<i>Action</i>’ again in MS. on the margin.) Not a word was said about the +pistol.... So again, afterwards, as a rousing self-direction, one sees +notified in MS. on page 107 the grim stage direction, ‘<i>Murder +coming!</i>’”</p></div> + +<p>The “Murder” was frequently read by Dickens not less than four times a +week during the early months of 1869, in which year, after beginning in +Ireland, he had been continually travelling to and fro between various +parts of Great Britain and town. Already in February the old trouble in +his foot had made itself felt, but, as usual, it had long been +disregarded. On the 10th of April he had been entertained at Liverpool, in +St. George’s Hall, at a banquet presided over by Lord Dufferin, and in a +genial speech had tossed back the ball to Lord Houghton, who had +pleasantly bantered him for his unconsciousness of the merits of the House +of Lords. Ten days afterwards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> he was to read at Preston, but, feeling +uneasy about himself, had reported his symptoms to his doctor in London. +The latter hastened down to Preston, and persuaded Dickens to accompany +him back to town, where, after a consultation, it was determined that the +readings must be stopped for the current year, and that reading combined +with travelling must never be resumed. What his sister-in-law and daughter +feel themselves justified in calling “the beginning of the end” had come +at last.</p> + +<p>With his usual presence of mind Dickens at once perceived the imperative +necessity of interposing, “as it were, a fly-leaf in the book of my life, +in which nothing should be written from without for a brief season of a +few weeks.” But he insisted that the combination of the reading and the +travelling was alone to be held accountable for his having found himself +feeling, “for the first time in my life, giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, +uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull of spirit.” +Meanwhile, he for once kept quiet, first in London, and then at Gad’s +Hill. “This last summer,” say those who did most to make it bright for +him, “was a very happy one,” and gladdened by the visits of many friends. +On the retirement, also on account of ill-health, from <i>All the Year +Round</i> of his second self, Mr. W. H. Wills, he was fortunately able at +once to supply the vacant place by the appointment to it of his eldest +son, who seems to have inherited that sense of lucid order which was +amongst his father’s most distinctive characteristics. He travelled very +little this year, though in September he made a speech at Birmingham on +behalf of his favourite Midland Institute, delivering himself, at its +conclusion, of an antithetical Radical commonplace, which, being +misreported or misunderstood, was commented upon with much unnecessary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>wonderment. With a view to avoiding the danger of excessive fatigue, the +latter part of the year was chiefly devoted to writing in advance part of +his new book, which, like <i>Great Expectations</i>, was to grow up, and to be +better for growing up, in his own Kentish home, and almost within sound of +the bells of “Cloisterham” Cathedral. But the new book was never to be +finished.</p> + +<p>The first number of <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i> was not published till +one more short series of twelve readings, given in London during a period +extending from January to March, was at an end. He had obtained Sir Thomas +Watson’s consent to his carrying out this wish, largely caused by the +desire to compensate the Messrs. Chappell in some measure for the +disappointment to which he had been obliged to subject them by the +interruption of his longer engagement. Thus, though the Christmas of 1869 +had brought with it another warning of trouble in the foot, the year 1870 +opened busily, and early in January Dickens established himself for the +season at 5 Hyde Park Place. Early in the month he made another speech at +Birmingham; but the readings were strictly confined to London. On the +other hand, it was not to be expected that the “Murder” would be excluded +from the list. It was read in January to an audience of actors and +actresses; and it is pleasant to think that he was able to testify to his +kindly feeling towards their profession on one of the last occasions when +he appeared on his own stage. “I set myself,” he wrote, “to carrying out +of themselves and their observation those who were bent on watching how +the effects were got; and, I believe, I succeeded. Coming back to it +again, however, I feel it was madness ever to do it so continuously. My +ordinary pulse is seventy-two, and it runs up under this effort to one +hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and twelve.” Yet this fatal reading was repeated thrice more +before the series closed, and with even more startling results upon the +reader. The careful observations made by the physician, however, show that +the excitement of his last readings was altogether too great for any man +to have endured much longer. At last, on March 16, the night came which +closed fifteen years of personal relations between the English public and +its favourite author, such as are, after all, unparalleled in the history +of our literature. His farewell words were few and simple, and referred +with dignity to his resolution to devote himself henceforth exclusively to +his calling as an author, and to his hope that in but two short weeks’ +time his audience “might enter, in their own homes, on a new series of +readings at which his assistance would be indispensable.”</p> + +<p>Of the short time which remained to him his last book was the chief +occupation; and an association thus clings to the <i>Mystery of Edwin Drood</i> +which would, in any case, incline us to treat this fragment—for it was to +be no more—with tenderness. One would, indeed, hardly be justified in +asserting that this story, like that which Thackeray left behind him in +the same unfinished state, bade fair to become a masterpiece in its +author’s later manner; there is much that is forced in its humour, while +as to the working out of the chief characters our means of judgment are, +of course, incomplete. The outline of the design, on the other hand, +presents itself with tolerable clearness to the minds of most readers of +insight or experience, though the story deserves its name of a mystery, +instead of, like <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, seeming merely to withhold a +necessary explanation. And it must be allowed few plots have ever been +more effectively laid than this, of which the untying will never be known. +Three such <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>personages in relation to a deed of darkness as Jasper for its +contriver, Durden for its unconscious accomplice, and Deputy for its +self-invited witness, and all so naturally connecting themselves with the +locality of the perpetration of the crime, assuredly could not have been +brought together except by one who had gradually attained to mastership in +the adaptation of characters to the purposes of a plot. Still, the +strongest impression left upon the reader of this fragment is the evidence +it furnishes of Dickens having retained to the last powers which were most +peculiarly and distinctively his own. Having skilfully brought into +connexion, for the purposes of his plot, two such strangely-contrasted +spheres of life and death as the cathedral close at “Cloisterham” and an +opium-smoking den in one of the obscurest corners of London, he is +enabled, by his imaginative and observing powers, not only to <i>realise</i> +the picturesque elements in both scenes, but also to convert them into a +twofold background, accommodating itself to the most vivid hues of human +passion. This is to bring out what he was wont to call “the romantic +aspect of familiar things.” With the physiognomy of Cloisterham—otherwise +Rochester—with its cathedral, and its “monastery” ruin, and its “Minor +Canon Corner,” and its “Nuns’ House”—otherwise “Eastgate House,” in the +High Street—he was, of course, closely acquainted; but he had never +reproduced its features with so artistic a cunning, and the Mystery of +Edwin Drood will always haunt Bishop Gundulph’s venerable building and its +tranquil precincts. As for the opium-smoking, we have his own statement +that what he described he saw—“exactly as he had described it, penny +ink-bottle and all—down in Shadwell” in the autumn of 1869. “A couple of +the Inspectors of Lodging-houses knew the woman, and took me to her as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> I +was making a round with them to see for myself the working of Lord +Shaftesbury’s Bill.” Between these scenes John Jasper—a figure conceived +with singular force—moves to and fro, preparing his mysterious design. No +story of the kind ever began more finely; and we may be excused from +enquiring whether signs of diminished vigour of invention and freshness of +execution are to be found in other and less prominent portions of the +great novelist’s last work.</p> + +<p>Before, in this year 1870, Dickens withdrew from London to Gad’s Hill, +with the hope of there in quiet carrying his all but half-finished task to +its close, his health had not been satisfactory; he had suffered from time +to time in his foot, and his weary and aged look was observed by many of +his friends. He was able to go occasionally into society; though at the +last dinner-party which he attended—it was at Lord Houghton’s, to meet +the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians—he had been unable to +mount above the dining-room floor. Already in March the Queen had found a +suitable opportunity for inviting him to wait upon her at Buckingham +Palace, when she had much gratified him by her kindly manner; and a few +days later he made his appearance at the levee. These acknowledgments of +his position as an English author were as they should be; no others were +offered, nor is it a matter of regret that there should have been no +titles to inscribe on his tomb. He was also twice seen on one of those +public occasions which no eloquence graced so readily and so pleasantly as +his: once in April, at the dinner for the Newsvenders’ Charity, when he +spoke of the existence among his humble clients of that “feeling of +brotherhood and sympathy which is worth much to all men, or they would +herd with wolves;” and once in May—only a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> day or two before he went home +into the country—when, at the Royal Academy dinner, he paid a touching +tribute to the eminent painter, Daniel Maclise, who in the good old days +had been much like a brother to himself. Another friend and companion, +Mark Lemon, passed away a day or two afterwards; and with the most +intimate of all, his future biographer, he lamented the familiar faces of +their companions—not one of whom had passed his sixtieth year—upon which +they were not to look again. On the 30th of May he was once more at Gad’s +Hill.</p> + +<p>Here he forthwith set to work on his book, taking walks as usual, though +of no very great length. On Thursday, the 9th of June, he had intended to +pay his usual weekly visit to the office of his journal, and accordingly, +on the 8th, devoted the afternoon as well as the morning to finishing the +sixth number of the story. When he came across to the house from the +châlet before dinner he seemed to his sister-in-law, who alone of the +family was at home, tired and silent, and no sooner had they sat down to +dinner than she noticed how seriously ill he looked. It speedily became +evident that a fit was upon him. “Come and lie down,” she entreated. “Yes, +on the ground,” he said, very distinctly—these were the last words he +spoke—and he slid from her arm and fell upon the floor. He was laid on a +couch in the room, and there he remained unconscious almost to the last. +He died at ten minutes past six on the evening of the 9th—by which time +his daughters and his eldest son had been able to join the faithful +watcher by his side; his sister and his son Henry arrived when all was +over.</p> + +<p>His own desire had been to be buried near Gad’s Hill; though at one time +he is said to have expressed a wish to lie in a disused graveyard, which +is still pointed out, in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> secluded corner in the moat of Rochester +Castle. Preparations had been made accordingly, when the Dean and Chapter +of Rochester urged a request that his remains might be placed in their +Cathedral. This was assented to; but at the last moment the Dean of +Westminster gave expression to a widespread wish that the great national +writer might lie in the national Abbey. There he was buried on June 14, +without the slightest attempt at the pomp which he had deprecated in his +will, and which he almost fiercely condemned in more than one of his +writings. “The funeral,” writes Dean Stanley, whose own dust now mingles +with that of so many illustrious dead, “was strictly private. It took +place at an early hour in the summer morning, the grave having been dug in +secret the night before, and the vast solitary space of the Abbey was +occupied only by the small band of the mourners, and the Abbey clergy, +who, without any music except the occasional peal of the organ, read the +funeral service. For days the spot was visited by thousands. Many were the +tears shed by the poorer visitors. He rests beside Sheridan, Garrick, and +Henderson”—the first actor ever buried in the Abbey. Associations of +another kind cluster near; but his generous spirit would not have +disdained the thought that he would seem even in death the players’ +friend.</p> + +<p>A plain memorial brass on the walls of Rochester Cathedral vindicates the +share which the ancient city and its neighbourhood will always have in his +fame. But most touching of all it is to think of him under the trees of +his own garden on the hill, in the pleasant home where, after so many +labours and so many wanderings, he died in peace, and as one who had +earned his rest.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> +<p class="center"><span class="large">THE FUTURE OF DICKENS’S FAME.</span></p> + +<p><br />There is no reason whatever to believe that in the few years which have +gone by since Dickens’s death the delight taken in his works throughout +England and North America, as well as elsewhere, has diminished, or that +he is not still one of our few most popular writers. The mere fact that +his popularity has remained such since, nearly half a century ago, he, +like a beam of spring sunshine, first made the world gay, is a sufficient +indication of the influence which he must have exercised upon his age. In +our world of letters his followers have been many, though naturally enough +those whose original genius impelled them to follow their own course +soonest ceased to be his imitators. Amongst these I know no more signal +instance than the great novelist whose surpassing merits he had very +swiftly recognised in her earliest work. For though in the <i>Scenes of +Clerical Life</i> George Eliot seems to be, as it were, hesitating between +Dickens and Thackeray as the models of her humorous writing, reminiscences +of the former are unmistakable in the opening of <i>Amos Barton</i>, in <i>Mr. +Gilfil’s Love-Story</i>, in <i>Janet’s Repentance</i>; and though it would be +hazardous to trace his influence in the domestic scenes in <i>Adam Bede</i>, +neither a Christmas exordium in one of the books of <i>The Mill on the +Floss</i>, nor the Sam<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Weller-like freshness of Bob Wakem in the same +powerful story, is altogether the author’s own. Two of the most successful +Continental novelists of the present day have gone to school with Dickens: +the one the truly national writer whose <i>Debit and Credit</i>, a work largely +in the manner of his English model, has, as a picture of modern life, +remained unexcelled in German literature;<a name='fna_14' id='fna_14' href='#f_14'><small>[14]</small></a> the other, the brilliant +Southerner, who may write as much of the <i>History of his Books</i> as his +public may desire to learn, but who cannot write the pathos of Dickens +altogether out of <i>Jack</i>, or his farcical fun out of <i>Le Nabab</i>. And +again—for I am merely illustrating, not attempting to describe, the +literary influence of Dickens—who could fail to trace in the Californian +studies and sketches of Bret Harte elements of humour and of pathos, to +which that genuinely original author would be the last to deny that his +great English “master” was no stranger?</p> + +<p>Yet popularity and literary influence, however wide and however strong, +often pass away as they have come; and in no field of literature are there +many reputations which the sea of time fails before very long to submerge. +In prose fiction—a comparatively young literary growth—they are +certainly not the most numerous, perhaps because on works of this species +the manners and style of an age most readily impress themselves, rendering +them proportionately strange to the ages that come after. In the works of +even the lesser playwrights who pleased the liberal times of Elizabeth, +and in lyrics of even secondary merit that were admired by fantastic +Caroline cavaliers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> we can still take pleasure. But who can read many of +the “standard” novels published as lately even as the days of George the +Fourth? The speculation is, therefore, not altogether idle, whether +Dickens saw truly when labouring, as most great men do labour, in the +belief that his work was not only for a day. Literary eminence was the +only eminence he desired, while it was one of the very healthiest elements +in his character, that whatever he was, he was thoroughly. He would not +have told any one, as Fielding’s author told Mr. Booth at the +sponging-house, that romance-writing “is certainly the easiest work in the +world;” nor, being what he was, could he ever have found it such in his +own case. “Whoever,” he declared, “is devoted to an art must be content to +give himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it.” And not +only did he obey his own labour-laws, but in the details of his work as a +man of letters he spared no pains and no exercise of self-control. “I am,” +he generously told a beginner, to whom he was counselling patient +endeavour, “an impatient and impulsive person myself, but it has been for +many years the constant effort of my life to practise at my desk what I +preach to you.” Never, therefore has a man of letters had a better claim +to be judged by his works. As he expressly said in his will, he wished for +no other monument than his writings; and with their aid we, who already +belong to a new generation, and whose children will care nothing for the +gossip and the scandal of which he, like most popular celebrities, was in +his lifetime privileged or doomed to become the theme, may seek to form +some definite conception of his future place among illustrious Englishmen.</p> + +<p>It would, of course, be against all experience to suppose that to future +generations Dickens, as a writer, will be all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> that he was to his own. +Much that constitutes the subject, or at least furnishes the background, +of his pictures of English life, like the Fleet Prison and the Marshalsea, +has vanished, or is being improved off the face of the land. The form, +again, of Dickens’s principal works may become obsolete, as it was in a +sense accidental. He was the most popular novelist of his day; but should +prose fiction, or even the full and florid species of it which has enjoyed +so long-lived a favour ever be out of season, the popularity of Dickens’s +books must experience an inevitable diminution. And even before that day +arrives not all the works in a particular species of literature that may +to a particular age have seemed destined to live, will have been +preserved. Nothing is more surely tested by time than that originality +which is the secret of a writer’s continuing to be famous, and continuing +to be read.</p> + +<p>Dickens was not—and to whom in these latter ages of literature could such +a term be applied?—a self-made writer, in the sense that he owed nothing +to those who had gone before him. He was most assuredly no classical +scholar—how could he have been? But I should hesitate to call him an +ill-read man, though he certainly was neither a great nor a catholic +reader, and though he could not help thinking about <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> +while he was reading the <i>Curse of Kehama</i>. In his own branch of +literature his judgment was sound and sure-footed. It was, of course, a +happy accident that as a boy he imbibed that taste for good fiction which +is a thing inconceivable to the illiterate. Sneers have been directed +against the poverty of his book-shelves in his earlier days of authorship; +but I fancy there were not many popular novelists in 1839 who would have +taken down with them into the country for a summer sojourn, as Dickens did +to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>Petersham, not only a couple of Scott’s novels, but Goldsmith, Swift, +Fielding, Smollett, and the British Essayists; nor is there one of these +national classics—unless it be Swift—with whom Dickens’s books or +letters fail to show him to have been familiar. Of Goldsmith’s books, he +told Forster, in a letter which the biographer of Goldsmith modestly +suppressed, he “had no indifferent perception—to the best of his +remembrance—when little more than a child.” He discusses with +understanding the relative literary merits of the serious and humorous +papers in <i>The Spectator</i>; and, with regard to another work of unique +significance in the history of English fiction, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, he +acutely observed that “one of the most popular books on earth has nothing +in it to make any one laugh or cry.” “It is a book,” he added, which he +“read very much.” It may be noted, by-the-way, that he was an attentive +and judicious student of Hogarth; and that thus his criticisms of humorous +pictorial art rested upon as broad a basis of comparison as did his +judgment of his great predecessors in English humorous fiction.</p> + +<p>Amongst these predecessors it has become usual to assert that Smollett +exercised the greatest influence upon Dickens. It is no doubt true that in +David Copperfield’s library Smollett’s books are mentioned first, and in +the greatest number, that a vision of Roderick Random and Strap haunted +the very wicket-gate at Blunderstone, that the poor little hero’s first +thought on entering the King’s Bench prison was the strange company whom +Roderick met in the Marshalsea; and that the references to Smollett and +his books are frequent in Dickens’s other books and in his letters. +Leghorn seemed to him “made illustrious” by Smollett’s grave, and in a +late period of his life he criticises his chief fictions with admirable +justice. “<i>Humphry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> Clinker</i>,” he writes, “is certainly Smollett’s best. I +am rather divided between <i>Peregrine Pickle</i> and <i>Roderick Random</i>, both +extraordinarily good in their way, which is a way without tenderness; but +you will have to read them both, and I send the first volume of +<i>Peregrine</i> as the richer of the two.” An odd volume of <i>Peregrine</i> was +one of the books with which the waiter at the <i>Holly Tree Inn</i> endeavoured +to beguile the lonely Christmas of the snowed-up traveller, but the latter +“knew every word of it already.” In the <i>Lazy Tour</i>, “Thomas, now just +able to grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, was no bad +embodiment of Commodore Trunnion.” I have noted, moreover, coincidences of +detail which bear witness to Dickens’s familiarity with Smollett’s works. +To Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion, as to Captain Cuttle, every +man was a “brother,” and to the Commodore, as to Mr. Smallweed, the most +abusive substantive addressed to a woman admitted of intensification by +the epithet “brimstone.” I think Dickens had not forgotten the opening of +the <i>Adventures of an Atom</i> when he wrote a passage in the opening of his +own <i>Christmas Carol</i>; and that the characters of Tom Pinch and Tommy +Traddles—the former more especially—were not conceived without some +thought of honest Strap. Furthermore, it was Smollett’s example that +probably suggested to Dickens the attractive jingle in the title of his +<i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>. But these are for the most part mere details. The +manner of Dickens as a whole resembles Fielding’s more strikingly than +Smollett’s, as it was only natural that it should. The irony of Smollett +is drier than was reconcilable with Dickens’s nature; it is only in the +occasional extravagances of his humour that the former anticipates +anything in the latter, and it is only the coarsest scenes of Dickens’s +earlier books—such as that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> between Noah, Charlotte, and Mrs. Sowerbery +in <i>Oliver Twist</i>—which recall the whole manner of his predecessor. They +resemble one another in their descriptive accuracy, and in the +accumulation of detail by which they produce instead of obscuring +vividness of impression; but it was impossible that Dickens should prefer +the general method of the novel of adventure pure and simple, such as +Smollett produced after the example of <i>Gil Blas</i>, to the less crude form +adopted by Fielding, who adhered to earlier and nobler models. With +Fielding’s, moreover, Dickens’s whole nature was congenial; they both had +that tenderness which Smollett lacked; and the circumstance that, of all +English writers of the past, Fielding’s name alone was given by Dickens to +one of his sons, shows how, like so many of Fielding’s readers, he had +learnt to love him with an almost personal affection. The very spirit of +the author of <i>Tom Jones</i>—that gaiety which, to borrow the saying of a +recent historian concerning Cervantes, renders even brutality agreeable, +and that charm of sympathetic feeling which makes us love those of his +characters which he loves himself—seem astir in some of the most +delightful passages of Dickens’s most delightful books. So in <i>Pickwick</i>, +to begin with, in which, by the way, Fielding is cited with a twinkle of +the eye all his own, and in <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i>, where a chapter opens +with a passage which is pure Fielding:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“It was morning, and the beautiful Aurora, of whom so much hath been +written, said, and sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak +Miss Pecksniff’s nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the goddess, in +her intercourse with the fair Cherry, to do so; or, in more prosaic +phrase, the tip of that feature in the sweet girl’s countenance was +always very red at breakfast-time.”</p></div> + +<p>Amongst the writers of Dickens’s own age there were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> only two, or perhaps +three, who in very different degrees and ways exercised a noticeable +influence upon his writings. He once declared to Washington Irving that he +kept everything written by that delightful author upon “his shelves, and +in his thoughts, and in his heart of hearts.” And, doubtless, in Dickens’s +early days as an author the influence of the American classic may have +aided to stimulate the imaginative element in his English admirer’s +genius, and to preserve him from a grossness of humour into which, after +the <i>Sketches by Boz</i>, he very rarely allowed himself to lapse. The two +other writers were Carlyle, and, as I have frequently noted in previous +chapters, the friend and fellow-labourer of Dickens’s later manhood, Mr. +Wilkie Collins. It is no unique experience that the disciple should +influence the master; and in this instance, perhaps with the co-operation +of the examples of the modern French theatre, which the two friends had +studied in common, Mr. Wilkie Collins’s manner had, I think, no small +share in bringing about a transformation in that of Dickens. His stories +thus gradually lost all traces of the older masters both in general method +and in detail; whilst he came to condense and concentrate his effects in +successions of skilfully-arranged scenes. Dickens’s debt to Carlyle was, +of course, of another nature; and in his works the proofs are not few of +his readiness to accept the teachings of one whom he declared he would “go +at all times farther to see than any man alive.” There was something +singular in the admiration these two men felt for one another; for +Carlyle, after an acquaintance of almost thirty years, spoke of Dickens as +“a most cordial, sincere, clear-sighted, quietly decisive, just, and +loving man;” and there is not one of these epithets but seems well +considered and well chosen. But neither Carlyle nor Dickens possessed a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> +moral quality omitted in this list, the quality of patience, which abhors +either “quietly” or loudly “deciding” a question before considering it +under all its aspects, and in a spirit of fairness to all sides. The +<i>Latter-Day Pamphlets</i>, to confine myself to them,<a name='fna_15' id='fna_15' href='#f_15'><small>[15]</small></a> like so much of the +political philosophy, if it is to be dignified by that name, which in part +Dickens derived from them, were at the time effective strokes of satirical +invective; now, their edge seems blunt and their energy inflation. Take +the pamphlet on Model Prisons, with its summary of a theory which Dickens +sought in every way to enforce upon his readers; or again, that entitled +<i>Downing Street</i>, which settles the question of party government as a +question of the choice between Buffy and Boodle, or, according to Carlyle, +the Honourable Felix Parvulus and the Right Honourable Felicissimus Zero. +The corrosive power of such sarcasms may be unquestionable; but the angry +rhetoric pointed by them becomes part of the nature of those who +habitually employ its utterance in lieu of argument; and not a little of +the declamatory element in Dickens, which no doubt at first exercised its +effect upon a large number of readers, must be ascribed to his reading of +a great writer who was often very much more stimulative than nutritious.</p> + +<p>Something, then, he owed to other writers, but it was little indeed in +comparison with what he owed to his natural gifts. First amongst these, I +think, must be placed what may, in a word, be called his sensibility—that +quality of which humour, in the more limited sense of the word, and +pathos<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> are the twin products. And in Dickens both these were paramount +powers, almost equally various in their forms and effective in their +operation. According to M. Taine, Dickens, whilst he excels in irony of a +particular sort, being an Englishman, is incapable of being gay. Such +profundities are unfathomable to the readers of <i>Pickwick</i>; though the +French critic may have generalised from Dickens’s later writings only. His +pathos is not less true than various, for the gradations are marked +between the stern, tragic pathos of <i>Hard Times</i>, the melting pathos of +the <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>, <i>Dombey and Son</i>, and <i>David Copperfield</i>, and +the pathos of helplessness which appeals to us in Smike and Jo. But this +sensibility would not have given us Dickens’s gallery of living pictures +had it not been for the powers of imagination and observation which +enabled him spontaneously to exercise it in countless directions. To the +way in which his imagination enabled him to identify himself with the +figments of his own brain he frequently testified; Dante was not more +certain in his celestial and infernal topography than was Dickens as to +“every stair in the little mid-shipman’s house,” and as to “every young +gentleman’s bedstead in Dr. Blimber’s establishment.” One particular class +of phenomena may be instanced instead of many, in the observation and +poetic reproduction of which his singular natural endowment continually +manifested itself—I mean those of the weather. It is not, indeed, often +that he rises to a fine image like that in the description of the night in +which Ralph Nickleby, ruined and crushed, slinks home to his death:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds +furiously and fast before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that +seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> others, +but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. +He often looked back at this, and more than once stopped to let it +pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward again it was still +behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral +train.”</p></div> + +<p>But he again and again enables us to feel as if the Christmas morning on +which Mr. Pickwick ran gaily down the slide, or as if the “very quiet” +moonlit night in the midst of which a sudden sound, like the firing of a +gun or a pistol, startled the repose of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, were not +only what we have often precisely experienced in country villages or in +London squares, but as if they were the very morning and the very night +which we <i>must</i> experience, if we were feeling the glow of wintry +merriment, or the awful chill of the presentiment of evil in a dead hour. +In its lower form this combination of the powers of imagination and +observation has the rapidity of wit, and, indeed, sometimes is wit. The +gift of suddenly finding out what a man, a thing, a combination of man and +thing, is like—this, too, comes by nature; and there is something +electrifying in its sudden exercise, even on the most trivial occasions, +as when Flora, delighted with Little Dorrit’s sudden rise to fortune, +requests to know all</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“about the good, dear, quiet little thing, and all the changes of her +fortunes, carriage people now, no doubt, and horses without number +most romantic, a coat of arms, of course, and wild beasts on their +hind legs, showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths +from ear to ear, good gracious!”</p></div> + +<p>But Nature, when she gifted Dickens with sensibility, observation, and +imagination, had bestowed upon him yet another boon in the quality which +seems more prominent than any other in his whole being. The vigour of +Dickens—a mental and moral vigour supported by a splendid physical +organism—was the parent of some of his foibles;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> amongst the rest, of his +tendency to exaggeration. No fault has been more frequently found with his +workmanship than this; nor can he be said to have defended himself very +successfully on this head when he declared that he did “not recollect ever +to have heard or seen the charge of exaggeration made against a feeble +performance, though, in its feebleness, it may have been most untrue.” But +without this vigour he could not have been creative as he was; and in him +there were accordingly united with rare completeness a swift +responsiveness to the impulses of humour and pathos, an inexhaustible +fertility in discovering and inventing materials for their exercise, and +the constant creative desire to give to these newly-created materials a +vivid plastic form.</p> + +<p>And the mention of this last-named gift in Dickens suggests the query +whether, finally, there is anything in his <i>manner</i> as a writer which may +prevent the continuance of his extraordinary popularity. No writer can be +great without a <i>manner</i> of his own; and that Dickens had such a manner +his most supercilious censurer will readily allow. His terse narrative +power, often intensely humorous in its unblushing and unwinking gravity, +and often deeply pathetic in its simplicity, is as characteristic of his +manner as is the supreme felicity of phrase, in which he has no equal. As +to the latter, I should hardly know where to begin and where to leave off +were I to attempt to illustrate it. But, to take two instances of +different kinds of wit, I may cite a passage in Guster’s narrative of her +interview with Lady Dedlock: “And so I took the letter from her, and she +said she had nothing to give me; and <i>I said I was poor myself, and +consequently wanted nothing</i>;” and, of a different kind, the account in +one of his letters of a conversation with Macready, in which the great +tragedian, after a solemn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> but impassioned commendation of his friend’s +reading, “put his hand upon my breast and pulled out his +pocket-handkerchief, and <i>I felt as if I were doing somebody to his +Werner</i>.” These, I think, were amongst the most characteristic merits of +his style. It also, and more especially in his later years, had its +characteristic faults. The danger of degenerating into mannerism is +incident to every original manner. There is mannerism in most of the great +English prose-writers of Dickens’s age—in Carlyle, in Macaulay, in +Thackeray—but in none of them is there more mannerism than in Dickens +himself. In his earlier writings, in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i>, for instance (I +do not, of course, refer to the Portsmouth boards), and even in <i>Martin +Chuzzlewit</i>, there is much staginess; but in his later works his own +mannerism had swallowed up that of the stage, and, more especially in +serious passages, his style had become what M. Taine happily characterises +as <i>le style tourmenté</i>. His choice of words remained throughout +excellent, and his construction of sentences clear. He told Mr. Wilkie +Collins that “underlining was not his nature;” and in truth he had no need +to emphasise his expressions, or to bid the reader “go back upon their +meaning.” He recognised his responsibility, as a popular writer, in +keeping the vocabulary of the language pure; and in <i>Little Dorrit</i> he +even solemnly declines to use the French word <i>trousseau</i>. In his +orthography, on the other hand, he was not free from Americanisms; and his +interpunctuation was consistently odd. But these are trifles; his more +important mannerisms were, like many really dangerous faults of style, +only the excess of characteristic excellences. Thus it was he who +elaborated with unprecedented effect that humorous species of paraphrase +which, as one of the most imitable devices of his style, has also been the +most <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>persistently imitated. We are all tickled when Grip, the raven, +“issues orders for the instant preparation of innumerable kettles for +purposes of tea;” or when Mr. Pecksniff’s eye is “piously upraised, with +something of that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a +domestic bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric +storm;” but in the end the device becomes a mere trick of circumlocution. +Another mannerism which grew upon Dickens, and was faithfully imitated by +several of his disciples, was primarily due to his habit of turning a +fact, fancy, or situation round on every side. This consisted in the +reiteration of a construction, or of part of a construction, in the +strained rhetorical fashion to which he at last accustomed us in spite of +ourselves, but to which we were loath to submit in his imitators. These +and certain other peculiarities, which it would be difficult to indicate +without incurring the charge of hypercriticism, hardened as the style of +Dickens hardened; and, for instance, in the <i>Tale of Two Cities</i> his +mannerisms may be seen side by side in glittering array. By way of +compensation, the occasional solecisms and vulgarisms of his earlier style +(he only very gradually ridded himself of the cockney habit of punning) no +longer marred his pages; and he ceased to break or lapse occasionally, in +highly-impassioned passages, into blank verse.</p> + +<p>From first to last Dickens’s mannerism, like everything which he made part +of himself, was not merely assumed on occasion, but was, so to speak, +absorbed into his nature. It shows itself in almost everything that he +wrote in his later years, from the most carefully-elaborated chapters of +his books down to the most deeply-felt passages of his most familiar +correspondence, in the midst of the most genuine pathos and most exuberant +humour of his books,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> and in the midst of the sound sense and unaffected +piety of his private letters. Future generations may, for this very +reason, be perplexed and irritated by what we merely stumbled at, and may +wish that what is an element hardly separable from many of Dickens’s +compositions were away from them, as one wishes away from his signature +that horrible flourish which in his letters he sometimes represents +himself as too tired to append.</p> + +<p>But no distaste for his mannerisms is likely to obscure the sense of his +achievements in the branch of literature to which he devoted the full +powers of his genius and the best energies of his nature. He introduced, +indeed, no new species of prose fiction into our literature. In the +historical novel he made two far from unsuccessful essays, in the earlier +of which in particular—<i>Barnaby Rudge</i>—he showed a laudable desire to +enter into the spirit of a past age; but he was without the reading or the +patience of either the author of <i>Waverley</i> or the author of <i>The +Virginians</i>, and without the fine historic enthusiasm which animates the +broader workmanship of <i>Westward Ho</i>. For the purely imaginative romance, +on the other hand, of which in some of his works Lord Lytton was the most +prominent representative in contemporary English literature, Dickens’s +genius was not without certain affinities; but, to feel his full strength, +he needed to touch the earth with his feet. Thus it is no mere phrase to +say of him that he found the ideal in the real, and drew his inspirations +from the world around him. Perhaps the strongest temptation which ever +seemed likely to divert him from the sounder forms in which his +masterpieces were cast lay in the direction of the <i>novel with a purpose</i>, +the fiction intended primarily and above all things to promote the +correction of some social abuse, or the achievement of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> some social +reform. But in spite of himself, to whom the often voiceless cause of the +suffering and the oppressed was at all times dearer than any mere literary +success, he was preserved from binding his muse, as his friend Cruikshank +bound his art, handmaid in a service with which freedom was +irreconcilable. His artistic instinct helped him in this, and perhaps also +the consciousness that where, as in <i>The Chimes</i> or in <i>Hard Times</i>, he +had gone furthest in this direction, there had been something jarring in +the result. Thus, under the influences described above, he carried on the +English novel mainly in the directions which it had taken under its early +masters, and more especially in those in which the essential attributes of +his own genius prompted him to excel.</p> + +<p>Amongst the elements on which the effect alike of the novelist’s and of +the dramatist’s work must, apart from style and diction, essentially +depend, that of construction is obviously one of the most significant. In +this Dickens was, in the earlier period of his authorship, very far from +strong. This was due in part to the accident that he began his literary +career as a writer of <i>Sketches</i>, and that his first continuous book, +<i>Pickwick</i>, was originally designed as little more than a string of such. +It was due in a still greater measure to the influence of those masters of +English fiction with whom he had been familiar from boyhood, above all to +Smollett. And though, by dint of his usual energy, he came to be able to +invent a plot so generally effective as that of <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>, +or, I was about to say, of <i>The Mystery of Edwin Drood</i>, yet on this head +he had had to contend against a special difficulty; I mean, of course, the +publication of most of his books in monthly or even weekly numbers. In the +case of a writer both pathetic and humorous the serial method of +publication<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> leads the public to expect its due allowance of both pathos +and humour every month or week, even if each number, to borrow a homely +simile applied in <i>Oliver Twist</i> to books in general, need not contain +“the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers +of red and white in a side of streaky bacon.” And again, as in a melodrama +of the old school, each serial division has, if possible, to close +emphatically, effectively, with a promise of yet stranger, more touching, +more laughable things to come. On the other hand, with this form of +publication repetition is frequently necessary by way of “reminder” to +indolent readers, whose memory needs refreshing after the long pauses +between the acts. Fortunately, Dickens abhorred living, as it were, from +hand to mouth, and thus diminished the dangers to which, I cannot help +thinking, Thackeray at times almost succumbed. Yet, notwithstanding, in +the arrangement of his incidents and the contrivance of his plots it is +often impossible to avoid noting the imperfection of the machinery, or at +least the traces of effort. I have already said under what influences, in +my opinion, Dickens acquired a constructive skill which would have been +conspicuous in most other novelists.</p> + +<p>If in the combination of parts the workmanship of Dickens was not +invariably of the best, on the other hand in the invention of those parts +themselves he excelled, his imaginative power and dramatic instinct +combining to produce an endless succession of effective scenes and +situations, ranging through almost every variety of the pathetic and the +humorous. In no direction was nature a more powerful aid to art with him +than in this. From his very boyhood he appears to have possessed in a +developed form what many others may possess in its germ, the faculty of +converting into a scene—putting, as it were,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> into a frame—personages +that came under his notice, and the background on which he saw them. Who +can forget the scene in <i>David Copperfield</i> in which the friendless little +boy attracts the wonderment of the good people of the public-house +where—it being a special occasion—he has demanded a glass of their “very +best ale, with a head to it?” In the autobiographical fragment already +cited, where the story appears in almost the same words, Dickens exclaims:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire +Terrace. The landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar +window-frame; his wife, looking over the little half-door; and I, in +some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition.”</p></div> + +<p>He saw the scene while he was an actor in it. Already the <i>Sketches by +Boz</i> showed the exuberance of this power, and in his last years more than +one paper in the delightful <i>Uncommercial Traveller</i> series proved it to +be as inexhaustible as ever, while the art with which it was exercised had +become more refined. Who has better described (for who was more sensitive +to it?) the mysterious influence of crowds, and who the pitiful pathos of +solitude? Who has ever surpassed Dickens in his representations, varied a +thousandfold, but still appealing to the same emotions, common to us all, +of the crises or turning-points of human life? Who has dwelt with a more +potent effect on that catastrophe which the drama of every human life must +reach; whose scenes of death in its pathetic, pitiful, reverend, terrible, +ghastly forms speak more to the imagination and more to the heart? There +is, however, one species of scenes in which the genius of Dickens seems to +me to exercise a still stronger spell—those which <i>precede</i> a +catastrophe, which are charged like thunder-clouds with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> the coming storm. +And here the constructive art is at work; for it is the arrangement of the +incidents, past and to come, combined by anticipation in the mind of the +reader, which gives their extraordinary force to such scenes as the +nocturnal watching of Nancy by Noah, or Carker’s early walk to the railway +station, where he is to meet his doom. Extremely powerful, too, in a +rather different way, is the scene in <i>Little Dorrit</i>, described in a word +or two, of the parting of Bar and Physician at dawn, after they have +“found out Mr. Merdle’s complaint:”</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Before parting, at Physician’s door, they both looked up at the sunny +morning sky, into which the smoke of a few early fires, and the breath +and voices of a few early stirrers, were peacefully rising, and then +looked round upon the immense city and said: ‘If all those hundreds +and thousands of beggared people who were yet asleep could only know, +as they two spoke, the ruin that impended over them, what a fearful +cry against one miserable soul would go up to Heaven!’”</p></div> + +<p>Nor is it awe only, but pity also, which he is able thus to move +beforehand, as in <i>Dombey and Son</i>, in the incomparable scenes leading up +to little Paul’s death.</p> + +<p>More diverse opinions have been expressed as to Dickens’s mastery of that +highest part of the novelist’s art, which we call characterisation. +Undoubtedly, the characters which he draws are included in a limited +range. Yet I question whether their range can be justly termed narrow as +compared with that commanded by any other great English novelist except +Scott, or with those of many novelists of other literatures except Balzac. +But within his own range Dickens is unapproached. His novels do not +altogether avoid the common danger of uninteresting heroes and insipid +heroines; but only a very few of his heroes are conventionally declamatory +like Nicholas Nickleby,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> and few of his heroines simper sentimentally like +Rose Maylie. Nor can I for a moment assent to the condemnation which has +been pronounced upon all the female characters in Dickens’s books, as more +or less feeble or artificial. At the same time it is true that from women +of a mightier mould Dickens’s imagination turns aside; he could not have +drawn a Dorothea Casaubon any more than he could have drawn Romola +herself. Similarly, heroes of the chivalrous or magnanimous type, +representatives of generous effort in a great cause, will not easily be +met with in his writings: he never even essayed the picture of an artist +devoted to Art for her own sake.</p> + +<p>It suited the genius, and in later years perhaps the temper, of Dickens as +an author to leave out of sight those “public virtues” to which no man was +in truth less blind than himself, and to remain content with the +illustration of types of the private or domestic kind. We may cheerfully +take to us the censure that our great humourist was in nothing more +English than in this—that his sympathy with the affections of the hearth +and the home knew almost no bounds. A symbolisation of this may be found +in the honour which, from the <i>Sketches</i> and <i>Pickwick</i> onwards, through a +long series of Christmas books and Christmas numbers, Dickens, doubtless +very consciously, paid to the one great festival of English family life. +Yet so far am I from agreeing with those critics who think that he is +hereby lowered to the level of the poets of the teapot and the +plum-pudding, that I am at a loss how to express my admiration for this +side of his genius—tender with the tenderness of Cowper, playful with the +playfulness of Goldsmith, natural with the naturalness of the author of +<i>Amelia</i>. Who was ever more at home with children than he, and, for that +matter, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> babies to begin with? Mr. Horne relates how he once heard a +lady exclaim: “Oh, do read to us about the baby; Dickens is capital at a +baby!” Even when most playful, most farcical concerning children, his fun +is rarely without something of true tenderness, for he knew the meaning of +that dreariest solitude which he has so often pictured, but nowhere, of +course, with a truthfulness going so straight to the heart as in <i>David +Copperfield</i>—the solitude of a child left to itself. Another wonderfully +true child-character is that of Pip, in <i>Great Expectations</i>, who is also, +as his years progress, an admirable study of boy-nature. For Dickens +thoroughly understood what that mysterious variety of humankind really is, +and was always, if one may so say, on the lookout for him. He knew him in +the brightness and freshness which makes true <i>ingénus</i> of such delightful +characters (rare enough in fiction) as Walter Gay and Mrs. Lirriper’s +grandson. He knew him in his festive mood—witness the amusing letter in +which he describes a water expedition at Eton with his son and two of his +irrepressible school-fellows. He knew him in his precocity—the boy of +about three feet high, at the “George and Vulture,” “in a hairy cap and +fustian overalls, whose garb bespoke a laudable ambition to attain in time +the elevation of an hostler;” and the thing on the roof of the Harrisburg +coach, which, when the rain was over, slowly upreared itself, and +patronisingly piped out the enquiry: “Well, now, stranger, I guess you +find this a’most like an English arternoon, hey?” He knew the Gavroche who +danced attendance on Mr. Quilp at his wharf, and those strangest, but by +no means least true, types of all, the pupil-teachers in Mr. Fagin’s +academy.</p> + +<p>But these, with the exception of the last-named, which show much shrewd +and kindly insight into the paradoxes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> of human nature, are, of course, +the mere <i>croquis</i> of the great humourist’s pencil. His men and women, and +the passions, the desires, the loves, and hatreds that agitate them, he +has usually chosen to depict on that background of domestic life which is +in a greater or less degree common to us all. And it is thus also that he +has secured to himself the vast public which vibrates very differently +from a mere class or section of society to the touch of a popular speaker +or writer. “The more,” he writes, “we see of life and its brevity, and the +world and its varieties, the more we know that no exercise of our +abilities in any art, but the addressing of it to the great ocean of +humanity in which we are drops, and not to by-ponds (very stagnant) here +and there, ever can or ever will lay the foundations of an endurable +retrospect.” The types of character which in his fictions he chiefly +delights in reproducing are accordingly those which most of us have +opportunities enough of comparing with the realities around us; and this +test, a sound one within reasonable limits, was the test he demanded. To +no other author were his own characters ever more real; and Forster +observes that “what he had most to notice in Dickens at the very outset of +his career was his indifference to any praise of his performances on the +merely literary side, compared with the higher recognition of them as bits +of actual life, with the meaning and purpose, on their part, and the +responsibility on his, of realities, rather than creations of fancy.” It +is, then, the favourite growths of our own age and country for which we +shall most readily look in his works, and not look in vain: avarice and +prodigality; pride in all its phases; hypocrisy in its endless varieties, +unctuous and plausible, fawning and self-satisfied, formal and moral; and, +on the other side, faithfulness, simplicity, long-suffering patience, and +indomitable heroic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> good-humour. Do we not daily make room on the pavement +for Mr. Dombey, erect, solemn, and icy, along-side of whom in the road Mr. +Carter deferentially walks his sleek horse? Do we not know more than one +Anthony Chuzzlewit laying up money for himself and his son, and a curse +for both along with it; and many a Richard Carston, sinking, sinking, as +the hope grows feebler that Justice or Fortune will at last help one who +has not learnt how to help himself? And will not prodigals of a more +buoyant kind, like the immortal Mr. Micawber (though, maybe, with an +eloquence less ornate than his), when <i>their</i> boat is on the shore and +<i>their</i> bark is on the sea, become “perfectly business-like and perfectly +practical,” and propose, in acknowledgment of a parting gift we had +neither hoped nor desired to see again, “bills” or, if we should prefer +it, “a bond, or any other description of security?” All this will happen +to us, as surely as we shall be buttonholed by Pecksniffs in a state of +philanthropic exultation; and watched round corners by ’umble but +observant Uriah Heeps; and affronted in what is best in us by the worst +hypocrite of all, the hypocrite of religion, who flaunts in our eyes his +greasy substitute for what he calls the “light of terewth.” To be sure, +unless it be Mr. Chadband and those of his tribe, we shall find the +hypocrite and the man-out-at-elbows in real life less endurable than their +representatives in fiction; for Dickens well understood “that if you do +not administer a disagreeable character carefully, the public have a +decided tendency to think that the <i>story</i> is disagreeable, and not merely +the fictitious form.” His economy is less strict with characters of the +opposite class, true copies of Nature’s own handiwork—the Tom Pinches and +Trotty Vecks and Clara Peggottys, who reconcile us with our kind, and Mr. +Pickwick himself, “a human being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> replete with benevolence,” to borrow a +phrase from a noble passage in Dickens’s most congenial predecessor. These +characters in Dickens have a warmth which only the creations of Fielding +and Smollett had possessed before, and which, like these old masters, he +occasionally carries to excess. At the other extreme stand those +characters in which the art of Dickens, always in union with the +promptings of his moral nature, illustrates the mitigating or redeeming +qualities observable even in the outcasts of our civilisation. To me his +figures of this kind, when they are not too intensely elaborated, are not +the least touching; and there is something as pathetic in the uncouth +convict Magwitch as in the consumptive crossing-sweeper Jo.</p> + +<p>As a matter of course it is possible to take exceptions of one kind or +another to some of the characters created by Dickens in so extraordinary a +profusion. I hardly know of any other novelist less obnoxious to the +charge of repeating himself; though, of course, many characters in his +earlier or shorter works contained in themselves the germs of later and +fuller developments. But Bob Sawyer and Dick Swiveller, Noah Claypole and +Uriah Heep are at least sufficiently independent variations on the same +themes. On the other hand, Filer and Cute in <i>The Chimes</i> were the first +sketches of Gradgrind and Bounderby in <i>Hard Times</i>; and Clemency in <i>The +Battle of Life</i> prefigures Peggotty in <i>David Copperfield</i>. No one could +seriously quarrel with such repetitions as these, and there are remarkably +few of them; for the fertile genius of Dickens took delight in the variety +of its creativeness, and, as if to exemplify this, there was no relation +upon the contrasted humours of which he better loved to dwell than that of +partnership. It has been seen how rarely his inventive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> power condescended +to supplement itself by what in the novel corresponds to the mimicry of +the stage, and what in truth is as degrading to the one as it is to the +other—the reproduction of originals <i>from real life</i>. On the other hand, +he carries his habit too far of making a particular phrase do duty as an +index of a character. This trick also is a trick of the stage, where it +often enough makes the judicious grieve. Many may be inclined to censure +it in Dickens as one of several forms of the exaggeration which is so +frequently condemned in him. There was no charge to which he was more +sensitive; and in the preface to <i>Martin Chuzzlewit</i> he accordingly (not +for the first time) turned round upon the objectors, declaring roundly +that “what is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions is plain +truth to another;” and hinting a doubt “whether it is <i>always</i> the writer +who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for +colour is a little dull.” I certainly do not think that the term +“exaggerated” is correctly applied to such conventional characters of +sensational romance as Rosa Dartle, who has, as it were, lost her way into +<i>David Copperfield</i>, while Hortense and Madame Defarge seem to be in their +proper places in <i>Bleak House</i> and <i>A Tale of Two Cities</i>. In his earlier +writings, and in the fresher and less overcharged serious parts of his +later books, he rarely if ever paints black in black; even the Jew Fagin +has a moment of relenting against the sleeping Oliver; he is not that +unreal thing, a “demon,” whereas Sikes is that real thing, a brute. On the +other hand, certainly he at times makes his characters more laughable than +nature; few great humourists have so persistently sought to efface the +line which separates the barely possible from the morally probable. This +was, no doubt, largely due to his inclination towards<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> the grotesque, +which a severer literary training might have taught him to restrain. Thus +he liked to introduce insane or imbecile personages into fiction, where, +as in real life, they are often dangerous to handle. It is to his sense of +the grotesque, rather than to any deep-seated satirical intention, and +certainly not to any want of reverence or piety in his very simple and +very earnest nature, that I would likewise ascribe the exaggeration and +unfairness of which he is guilty against Little Bethel and all its works. +But in this, as in other instances, no form of humour requires more +delicate handling than the grotesque, and none is more liable to cause +fatigue. Latterly, Dickens was always adding to his gallery of eccentric +portraits, and if inner currents may be traced by outward signs, it may be +worth while to apply the test of his <i>names</i>, which become more and more +odd as their owners deviate more and more from the path of nature. Who +more simply and yet more happily named than the leading members of the +Pickwick Club—from the poet, Mr. Snodgrass, to the sportsman, Mr. +Winkle—Nathaniel, not Daniel; but with Veneering and Lammle, and Boffin +and Venus, and Crisparkle and Grewgious—be they actual names or not—we +feel instinctively that we are in the region of the transnormal.</p> + +<p>Lastly, in their descriptive power and the faithfulness with which they +portray the life and ways of particular periods or countries, of special +classes, professions, or other divisions of mankind, the books of Dickens +are, again of course within their range, unequalled. He sought his +materials chiefly at home, though his letters from Italy and Switzerland +and America, and his French pictures in sketch and story, show how much +wider a field his descriptive powers might have covered. The <i>Sketches by +Boz</i> and the <i>Pickwick Papers</i> showed a mastery, unsurpassed before<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> or +since, in the description of the life of English society in its middle and +lower classes, and in <i>Oliver Twist</i> he lifted the curtain from some of +the rotten parts of our civilisation. This history of a work-house child +also sounded the note of that sympathy with the poor which gave to +Dickens’s descriptions of their sufferings and their struggles a veracity +beyond mere accuracy of detail. He was still happier in describing their +household virtues, their helpfulness to one another, their compassion for +those who are the poorest of all—the friendless and the outcast—as he +did in his <i>Old Curiosity Shop</i>, and in most of his Christmas books. His +pictures of middle-class life abounded in kindly humour; but the humour +and pathos of poverty—more especially the poverty which has not yet lost +its self-respect—commended themselves most of all to his descriptive +power. Where, as in <i>Nicholas Nickleby</i> and later works, he essayed to +describe the manners of the higher classes, he was, as a rule, far less +successful; partly because there was in his nature a vein of rebellion +against the existing system of society, so that, except in his latest +books, he usually approached a description of members of its dominant +orders with a satirical intention, or at least an undertone of bitterness. +At the same time I demur to the common assertion that Dickens could not +draw a real gentleman. All that can be said is that it very rarely suited +his purpose to do so, supposing the term to include manners as well as +feelings and actions; though Mr. Twemlow, in <i>Our Mutual Friend</i>, might be +instanced as a (perhaps rather conscious) exception of one kind, and Sir +Leicester Dedlock, in the latter part of <i>Bleak House</i>, as another. +Moreover, a closer examination of Lord Frederick Verisopht and Cousin +Feenix will show that, gull as the one and ninny as the other is, neither +has anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> that can be called ungentlemanly about him; on the contrary, +the characters, on the whole, rather plead in favour of the advantage than +of the valuelessness of blue blood. As for Dickens’s other noblemen, whom +I find enumerated in an American dictionary of his characters, they are +nearly all mere passing embodiments of satirical fancies, which pretend to +be nothing more.</p> + +<p>Another ingenious enthusiast has catalogued the numerous callings, +professions, and trades of the personages appearing in Dickens’s works. I +cannot agree with the criticism that in his personages the man is apt to +become forgotten in the externals of his calling—the barrister’s wig and +gown, as it were, standing for the barrister, and the beadle’s cocked hat +and staff for the beadle. But he must have possessed in its perfection the +curious detective faculty of deducing a man’s occupation from his manners. +To him nothing wore a neutral tint, and no man or woman was featureless. +He was, it should be remembered, always observing; half his life he was +afoot. When he undertook to describe any novel or unfamiliar kind of +manners, he spared no time or trouble in making a special study of his +subject. He was not content to know the haunts of the London thieves by +hearsay, or to read the history of opium-smoking and its effects in +Blue-books. From the office of his journal in London we find him starting +on these self-imposed commissions, and from his hotel in New York. The +whole art of descriptive reporting, which has no doubt produced a large +quantity of trashy writing, but has also been of real service in arousing +a public interest in neglected corners of our social life, was, if not +actually set on foot, at any rate re-invigorated and vitalised by him. No +one was so delighted to notice the oddities which habit and tradition +stereotype in particular classes of men.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> A complete natural history of +the country actor, the London landlady, and the British waiter might be +compiled from his pages. This power of observation and description +extended from human life to that of animals. His habits of life could not +but make him the friend of dogs, and there is some reason for a title +which was bestowed on him in a paper in a London magazine concerning his +own dogs—the Landseer of Fiction. His letters are full of delightful +details concerning these friends and companions, Turk, Linda, and the rest +of them; nor is the family of their fictitious counterparts, culminating +(intellectually) in Merrylegs, less numerous and delightful. Cats were +less congenial to Dickens, perhaps because he had no objection to changing +house; and they appear in his works in no more attractive form than as the +attendant spirits of Mrs. Pipchin and of Mr. Krook. But for the humours of +animals in general he had a wonderfully quick eye. Of his ravens I have +already spoken. The pony Whisker is the type of kind old gentlemen’s +ponies. In one of his letters occurs an admirably droll description of the +pig-market at Boulogne; and the best unscientific description ever given +of a spider was imagined by Dickens at Broadstairs, when in his solitude +he thought</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“of taming spiders, as Baron Trenck did. There is one in my cell (with +a speckled body and twenty-two very decided knees) who seems to know +me.”</p></div> + +<p>In everything, whether animate or inanimate, he found out at once the +characteristic feature, and reproduced it in words of faultless precision. +This is the real secret of his descriptive power, the exercise of which it +would be easy to pursue through many other classes of subjects. Scenery, +for its own sake, he rarely cared to describe; but no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> one better +understood how to reproduce the combined effect of scenery and weather on +the predisposed mind. Thus London and its river in especial are, as I have +said, haunted by the memory of Dickens’s books. To me it was for years +impossible to pass near London Bridge at night, or to idle in the Temple +on summer days, or to frequent a hundred other localities on or near the +Thames, without instinctively recalling pictures scattered through the +works of Dickens—in this respect, also, a real <i>liber veritatis</i>.</p> + +<p>Thus, and in many ways which it would be labour lost to attempt to +describe, and by many a stroke or touch of genius which it would be idle +to seek to reproduce in paraphrase, the most observing and the most +imaginative of our English humourists revealed to us that infinite +multitude of associations which binds men together, and makes us members +one of another. But though observation and imagination might discern and +discover these associations, sympathy—the sympathy of a generous human +heart with humanity—alone could breathe into them the warmth of life. +Happily, to most men, there is one place consecrated above others to the +feelings of love and good-will; “that great altar where the worst among us +sometimes perform the worship of the heart, and where the best have +offered up such sacrifices and done such deeds of heroism as, chronicled, +would put the proudest temples of old time, with all their vaunting +annals, to the blush.” It was thus that Dickens spoke of the sanctity of +<i>home</i>; and, English in many things, he was most English in that love of +home to which he was never weary of testifying. But, though the “pathway +of the sublime” may have been closed to him, he knew well enough that the +interests of a people and the interests of humanity are mightier than the +domestic<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> loves and cares of any man; and he conscientiously addressed +himself, as to the task of his life, to the endeavour to knit humanity +together. The method which he, by instinct and by choice, more especially +pursued was that of seeking to show the “good in everything.” This it is +that made him, unreasonably sometimes, ignobly never, the champion of the +poor, the helpless, the outcast. He was often tempted into a rhetoric too +loud and too shrill, into a satire neither fine nor fair; for he was +impatient, but not impatient of what he thought true and good. His +purpose, however, was worthy of his powers; nor is there recorded among +the lives of English men of letters any more single-minded in its aim, and +more successful in the pursuit of it, than his. He was much criticised in +his lifetime; and he will, I am well aware, be often criticised in the +future by keener and more capable judges than myself. They may miss much +in his writings that I find in them; but, unless they find one thing +there, it were better that they never opened one of his books. He has +indicated it himself when criticising a literary performance by a clever +writer:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“In this little MS. everything is too much patronised and condescended +to, whereas the slightest touch of feeling for the rustic who is of +the earth earthy, or of sisterhood with the homely servant who has +made her face shine in her desire to please, would make a difference +that the writer can generally imagine without trying it. You don’t +want any sentiment laboriously made out in such a thing. You don’t +want any maudlin show of it. But you do want a pervading suggestion +that it is there.”</p></div> + +<p>The sentiment which Dickens means is the salt which will give a fresh +savour of their own to his works so long as our language endures.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p class="center">THE END.</p> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p class="center"><span class="large">ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.</span></p> +<p class="center">EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.</p> + +<p class="center"><br />The following Volumes are now ready:</p> + +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table"> +<tr><td>SAMUEL JOHNSON</td><td><span class="spacer"> </span></td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Leslie Stephen</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>EDWARD GIBBON</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">J. C. Morison</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>SIR WALTER SCOTT</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">R. H. Hutton</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">J. A. Symonds</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>DAVID HUME</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">T. H. Huxley</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>OLIVER GOLDSMITH.</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">William Black</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>DANIEL DEFOE</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">William Minto</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>ROBERT BURNS</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">J. C. Shairp</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>EDMUND SPENSER</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">R. W. Church</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>WILLIAM M. THACKERAY</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Anthony Trollope</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>EDMUND BURKE</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">John Morley</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>JOHN MILTON</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Mark Pattison</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Henry James, Jr.</span></td></tr> +<tr><td>ROBERT SOUTHEY</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">E. Dowden</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>GEOFFREY CHAUCER</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">A. W. Ward</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>JOHN BUNYAN</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">J. A. Froude</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>WILLIAM COWPER</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Goldwin Smith</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>ALEXANDER POPE</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Leslie Stephen</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>LORD BYRON</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">John Nichol</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>JOHN LOCKE</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Thomas Fowler</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>WILLIAM WORDSWORTH</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">F. W. H. Myers</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>JOHN DRYDEN</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">G. Saintsbury</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Sidney Colvin</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>THOMAS DE QUINCEY</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">David Masson</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>CHARLES LAMB</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Alfred Ainger</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>RICHARD BENTLEY</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">R. C. Jebb</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>CHARLES DICKENS</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">A. W. Ward</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>THOMAS GRAY</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">E. W. Gosse</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>JONATHAN SWIFT</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Leslie Stephen</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>LAURENCE STERNE</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">H. D. Traill</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>THOMAS B. 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Symonds</span>.</td></tr> +<tr><td>JOHN KEATS</td><td> </td><td align="right">By <span class="smcap">Sidney Colvin</span>.</td></tr></table> + +<div class="verts"> +<p class="center">12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per Volume.</p> +<p class="center">Also, People’s Edition (36 volumes in 12), 12mo, Cloth, $1 00 per volume.</p> +<p class="center"><i>Other Volumes in preparation.</i></p> +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by</span> HARPER & BROTHERS, <span class="smcap">New York</span>.</p> +<p><span class="giant">☞</span> <span class="smcap">Harper & Brothers</span> <i>will send any of the above works by mail, +postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price</i>.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + + +<p class="center"><span class="large">SAMUEL JOHNSON.</span></p> + + +<p>BOSWELL’S JOHNSON.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Including a Journal of a Tour to the +Hebrides. 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By <span class="smcap">John Lothrop Motley</span>, LL.D., +D.C.L. With a Portrait of William of Orange. 3 volumes, 8vo, Cloth with +Paper Labels, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, $6.00. <i>Sold only in Sets.</i></p> + +<p class="hang">HISTORY OF THE UNITED NETHERLANDS: from the Death of William the Silent to +the Twelve-Years’ Truce. With a full View of the English-Dutch Struggle +against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruction of the Spanish Armada. By +<span class="smcap">John Lothrop Motley</span>, LL.D., D.C.L. With Portraits. 4 volumes, 8vo, Cloth +with Paper Labels, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, $8.00. <i>Sold only in Sets.</i></p> + +<p class="hang">LIFE AND DEATH OF JOHN OF BARNEVELD, Advocate of Holland. With a View of +the Primary Causes and Movements of the “Thirty-Years’ War.” By <span class="smcap">John +Lothrop Motley</span>, LL.D., D.C.L. Illustrated. 2 volumes, 8vo, Cloth with +Paper Labels, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, $4.00. <i>Sold only in Sets.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>This edition of Motley’s “Complete Historical Works” affords an +opportunity to the collector of choice standard works to fill a +possible vacancy in his library at a moderate cost. The reader of +Motley always returns to the perusal of his writings with a zest which +may be compared to the taste of the ripe strawberries in early June. +The freshness of his mind never fails to give a flavor to his +narrative. His descriptions read less like a recital of the faded past +than a vivid picture of living scenes. No historian transports so much +of himself into his writings; and though without the faintest trace of +egotism, they are always intensely human and individual.—<i>N.Y. +Tribune.</i></p></div> + +<p>The original Library Edition, on larger paper, of Mr. Motley’s Histories +can still be supplied: “The Dutch Republic,” 3 vols.; “The History of the +United Netherlands,” 4 vols.; “Life and Death of John of Barneveld,” 2 +vols. Price <i>per volume</i>, in Cloth, $3.50; in Sheep, $4.00; in Half Calf +or Half Morocco, $5.75. <i>The volumes of this original edition sold +separately.</i></p> + +<p class="center">Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.</p> +<p><span class="giant">☞</span> <i>Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on +receipt of the price.</i></p> + + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + + +<p class="center"><span class="large">BURNS’S LIFE AND WORKS.</span></p> + +<p class="hang">The Life and Works of Robert Burns. Edited by <span class="smcap">Robert Chambers</span>. 4 vols., +12mo, Cloth, $6.00; Half Calf, $13.00.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Mr. Chambers’s edition is the completest presentation of the Scottish +poet in existence. The various compositions are here strung in strict +chronological order upon the Memoir, that they may render up the whole +light which they are qualified to throw upon the history of the life +and mental progress of Burns, while a new significance is given to +them by their being read in connection with the current of events and +emotions which led to their production. The result of this plan is not +merely a great amount of new biographical detail, but a new sense, +efficacy, and feeling in the writings of the poet himself.</p></div> + +<p>All that remains of Burns, the writings he has left, seem to us no +more than a poor mutilated fraction of what was in him; brief, broken +glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete; that +wanted all things for completeness—culture, leisure, true effort, +nay, even length of life. * * * There is something in his poems which +forbids the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by. * * * +The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the <i>rarest</i>, whether in +poetry or prose; but, at the same time, it is plain, and easily +recognized—his indisputable air of truth.—<span class="smcap">Thomas Carlyle.</span></p> + +<p>Burns is by far the greatest poet that ever sprung from the bosom of +the people, and lived and died in an humble condition. He was born a +poet, if ever man was, and to his native genius alone is owing the +perpetuity of his fame. * * * Whatever be the faults or the defects of +the poetry of Burns—and no doubt it has many—it has, beyond all that +was ever written, this greatest of all merits, intense, +life-pervading, and life-breathing truth.—Professor <span class="smcap">Wilson</span> +(<i>Christopher North</i>).</p> + +<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Published by</span> HARPER & BROTHERS, <span class="smcap">New York</span>.</p> +<p><span class="giant">☞</span> <i>Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on +receipt of the price.</i></p> + + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + + +<p class="center"><span class="large">OLIVER GOLDSMITH.</span></p> + + +<p>POETICAL WORKS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>With a Biographical Memoir, and Notes on the Poems. Edited by <span class="smcap">Bolton +Corney</span>. Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $3.00; Cloth, Gilt Edges, $3.75; +Turkey Morocco, Gilt Edges, $7.50.</p></div> + +<p>SELECT POEMS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Edited, with Notes, by <span class="smcap">William J. Rolfe</span>, A.M. Illustrated. Small 4to, +Flexible Cloth, 70 cents; Paper, 50 cents.</p></div> + +<p>GOLDSMITH’S POEMS.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>32mo, Paper, 25 cents; Cloth, 40 cents.</p></div> + +<p>GOLDSMITH’S PLAYS.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>32mo, Paper, 20 cents; Cloth, 35 cents.</p></div> + +<p>THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>By <span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span>. 18mo, Cloth, 50 cents. 32mo, Paper, 25 cents; +Cloth, 40 cents.</p></div> + +<p>GOLDSMITH. By <span class="smcap">William Black</span>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Goldsmith. By <span class="smcap">William Black</span>. A Critical and Biographical Sketch. (In +the series entitled “English Men of Letters.”) 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents.</p></div> + +<p>GOLDSMITH.—BUNYAN.—MADAME D’ARBLAY.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>By <span class="smcap">Lord Macaulay</span>. 32mo, Paper, 25 cents; Cloth, 40 cents.</p></div> + +<p>HISTORY OF GREECE.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>By <span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span>. Abridged by the Author. 18mo, Cloth, 75 cents.</p></div> + +<p>HISTORY OF ROME.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>By <span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span>. Abridged by the Author. 18mo, Cloth, 75 cents.</p></div> + +<p>OLIVER GOLDSMITH. By <span class="smcap">Washington Irving</span>.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>Life of Oliver Goldsmith. With Selections from his Writings. By +<span class="smcap">Washington Irving</span>. 2 vols., 18mo, Cloth, $1.50.</p></div> + +<p class="center">Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.</p> +<p><span class="giant">☞</span> <i>Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to +any part of the United States, on receipt of the price.</i></p> + + +<hr style="width: 25%;" /> + + +<p class="center">A NEW LIBRARY EDITION<br /> +<small>OF</small><br /> +<span class="large">MACAULAY’S ENGLAND.</span></p> + +<p class="hang">MACAULAY’S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. New Edition, from New Electrotype Plates. 5 +volumes, 8vo, Cloth, with Paper Labels, Gilt Tops and Uncut Edges, $10.00; +Sheep, $12.50; Half Calf, $21.25. <i>Sold only in Sets.</i></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>The beauty of the edition is the beauty of proper workmanship and +solid worth—the beauty of fitness alone. Nowhere is the least effort +made to decorate the volumes externally or internally. They are +perfectly printed from new plates that have been made in the best +manner, and with the most accurate understanding of what is needed; +and they are solidly bound, with absolutely plain black cloth covers, +without relief of any kind, except such as is afforded by the paper +label. It is a set of plain, solid, sensible volumes, made for use, +and so made as to be comfortable in the using.—<i>N.Y. Evening Post.</i></p></div> + + +<p class="center">OTHER EDITIONS OF MACAULAY’S ENGLAND.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p><span class="smcap">Library Edition</span>: 5 volumes, 8vo, Cloth, $10 00.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Popular Edition</span>: 5 volumes, 12mo, Cloth, $2 50.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Cheap Edition</span>: 5 volumes, 8vo, Paper, $1 00. In one volume, 8vo, +Cloth, $1 25.</p></div> + +<p class="center"><i>The volumes are sold separately.</i></p> +<p class="center">Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.</p> +<p><span class="giant">☞</span> <i>Sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, on +receipt of the price.</i></p></div> + + +<p> </p><p> </p> +<hr style="width: 50%;" /> +<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p> + +<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> See <i>Idyll</i>. xv. 77. This discovery is not my own, but that of the +late Dr. Donaldson, who used to translate the passage accordingly with +great gusto.</p> + +<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> For operas, as a form of <i>dramatic</i> entertainment, Dickens seems +afterwards to have entertained a strong contempt, such as, indeed, it is +difficult for any man with a sense of humour wholly to avoid.</p> + +<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> W. & D. Grant Brothers had their warehouse at the lower end of Cannon +Street, and their private house in Mosely Street.</p> + +<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> As there is hardly a character in the whole world of fiction and the +drama without some sort of a literary predecessor, so Dickens may have +derived the first notion of Grip from the raven Ralpho—likewise the +property of an idiot—who frightened Roderick Random and Strap out of +their wits, and into the belief that he was the personage Grip so +persistently declared himself to be.</p> + +<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> After dining at a party including the son of an eminent man of +letters, he notes in his <i>Remembrancer</i> that he found the great man’s son +“decidedly lumpish,” and appends the reflexion, “Copyrights need be +hereditary, for genius isn’t.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> From a list of MSS. at South Kensington, kindly furnished me by Mr. R. +F. Sketchley, I find that Mr. R. H. Shepherd’s <i>Bibliography of Dickens</i> +is incomplete on this head.</p> + +<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> By an odd coincidence, not less than four out of the six theatres +advertising their performances in this first number of the <i>Daily News</i> +announce each a different adaptation of <i>The Cricket on the Hearth</i>. +Amongst the curiosities of the casts are observable: At the Adelphi, +Wright as Tilly Slowboy, and at the Haymarket Buckstone in the same +character, with William Farren as Caleb Plummer. The latter part is taken +at the Princess’s by Compton, Mrs. Stirling playing Dot. At the Lyceum, +Mr., Mrs., and Miss Mary Keeley, and Mr. Emery, appear in the piece.</p> + +<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> It is, perhaps, worth pointing out, though it is not surprising, that +Dickens had a strong sense of what I may call the poetry of the +railway-train. Of the effect of the weird <i>Signalman’s Story</i> in one of +his Christmas numbers it is not very easy to rid one’s self. There are +excellent descriptions of the <i>rapidity</i> of a railway journey in the first +chapter of <i>The Lazy Tour</i>, and in another <i>Household Words</i> paper, called +<i>A Flight</i>.</p> + +<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> Among these is Mr. Alexander Ireland, the author of the <i>Bibliography +of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt</i>, who has kindly communicated to me part of his +collections concerning the former. The tittle-tattle against Leigh Hunt +repeated by Lord Macaulay is, on the face of it, unworthy of notice.</p> + +<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> <i>By Rail to Parnassus</i>, June 16, 1855.</p> + +<p><a name='f_11' id='f_11' href='#fna_11'>[11]</a> One of the last things ever written by Dickens was a criticism of M. +Fechter’s acting, intended to introduce him to the American public. A +false report, by-the-way, declared Dickens to have been the author of the +dramatic version of Scott’s novel, which at Christmas, 1865-’66, was +produced at the Lyceum, under the title of <i>The Master of Ravenswood</i>; but +he allowed that he had done “a great deal towards and about the piece, +having an earnest desire to put Scott, for once, on the stage in his own +gallant manner.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_12' id='f_12' href='#fna_12'>[12]</a> Dickens undoubtedly had a genius for titles. Amongst some which he +suggested for the use of a friend and contributor to his journal are, +“<i>What will he do with it?</i>” and “<i>Can he forgive her?</i>”</p> + +<p><a name='f_13' id='f_13' href='#fna_13'>[13]</a> This title has helped to extinguish the phrase of which it consists. +Few would now be found to agree with the last clause of Flora’s +parenthesis in <i>Little Dorrit</i>: “Our mutual friend—too cold a word for +me; at least I don’t mean that very proper expression, mutual friend.”</p> + +<p><a name='f_14' id='f_14' href='#fna_14'>[14]</a> In the last volume of his <i>magnum opus</i> of historical fiction Gustav +Freytag describes “Boz” as, about the year 1846, filling with boundless +enthusiasm the hearts of young men and maidens in a small Silesian country +town.</p> + +<p><a name='f_15' id='f_15' href='#fna_15'>[15]</a> The passage in <i>Oliver Twist</i> (chapter xxxvii.) which illustrates the +maxim that “dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes are more questions +of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine,” may, or may not, be a +reminiscence of <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, then (1838) first published in a +volume.</p> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dickens, by Adolphus William Ward + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKENS *** + +***** This file should be named 36714-h.htm or 36714-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/7/1/36714/ + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: Dickens + English Men of Letters + +Author: Adolphus William Ward + +Release Date: July 12, 2011 [EBook #36714] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKENS *** + + + + +Produced by The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive.) + + + + + + + + + +English Men of Letters + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY + + + + + DICKENS + + + BY ADOLPHUS WILLIAM WARD + + + NEW YORK + HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS + FRANKLIN SQUARE + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. + + JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. + GIBBON J. C. Morison. + SCOTT R. H. Hutton. + SHELLEY J. A. Symonds. + HUME T. H. Huxley. + GOLDSMITH William Black. + DEFOE William Minto. + BURNS J. C. Shairp. + SPENSER R. W. Church. + THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. + BURKE John Morley. + MILTON Mark Pattison. + HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr. + SOUTHEY E. Dowden. + CHAUCER A. W. Ward. + BUNYAN J. A. Froude. + COWPER Goldwin Smith. + POPE Leslie Stephen. + BYRON John Nichol. + LOCKE Thomas Fowler. + WORDSWORTH F. Myers. + DRYDEN G. Saintsbury. + LANDOR Sidney Colvin. + DE QUINCEY David Masson. + LAMB Alfred Ainger. + BENTLEY R. C. Jebb. + DICKENS A. W. Ward. + GRAY E. W. Gosse. + SWIFT Leslie Stephen. + STERNE H. D. Traill. + MACAULAY J. Cotter Morison. + FIELDING Austin Dobson. + SHERIDAN Mrs. Oliphant. + ADDISON W. J. Courthope. + BACON R. W. Church. + COLERIDGE H. D. Traill. + SIR PHILIP SIDNEY J. A. Symonds. + KEATS Sidney Colvin. + +12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume. + +_Other volumes in preparation._ + +PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. + +_Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part +of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price._ + + + + +PREFACE. + + +At the close of a letter addressed by Dickens to his friend John Forster, +but not to be found in the English editions of the _Life_, the writer adds +to his praises of the biography of Goldsmith these memorable words: "I +desire no better for my fame, when my personal dustiness shall be past the +control of my love of order, than such a biographer and such a critic." +Dickens was a man of few close friendships--"his breast," he said, "would +not hold many people"--but, of these friendships, that with Forster was +one of the earliest, as it was one of the most enduring. To Dickens, at +least, his future biographer must have been the embodiment of two +qualities rarely combined in equal measure--discretion and candour. In +literary matters his advice was taken almost as often as it was given, and +nearly every proof-sheet of nearly every work of Dickens passed through +his faithful helpmate's hands. Nor were there many important decisions +formed by Dickens concerning himself in the course of his manhood to which +Forster was a stranger, though, unhappily, he more than once counselled in +vain. + +On Mr. Forster's _Life of Charles Dickens_, together with the three +volumes of _Letters_ collected by Dickens's eldest daughter and his +sister-in-law--his "dearest and best friend"--it is superfluous to state +that the biographical portion of the following essay is mainly based. It +may be superfluous, but it cannot be considered impertinent, if I add that +the shortcomings of the _Life_ have, in my opinion, been more frequently +proclaimed than defined; and that its merits are those of its author as +well as of its subject. + +My sincere thanks are due for various favours shown to me in connexion +with the production of this little volume by Miss Hogarth, Mr. Charles +Dickens, Professor Henry Morley, Mr. Alexander Ireland, Mr. John Evans, +Mr. Robinson, and Mr. Britton. Mr. Evans has kindly enabled me to correct +some inaccuracies in Mr. Forster's account of Dickens's early Chatham days +on unimpeachable first-hand evidence. I also beg Captain and Mrs. Budden +to accept my thanks for allowing me to see Gad's Hill Place. + +I am under special obligations to Mr. R. F. Sketchley, Librarian of the +Dyce and Forster Libraries at South Kensington, for his courtesy in +affording me much useful aid and information. With the kind permission of +Mrs. Forster, Mr. Sketchley enabled me to supplement the records of +Dickens's life, in the period 1838-'41, from a hitherto unpublished +source--a series of brief entries by him in four volumes of _The Law and +Commercial Daily Remembrancer_ for those years. These volumes formed no +part of the Forster bequest, but were added to it, under certain +conditions, by Mrs. Forster. The entries are mostly very brief; and +sometimes there are months without an entry. Many days succeed one another +with no other note than "Work." + +Mr. R. H. Shepherd's _Bibliography of Dickens_ has been of considerable +service to me. May I take this opportunity of commending to my readers, as +a charming reminiscence of the connexion between _Charles Dickens and +Rochester_, Mr. Robert Langton's sketches illustrating a paper recently +printed under that title? + +Last, not least, as the Germans say, I wish to thank my friend Professor +T. N. Toller for the friendly counsel which has not been wanting to me on +this, any more than on former occasions. + +A. W. W. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + PREFACE v + + CHAPTER I. + BEFORE "PICKWICK" 1 + + CHAPTER II. + FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS 20 + + CHAPTER III. + STRANGE LANDS 49 + + CHAPTER IV. + "DAVID COPPERFIELD" 85 + + CHAPTER V. + CHANGES 108 + + CHAPTER VI. + LAST YEARS 146 + + CHAPTER VII. + THE FUTURE OF DICKENS'S FAME 192 + + + + +DICKENS. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +BEFORE "PICKWICK." + +[1812-1836.] + + +Charles Dickens, the eldest son, and the second of the eight children, of +John and Elizabeth Dickens, was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsea, on +Friday, February 7, 1812. His baptismal names were Charles John Huffham. +His father, at that time a clerk in the Navy Pay Office, and employed in +the Portsmouth Dock-yard, was recalled to London when his eldest son was +only two years of age; and two years afterwards was transferred to +Chatham, where he resided with his family from 1816 to 1821. Thus Chatham, +and the more venerable city of Rochester adjoining, with their +neighbourhood of chalk hills and deep green lanes and woodland and +marshes, became, in the words of Dickens's biographer, the birthplace of +his fancy. He looked upon himself as, to all intents and purposes, a +Kentish man born and bred, and his heart was always in this particular +corner of the incomparable county. Again and again, after Mr. Alfred +Jingle's spasmodic eloquence had, in the very first number of _Pickwick_, +epitomised the antiquities and comforts of Rochester, already the scene of +one of the _Sketches_, Dickens returned to the local associations of his +early childhood. It was at Chatham that poor little David Copperfield, on +his solitary tramp to Dover, slept his Sunday night's sleep "near a +cannon, happy in the society of the sentry's footsteps;" and in many a +Christmas narrative or uncommercial etching the familiar features of town +and country, of road and river, were reproduced, before in _Great +Expectations_ they suggested some of the most picturesque effects of his +later art, and before in his last unfinished romance his faithful fancy +once more haunted the well-known precincts. During the last thirteen years +of his life he was again an inhabitant of the loved neighbourhood where, +with the companions of his mirthful idleness, he had so often made +holiday; where, when hope was young, he had spent his honey-moon; and +whither, after his last restless wanderings, he was to return, to seek +such repose as he would allow himself, and to die. But, of course, the +daily life of the "very queer small boy" of that early time is only quite +incidentally to be associated with the grand gentleman's house on Gad's +Hill, where his father, little thinking that his son was to act over again +the story of Warren Hastings and Daylesford, had told him he might some +day come to live, if he were to be very persevering, and to work hard. The +family abode was in Ordnance (not St. Mary's) Place, at Chatham, amidst +surroundings classified in Mr. Pickwick's notes as "appearing to be +soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, offices, and dock-yard men." But +though the half-mean, half-picturesque aspect of the Chatham streets may +already at an early age have had its fascination for Dickens, yet his +childish fancy was fed as fully as were his powers of observation. Having +learned reading from his mother, he was sent with his elder sister, Fanny, +to a day-school kept in Gibraltar Place, New Road, by Mr. William Giles, +the eldest son and namesake of a worthy Baptist minister, whose family had +formed an intimate acquaintance with their neighbours in Ordnance Row. The +younger Giles children were pupils at the school of their elder brother +with Charles and Fanny Dickens, and thus naturally their constant +playmates. In later life Dickens preserved a grateful remembrance, at +times refreshed by pleasant communications between the families, of the +training he had received from Mr. William Giles, an intelligent as well as +generous man, who, recognising his pupil's abilities, seems to have +resolved that they should not lie fallow for want of early cultivation. +Nor does there appear to be the slightest reason for supposing that this +period of his life was anything but happy. For his sister Fanny he always +preserved a tender regard; and a touching little paper, written by him +after her death in womanhood, relates how the two children used to watch +the stars together, and make friends with one in particular, as belonging +to themselves. But obviously he did not lack playmates of his own sex; and +it was no doubt chiefly because his tastes made him disinclined to take +much part in the rougher sports of his school-fellows, that he found +plenty of time for amusing himself in his own way. And thus it came to +pass that already as a child he followed his own likings in the two +directions from which they were never very materially to swerve. He once +said of himself that he had been "a writer when a mere baby, an actor +always." + +Of these two passions he could always, as a child and as a man, be "happy +with either," and occasionally with both at the same time. In his tender +years he was taken by a kinsman, a Sandhurst cadet, to the theatre, to +see the legitimate drama acted, and was disillusioned by visits behind the +scenes at private theatricals; while his own juvenile powers as a teller +of stories and singer of comic songs (he was possessed, says one who +remembers him, of a sweet treble voice) were displayed on domestic chairs +and tables, and then in amateur plays with his school-fellows. He also +wrote a--not strictly original--tragedy, which is missing among his +_Reprinted Pieces_. There is nothing unique in these childish doings, nor +in the circumstance that he was an eager reader of works of fiction; but +it is noteworthy that chief among the books to which he applied himself, +in a small neglected bookroom in his father's house, were those to which +his allegiance remained true through much of his career as an author. +Besides books of travel, which he says had a fascination for his mind from +his earliest childhood, besides the "Arabian Nights" and kindred tales, +and the English Essayists, he read Fielding and Smollett, and Cervantes +and Le Sage, in all innocence of heart, as well as Mrs. Inchbald's +collection of farces, in all contentment of spirit. Inasmuch as he was no +great reader in the days of his authorship, and had to go through hard +times of his own before, it was well that the literature of his childhood +was good of its kind, and that where it was not good it was at least gay. +Dickens afterwards made it an article of his social creed that the +imagination of the young needs nourishment as much as their bodies require +food and clothing; and he had reason for gratefully remembering that at +all events the imaginative part of his education had escaped neglect. + +But these pleasant early days came to a sudden end. In the year 1821 his +family returned to London, and soon his experiences of trouble began. +Misfortune pursued the elder Dickens to town, his salary having been +decreased already at Chatham in consequence of one of the early efforts at +economical reform. He found a shabby home for his family in Bayham Street, +Camden Town; and here, what with the pecuniary embarrassments in which he +was perennially involved, and what with the easy disposition with which he +was blessed by way of compensation, he allowed his son's education to take +care of itself. John Dickens appears to have been an honourable as well as +a kindly man. His son always entertained an affectionate regard for him, +and carefully arranged for the comfort of his latter years; nor would it +be fair, because of a similarity in their experiences, and in the grandeur +of their habitual phraseology, to identify him absolutely with the +immortal Mr. Micawber. Still less, except in certain details of manner and +incident, can the character of the elder Dickens be thought to have +suggested that of the pitiful "Father of the Marshalsea," to which prison, +almost as famous in English fiction as it is in English history, the +unlucky navy-clerk was consigned a year after his return to London. + +Every effort had been made to stave off the evil day; and little Charles, +whose eyes were always wide open, and who had begun to write descriptive +sketches of odd personages among his acquaintance, had become familiar +with the inside of a pawnbroker's shop, and had sold the paternal +"library" piecemeal to the original of the drunken second-hand bookseller, +with whom David Copperfield dealt as Mr. Micawber's representative. But +neither these sacrifices nor Mrs. Dickens's abortive efforts at setting up +an educational establishment had been of avail. Her husband's creditors +_would not_ give him time; and a dark period began for the family, and +more especially for the little eldest son, now ten years old, in which, +as he afterwards wrote, in bitter anguish of remembrance, "but for the +mercy of God, he might easily have become, for any care that was taken of +him, a little robber or a little vagabond." + +Forster has printed the pathetic fragment of autobiography, communicated +to him by Dickens five-and-twenty years after the period to which it +refers, and subsequently incorporated with but few changes in the +_Personal History of David Copperfield_. Who can forget the thrill with +which he first learned the well-kept secret that the story of the solitary +child, left a prey to the cruel chances of the London streets, was an +episode in the life of Charles Dickens himself? Between fact and fiction +there was but a difference of names. Murdstone & Grinby's wine warehouse +down in Blackfriars was Jonathan Warren's blacking warehouse at Hungerford +Stairs, in which a place had been found for the boy by a relative, a +partner in the concern; and the bottles he had to paste over with labels +were in truth blacking-pots. But the menial work and the miserable pay, +the uncongenial companionship during worktime, and the speculative devices +of the dinner-hour were the same in each case. At this time, after his +family had settled itself in the Marshalsea, the haven open to the little +waif at night was a lodging in Little College Street, Camden Town, +presenting even fewer attractions than Mr. Micawber's residence in Windsor +Terrace, and kept by a lady afterwards famous under the name of Mrs. +Pipchin. His Sundays were spent at home in the prison. On his urgent +remonstrance--"the first I had ever made about my lot"--concerning the +distance from his family at which he was left through the week, a back +attic was found for him in Lant Street, in the Borough, "where Bob Sawyer +lodged many years afterwards;" and he now breakfasted and supped with his +parents in their apartment. Here they lived in fair comfort, waited upon +by a faithful "orfling," who had accompanied the family and its fortunes +from Chatham, and who is said by Forster to have her part in the character +of the Marchioness. Finally, after the prisoner had obtained his +discharge, and had removed with his family to the Lant Street lodgings, a +quarrel occurred between the elder Dickens and his cousin, and the boy was +in consequence taken away from the business. + +He had not been ill-treated there; nor indeed is it ill-treatment which +leads to David Copperfield's running away in the story. Nevertheless, it +is not strange that Dickens should have looked back with a bitterness very +unusual in him upon the bad old days of his childish solitude and +degradation. He never "forgot" his mother's having wished him to remain in +the warehouse; the subject of his employment there was never afterwards +mentioned in the family; he could not bring himself to go near old +Hungerford Market so long as it remained standing; and to no human being, +not even to his wife, did he speak of this passage in his life until he +narrated it in the fragment of autobiography which he confided to his +trusty friend. Such a sensitiveness is not hard to explain; for no man is +expected to dilate upon the days "when he lived among the beggars in St. +Mary Axe," and it is only the Bounderbies of society who exult, truly or +falsely, in the sordid memories of the time before they became rich or +powerful. And if the sharp experiences of his childhood might have ceased +to be resented by one whom the world on the whole treated so kindly, at +least they left his heart unhardened, and helped to make him ever tender +to the poor and weak, because he too had after a fashion "eaten his bread +with tears" when a puny child. + +A happy accident having released the David Copperfield of actual life from +his unworthy bondage, he was put in the way of an education such as at +that time was the lot of most boys of the class to which he belonged. "The +world has done much better since in that way, and will do far better yet," +he writes at the close of his description of _Our School_, the "Wellington +House Academy," situate near that point in the Hampstead Road where modest +gentility and commercial enterprise touch hands. Other testimony confirms +his sketch of the ignorant and brutal head-master; and doubtless this +worthy and his usher, "considered to know everything as opposed to the +chief who was considered to know nothing," furnished some of the features +in the portraits of Mr. Creakle and Mr. Mell. But it has been very justly +doubted by an old school-fellow whether the statement "We were First Boy" +is to be regarded as strictly historical. If Charles Dickens, when he +entered the school, was "put into Virgil," he was not put there to much +purpose. On the other hand, with the return of happier days had come the +resumption of the old amusements which were to grow into the occupations +of his life. A club was founded among the boys at Wellington House for the +express purpose of circulating short tales written by him, and he was the +manager of the private theatricals which they contrived to set on foot. + +After two or three years of such work and play it became necessary for +Charles Dickens once more to think of earning his bread. His father, who +had probably lost his official post at the time when, in Mr. Micawber's +phrase, "hope sunk beneath the horizon," was now seeking employment as a +parliamentary reporter, and must have rejoiced when a Gray's Inn solicitor +of his acquaintance, attracted by the bright, clever looks of his son, +took the lad into his office as a clerk at a modest weekly salary. His +office associates here were perhaps a grade or two above those of the +blacking warehouse; but his danger now lay rather in the direction of the +vulgarity which he afterwards depicted in such samples of the profession +as Mr. Guppy and Mr. Jobling. He is said to have frequented, in company +with a fellow-clerk, one of the minor theatres, and even occasionally to +have acted there; and assuredly it must have been personal knowledge which +suggested the curiously savage description of _Private Theatres_ in the +_Sketches by Boz_, the all but solitary _unkindly_ reference to theatrical +amusements in his works. But whatever his experiences of this kind may +have been, he passed unscathed through them; and during the year and a +half of his clerkship picked up sufficient knowledge of the technicalities +of the law to be able to assail its enormities without falling into +rudimentary errors about it, and sufficient knowledge of lawyers and +lawyers' men to fill a whole chamber in his gallery of characters. + +Oddly enough, it was, after all, the example of the father that led the +son into the line of life from which he was easily to pass into the career +where success and fame awaited him. The elder Dickens having obtained +employment as a parliamentary reporter for the _Morning Herald_, his son, +who was living with him in Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, resolved to +essay the same laborious craft. He was by this time nearly seventeen years +of age, and already we notice in him what were to remain, through life, +two of his most marked characteristics--strength of will, and a +determination, if he did a thing at all, to do it thoroughly. The art of +short-hand, which he now resolutely set himself to master, was in those +days no easy study, though, possibly, in looking back upon his first +efforts, David Copperfield overestimated the difficulties which he had +conquered with the help of love and Traddles. But Dickens, whose education +no Dr. Strong had completed, perceived that in order to succeed as a +reporter of the highest class he needed something besides the knowledge of +short-hand. In a word, he lacked reading; and this deficiency he set +himself to supply as best he could by a constant attendance at the British +Museum. Those critics who have dwelt on the fact that the reading of +Dickens was neither very great nor very extensive, have insisted on what +is not less true than obvious; but he had this one quality of the true +lover of reading, that he never professed a familiarity with that of which +he knew little or nothing. He continued his visits to the Museum, even +when in 1828 he had become a reporter in Doctors' Commons. With this +occupation he had to remain as content as he could for nearly two years. +Once more David Copperfield, the double of Charles Dickens in his youth, +will rise to the memory of every one of his readers. For not only was his +soul seized with a weariness of Consistory, Arches, Delegates, and the +rest of it, to which he afterwards gave elaborate expression in his story, +but his heart was full of its first love. In later days he was not of +opinion that he had loved particularly wisely; but how well he had loved +is known to every one who after him has lost his heart to Dora. Nothing +came of the fancy, and in course of time he had composure enough to visit +the lady who had been its object in the company of his wife. He found that +Jip was stuffed as well as dead, and that Dora had faded into Flora; for +it was as such that, not very chivalrously, he could bring himself to +describe her, for the second time, in _Little Dorrit_. + +Before at last he was engaged as a reporter on a newspaper, he had, and +not for a moment only, thought of turning aside to another profession. It +was the profession to which--uncommercially--he was attached during so +great a part of his life, that when he afterwards created for himself a +stage of his own, he seemed to be but following an irresistible +fascination. His best friend described him to me as "a born actor;" and +who needs to be told that the world falls into two divisions only--those +whose place is before the foot-lights, and those whose place is behind +them? His love of acting was stronger than himself; and I doubt whether he +ever saw a play successfully performed without longing to be in and of it. +"Assumption," he wrote in after days to Lord Lytton, "has charms for me--I +hardly know for how many wild reasons--so delightful that I feel a loss +of, oh! I can't say what exquisite foolery, when I lose a chance of being +some one in voice, etc., not at all like myself." He loved the theatre and +everything which savoured of histrionics with an intensity not even to be +imagined by those who have never felt a touch of the same passion. He had +that "belief in a play" which he so pleasantly described as one of the +characteristics of his life-long friend, the great painter, Clarkson +Stanfield. And he had that unextinguishable interest in both actors and +acting which makes a little separate world of the "quality." One of the +staunchest friendships of his life was that with the foremost English +tragedian of his age, Macready; one of the delights of his last years was +his intimacy with another well-known actor, the late Mr. Fechter. No +performer, however, was so obscure or so feeble as to be outside the pale +of his sympathy. His books teem with kindly likenesses of all manner of +entertainers and entertainments--from Mr. Vincent Crummles and the more or +less legitimate drama, down to Mr. Sleary's horse-riding and Mrs. Jarley's +wax-work. He has a friendly feeling for Chops the dwarf, and for Pickleson +the giant; and in his own quiet Broadstairs he cannot help tumultuously +applauding a young lady "who goes into the den of ferocious lions, tigers, +leopards, etc., and pretends to go to sleep upon the principal lion, upon +which a rustic keeper, who speaks through his nose, exclaims, 'Behold the +abazid power of woobad!'" He was unable to sit through a forlorn +performance at a wretched country theatre without longing to add a +sovereign to the four-and-ninepence which he had made out in the house +when he entered, and which "had warmed up in the course of the evening to +twelve shillings;" and in Bow Street, near his office, he was beset by +appeals such as that of an aged and greasy suitor for an engagement as +Pantaloon: "Mr. Dickens, you know our profession, sir--no one knows it +better, sir--there is no right feeling in it. I was Harlequin on your own +circuit, sir, for five-and-thirty years, and was displaced by a boy, +sir!--a boy!" Nor did his disposition change when he crossed the seas; the +streets he first sees in the United States remind him irresistibly of the +set-scene in a London pantomime; and at Verona his interest is divided +between _Romeo and Juliet_ and the vestiges of an equestrian troupe in the +amphitheatre. + +What success Dickens might have achieved as an actor it is hardly to the +present purpose to inquire. A word will be said below of the success he +achieved as an amateur actor and manager, and in his more than +half-dramatic readings. But, the influence of early associations and +personal feelings apart, it would seem that the artists of the stage whom +he most admired were not those of the highest type. He was subdued by the +genius of Frederic Lemaitre, but blind and deaf to that of Ristori. "Sound +melodrama and farce" were the dramatic species which he affected, and in +which as a professional actor he might have excelled. His intensity might +have gone for much in the one, and his versatility and volubility for more +in the other; and in both, as indeed in any kind of play or part, his +thoroughness, which extended itself to every detail of performance or +make-up, must have stood him in excellent stead. As it was, he was +preserved for literature. But he had carefully prepared himself for his +intended venture, and when he sought an engagement at Covent Garden, a +preliminary interview with the manager was postponed only on account of +the illness of the applicant. + +Before the next theatrical season opened he had at last--in the year +1831--obtained employment as a parliamentary reporter, and after some +earlier engagements he became, in 1834, one of the reporting staff of the +famous Whig _Morning Chronicle_, then in its best days under the +editorship of Mr. John Black. Now, for the first time in his life, he had +an opportunity of putting forth the energy that was in him. He shrunk from +none of the difficulties which in those days attended the exercise of his +craft. They were thus depicted by himself, when a few years before his +death he "held a brief for his brothers" at the dinner of the Newspaper +Press Fund: "I have often transcribed for the printer from my short-hand +notes important public speeches in which the strictest accuracy was +required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young man severely +compromising; writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark +lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild country, and +through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate of fifteen +miles an hour.... I have worn my knees by writing on them on the old back +row of the old gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my +feet by standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords, +where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep kept in waiting, +say, until the woolsack might want restuffing. Returning home from excited +political meetings in the country to the waiting press in London, I do +verily believe I have been upset in almost every description of vehicle +known in this country. I have been in my time belated on miry by-roads, +towards the small hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless +carriage, with exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back +in time for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments +by the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest +of hearts I ever knew." Thus early had Dickens learnt the secret of +throwing himself into any pursuit once taken up by him, and of half +achieving his task by the very heartiness with which he set about it. When +at the close of the parliamentary session of the year 1836 his labours as +a reporter came to an end, he was held to have no equal in the gallery. +During this period his naturally keen powers of observation must have been +sharpened and strengthened, and that quickness of decision acquired which +constitutes, perhaps, the most valuable lesson that journalistic practice +of any kind can teach to a young man of letters. To Dickens's experience +as a reporter may likewise be traced no small part of his political creed, +in which there was a good deal of infidelity; or, at all events, his +determined contempt for the parliamentary style proper, whether in the +mouth of "Thisman" or of "Thatman," and his rooted dislike of the +"cheap-jacks" and "national dustmen" whom he discerned among our orators +and legislators. There is probably no very great number of Members of +Parliament who are heroes to those who wait attendance on their words. +Moreover, the period of Dickens's most active labours as a reporter was +one that succeeded a time of great political excitement; and when men wish +thankfully to rest after deeds, words are in season. + +Meanwhile, very tentatively and with a very imperfect consciousness of the +significance for himself of his first steps on a slippery path, Dickens +had begun the real career of his life. It has been seen how he had been a +writer as a "baby," as a school-boy, and as a lawyer's clerk, and the time +had come when, like all writers, he wished to see himself in print. In +December, 1833, the _Monthly Magazine_ published a paper which he had +dropped into its letter-box, and with eyes "dimmed with joy and pride" the +young author beheld his first-born in print. The paper, called _A Dinner +at Poplar Walk_, was afterwards reprinted in the _Sketches by Boz_ under +the title of _Mr. Minns and his Cousin_, and is laughable enough. His +success emboldened him to send further papers of a similar character to +the same magazine, which published ten contributions of his by February, +1835. That which appeared in August, 1834, was the first signed "Boz," a +nickname given by him in his boyhood to a favourite brother. Since Dickens +used this signature not only as the author of the _Sketches_ and a few +other minor productions, but also as "editor" of the _Pickwick Papers_, it +is not surprising that, especially among his admirers on the Continent and +in America, the name should have clung to him so tenaciously. It was on +a steamboat near Niagara that he heard from his state-room a gentleman +complaining to his wife: "Boz keeps himself very close." + +But the _Monthly Magazine_, though warmly welcoming its young +contributor's lively sketches, could not afford to pay for them. He was +therefore glad to conclude an arrangement with Mr. George Hogarth, the +conductor of the _Evening Chronicle_, a paper in connexion with the great +morning journal on the reporting staff of which he was engaged. He had +gratuitously contributed a sketch to the evening paper as a personal +favour to Mr. Hogarth, and the latter readily proposed to the proprietors +of the _Morning Chronicle_ that Dickens should be duly remunerated for +this addition to his regular labours. With a salary of seven instead of, +as heretofore, five guineas a week, and settled in chambers in Furnival's +Inn--one of those old legal inns which he loved so well--he might already +in this year, 1835, consider himself on the high-road to prosperity. By +the beginning of 1836 the _Sketches by Boz_ printed in the _Evening +Chronicle_ were already numerous enough, and their success was +sufficiently established to allow of his arranging for their +republication. They appeared in two volumes, with etchings by Cruikshank, +and the sum of a hundred and fifty pounds was paid to him for the +copyright. The stepping-stones had been found and passed, and on the last +day of March, which saw the publication of the first number of the +_Pickwick Papers_, he stood in the field of fame and fortune. Three days +afterwards Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, the eldest daughter of the +friend who had so efficiently aided him in his early literary ventures. +Mr. George Hogarth's name thus links together the names of two masters of +English fiction; for Lockhart speaks of him when a writer to the signet +in Edinburgh as one of the intimate friends of Scott. Dickens's +apprenticeship as an author was over almost as soon as it was begun; and +he had found the way short from obscurity to the dazzling light of +popularity. As for the _Sketches by Boz_, their author soon repurchased +the copyright for more than thirteen times the sum which had been paid to +him for it. + +In their collected form these _Sketches_ modestly described themselves as +"illustrative of every-day life and every-day people." Herein they only +prefigured the more famous creations of their writer, whose genius was +never so happy as when lighting up, now the humorous, now what he chose to +term the romantic, side of familiar things. The curious will find little +difficulty in tracing in these outlines, often rough and at times coarse, +the groundwork of more than one finished picture of later date. Not a few +of the most peculiar features of Dickens's humour are already here, +together with not a little of his most characteristic pathos. It is true +that in these early _Sketches_ the latter is at times strained, but its +power is occasionally beyond denial, as, for instance, in the brief +narrative of the death of the hospital patient. On the other hand, the +humour--more especially that of the _Tales_--is not of the most refined +sort, and often degenerates in the direction of boisterous farce. The +style, too, though in general devoid of the pretentiousness which is the +bane of "light" journalistic writing, has a taint of vulgarity about it, +very pardonable under the circumstances, but generally absent from +Dickens's later works. Weak puns are not unfrequent; and the diction but +rarely reaches that exquisite felicity of comic phrase in which _Pickwick_ +and its successors excel. For the rest, Dickens's favourite passions and +favourite aversions alike reflect themselves here in small. In the +description of the election for beadle he ridicules the tricks and the +manners of political party-life, and his love of things theatrical has its +full freshness upon it--however he may pretend at Astley's that his +"histrionic taste is gone," and that it is the audience which chiefly +delights him. But of course the gift which these _Sketches_ pre-eminently +revealed in their author was a descriptive power that seemed to lose sight +of nothing characteristic in the object described, and of nothing humorous +in an association suggested by it. Whether his theme was street or river, +a Christmas dinner or the extensive groves of the illustrious dead (the +old clothes shops in Monmouth Street), he reproduced it in all its shades +and colours, and under a hundred aspects, fanciful as well as real. How +inimitable, for instance, is the sketch of "the last cab-driver, and the +first omnibus cad," whose earlier vehicle, the omnipresent "red cab," was +not the gondola, but the very fire-ship of the London streets. + +Dickens himself entertained no high opinion of these youthful efforts; and +in this he showed the consciousness of the true artist, that masterpieces +are rarely thrown off at hazard. But though much of the popularity of the +_Sketches_ may be accounted for by the fact that commonplace people love +to read about commonplace people and things, the greater part of it is due +to genuine literary merit. The days of half-price in theatres have +followed the days of coaching; "Honest Tom" no more paces the lobby in a +black coat with velvet facings and cuffs, and a D'Orsay hat; the Hickses +of the present time no longer quote "Don Juan" over boarding-house +dinner-tables; and the young ladies in Camberwell no longer compare young +men in attitudes to Lord Byron, or to "Satan" Montgomery. But the +_Sketches by Boz_ have survived their birth-time; and they deserve to be +remembered among the rare instances in which a young author has no sooner +begun to write than he has shown a knowledge of his real strength. As yet, +however, this sudden favourite of the public was unaware of the range to +which his powers were to extend, and of the height to which they were to +mount. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +FROM SUCCESS TO SUCCESS. + +[1836-1841.] + + +Even in those years of which the record is brightest in the story of his +life, Charles Dickens, like the rest of the world, had his share of +troubles--troubles great and small, losses which went home to his heart, +and vexations manifold in the way of business. But in the history of his +early career as an author the word failure has no place. + +Not that the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_, published as they +were in monthly numbers, at once took the town by storm; for the public +needed two or three months to make up its mind that "Boz" was equal to an +effort considerably in advance of his _Sketches_. But when the popularity +of the serial was once established, it grew with extraordinary rapidity +until it reached an altogether unprecedented height. He would be a bold +man who should declare that its popularity has very materially diminished +at the present day. Against the productions of _Pickwick_, and of other +works of amusement of which it was the prototype, Dr. Arnold thought +himself bound seriously to contend among the boys of Rugby; and twenty +years later young men at the university talked nothing but _Pickwick_, and +quoted nothing but _Pickwick_, and the wittiest of undergraduates set the +world at large an examination paper in _Pickwick_, over which pretentious +half-knowledge may puzzle, unable accurately to "describe the common +Profeel-machine," or to furnish a satisfactory definition of "a red-faced +Nixon." No changes in manners and customs have interfered with the hold of +the work upon nearly all classes of readers at home; and no translation +has been dull enough to prevent its being relished even in countries where +all English manners and customs must seem equally uninteresting or equally +absurd. + +So extraordinary has been the popularity of this more than thrice +fortunate book, that the wildest legends have grown up as to the history +of its origin. The facts, however, as stated by Dickens himself, are few +and plain. Attracted by the success of the _Sketches_, Messrs. Chapman & +Hall proposed to him that he should write "something" in monthly numbers +to serve as a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by the comic +draughtsman, Mr. R. Seymour; and either the publishers or the artist +suggested as a kind of leading notion, the idea of a "Nimrod Club" of +unlucky sportsmen. The proposition was at Dickens's suggestion so modified +that the plates were "to arise naturally out of the text," the range of +the latter being left open to him. This explains why the rather artificial +machinery of a club was maintained, and why Mr. Winkle's misfortunes by +flood and field hold their place by the side of the philanthropical +meanderings of Mr. Pickwick and the amorous experiences of Mr. Tupman. An +original was speedily found for the pictorial presentment of the hero of +the book, and a felicitous name for him soon suggested itself. Only a +single number of the serial had appeared when Mr. Seymour's own hand put +an end to his life. It is well known that among the applicants for the +vacant office of illustrator of the _Pickwick Papers_ was Thackeray--the +senior of Dickens by a few months--whose style as a draughtsman would have +been singularly unsuited to the adventures and the gaiters of Mr. +Pickwick. Finally, in no altogether propitious hour for some of Dickens's +books, Mr. Hablot Browne ("Phiz") was chosen as illustrator. Some happy +hits--such as the figure of Mr. Micawber--apart, the illustrations of +Dickens by this artist, though often both imaginative and effective, are +apt, on the one hand, to obscure the author's fidelity to nature, and on +the other, to intensify his unreality. _Oliver Twist_, like the +_Sketches_, was illustrated by George Cruikshank, a pencil humourist of no +common calibre, but as a rule ugly with the whole virtuous intention of +his heart. Dickens himself was never so well satisfied with any +illustrator as with George Cattermole (_alias_ "Kittenmoles"), a +connection of his by marriage, who co-operated with Hablot Browne in +_Master Humphrey's Clock_; in his latest works he resorted to the aid of +younger artists, whose reputation has since justified his confidence. The +most congenial of the pictorial interpreters of Dickens, in his brightest +and freshest humour, was his valued friend John Leech, whose services, +together occasionally with those of Doyle, Frank Stone, and Tenniel, as +well as of his faithful Stanfield and Maclise, he secured for his +Christmas books. + +The _Pickwick Papers_, of which the issue was completed by the end of +1837, brought in to Dickens a large sum of money, and after a time a +handsome annual income. On the whole this has remained the most general +favourite of all his books. Yet it is not for this reason only that +_Pickwick_ defies criticism, but also because the circumstances under +which the book was begun and carried on make it preposterous to judge it +by canons applicable to its author's subsequent fictions. As the serial +proceeded, the interest which was to be divided between the inserted +tales, some of which have real merit, and the framework, was absorbed by +the latter. The rise in the style of the book can almost be measured by +the change in the treatment of its chief character, Mr. Pickwick himself. +In a later preface, Dickens endeavoured to illustrate this change by the +analogy of real life. The truth, of course, is that it was only as the +author proceeded that he recognised the capabilities of the character, and +his own power of making it, and his book with it, truly lovable as well as +laughable. Thus, on the very same page in which Mr. Pickwick proves +himself a true gentleman in his leave-taking from Mr. Nupkins, there +follows a little bit of the idyl between Sam and the pretty housemaid, +written with a delicacy that could hardly have been suspected in the +chronicler of the experiences of Miss Jemima Evans or of Mr. Augustus +Cooper. In the subsequent part of the main narrative will be found +exemplified nearly all the varieties of pathos of which Dickens was +afterwards so repeatedly to prove himself master, more especially, of +course, in those prison scenes for which some of our older novelists may +have furnished him with hints. Even that subtle species of humour is not +wanting which is content to miss its effect with the less attentive +reader; as in this passage concerning the ruined cobbler's confidences to +Sam in the Fleet: + + "The cobbler paused to ascertain what effect his story had produced on + Sam; but finding that he had dropped asleep, knocked the ashes out of + his pipe, _sighed_, put it down, drew the bedclothes over his head, + and went to sleep too." + +Goldsmith himself could not have put more of pathos and more of irony into +a single word. + +But it may seem out of place to dwell upon details such as this in view +of the broad and universally acknowledged comic effects of this +masterpiece of English humour. Its many genuinely comic characters are as +broadly marked as the heroes of the least refined of sporting novels, and +as true to nature as the most elaborate products of Addison's art. The +author's humour is certainly not one which eschews simple in favour of +subtle means, or which is averse from occasional desipience in the form of +the wildest farce. Mrs. Leo Hunter's garden-party--or rather "public +breakfast"--at The Den, Eatanswill; Mr. Pickwick's nocturnal descent, +through three gooseberry-bushes and a rose-tree, upon the virgin soil of +Miss Tomkins's establishment for young ladies; the _supplice d'un homme_ +of Mr. Pott; Mr. Weller junior's love-letter, with notes and comments by +Mr. Weller senior, and Mr. Weller senior's own letter of affliction +written by somebody else; the footmen's "swarry" at Bath, and Mr. Bob +Sawyer's bachelors' party in the Borough--all these and many other scenes +and passages have in them that jovial element of exaggeration which nobody +mistakes and nobody resents. Whose duty is it to check the volubility of +Mr. Alfred Jingle, or to weigh the heaviness, _quot libras_, of the Fat +Boy? Every one is conscious of the fact that in the contagious high +spirits of the author lies one of the chief charms of the book. Not, +however, that the effect produced is obtained without the assistance of a +very vigilant art. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the character +which is upon the whole the most brilliant of the many brilliant additions +which the author made to his original group of personages. If there is +nothing so humorous in the book as Sam Weller, neither is there in it +anything more pathetic than the relation between him and his master. As +for Sam Weller's style of speech, scant justice was done to it by Mr. +Pickwick when he observed to Job Trotter, "My man is in the right, +although his mode of expressing his opinion is somewhat homely, and +occasionally incomprehensible." The fashion of Sam's gnomic philosophy is +at least as old as Theocritus;[1] but the special impress which he has +given to it is his own, rudely foreshadowed, perhaps, in some of the +apophthegms of his father. Incidental Sam Wellerisms in _Oliver Twist_ and +_Nicholas Nickleby_ show how enduring a hold the whimsical fancy had taken +of its creator. For the rest, the freshness of the book continues the same +to the end; and farcical as are some of the closing scenes--those, for +instance, in which a chorus of coachmen attends the movements of the elder +Mr. Weller--there is even here no straining after effect. An exception +might perhaps be found in the catastrophe of the Shepherd, which is +coarsely contrived; but the fun of the character is in itself neither +illegitimate nor unwholesome. It will be observed below that it is the +constant harping on the same string, the repeated picturing of +professional preachers of religion as gross and greasy scoundrels, which +in the end becomes offensive in Dickens. + +On the whole, no hero has ever more appropriately bidden farewell to his +labours than Mr. Pickwick in the words which he uttered at the table of +the ever-hospitable Mr. Wardle at the Adelphi. + + "'I shall never regret,' said Mr. Pickwick, in a low voice--'I shall + never regret having devoted the greater part of two years to mixing + with different varieties and shades of human character; frivolous as + my pursuit of novelty may appear to many. Nearly the whole of my + previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of + wealth, numerous scenes of which I had no previous conception have + dawned upon me--I hope to the enlargement of my mind, and to the + improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I + trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be + other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection to me in the + decline of life. God bless you all.'" + +Of course Mr. Pickwick "filled and drained a bumper" to the sentiment. +Indeed, it "snoweth" in this book "of meat and drink." Wine, ale, and +brandy abound there, and viands to which ample justice is invariably +done--even under Mr. Tupman's heart-rending circumstances at the (now, +alas! degenerate) Leather Bottle. Something of this is due to the times in +which the work was composed, and to the class of readers for which we may +suppose it in the first instance to have been intended; but Dickens, +though a temperate man, loved the paraphernalia of good cheer, besides +cherishing the associations which are inseparable from it. At the same +time, there is a little too much of it in the _Pickwick Papers_, however +well its presence may consort with the geniality which pervades them. It +is difficult to turn any page of the book without chancing on one of those +supremely felicitous phrases in the ready mintage of which Dickens at all +times excelled. But its chief attraction lies in the spirit of the +whole--that spirit of true humour which calls forth at once merriment, +good-will, and charity. + +In the year 1836, which the commencement of the _Pickwick Papers_ has made +memorable in the history of English literature, Dickens was already in the +full tide of authorship. In February, 1837, the second number of +_Bentley's Miscellany_, a new monthly magazine which he had undertaken to +edit, contained the opening chapters of his story of _Oliver Twist_. +Shortly before this, in September and December, 1836, he had essayed two +of the least ambitious branches of dramatic authorship. The acting of +Harley, an admirable dry comedian, gave some vitality to _The Strange +Gentleman_, a "comic burletta," or farce, in two acts, founded upon the +tale in the _Sketches_ called _The Great Winglebury Duel_. It ran for +seventy nights at Drury Lane, and, in its author's opinion, was "the best +thing Harley did." But the adaptation has no special feature +distinguishing it from the original, unless it be the effective bustle of +the opening. _The Village Coquettes_, an operetta represented at the St. +James's Theatre, with music by Hullah, was an equally unpretending effort. +In this piece Harley took one part, that of "a very small farmer with a +very large circle of intimate friends," and John Parry made his _debut_ on +the London stage in another. To quote any of the songs in this operetta +would be very unfair to Dickens.[2] He was not at all depressed by the +unfavourable criticisms which were passed upon his libretto, and against +which he had to set the round declaration of Braham, that there had been +"no such music since the days of Shiel, and no such piece since _The +Duenna_." As time went on, however, he became anything but proud of his +juvenile productions as a dramatist, and strongly objected to their +revival. His third and last attempt of this kind, a farce called _The +Lamplighter_, which he wrote for Covent Garden in 1838, was never acted, +having been withdrawn by Macready's wish; and in 1841 Dickens converted it +into a story printed among the _Picnic Papers_, a collection generously +edited by him for the benefit of the widow and children of a publisher +towards whom he had little cause for personal gratitude. His friendship +for Macready kept alive in him for some time the desire to write a comedy +worthy of so distinguished an actor; and, according to his wont, he had +even chosen beforehand for the piece a name which he was not to +forget--_No Thoroughfare_. But the genius of the age, an influence which +is often stronger than personal wishes or inclinations, diverted him from +dramatic composition. He would have been equally unwilling to see +mentioned among his literary works the _Life of Grimaldi_, which he merely +edited, and which must be numbered among forgotten memorials of forgotten +greatness. + +To the earlier part of 1838 belong one or two other publications, which +their author never cared to reprint. The first of these, however, a short +pamphlet entitled _Sunday under Three Heads_, is not without a certain +biographical interest. This little book was written with immediate +reference to a bill "for the better observance of the Sabbath," which the +House of Commons had recently thrown out by a small majority; and its +special purpose was the advocacy of Sunday excursions, and harmless Sunday +amusements, in lieu of the alternate gloom and drunkenness distinguishing +what Dickens called a London _Sunday as it is_. His own love of fresh air +and brightness intensified his hatred of a formalism which shuts its ears +to argument. In the powerful picture of a Sunday evening in London, +"gloomy, close, and stale," which he afterwards drew in _Little Dorrit_, +he almost seems to hold Sabbatarianism and the weather responsible for one +another. When he afterwards saw a Parisian Sunday, he thought it "not +comfortable," so that, like others who hate bigotry, he may perhaps have +come to recognise the difficulty of arranging an English _Sunday as it +might be made_. On the other hand, he may have remembered his youthful +fancy of the good clergyman encouraging a game of cricket after church, +when thirty years later, writing from Edinburgh, he playfully pictured the +counterpart of _Sunday as Sabbath bills would have it_: describing how +"the usual preparations are making for the band in the open air in the +afternoon, and the usual pretty children (selected for that purpose) are +at this moment hanging garlands round the Scott monument preparatory to +the innocent Sunday dance round that edifice with which the diversions +invariably close." The _Sketches of Young Gentlemen_, published in the +same year, are little if at all in advance of the earlier _Sketches by +Boz_, and were evidently written to order. He finished them in precisely a +fortnight, and noted in his diary that "one hundred and twenty-five pounds +for such a book, without any name to it, is pretty well." The _Sketches of +Young Couples_, which followed as late as 1840, have the advantage of a +facetious introduction, suggested by her Majesty's own announcement of her +approaching marriage. But the life has long gone out of these +pleasantries, as it has from others of the same cast, in which many a +mirthful spirit, forced to coin its mirth into money, has ere now spent +itself. + +It was the better fortune of Dickens to be able almost from the first to +keep nearly all his writings on a level with his powers. He never made a +bolder step forwards than when, in the very midst of the production of +_Pickwick_, he began his first long continuous story, the _Adventures of +Oliver Twist_. Those who have looked at the MS. of this famous novel will +remember the vigour of the handwriting, and how few, in comparison with +his later MSS., are the additions and obliterations which it exhibits. +But here and there the writing shows traces of excitement; for the +author's heart was in his work, and much of it, contrary to his later +habit, was written at night. No doubt he was upheld in the labour of +authorship by something besides ambition and consciousness of strength. +_Oliver Twist_ was certainly written _with a purpose_, and with one that +was afterwards avowed. The author intended to put before his readers--"so +long as their speech did not offend the ear"--a picture of "dregs of +life," hitherto, as he believed, never exhibited by any novelist in their +loathsome reality. Yet the old masters of fiction, Fielding in particular, +as well as the old master of the brush whom Dickens cites (Hogarth), had +not shrunk from the path which their disciple now essayed. Dickens, +however, was naturally thinking of his own generation, which had already +relished _Paul Clifford_, and which was not to be debarred from exciting +itself over _Jack Sheppard_, begun before _Oliver Twist_ had been +completed, and in the self-same magazine. Dickens's purpose was an honest +and a praiseworthy one. But the most powerful and at the same time the +most lovable element in his genius suggested the silver lining to the +cloud. To that unfailing power of sympathy which was the mainspring of +both his most affecting and his most humorous touches, we owe the +redeeming features in his company of criminals; not only the devotion and +the heroism of Nancy, but the irresistible vivacity of the Artful Dodger, +and the good-humour of Charley Bates, which moved Talfourd to "plead as +earnestly in mitigation of judgment" against him as ever he had done "at +the bar for any client he most respected." Other parts of the story were +less carefully tempered. Mr. Fang, the police-magistrate, appears to have +been a rather hasty portrait of a living original; and the whole picture +of Bumble and Bumbledom was certainly a caricature of the working of the +new Poor-law, confounding the question of its merits and demerits with +that of its occasional maladministration. On the other hand, a vein of +truest pathos runs through the whole of poor Nancy's story, and adds to +the effect of a marvellously powerful catastrophe. From Nancy's interview +with Rose at London Bridge to the closing scenes--the flight of Sikes, his +death at Jacob's Island, and the end of the Jew--the action has an +intensity rare in the literature of the terrible. By the side of this +genuine tragic force, which perhaps it would be easiest to parallel from +some of the "low" domestic tragedy of the Elizabethans, the author's comic +humour burst forth upon the world in a variety of entirely new types: +Bumble and his partner; Noah Claypole, complete in himself, but full of +promise for Uriah Heep; and the Jew, with all the pupils and supporters of +his establishment of technical education. Undeniably the story of _Oliver +Twist_ also contains much that is artificial and stilted, with much that +is weak and (the author of _Endymion_ is to be thanked for the word) +"gushy." Thus, all the Maylie scenes, down to the last in which Oliver +discreetly "glides" away from the lovers, are barely endurable. But, +whatever its shortcomings, _Oliver Twist_ remains an almost unique example +of a young author's brilliant success in an enterprise of complete novelty +and extreme difficulty. Some of its situations continue to exercise their +power even over readers already familiarly acquainted with them; and some +of its characters will live by the side of Dickens's happiest and most +finished creations. Even had a sapient critic been right who declared, +during the progress of the story, that Mr. Dickens appeared to have +worked out "the particular vein of humour which had hitherto yielded so +much attractive metal," it would have been worked out to some purpose. +After making his readers merry with _Pickwick_, he had thrilled them with +_Oliver Twist_; and by the one book as by the other he had made them think +better of mankind. + +But neither had his vein been worked out, nor was his hand content with a +single task. In April, 1838, several months before the completion of +_Oliver Twist_, the first number of _Nicholas Nickleby_ appeared; and +while engaged upon the composition of these books he contributed to +_Bentley's Miscellany_, of which he retained the editorship till the early +part of 1839, several smaller articles. Of these, the _Mudfog Papers_ have +been recently thought worth reprinting; but even supposing the satire +against the Association for the Advancement of Everything to have not yet +altogether lost its savour, the fun of the day before yesterday refuses to +be revived. _Nicholas Nickleby_, published in twenty numbers, was the +labour of many months, but was produced under so great a press of work +that during the whole time of publication Dickens was never a single +number in advance. Yet, though not one of the most perfect of his books, +it is indisputably one of the most thoroughly original, and signally +illustrates the absurdity of recent attempts to draw a distinction between +the imaginative romance of the past and the realistic novel of the +present. Dickens was never so strong as when he produced from the real; +and in this instance--starting, no doubt, with a healthy prejudice--so +carefully had he inspected the neighbourhood of the Yorkshire schools, of +which Dotheboys Hall was to be held up as the infamous type, that there +seems to be no difficulty in identifying the site of the very school +itself; while the Portsmouth Theatre is to the full as accurate a study +as the Yorkshire school. So, again, as every one knows, the Brothers +Cheeryble were real personages well known in Manchester,[3] where even the +original of Tim Linkinwater still survives in local remembrance. On the +other hand, with how conscious a strength has the author's imaginative +power used and transmuted his materials: in the Squeers family creating a +group of inimitable grotesqueness; in their humblest victim Smike giving +one of his earliest pictures of those outcasts whom he drew again and +again with such infinite tenderness; and in Mr. Vincent Crummles and his +company, including the Phenomenon, establishing a jest, but a kindly one, +for all times! In a third series of episodes in this book, it is +universally agreed that the author has no less conspicuously failed. +Dickens's first attempt to picture the manners and customs of the +aristocracy certainly resulted in portraying some very peculiar people. +Lord Frederick Verisopht, indeed--who is allowed to redeem his character +in the end--is not without touches resembling nature. + + "'I take an interest, my lord,' said Mrs. Wititterly, with a faint + smile, 'such an interest in the drama.' + + "'Ye-es. It's very interasting,' replied Lord Frederick. + + "'I'm always ill after Shakspeare,' said Mrs. Wititterly. 'I scarcely + exist the next day. I find the reaction so very great after a tragedy, + my lord, and Shakspeare is such a delicious creature.' + + "'Ye-es,' replied Lord Frederick. 'He was a clayver man.'" + +But Sir Mulberry Hawk is a kind of scoundrel not frequently met with in +polite society; his henchmen Pluck and Pyke have the air of "followers of +Don John," and the enjoyments of the "trainers of young noblemen and +gentlemen" at Hampton races, together with the riotous debauch which +precedes the catastrophe, seem taken direct from the transpontine stage. +The fact is that Dickens was here content to draw his vile seducers and +wicked orgies just as commonplace writers had drawn them a thousand times +before, and will draw them a thousand times again. Much of the hero's talk +is of the same conventional kind. On the other hand, nothing could be more +genuine than the flow of fun in this book, which finds its outlet in the +most unexpected channels, but nowhere so resistlessly as in the +invertebrate talk of Mrs. Nickleby. For her Forster discovered a literary +prototype in a character of Miss Austen's; but even if Mrs. Nickleby was +founded on Miss Bates, in _Emma_, she left her original far behind. Miss +Bates, indeed, is verbose, roundabout, and parenthetic; but the widow +never deviates into coherence. + +_Nicholas Nickleby_ shows the comic genius of its author in full activity, +and should be read with something of the buoyancy of spirit in which it +was written, and not with a callousness capable of seeing in so amusing a +scamp as Mr. Mantalini one of Dickens's "monstrous failures." At the same +time this book displays the desire of the author to mould his manner on +the old models. The very title has a savour of Smollett about it; the +style has more than one reminiscence of him, as well as of Fielding and of +Goldsmith; and the general method of the narrative resembles that of our +old novelists and their Spanish and French predecessors. Partly for this +reason, and partly, no doubt, because of the rapidity with which the story +was written, its construction is weaker than is usual even with Dickens's +earlier works. Coincidences are repeatedly employed to help on the +action; and the _denoument_, which, besides turning Mr. Squeers into a +thief, reveals Ralph Nickleby as the father of Smike, is oppressively +complete. As to the practical aim of the novel, the author's word must be +taken for the fact that "Mr. Squeers and his school were faint and feeble +pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they +should be deemed impossible." The exposure, no doubt, did good in its way, +though perhaps Mr. Squeers, in a more or less modified form, has proved a +tougher adversary to overcome than Mrs. Gamp. + +During these years Dickens was chiefly resident in the modest locality of +Doughty Street, whither he had moved his household from the "three rooms," +"three storeys high," in Furnival's Inn, early in 1837. It was not till +the end of 1839 that he took up his abode, further west, in a house which +he came to like best among all his London habitations, in Devonshire +Terrace, Regent's Park. His town life was, however, varied by long +rustications at Twickenham and at Petersham, and by sojourns at the +sea-side, of which he was a most consistent votary. He is found in various +years of his life at Brighton, Dover, and Bonchurch--where he liked his +neighbours better than he liked the climate; and in later years, when he +had grown accustomed to the Continent, he repeatedly domesticated himself +at Boulogne. But already in 1837 he had discovered the little sea-side +village, as it then was, which for many years afterwards became his +favourite holiday retreat, and of which he would be the _genius loci_, +even if he had not by a special description immortalised _Our English +Watering-place_. Broadstairs--whose afternoon tranquillity even to this +day is undisturbed except by the Ethiopians on their tramp from Margate to +Ramsgate--and its constant visitor, are thus described in a letter +written to an American friend in 1843: "This is a little fishing-place; +intensely quiet; built on a cliff, whereon--in the centre of a tiny +semicircular bay--our house stands; the sea rolling and dashing under the +windows. Seven miles out are the Goodwin Sands (you've heard of the +Goodwin Sands?), whence floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if +they were carrying on intrigues with the servants. Also there is a big +light-house called the North Foreland on a hill beyond the village, a +severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy floaters, and +stares grimly out upon the sea. Under the cliff are rare good sands, where +all the children assemble every morning and throw up impossible +fortifications, which the sea throws down again at high-water. Old +gentlemen and ancient ladies flirt after their own manner in two +reading-rooms and on a great many scattered seats in the open air. Other +old gentlemen look all day through telescopes and never see anything. In a +bay-window in a one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with +rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought +he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz." + +Not a few houses at Broadstairs may boast of having been at one time or +another inhabited by him and his. Of the long-desired Fort House, however, +which local perverseness triumphantly points out as the original of _Bleak +House_ (no part even of _Bleak House_ was written there, though part of +_David Copperfield_ was), he could not obtain possession till 1850. As +like Bleak House as it is like Chesney Wold, it stands at the very highest +end of the place, looking straight out to sea, over the little harbour and +its two colliers, with a pleasant stretch of cornfields leading along the +cliff towards the light-house which Dickens promised Lord Carlisle should +serve him as a night-light. But in 1837 Dickens was content with narrower +quarters. The "long small procession of sons" and daughters had as yet +only begun with the birth of his eldest boy. His life was simple and full +of work, and occasional sea-side or country quarters, and now and then a +brief holiday tour, afforded the necessary refreshment of change. In 1837 +he made his first short trip abroad, and in the following year, +accompanied by Mr. Hablot Browne, he spent a week of enjoyment in +Warwickshire, noting in his _Remembrancer_: "Stratford; Shakspeare; the +birthplace; visitors, scribblers, old woman (query whether she knows what +Shakspeare did), etc." Meanwhile, among his truest home enjoyments were +his friendships. They were few in number, mostly with men for whom, after +he had once taken them into his heart, he preserved a life-long regard. +Chief of all these were John Forster and Daniel Maclise, the high-minded +painter, to whom we owe a charming portrait of his friend in this youthful +period of his life. Losing them, he afterwards wrote when absent from +England, was "like losing my arms and legs, and dull and tame I am without +you." Besides these, he was at this time on very friendly terms with +William Harrison Ainsworth, who succeeded him in the editorship of the +_Miscellany_, and concerning whom he exclaimed in his _Remembrancer_: +"Ainsworth has a fine heart." At the close of 1838, Dickens, Ainsworth, +and Forster constituted themselves a club called the Trio, and afterwards +the Cerberus. Another name frequent in the _Remembrancer_ entries is that +of Talfourd, a generous friend, in whom, as Dickens finely said after his +death, "the success of other men made as little change as his own." All +these, together with Stanfield, the Landseers, Douglas Jerrold, Macready, +and others less known to fame, were among the friends and associates of +Dickens's prime. The letters, too, remaining from this part of Dickens's +life, have all the same tone of unaffected frankness. With some of his +intimate friends he had his established epistolary jokes. Stanfield, the +great marine painter, he pertinaciously treated as a "very salt" +correspondent, communications to whom, as to a "block-reeving, +main-brace-splicing, lead-heaving, ship-conning, stun'sail-bending, +deck-swabbing son of a sea-cook," needed garnishing with the obscurest +technicalities and strangest oaths of his element. (It is touching to turn +from these friendly buffooneries to a letter written by Dickens many years +afterward--in 1867--and mentioning a visit to "poor dear Stanfield," when +"it was clear that the shadow of the end had fallen on him.... It happened +well that I had seen, on a wild day at Tynemouth, a remarkable sea effect, +of which I wrote a description to him, and he had kept it under his +pillow.") Macready, after his retirement from the stage, is bantered on +the score of his juvenility with a pertinacity of fun recalling similar +whimsicalities of Charles Lamb's; or the jest is changed, and the great +London actor in his rural retreat is depicted in the character of a +country gentleman strange to the wicked ways of the town. As in the case +of many delightful letter-writers, the charm of Dickens as a correspondent +vanishes so soon as he becomes self-conscious. Even in his letters to Lady +Blessington and Mrs. Watson, a striving after effect is at times +perceptible; the homage rendered to Lord John Russell is not offered with +a light hand; on the contrary, when writing to Douglas Jerrold, Dickens is +occasionally so intent upon proving himself a sound Radical that his +vehemence all but passes into a shriek. + +In these early years, at all events, Dickens was happy in the society of +his chosen friends. His favourite amusements were a country walk or ride +with Forster, or a dinner at Jack Straw's Castle with him and Maclise. He +was likewise happy at home. Here, however, in the very innermost circle of +his affections, he had to suffer the first great personal grief of his +life. His younger sister-in-law, Miss Mary Hogarth, had accompanied him +and his wife into their new abode in Doughty Street, and here, in May, +1837, she died, at the early age of seventeen. No sorrow seems ever to +have touched the heart and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens +like that for the loss of this dearly-loved girl, "young, beautiful, and +good." "I can solemnly say," he wrote to her mother a few months after her +death, "that, waking or sleeping, I have never lost the recollection of +our hard trial and sorrow, and I feel that I never shall." "If," ran part +of his first entry in the Diary which he began on the first day of the +following year, "she were with us now, the same winning, happy, amiable +companion, sympathising with all my thoughts and feelings more than any +one I knew ever did or will, I think I should have nothing to wish for but +a continuance of such happiness. But she is gone, and pray God I may one +day, through his mercy, rejoin her." It was not till, in after years, it +became necessary to abandon the project, that he ceased to cherish the +intention of being buried by her side, and through life the memory of her +haunted him with strange vividness. At the Niagara Falls, when the +spectacle of Nature in her glory had produced in him, as he describes it, +a wondrously tranquil and happy peace of mind, he longed for the presence +of his dearest friends, and "I was going to add, what would I give if the +dear girl, whose ashes lie in Kensal Green, had lived to come so far along +with us; but she has been here many times, I doubt not, since her sweet +face faded from my earthly sight." "After she died," he wrote to her +mother in May, 1843, "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and +always with a kind of quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that +I never lay down at night without a hope of the vision coming back in one +shape or other. And so it did." Once he dreamt of her, when travelling in +Yorkshire; and then, after an interval of many months, as he lay asleep +one night at Genoa, it seemed to him as if her spirit visited him and +spoke to him in words which he afterwards precisely remembered, when he +had awaked, with the tears running down his face. He never forgot her, and +in the year before he died he wrote to his friend: "She is so much in my +thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful and have greatly +prospered in anything, that the recollection of her is an essential part +of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as the beating of my +heart is!" In a word, she was the object of the one great imaginative +passion of his life. Many have denied that there is any likeness to nature +in the fictitious figure in which, according to the wont of imaginative +workers, he was irresistibly impelled to embody the sentiment with which +she inspired him; but the sentiment itself became part of his nature, and +part of his history. When in writing the _Old Curiosity Shop_ he +approached the death of Little Nell, he shrunk from the task: "Dear Mary +died yesterday, when I think of this sad story." + +The _Old Curiosity Shop_ has long been freed from the encumbrances which +originally surrounded it, and there is little except biographical interest +in the half-forgotten history of _Master Humphrey's Clock_. Early in the +year 1840, his success and confidence in his powers induced him to +undertake an illustrated weekly journal, in which he depended solely on +his own name, and, in the first instance, on his own efforts, as a writer. +Such was his trust in his versatility that he did not think it necessary +even to open with a continuous story. Perhaps the popularity of the +_Pickwick Papers_ encouraged him to adopt the time-honoured device of +wrapping up several tales in one. In any case, his framework was in the +present instance too elaborate to take hold of the public mind, while the +characters introduced into it possessed little or nothing of the freshness +of their models in the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. In order to +re-enforce Master Humphrey, the deaf gentleman, and the other original +members of his benevolent conclave, he hereupon resorted to a natural, but +none the less unhappy, expedient. Mr. Pickwick was revived, together with +Sam Weller and his parent; and a Weller of the third generation was +brought on the stage in the person of a precocious four-year-old, +"standing with his little legs very wide apart as if the top-boots were +familiar to them, and actually winking upon the house-keeper with his +infant eye, in imitation of his grandfather." A laugh may have been raised +at the time by this attempt, from which, however, every true Pickwickian +must have turned sadly away. Nor was there much in the other contents of +these early numbers to make up for the disappointment. As, therefore, +neither "Master Humphrey's Clock" nor "Mr. Weller's Watch" seemed to +promise any lasting success, it was prudently determined that the story of +the _Old Curiosity Shop_, of which the first portion had appeared in the +fourth number of the periodical, should run on continuously; and when this +had been finished, a very short "link" sufficed to introduce another +story, _Barnaby Rudge_, with the close of which _Master Humphrey's Clock_ +likewise stopped. + +In the _Old Curiosity Shop_, though it abounds in both grotesquely +terrible and boisterously laughable effects, the key-note is that of an +idyllic pathos. The sense of this takes hold of the reader at the very +outset, as he lingers over the picture, with which the first chapter +concludes, of little Nell asleep through the solitary night in the +curiosity-dealer's warehouse. It retains possession of him as he +accompanies the innocent heroine through her wanderings, pausing with her +in the church-yard where all is quiet save the cawing of the satirical +rooks, or in the school-master's cottage by the open window, through which +is borne upon the evening air the distant hum of the boys at play upon the +green, while the poor school-master holds in his hand the small cold one +of the little scholar that has fallen asleep. Nor is it absent to the last +when Nell herself lies at rest in her little bed. "Her little bird--a poor +slight thing the pressure of a finger would have crushed--was stirring +nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute +and motionless forever." The hand which drew Little Nell afterwards formed +other figures not less affecting, but none so essentially poetic. Like +many such characters, this requires, for its full appreciation, a certain +tension of the mind; and those who will not, or cannot, pass in some +measure out of themselves, will be likely to tire of the conception, or to +declare its execution artificial. Curiously enough, not only was Little +Nell a favourite of Landor, a poet and critic utterly averse from +meretricious art, but she also deeply moved the sympathy of Lord Jeffrey, +who at least knew his own mind, and spoke it in both praise and blame. As +already stated, Dickens only with difficulty brought himself to carry his +story to its actual issue, though it is hard to believe that he could ever +have intended a different close from that which he gave to it. His whole +heart was in the story, nor could he have consoled himself by means of an +ordinary happy ending. + +Dickens's comic humour never flowed in a pleasanter vein than in the _Old +Curiosity Shop_, and nowhere has it a more exquisite element of pathos in +it. The shock-headed, red-cheeked Kit is one of the earliest of those +ungainly figures who speedily find their way into our affections--the odd +family to which Mr. Toots, Tom Pinch, Tommy Traddles, and Joe Gargery +alike belong. But the triumph of this serio-comic form of art in the _Old +Curiosity Shop_ is to be found in the later experiences of Dick Swiveller, +who seems at first merely a more engaging sample of the Bob Sawyer +species, but who ends by endearing himself to the most thoughtless +laugher. Dick Swiveller and his protegee have gained a lasting place among +the favourite characters of English fiction, and the privations of the +Marchioness have possibly had a result which would have been that most +coveted by Dickens--that of helping towards the better treatment of a +class whose lot is among the dust and ashes, too often very bitter ashes, +of many households. Besides these, the story contains a variety of +incidental characters of a class which Dickens never grew weary of drawing +from the life. Messrs. Codlin, Short, and Company, and the rest of the +itinerant showmen, seem to have come straight from the most real of +country fairs; and if ever a _troupe_ of comedians deserved pity on their +wanderings through a callous world, it was the most diverting and the most +dismal of all the mountebanks that gathered round the stew of tripe in +the kitchen of The Jolly Sandboys--Jerry's performing dogs. + + "'Your people don't usually travel in character, do they?' said Short, + pointing to the dresses of the dogs. 'It must come expensive if they + do.' + + "'No,' replied Jerry--'no, it's not the custom with us. But we've been + playing a little on the road to-day, and we come out with a new + wardrobe at the races, so I didn't think it worth while to stop to + undress. Down, Pedro!'" + +In addition to these public servants we have a purveyor of diversion--or +instruction--of an altogether different stamp. "Does the caravan look as +if _it_ know'd em?" indignantly demands the proprietress of Jarley's +wax-work, when asked whether she is acquainted with the men of the Punch +show. She too is drawn, or moulded, in the author's most exuberant style +of fun, together with _her_ company, in which "all the gentlemen were very +pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards, and all the ladies were +miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all the gentlemen were looking +intensely nowhere, and staring with extraordinary earnestness at nothing." + +In contrast with these genial products of observation and humour stand the +grotesquely hideous personages who play important parts in the machinery +of the story, the vicious dwarf Quilp and the monstrous virago Sally +Brass. The former is among the most successful attempts of Dickens in a +direction which was full of danger for him, as it is for all writers; the +malevolent little demon is so blended with his surroundings--the +description of which forms one of the author's most telling pictures of +the lonely foulnesses of the river-side--that his life seems natural in +its way, and his death a most appropriate ending to it. Sally Brass, +"whose accomplishments were all of a masculine and strictly legal kind," +is less of a caricature, and not without a humorously redeeming point of +feminine weakness; yet the end of her and her brother is described at the +close of the book with almost tragic earnestness. On the whole, though the +poetic sympathy of Dickens when he wrote this book was absorbed in the +character of his heroine, yet his genius rarely asserted itself after a +more diversified fashion. + +Of _Barnaby Rudge_, though in my opinion an excellent book after its kind, +I may speak more briefly. With the exception of _A Tale of Two Cities_, it +was Dickens's only attempt in the historical novel. In the earlier work +the relation between the foreground and background of the story is +skilfully contrived, and the colouring of the whole, without any elaborate +attempt at accurate fidelity, has a generally true and harmonious effect. +With the help of her portrait by a painter (Mr. Frith) for whose pictures +Dickens had a great liking, Dolly Varden has justly taken hold of the +popular fancy as a charming type of a pretty girl of a century ago. And +some of the local descriptions in the early part of the book are hardly +less pleasing: the Temple in summer, as it was before the charm of +Fountain Court was destroyed by its guardians; and the picturesque +comforts of the Maypole Inn, described beforehand, by way of contrast to +the desecration of its central sanctuary. The intrigue of the story is +fairly interesting in itself, and the gentlemanly villain who plays a +principal part in it, though, as usual, over-elaborated, is drawn with +more skill than Dickens usually displays in such characters. After the +main interest of the book has passed to the historical action of the +George Gordon riots, the story still retains its coherence, and, a few +minor improbabilities apart, is successfully conducted to its close. No +historical novel can altogether avoid the banalities of the species; and +though Dickens, like all the world, had his laugh at the late Mr. G. P. R. +James, he is constrained to introduce the historical hero of the tale, +with his confidential adviser, and his attendant, in the familiar guise of +three horsemen. As for Lord George Gordon himself, and the riots of which +the responsibility remains inseparable from his unhappy memory, the +representation of them in the novel sufficiently accords both with poetic +probability and with historical fact. The poor lord's evil genius, indeed, +Gashford--who has no historical original--tries the reader's sense of +verisimilitude rather hard; such converts are uncommon except among +approvers. The Protestant hangman, on the other hand, has some slight +historical warranty; but the leading part which he is made to play in the +riots, and his resolution to go any lengths "in support of the great +Protestant principle of hanging," overshoot the mark. It cannot be said +that there is any substantial exaggeration in the description of the +riots; thus, the burning of the great distiller's house in Holborn is a +well-authenticated fact; and there is abundant vigour in the narrative. +Repetition is unavoidable in treating such a theme, but in _Barnaby Rudge_ +it is not rendered less endurable by mannerism, nor puffed out with +rhetoric. + +One very famous character in this story was, as personages in historical +novels often are, made up out of two originals.[4] This was Grip the +Raven, who, after seeing the idiot hero of the tale safe through his +adventures, resumed his addresses on the subject of the kettle to the +horses in the stable; and who, "as he was a mere infant when Barnaby was +gray, has very probably gone on talking to the present time." In a later +preface to _Barnaby Rudge_, Dickens, with infinite humour, related his +experiences of the two originals in question, and how he had been +ravenless since the mournful death before the kitchen fire of the second +of the pair, the _Grip_ of actual life. This occurred in the house at +Devonshire Terrace, into which the family had moved two years before (in +1839). + +As Dickens's fame advanced his circle of acquaintances was necessarily +widened; and in 1841 he was invited to visit Edinburgh, and to receive +there the first great tribute of public recognition which had been paid to +him. He was entertained with great enthusiasm at a public banquet, voted +the freedom of the city, and so overwhelmed with hospitalities that, +notwithstanding his frank pleasure in these honours, he was glad to make +his escape at last, and refreshed himself with a tour in the Highlands. +These excitements may have intensified in him a desire which had for some +time been active in his mind, and which in any case would have been kept +alive by an incessant series of invitations. He had signed an agreement +with his publishers for a new book before this desire took the shape of an +actual resolution. There is no great difficulty in understanding why +Dickens made up his mind to go to America, and thus to interrupt for the +moment a course of life and work which was fast leading him on to great +heights of fame and fortune. The question of international copyright alone +would hardly have induced him to cross the seas. Probably he felt +instinctively that to see men and cities was part of the training as well +as of the recreation which his genius required. Dickens was by nature one +of those artists who when at work always long to be in sympathy with their +public, and to know it to be in sympathy with them. And hitherto he had +not met more than part of his public of readers face to face. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +STRANGE LANDS. + +[1842-1847.] + + +A journey across the Atlantic in midwinter is no child's-play even at the +present day, when, bad though their passage may have been, few people +would venture to confess doubts, as Dickens did, concerning the safety of +such a voyage by steam in heavy weather. The travellers--for Dickens was +accompanied by his wife--had an exceptionally rough crossing, the horrors +of which he has described in his _American Notes_. His powers of +observation were alive in the midst of the lethargy of sea-sickness, and +when he could not watch others he found enough amusement in watching +himself. At last, on January 28, 1842, they found themselves in Boston +harbour. Their stay in the United States lasted about four months, during +which time they saw Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, +Richmond, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Buffalo. Then they passed by +Niagara into Canada, and after a pleasant visit to Montreal, diversified +by private theatricals with the officers there, were safe at home again in +July. + +Dickens had met with an enthusiastic welcome in every part of the States +where he had not gone out of the way of it; in New York, in particular, +he had been feted, with a fervour unique even in the history of American +enthusiasms, under the resounding title of "the Guest of the Nation." +Still, even this imposed no moral obligation upon him to take the advice +tendered to him in America, and to avoid writing about that country--"we +are so very suspicious." On the other hand, whatever might be his +indignation at the obstinate unwillingness of the American public to be +moved a hair's-breadth by his championship of the cause of international +copyright,[5] this failure could not, in a mind so reasonable as his, have +outweighed the remembrance of the kindness shown to him and to his fame. +But the truth seems to be that he had, if not at first, at least very +speedily, taken a dislike to American ways which proved too strong for him +to the last. In strange lands, most of all in a country which, like the +United States, is not in the least ashamed to be what it is, travellers +are necessarily at the outset struck by details; and Dickens's habit of +minute observation was certain not to let him lose many of them. He was +neither long enough in the country to study very closely, nor was it in +his way to ponder very deeply, the problems involved in the existence of +many of the institutions with which he found fault. Thus, he was indignant +at the sight of slavery, and even ventured to "tell a piece of his mind" +on the subject to a judge in the South; but when, twenty years later, the +great struggle came, at the root of which this question lay, his +sympathies were with the cause of disunion and slavery in its conflict +with the "mad and villanous" North. In short, his knowledge of America +and its affairs was gained in such a way and under such circumstances as +to entitle him, if he chose, to speak to the vast public which he +commanded as an author of men and manners as observed by him; but he had +no right to judge the destinies and denounce the character of a great +people on evidence gathered in the course of a holiday tour. + +Nor, indeed, did the _American Notes_, published by him after his return +home, furnish any serious cause of offence. In an introductory chapter, +which was judiciously suppressed, he had taken credit for the book as not +having "a grain of any political ingredient in its whole composition." +Indeed, the contents were rather disappointing from their meagreness. The +author showed good taste in eschewing all reference to his personal +reception, and good judgment in leaving the copyright question +undiscussed. But though his descriptions were as vivid as usual--whether +of the small steamboat, "of about half a pony power," on the Connecticut +river, or of the dismal scenery on the Mississippi, "great father of +rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him!"--and +though some of the figure-sketches were touched off with the happiest of +hands, yet the public, even in 1842, was desirous to learn something more +about America than this. It is true that Dickens had, with his usual +conscientiousness, examined and described various interesting public +institutions in the States--prisons, asylums, and the like; but the book +was not a very full one; it was hardly anything but a sketch-book, with +more humour, but with infinitely less poetic spirit, than the +_Sketch-book_ of the illustrious American author whose friendship had been +one of the chief personal gains of Dickens's journey. + +The _American Notes_, for which the letters to Forster had furnished ample +materials, were published in the year of Dickens's return, after he had +refreshed himself with a merry Cornish trip in the company of his old +friend, and his two other intimates, "Stanny" and "Mac." But he had not +come home, as he had not gone out, to be idle. On the first day of the +following year, 1843, appeared the first number of the story which was to +furnish the real _casus discriminis_ between Dickens and the enemies, as +well no doubt as a very large proportion of the friends, whom he had left +behind him across the water. The American scenes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ +did not, it is true, begin till the fifth number of the story; nor is it +probable from the accounts of the sale, which was much smaller than +Dickens had expected, that these particular episodes at first produced any +strong feeling in the English public. But the merits of the book gradually +obtained for it a popularity at home which has been surpassed by that of +but one or two other of Dickens's works; and in proportion to this +popularity was the effect exercised by its American chapters. What that +effect has been, it would be hypocrisy to question. + +Dickens, it is very clear, had been unable to resist the temptation of at +once drawing upon the vast addition to his literary capital as a +humourist. That the satire of many of the American scenes in _Martin +Chuzzlewit_ is, as satire, not less true than telling, it needs but a +small acquaintance with American journalism and oratory even at the +present day to perceive; and the heartrending history of Eden, as a type +of some of the settlements "vaunted in England as a mine of Golden Hope," +at least had the warrant of something more than hearsay and a look in +passing. Nor, as has already been observed, would it have been in +accordance either with human nature, or with the fitness of things, had +Dickens allowed his welcome in America to become to him (as he termed it +in the suppressed Preface to the _Notes_) "an iron muzzle disguised +beneath a flower or two." But the frankness, to say the least, of the +mirror into which he now invited his late hosts to gaze was not likely to +produce grateful compliments to its presenter, nor was the effect softened +by the despatch with which this _souvenir_ of the "guest of the nation" +was pressed upon its attention. No doubt it would have been easy to +reflect that only the evil, not the good, sides of social life in America +were held up to derision and contempt, and that an honourable American +journalist had no more reason to resent the portraiture of Mr. Jefferson +Brick than a virtuous English paterfamilias had to quarrel with that of +Mr. Pecksniff. Unfortunately, offence is usually taken where offence is +meant; and there can be little doubt as to the _animus_ with which Dickens +had written. Only two months after landing at Boston Dickens had declared +to Macready, that "however much he liked the ingredients of this great +dish, he could not but say that the dish itself went against the grain +with him, and that he didn't like it." It was not, and could not be, +pleasant for Americans to find the "_New York Sewer_, in its twelfth +thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their +names printed," introduced as the first expression of "the bubbling +passions of their country;" or to be certified, apropos of a conversation +among American "gentlemen" after dinner, that dollars, and dollars only, +at the risk of honesty and honour, filled their souls. "No satirist," +Martin Chuzzlewit is told by a candid and open-minded American, "could, I +believe, breathe this air." But satire in such passages as these borders +too closely on angry invective; and neither the irresistible force nor the +earnest pathos of the details which follow can clear away the suspicion +that at the bottom lay a desire to depreciate. Nor was the general effect +of the American episodes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ materially modified by +their conclusion, to which, with the best of intentions, the author could +not bring himself to give a genuinely complimentary turn. The Americans +did not like all this, and could not be expected to like it. The tone of +the whole satire was too savage, and its tenor was too hopelessly +one-sided, for it to pass unresented; while much in it was too near the +truth to glance off harmless. It is well known that in time Dickens came +himself to understand this. Before quitting America, in 1868, he declared +his intention to publish in every future edition of his _American Notes_ +and _Martin Chuzzlewit_ his testimony to the magnanimous cordiality of his +second reception in the States, and to the amazing changes for the better +which he had seen everywhere around him during his second sojourn in the +country. But it is not likely that the postscript, all the more since it +was added under circumstances so honourable to both sides, has undone, or +will undo, the effect of the text. Very possibly the Americans may, in the +eyes of the English people as well as in their own, cease to be chargeable +with the faults and foibles satirised by Dickens; but the satire itself +will live, and will continue to excite laughter and loathing, together +with the other satire of the powerful book to which it belongs. + +For in none of his books is that power, which at times filled their author +himself with astonishment, more strikingly and abundantly revealed than in +_The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit_. Never was his inventive +force more flexible and more at his command; yet none of his books cost +him more hard work. The very names of hero and novel were only the final +fortunate choice out of a legion of notions; though "Pecksniff" as well as +"Charity" and "Mercy" ("not unholy names, I hope," said Mr. Pecksniff to +Mrs. Todgers) were first inspirations. The MS. text too is full of the +outward signs of care. But the author had his reward in the general +impression of finish which is conveyed by this book as compared with its +predecessors; so that _Martin Chuzzlewit_ may be described as already one +of the masterpieces of Dickens's maturity as a writer. Oddly enough, the +one part of the book which moves rather heavily is the opening chapter, an +effort in the mock-heroic, probably suggested by the author's eighteenth +century readings. + +A more original work, however, than _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was never +composed, or one which more freshly displays the most characteristic +qualities of its author's genius. Though the actual construction of the +story is anything but faultless--for what could be more slender than the +thread by which the American interlude is attached to the main action, or +more wildly improbable than the hazardous stratagem of old Martin upon +which that action turns?--yet it is so contrived as to fulfil the author's +avowed intention of exhibiting under various forms the evil and the folly +of selfishness. This vice is capable of both serious and comic treatment, +and commended itself in each aspect to Dickens as being essentially +antagonistic to his moral and artistic ideals of human life. A true comedy +of humours thus unfolded itself with the progress of his book, and one for +which the types had not been fetched from afar: "Your homes the scene; +yourselves the actors here," had been the motto which he had at first +intended to put upon his title-page. Thus, while in "the old-established +firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son" selfishness is cultivated as a growth +excellent in itself, and the son's sentiment, "Do other men, for they +would do you," is applauded by his admiring father, in young Martin the +vice rather resembles a weed strong and rank, yet not so strong but that +it gives way at last before a manly endeavour to uproot it. The character +of the hero, though very far from heroic, is worked out with that reliance +upon the fellow-feeling of candid readers which in our great novelists of +the eighteenth century has obtained sympathy for much less engaging +personages. More especially is the young man's loss of self-respect in the +season of his solitary wretchedness depicted with admirable feeling. It +would not, I think, be fanciful to assert that in this story Dickens has +with equal skill distinguished between two species of unselfishness. Mark +Tapley's is the actively unselfish nature, and though his reiteration of +his guiding motive is wearisome and occasionally absurd, yet the power of +coming out jolly under unpropitious circumstances is a genuinely English +ideal of manly virtue. Tom Pinch's character, on the other hand, is +unselfish from innate sweetness; and never has the art of Dickens drawn a +type which, while closely approaching the border-line of the grotesque, is +yet so charmingly true to nature. + +Grotesque characters proper are numerous enough in this book, but all the +others pale before the immortal presence of Mrs. Gamp. She had been traced +to an original in real life, but her literary right to stand on her own +legs has been most properly vindicated against any supposition of likeness +to the different type, the subject of Leigh Hunt's _Monthly Nurse_--a +paper, by-the-way, distinguished by shrewdness as well as feeling. +Imagination has never taken bolder flights than those requisite for the +development of Mrs. Gamp's mental processes: + + "'And which of all them smoking monsters is the Ankworks boat, I + wonder? Goodness me!' cried Mrs. Gamp. + + "'What boat did you want?' asked Ruth. + + "'The Ankworks package,' Mrs. Gamp replied. 'I will not deceive you, + my sweet. Why should I?' + + "'That is the Antwerp packet in the middle,' said Ruth. + + "'And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do!' cried Mrs. Gamp, + appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in this miraculous + aspiration." + +A hardly inferior exertion of creative power was needed in order to fix in +distinct forms the peculiarities of her diction, nay, to sustain the +unique rhythm of her speech: + + "'I says to Mrs. Harris,' Mrs. Gamp continued, 'only t' other day, the + last Monday fortnight as ever dawned upon this Piljian's Projiss of a + mortal wale; I says to Mrs. Harris, when she says to me, "Years and + our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us all"--"Say not the words, + Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to be continual friends, for sech is not + the case."'" + +Yet the reality of Mrs. Gamp has been acknowledged to be such that she has +been the death of her sisterhood in a great part (to say the least) of our +hospital wards and sick-rooms; and as for her oddities of tongue, they +are, with the exception of her boldest figures, but the glorified type of +all the utterances heard to this day from charwomen, laundresses, and +single gentlemen's house-keepers. Compared with her, even her friend and +patron, Mr. Mould, and her admirer, Mr. Bailey, and in other parts of the +book the low company at Todgers's and the fine company at Mr. Tigg +Montague's sink into insignificance. The aged Chuffey is a grotesque study +of a very different kind, of which the pathos never loses itself in +exaggeration. As for Pecksniff, he is as far out of the range of +grotesque as, except when moralising over the banisters at Todgers's, he +is out of that of genial characters. He is the richest comic type, while +at the same time one of the truest, among the innumerable reproductions in +English imaginative literature of our favourite national vice--hypocrisy. +His friendliness is the very quintessence of falsehood: "Mr. Pinch," he +cries to poor Tom over the currant-wine and captain's biscuits, "if you +spare the bottle, we shall quarrel!" His understanding with his daughters +is the very perfection of guile, for they confide in him, even when +ignorant of his intentions, because of their certainty "that in all he +does he has his purpose straight and full before him." And he is a man who +understands the times as well as the land in which he lives; for, as M. +Taine has admirably pointed out, where Tartuffe would have been full of +religious phrases, Pecksniff presents himself as a humanitarian +philosopher. Comic art has never more successfully fulfilled its highest +task after its truest fashion than in this picture of the rise and fall of +a creature who never ceases to be laughable, and yet never ceases to be +loathsome. Nothing is wanting in this wonderful book to attest the +exuberance of its author's genius. The kindly poetic spirit of the +Christmas books breathes in sweet Ruth Pinch; and the tragic power of the +closing chapters of _Oliver Twist_ is recalled by the picture of Jonas +before and after his deed of blood. I say nothing of merely descriptive +passages, though in none of his previous stories had Dickens so completely +mastered the secret of describing scenery and weather in their relation to +his action or his characters. + +_Martin Chuzzlewit_ ran its course of twenty monthly numbers; but already +a week or two before the appearance of the first of these, Dickens had +bestowed upon the public, young and old, the earliest of his delightful +_Christmas Books_. Among all his productions perhaps none connected him so +closely, and as it were personally, with his readers. Nor could it well +have been otherwise; since nowhere was he so directly intent upon +promoting kindliness of feeling among men--more especially good-will, +founded upon respect, towards the poor. Cheerfulness was, from his point +of view, twin-sister to charity; and sulkiness, like selfishness, +belonged, as an appropriate ort, to the dust-heap of "Tom Tiddler's +Ground." What more fit than that he should mingle such sentiments as these +with the holly and the mistletoe of the only English holiday in which +remains a vestige of religious and poetic feeling? Beyond all doubt there +is much that is tedious in the _cultus_ of Father Christmas, and there was +yet more in the days when the lower classes in England had not yet come to +look upon a sufficiency of periodical holidays as part of their democratic +inheritance. But that Dickens should constitute himself its chief minister +and interpreter was nothing but fit. Already one of the _Sketches_ had +commended a Christmas-dinner at which a seat is not denied even to "poor +Aunt Margaret;" and Mr. Pickwick had never been more himself than in the +Christmas game of Blind-man's-buff at Dingley Dell, in which "the poor +relations caught the people who they thought would like it," and, when the +game flagged, "got caught themselves." But he now sought to reach the +heart of the subject; and the freshness of his fancy enabled him +delightfully to vary his illustrations of a text of which it can do no man +harm to be reminded in as well as out of season. + +Dickens's Christmas books were published in the Christmas seasons of +1843-1846, and of 1848. If the palm is to be granted to any one among +them above its fellows, few readers would hesitate, I think, to declare +themselves in favour of _The Cricket on the Hearth_, as tender and +delicate a domestic idyl as any literature can boast. But the informing +spirit proper of these productions, the desire to stir up a feeling of +benevolence, more especially towards the poor and lowly, nowhere shows +itself more conspicuously than in the earliest, _A Christmas Carol in +Prose_, and nowhere more combatively than in the second in date, the +"Goblin Story" of _The Chimes_. Of the former its author declared that he +"wept and laughed and wept again" over it, "and excited himself in a most +extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking thereof he walked +about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a night, +when all the sober folks had gone to bed." Simple in its romantic design +like one of Andersen's little tales, the _Christmas Carol_ has never lost +its hold upon a public in whom it has called forth Christmas thoughts +which do not all centre on "holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, +geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, +puddings, fruit, and punch;" and the Cratchit household, with Tiny Tim, +who did not die, are living realities even to those who have not seen Mr. +Toole--an actor after Dickens's own heart--as the father of the family, +shivering in his half-yard of comforter. + +In _The Chimes_, composed in self-absorbed solitude at Genoa, he imagined +that "he had written a tremendous book, and knocked the _Carol_ out of the +field." Though the little work failed to make "the great uproar" he had +confidently anticipated, its purpose was certainly unmistakable; but the +effect of hard exaggerations such as Mr. Filer and Alderman Cute, and of a +burlesque absurdity like Sir Joseph Bowley, was too dreary to be +counteracted by the more pleasing passages of the tale. In his novel _Hard +Times_ Dickens afterwards reproduced some of the ideas, and repeated some +of the artistic mistakes, to be found in _The Chimes_, though the design +of the later work was necessarily of a more mixed kind. The Christmas book +has the tone of a _doctrinaire_ protest against _doctrinaires_, and, as +Forster has pointed out, is manifestly written under the influence of +Carlyle. But its main doctrine was one which Dickens lost no opportunity +of proclaiming, and which here breaks forth in the form of an indignant +appeal by Richard Fern, the outlaw in spite of himself: "Gentlefolks, be +not hard upon the poor!" No feeling was more deeply rooted in Dickens's +heart than this; nor could he forbear expressing it by invective and +satire as well as by humorous and pathetic pictures of his clients, among +whom Trotty Veck too takes a representative place. + +_The Cricket on the Hearth_, as a true work of art, is not troubled about +its moral, easily though half-a-dozen plain morals might be drawn from it; +a purer and more lightsome creation of the fancy has never been woven out +of homespun materials. Of the same imaginative type, though not executed +with a fineness so surpassing, is _The Battle of Life_, the treatment of a +fancy in which Dickens appears to have taken great pleasure. Indeed, he +declared that he was "thoroughly wretched at having to use the idea for so +short a story." As it stands, it is a pretty idyl of resignation, very +poetical in tone as well as in conception, though here and there, +notwithstanding the complaint just quoted, rather lengthy. It has been +conjectured, with much probability, that the success which had attended +dramatic versions of Dickens's previous Christmas books caused "those +admirable comedians, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley," to be in his mind "when he drew +the charming characters of Britain and Clemency Newcome." At all events +the pair serve as good old bits of English pottery to relieve the delicate +Sevres sentiment of Grace and Marion. In the last of Dickens's Christmas +books, _The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain_, he returns once more to +a machinery resembling those of the earliest. But the fancy on which the +action turns is here more forced, and the truth which it illustrates is +after all only a half-truth, unless taken as part of the greater truth, +that the moral conditions of man's life are more easily marred than +mended. Once more the strength of the book lies in its humorous side. The +picture of the good Milly's humble proteges, the Tetterby family, is to +remind us that happiness consists precisely in that which the poor and the +rich may alike obtain, but which it is so difficult for the poor, amidst +their shifts and shabbiness, to keep fresh and green. Even without the +evil influence of an enchanted chemist, it is hard enough for the Mrs. +Tetterbys of real life always to be ministering angels to their families; +for the hand of every little Tetterby not occasionally to be against the +other little Tetterbys, and even for a devoted Johnny's temper never to +rise against Moloch. All the more is that to be cherished in the poor +which makes them love one another. + +More than one of these Christmas books, both the humour and the sentiment +of which are so peculiarly English, was written on foreign soil. Dickens's +general conceptions of life, not less than his literary individuality, had +been formed before he became a traveller and sojourner in foreign lands. +In Italy, as elsewhere, a man will, in a sense, find only what he takes +there. At all events the changed life brought with it for Dickens, though +not at once, a refreshment and a brief repose which invigorated him for +some of the truest efforts of his genius. His resolution to spend some +time on the Continent had not been taken rashly, although it was at least +hastened by business disappointments. He seems at this time, as was +virtually inevitable, to have seen a good deal of society in London, and +more especially to have become a welcome guest of Lady Blessington and +Count d'Orsay at Gore House. Moreover, his services were beginning to be +occasionally claimed as a public speaker; and altogether he must have +found more of his time than he wished slipping through his hands. Lastly, +he very naturally desired to see what was to be seen, and to enjoy what +was to be enjoyed, by one gifted with a sleepless observation and animated +by a genuine love of nature and art. The letters, public and private, +which he wrote from Italy, are not among the most interesting productions +of his pen; even his humour seems now and then ill at ease in them, and +his descriptive power narrow in its range. His eyes were occasionally +veiled, as are those of most travellers in quest of "first impressions." +Thus I cannot but think his picture of Naples inadequate, and that of its +population unjust. Again, although he may have told the truth in asserting +that the Eternal City, at first sight, "looked like--I am half afraid to +write the word--like LONDON," and although his general description of Rome +has been pronounced correct by competent judgment, yet it is impossible to +ignore in it the undertone of Bow Bells. On the other hand, not even in +his newspaper letters can he be said to fall into affectation; his +impressions are never given pretentiously, and are accordingly seldom +altogether worthless; while his criticisms of works of art, when offered, +are candid and shrewd, besides being invariably his own. + +Thus, there was never anything truer in its way than the account which he +gave to Maclise of his first impressions a few days after his arrival at +Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where he found himself settled with his family +in July, 1844. He re-christened his abode, the Villa Bagnerello ("it +sounds romantic, but Signor Banderello is a butcher hard by"), "the Pink +Jail." Here, with abundance of space and time, and with a view from his +writing-table of "the sea, the mountains, the washed-out villas, the +vineyards, the blistering hot fort, with a sentry on the drawbridge +standing in a bit of shadow no broader than his own musket, and the sky," +he began his _villeggiatura_, and resolving not to know, or to be known +where it could be helped, looked round him at his leisure. This looking +round very naturally took up some time; for the circuit of Dickens's daily +observation was unusually wide. Soon he was seeking winter-quarters in +Genoa it self, and by October was established in the Palazzo Peschiere, +situate on a height within the walls of the city, and overlooking the +whole of it, with the harbour and the sea beyond. "There is not in Italy, +they say (and I believe them), a lovelier residence." Even here, however, +among fountains and frescoes, it was some time before he could set +steadily to work at his Christmas story. At last the bells of Genoa chimed +a title for it into his restless ears; and, though longing with a nostalgy +that was specially strong upon him at periods of mental excitement for his +nightly walks in the London streets, he settled down to his task. I have +already described the spirit in which he executed it. No sooner was the +writing done than the other half of his double artist-nature was seized +with another craving. The rage which possesses authors to read their +writings aloud to sympathizing ears, if such can be found, is a well-worn +theme of satire; but in Dickens the actor was almost as strong as the +author, and he could not withstand the desire to interpret in person what +he had written, and to watch its effect with his own eyes and ears. In the +first days of November, therefore, he set off from Genoa, and made his way +home by Bologna, Venice, Milan, and the Simplon Pass. Of this journey his +_Pictures from Italy_ contains the record, including a chapter about +Venice, pitched in an unusually poetic key. But not all the memories of +all the Doges could have stayed the execution of his set purpose. On the +30th of November he reached London, and on the 2d of December he was +reading the _Chimes_, from the proofs, to the group of friends +immortalised in Maclise's inimitable sketch. Three days afterwards the +reading was repeated to a slightly different audience; and, indeed, it +would seem, from an enthusiastic postscript to a letter addressed to his +wife, that he had read at least part of the book to Macready on the night +before that of the first conclave. The distance was no doubt wide between +the intimacy of these friendly readings and the stormy seas of public +audiences; but, however unconsciously, the first step had been taken. It +may be worth noticing, in connexion with this, that the scheme of a +private dramatic performance, which was to occupy much of Dickens's +"leisure" in the year following, was proposed for the first time on the +occasion of the first reading of the _Chimes_. Before Christmas he was +back again in his "Italian bowers." If the strain of his effort in writing +the _Chimes_ had been severe, the holiday which followed was long. In the +later winter and early spring of 1845 he and the ladies of his family saw +Rome and Naples, and in June their Italian life came to an end, and they +were in London before the close of the month. Projects of work remained in +abeyance until the absorbing fancy of a private play had been realised +with an earnestness such as only Dickens could carry into his amusements, +and into this particular amusement above all others. The play was _Every +Man in his Humour_; the theatre, the little house in Dean Street, of whose +chequered fortunes no theatrical history has succeeded in exhausting the +memories; and the manager was, of course, "Bobadil," as Dickens now took +to signing himself. His joking remark to Macready, that he "thought of +changing his present mode of life, and was open to an engagement," was +after all not so very wide of the mark. According to the inevitable rule +in such things, he and his friends--among whom Mark Lemon, Douglas +Jerrold, and Forster were conspicuous--were "induced" to repeat their +performance at a larger house for a public charity, and later in the year +they played _The Elder Brother_ for Miss Fanny Kelly's benefit. Leigh +Hunt, whose opinion, however, could hardly fail to be influenced by the +circumstances under which Ben Jonson's comedy was afterwards performed by +the amateurs, and who was no longer the youthful Draco of the _News_, +afterwards spoke very highly of Dickens's Bobadil. It had "a spirit in it +of intellectual apprehension beyond anything the existing stage has +shown." His acting in the farce which followed Leigh Hunt thought +"throughout admirable; quite rich and filled up." + +Christmas, 1845, had passed, and _The Cricket on the Hearth_ had graced +the festival, when an altogether new chapter in Dickens's life seemed +about to open for him. The experience through which he now passed was one +on which his biographer, for reasons easy to guess, has touched very +slightly, while his _Letters_ throw no additional light on it at all. Most +people, I imagine, would decline to pronounce upon the qualifications +requisite in an editor of a great political journal. Yet, literary power +of a kind which acts upon the multitude rapidly and powerfully, habits of +order so confirmed as to have almost become second nature, and an interest +in the affairs of the nation fed by an ardent enthusiasm for its +welfare--these would seem to go some way towards making up the list. Of +all these qualifications Dickens at various times gave proof, and they +sufficed in later years to make him the successful conductor of a weekly +journal which aimed at the enlightenment hardly less than at the +entertainment of no inconsiderable portion of the British public. But, in +the first place, political journalism proper is a craft of which very few +men have been known to become masters by intuition, and Dickens had as yet +had no real experience of it. His zealous efforts as a reporter can hardly +be taken into account here. He had for a short time edited a miscellany of +amusement, and had failed to carry beyond a beginning the not very +carefully considered scheme of another. Recently, he had resumed the old +notion of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ in a different shape; but nothing had +come of his projected cheap weekly paper for the present, while its title, +"_The Cricket_," was reserved for a different use. Since his reporting +days he had, however, now and then appeared among the lighter combatants +of political literature. In 1841 he had thrown a few squibs in the +_Examiner_ at Sir Robert Peel and the Tories; and from about the same date +he had, besides occasionally contributing to the literary and theatrical +columns of the same weekly journal, now and then discussed in it subjects +of educational or other general interest.[6] Finally, it is stated by +Forster that in 1844, when the greatest political struggle of the last +generation was approaching its climax, Dickens contributed some articles +to the _Morning Chronicle_ which attracted attention and led to +negotiations with the editor that arrived at no positive result. If these +contributions treated any political questions whatever, they were, with +the exception of the few _Examiner_ papers, and of the letters to the +_Daily News_ to be mentioned in this chapter, the only articles of this +kind which, to my knowledge, he ever wrote. + +For, from first to last, whether in the days when Oliver Twist suffered +under the maladministration of the Poor-law, or in those when Arthur +Clennam failed to make an impression upon the Circumlocution Office, +politics were with Dickens a sentiment rather than a study or a pursuit. +With his habits of application and method, it might have taken but a very +short time for him to train himself as a politician; but this short time +never actually occurred. There is, however, no reason to suppose that +when, in 1841, a feeler was put out by some more or less influential +persons at Reading, with regard to his willingness to be nominated for the +representation of that borough, he had any reason for declining the +proposal besides that which he stated in his replies. He could not afford +the requisite expense; and he was determined not to forfeit his +independence through accepting Government--by which I hope he means Whig +party--aid for meeting the cost of the contest. Still, in 1845, though +slack of faith in the "people who govern us," he had not yet become the +irreclaimable political sceptic of later days; and without being in any +way bound to the Whigs, he had that general confidence in Lord John +Russell which was all they could expect from their irregular followers. As +yet, however, he had shown no sign of any special aptitude or inclination +for political work, though if he addressed himself to questions affecting +the health and happiness of the humbler classes, he was certain to bring +to them the enthusiasm of a genuine sympathy. And a question of this kind +was uppermost in Englishmen's minds in this year 1845, when at last the +time was drawing near for the complete abolition of the tax upon the +staple article of the poor man's daily food. + +The establishment of a new London morning paper, on the scale to which +those already in existence had attained, was a serious matter in itself; +but it seems to have been undertaken in no spirit of diffidence by the +projectors and first proprietors of the _Daily News_. With the early +history of the experiment I cannot here concern myself; it is, however, an +open secret that the rate of expenditure of the new journal was at first +on a most liberal, not to say lavish, scale, and that the losses of the +proprietors were for many years very large indeed. Established on those +principles of Radicalism which, on the whole, it has in both good and evil +times consistently maintained, the _Daily News_ was to rise superior to +the opportunism, if not to the advertisements, of the _Times_, and to +outstrip the cautious steps of the Whig _Morning Chronicle_. Special +attention was to be given to those industrial enterprises with which the +world teemed in that speculative age, and no doubt also to those social +questions affecting the welfare and elevation of the masses and the +relations between employers and employed, which were attracting more and +more of the public attention. But in the first instance the actual +political situation would oblige the new journal to direct the greater +part of its energies to one particular question, which had, in truth, +already been threshed out by the organs of public opinion, and as to which +the time for action had at last arrived. No Liberal journal projected in +1845, and started early in 1846, could fail to concentrate its activity +for a time upon the question of the Corn-laws, to which the session of +1846 was to give the death-blow. + +It is curious enough, on opening the first number of the _Daily News_, +dated January 21, 1846, to find one's self transplanted into the midst of +one of the most memorable episodes of our more recent political history. +The very advertisements of subscriptions to the Anti-Corn-law League, with +the good old Manchester names figuring conspicuously among them, have a +historic interest; and the report of a disputation on free-trade at +Norwich, in which all the hits are made by Mr. Cobden, another report of a +great London meeting on the same subject, and some verses concerning the +people's want of its bread, probably written by Mr. Charles Mackay, occupy +an entire page of the paper. Railway news and accounts of railway meetings +fill about the same space; while the foreign news is extremely meagre. +There remain the leading articles, four in number--of which three are on +the burning question of the day--and the first of a series of _Travelling +Letters Written on the Road, by Charles Dickens_ (the Avignon chapter in +the _Pictures from Italy_.)[7] The hand of the editor is traceable only +in this _feuilleton_ and in the opening article of the new paper. On +internal evidence I conclude that this article, which has little to +distinguish it from similar manifestoes, unless it be a moderation of tone +that would not have suited Captain Shandon, was not written by Dickens +alone or unassisted. But his hand is traceable in the concluding +paragraphs, which contain the following wordy but spirited assertion of a +cause that Dickens lost no opportunity of advocating: + + "We seek, so far as in us lies, to elevate the character of the Public + Press in England. We believe it would attain a much higher position, + and that those who wield its powers would be infinitely more respected + as a class, and an important one, if it were purged of a disposition + to sordid attacks _upon itself_, which only prevails in England and + America. We discern nothing in the editorial plural that justifies a + gentleman, or body of gentlemen, in discarding a gentleman's + forbearance and responsibility, and venting ungenerous spleen against + a rival, by a perversion of a great power--a power, however, which is + only great so long as it is good and honest. The stamp on newspapers + is not like the stamp on universal medicine-bottles, which licenses + anything, however false and monstrous; and we are sure this misuse of + it, in any notorious case, not only offends and repels right-minded + men in that particular instance, but naturally, though unjustly, + involves the whole Press, as a pursuit or profession, in the feeling + so awakened, and places the character of all who are associated with + it at a great disadvantage. + + "Entering on this adventure of a new daily journal in a spirit of + honourable competition and hope of public usefulness, we seek, in our + new station, at once to preserve our own self-respect, and to be + respected, for ourselves and for it, by our readers. Therefore, we + beg them to receive, in this our first number, the assurance that no + recognition or interchange of trade abuse, by us, shall be the + destruction of either sentiment; and that we intend proceeding on our + way, and theirs, without stooping to any such flowers by the + roadside." + +I am unable to say how many days it was after the appearance of this first +number that Dickens, or the proprietors of the journal, or, as seems most +likely, both sides simultaneously, began to consider the expediency of +ending the connexion between them. He was "revolving plans for quitting +the paper" on January 30, and resigned his editorship on February 9 +following. In the interval, with the exception of two or three more of the +_Travelling Letters_, very few signs of his hand appear in the journal. +The number of January 24, however, contains an editorial contribution, in +the shape of "a new song, but an old story," concerning _The British +Lion_, his accomplishment of eating Corn-law Leagues, his principal +keeper, _Wan Humbug_, and so forth. This it would be cruel to unearth. A +more important indication of a line of writing that his example may have +helped to domesticate in the _Daily News_ appears in the number of +February 4, which contains a long letter, with his signature, urging the +claims of Ragged Schools, and giving a graphic account of his visit to one +in Saffron Hill. After he had placed his resignation in the hands of the +proprietors, and was merely holding on at his post till the time of his +actual withdrawal, he was naturally not anxious to increase the number of +his contributions. The _Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers_--which appeared +on February 14--is, of course, an echo of the popular cry of the day; but +the subtler pathos of Dickens never found its way into his verse. The most +important, and so far as I know, the last, of his contributions to the +_Daily News_, consisted of a series of three letters (March 9, 13, and +16) on capital punishment. It was a question which much occupied him at +various times of his life, and on which it cannot be shown that he really +changed his opinions. The letters in the _Daily News_, based in part on +the arguments of one of the ablest men of his day, the "unlucky" Mr. +Wakefield, are an interesting contribution to the subject; and the first +of them, with its Hogarthian sketch of the temptation and fall of Thomas +Hocker, Sunday-school teacher and murderer, would be worth reprinting as +an example of Dickens's masterly use of the argument _ex concreto_. + +The few traditions which linger in the _Daily News_ office concerning +Dickens as editor of the paper, agree with the conjecture that his labours +on its behalf were limited, or very nearly so, to the few pieces +enumerated above. Of course there must have been some inevitable business; +but of this much may have been taken off his hands by his sub-editor, Mr. +W. H. Wills, who afterwards became his _alter ego_ at the office of his +own weekly journal and his intimate personal friend. In the days of the +first infancy of the _Daily News_, Mr. Britton, the present publisher of +that journal, was attached to the editor as his personal office attendant; +and he remembers very vividly what little there can have been to remember +about Dickens's performance of his functions. His habit, following a +famous precedent, was to make up for coming late--usually about half-past +ten P.M.--by going away early--usually not long after midnight. There were +frequently sounds of merriment, if not of modest revelry, audible from the +little room at the office in Lombard Street, where the editor sat in +conclave with Douglas Jerrold and one or two other intimates. Mr. Britton +is not sure that the work did not sometimes begin _after the editor had +left_; but at all events he cannot recollect that Dickens ever wrote +anything at the office--that he ever, for instance, wrote about a debate +that had taken place in Parliament on the same night. And he sums up his +reminiscences by declaring his conviction that Dickens was "not a +newspaper man, at least not when in 'the chair.'" And so Dickens seems on +this occasion to have concluded; for when, not long after quitting the +paper, he republished with additions the _Travelling Letters_ which during +his conduct of it had been its principal ornaments, he spoke of "a brief +mistake he had made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between +himself and his readers, and departing for a moment from his old +pursuits." He had been virtually out of "the chair" almost as soon as he +had taken it. His successor, but only for a few months, was his friend +Forster. + +Never has captive released made a more eager or a better use of his +recovered freedom. Before the summer had fairly set in Dickens had let his +house, and was travelling with his family up the Rhine towards +Switzerland. This was, I think, Dickens's only passage through Germany, +which in language and literature remained a _terra incognita_ to him, +while in various ways so well known to his friendly rivals, Lord Lytton +and Thackeray. He was on the track of poor Thomas Hood's old journeyings, +whose facetious recollections of Rhineland he had some years before +reviewed in a spirit of admiration rather for the author than for the +book, funny as it is. His point of destination was Lausanne, where he had +resolved to establish his household for the summer, and where by the +middle of June they were most agreeably settled in a little villa or +cottage which did not belie its name of Rosemont, and from which they +looked upon the lake and the mighty Alpine chain beyond. If Rome had +reminded Dickens of London, the green woods near Lausanne recalled to him +his Kentish glades; but he had the fullest sense and the truest enjoyment +of the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, and lost no opportunity of becoming +acquainted with them. Thus his letters contain an admirable description +(not untinged with satire) of a trip to the Great St. Bernard and its +convent, many years afterwards reproduced in one of the few enjoyable +chapters of the Second Part of _Little Dorrit_. More interesting, however, +because more characteristic, is the freshness and candour with which in +Switzerland, where by most English visitors the native inhabitants are +"taken for granted," he set himself to observe, and, so far as he could, +to appreciate, the people among whom he was a temporary resident. His +solutions of some of the political difficulties, which were mostly +connected with religious differences, at that time rife in Switzerland, +are palpably one-sided. But the generosity of spirit which reveals itself +in his kindly recognition of the fine qualities of the people around him +is akin to what was best and noblest in Dickens. + +He had, at the same time, been peculiarly fortunate in finding at Lausanne +a circle of pleasant acquaintances, to whom he dedicated the Christmas +book which he wrote among the roses and the foliage of his lake-side +cottage. Of course _The Battle of Life_ was read aloud by its author to so +kindly an audience. The day of parting, however, soon came; on the 16th of +November _paterfamilias_ had his "several tons of luggage, other tons of +servants, and other tons of children," in travelling order, and soon had +safely stowed them away at Paris "in the most preposterous house in the +world. The like of it cannot, and so far as my knowledge goes, does not, +exist in any other part of the globe. The bedrooms are like opera-boxes; +the dining-rooms, staircases, and passages quite inexplicable. The +dining-room"--which in another letter he describes as "mere midsummer +madness"--"is a sort of cavern, painted (ceiling and all) to represent a +grove, with unaccountable bits of looking-glass sticking in among the +branches of the trees. There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room, but +it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints in a +telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery." Here, with the +exception of two brief visits to England, paid before his final departure, +he spent three months, familiarising himself for the first time of his +life with the second of his "Two Cities." + +Dickens came to know the French language well enough to use it with ease, +if not with elegance; and he lost no opportunity, it need hardly be said, +of resorting to the best of schools for the purpose. Macready, previously +addressed from "Altorf," had made him acquainted with Regnier, of the +Theatre Francais, who in his turn had introduced him to the greenroom of +the house of Moliere. Other theatres were diligently visited by him and +Forster, when the latter arrived on a visit; and celebrities were polite +and hospitable to their distinguished English _confrere_. With these, +however, Dickens was not cosmopolitan enough to consort except in passing; +the love of literary society _because_ it is literary society was at no +time one of his predilections or foibles. The streets of Paris were to him +more than its _salons_, more even than its theatres. They are so to a +larger number of Englishmen than that which cares to confess it, but +Dickens would have been the last to disown the impeachment. They were the +proper sphere for his powers of humorous observation, as he afterwards +showed in more than one descriptive paper as true to life as any of his +London _Sketches_. And, moreover, he _needed_ the streets for the work +which he had in hand. _Dombey and Son_ had been begun at Rosemont, and the +first of its twenty monthly numbers had been published in October, 1846. +No reader of the book is likely to forget how, after writing the chapter +which relates the death of little Paul, Dickens during the greater part of +the night wandered restlessly with a heavy heart about the Paris streets. +Sooner, however, than he had intended, his residence abroad had to come to +a close; and early in 1847 he and his family were again in London. + +_Dombey and Son_ has, perhaps, been more criticised than any other amongst +the stories of its author; and yet it certainly is not the one which has +been least admired, or least loved. Dickens himself, in the brief preface +which he afterwards prefixed to the story, assumed a half-defiant air +which sits ill upon the most successful author, but which occasionally he +was tempted to assume. Before condescending to defend the character of Mr. +Dombey as in accordance with both probability and experience, he "made so +bold as to believe that the faculty (or the habit) of correctly observing +the characters of men is a rare one." Yet, though the drawing of this +character is only one of the points which have been objected against the +story, not only did the book at the time of publication far surpass its +predecessor in popularity, but it has, I believe, always preserved to +itself a special congregation of enthusiastic admirers. Manifestly, this +novel is one of its author's most ambitious endeavours. In it, more +distinctly even than in _Chuzzlewit_, he has chosen for his theme one of +the chief vices of human nature, and has striven to show what pride +cannot achieve, what it cannot conquer, what it cannot withstand. This +central idea gives to the story, throughout a most varied succession of +scenes, a unity of action to be found in few of Dickens's earlier works. +On the other hand, _Dombey and Son_ shares with these earlier productions, +and with its successor, _David Copperfield_, the freshness of invention +and spontaneous flow of both humour and pathos which at times are wanting +in the more powerfully conceived and more carefully constructed romances +of Dickens's later years. If there be any force at all in the common +remark that the most interesting part of the book ends together with the +life of little Paul, the censure falls upon the whole design of the +author. Little Paul, in something besides the ordinary meaning of the +words, was born to die; and though, like the writer, most readers may have +dreaded the hour which was to put an end to that frail life, yet in this +case there could be no question--such as was possible in the story of +Little Nell--of any other issue. Indeed, deep as is the pathos of the +closing scene, its beauty is even surpassed by those which precede it. In +death itself there is release for a child as for a man, and for those +sitting by the pillow of the patient; but it is the gradual approach of +death which seems hardest of all for the watchers to bear; it is the +sinking of hope which seems even sadder than its extinction. What old +fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so +visibly expressed in him, so plainly seen by so many people? Every heart +is softened and every eye dimmed as the innocent child passes on his way +to his grave. The hand of God's angel is on him; he is no longer +altogether of this world. The imagination which could picture and present +this mysterious haze of feeling, through which the narrative moves, half +like a reality, half like a dream, is that of a true poet, and of a great +one. + +What even the loss of his son could not effect in Mr. Dombey is to be +accomplished in the progress of the story by a yet stronger agency than +sorrow. His pride is to be humbled to the dust, where he is to be sought +and raised up by the love of his despised and ill-used daughter. Upon the +relations between this pair, accordingly, it was necessary for the author +to expend the greatest care, and upon the treatment of those relations the +criticism to which the character of Mr. Dombey has been so largely +subjected must substantially turn. The unfavourable judgments passed upon +it have, in my opinion, not been altogether unjust. The problem obviously +was to show how the father's cold indifference towards the daughter +gradually becomes jealousy, as he finds that upon her is concentrated, +first, the love of his innocent little son, and then that of his haughty +second wife; and how hereupon this jealousy deepens into hate. But, unless +we are to suppose that Mr. Dombey hated his daughter from the first, the +disfavour shown by him on her account to young Walter Gay remains without +adequate explanation. His dislike of Florence is not manifestly founded +upon his jealousy of what Mrs. Chick calls her brother's "infatuation" for +her; and the main motives at work in the unhappy man are either not very +skilfully kept asunder, or not very intelligibly intermixed. Nor are the +later stages of the relations between father and daughter altogether +satisfactorily conceived. The momentary yielding of Mr. Dombey, after his +"coming home" with his new wife, is natural and touching; but his threat +to visit his daughter with the consequences of her step-mother's conduct +is sheer brutality. The passage in which Mr. Dombey's ultimatum to Mrs. +Dombey is conveyed by him in her presence through a third person is so +artificial as to fall not very far short of absurdity. The closing scene +which leads to the flight of Florence is undeniably powerful; but it is +the development of the relations between the pair in which the art of the +author is in my judgment occasionally at fault. + +As to the general effect of the latter part of the story--or rather of its +main plot--which again has been condemned as melodramatic and unnatural, a +distinction should be drawn between its incidents and its characters. +Neither Edith Dombey nor Mr. Carker is a character of real life. The pride +of the former comes very near to bad breeding, and her lapses into +sentiment seem artificial lapses. How differently Thackeray would have +managed the "high words" between her and her frivolous mother! how +differently, for that matter, he _has_ managed a not altogether dissimilar +scene in the _Newcomes_ between Ethel Newcome and old Lady Kew! As for Mr. +Carker, with his white teeth and glistening gums, who calls his unhappy +brother "Spaniel," and contemplates a life of sensual ease in Sicily, he +has the semi-reality of the stage. Possibly the French stage had helped to +suggest the _scene de la piece_ between the fugitives at Dijon--an +effective situation, but one which many a novelist might have worked out +not less skilfully than Dickens. His own master-hand, however, re-asserts +itself in the wondrously powerful narrative of Carker's flight and death. +Here again he excites terror--as in the same book he had evoked pity--by +foreshadowing, without prematurely revealing, the end. We know what the +morning is to bring which rises in awful tranquillity over the victim of +his own sins; and, as in Turner's wild but powerful picture, the engine +made by the hand of man for peaceful purposes seems a living agent of +wrath.[8] + +No other of Dickens's books is more abundantly stocked than this with +genuinely comic characters; but nearly all of them, in accordance with the +pathetic tone which is struck at the outset, and which never dies out till +the story has run its course, are in a more subdued strain of humour. Lord +Jeffrey was, I think, warranted in his astonishment that Dickens should +devote so much pains to characters like Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox. Probably +the habit remained with him from his earliest times of authorship, when he +had not always distinguished very accurately between the humorous and the +_bizarre_. But Polly and the Toodles household, Mrs. Pipchin and her +"select infantine boarding-house," and the whole of Doctor Blimber's +establishment, from the Doctor himself down to Mr. Toots, and up again, in +the scale of intellect, to Mr. Feeder, B.A., are among the most admirable +of all the great humourist's creations. Against this ample provision for +her poor little brother's nursing and training Florence has to set but her +one Susan Nipper; but she is a host in herself, an absolutely original +character among the thousands of _soubrettes_ that are known to comedy and +fiction, and one of the best tonic mixtures ever composed out of much +humour and not a few grains of pathos. Her tartness has a cooling flavour +of its own; but it is the Mrs. Pipchinses only upon whom she acts, as +their type acted upon her, "like early gooseberries." Of course she has a +favourite figure of speech belonging to herself, which rhetoricians would +probably class among the figures "working by surplusage:" + + "'Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, + Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole + set.'" + +Dickens was to fall very largely into this habit of "labelling" his +characters, as it has been called, by particular tricks or terms of +speech; and there is a certain excess in this direction already in _Dombey +and Son_, where not only Miss Nipper and Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots, but +Major Bagstock too and Cousin Feenix, are thus furnished forth. But the +invention is still so fresh and the play of humour so varied, that this +mannerism cannot be said as yet seriously to disturb them. A romantic +charm of a peculiar kind clings to honest Captain Cuttle and the quaint +home over which he mounts guard during the absence of its owner. The +nautical colouring and concomitant fun apart--for only Smollett could have +drawn Jack Bunsby's fellow, though the character in his hands would have +been differently accentuated--Dickens has never approached more nearly to +the manner of Sir Walter Scott than in this singularly attractive part of +his book. Elsewhere the story passes into that sphere of society in +describing which Dickens was, as a novelist, rarely very successful. But +though Edith is cold and unreal, there is, it cannot be denied, human +nature in the pigments and figments of her hideous old mother; and, to +outward appearance at all events, the counterparts of her apoplectic +admirer, Major Bagstock, still pace those pavements and promenades which +it suits them to frequent. Cousin Feenix is likewise very far from +impossible, and is besides extremely delightful--and a good fellow too at +bottom, so that the sting of the satire is here taken away. On the other +hand, the meeting between the _sacs et parchemins_ at Mr. Dombey's house +is quite out of focus. + +The book has other heights and depths, and pleasant and unpleasant parts +and passages. But enough has been said to recall the exuberant creative +force, and the marvellous strength of pathos and humour which _Dombey and +Son_ proves that Dickens, now near the very height of his powers as a +writer of fiction, possessed. In one of his public readings many years +afterwards, when he was reciting the adventures of Little Dombey, he +narrates that "a very good fellow," whom he noticed in the stalls, could +not refrain from wiping the tears out of his eyes as often as he thought +that Toots was coming on. And just as Toots had become a reality to this +good fellow, so Toots and Toots's little friend, and divers other +personages in this story, have become realities to half the world that +reads the English tongue, and to many besides. What higher praise could be +given to this wonderful book? Of all the works of its author none has more +powerfully and more permanently taken hold of the imagination of its +readers. Though he conjured up only pictures familiar to us from the +aspect of our own streets and our own homes, he too wielded a wizard's +wand. + +After the success of _Dombey_ it might have seemed that nothing further +was wanting to crown the prosperity of Dickens's literary career. While +the publication of this story was in progress he had concluded +arrangements for the issue of his collected writings, in a cheap edition, +which began in the year 1847, and which he dedicated "to the English +people, in whose approval, if the books be true in spirit, they will +live, and out of whose memory, if they be false, they will very soon die." +He who could thus proudly appeal to posterity was already, beyond all +dispute, the people's chosen favourite among its men of letters. That +position he was not to lose so long as he lived; but even at this time the +height had not been reached to which (in the almost unanimous judgment of +those who love his writings) he was in his next work to attain. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +"DAVID COPPERFIELD." + +[1847-1851.] + + +The five years, reckoned roughly, from the beginning of 1847 to the close +of 1851, were most assuredly the season in which the genius of Dickens +produced its richest and rarest fruit. When it opened he was still at work +upon _Dombey and Son_; towards its end he was already engaged upon the +earliest portions of _Bleak House_. And it was during the interval that he +produced a book cherished by himself with an affection differing in kind, +as well as in degree, from the common fondness of an author for his +literary offspring, and a pearl without a peer amongst the later fictions +of our English school--_David Copperfield_. To this period also belong, it +is true, not a few lesser productions of the same ready pen; for the last +of his Christmas books was written in 1848, and in 1850 his weekly +periodical, _Household Words_, began to run its course. There was much +play too in these busy years, but all more or less of the kind which his +good-humoured self-irony afterwards very correctly characterised: + + "'Play!' said Thomas Idle. 'Here is a man goes systematically tearing + himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant course of + training, as if he were always under articles to fight a match for the + champion's belt, and he calls it "Play." Play!' exclaimed Thomas + Idle, scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air; 'you can't + play. You don't know what it is. You make work of everything!'" + +"A man," added the same easy philosopher, "who can do nothing by halves +appears to me to be a fearful man." And as at all times in Dickens's life, +so most emphatically in these years when his physical powers seemed ready +to meet every demand, and the elasticity of his mind seemed equal to every +effort, he did nothing by halves. Within this short space of time not only +did he write his best book, and conduct a weekly journal of solid merit +through its most trying stage, but he also established his reputation as +one of the best "unpolitical" speakers in the country; and as an amateur +actor and manager successfully weathered what may be called three +theatrical seasons, to the labours and glories of which it would be +difficult to find a parallel even in the records of that most exacting of +all social amusements. One likes to think of him in these years of +vigorous manhood, no longer the fair youth with the flowing locks of +Maclise's charming portrait, but not yet, I suppose, altogether the +commanding and rather stern presence of later years. Mr. Frith's portrait +was not painted till 1859, by which time the face occasionally had a more +set expression, and the entire personality a more weather-beaten +appearance, than this well-known picture suggests. But even eight years +before this date, when Dickens was acting in Lord Lytton's comedy the part +of a young man of _mode_, Mr. Sala's well-known comparison of his outward +man to "some prosperous sea-captain home from a sea-voyage," was thought +applicable to him by another shrewd observer, Mr. R. H. Horne, who says +that, fashionable "make-up" notwithstanding, "he presented a figure that +would have made a good portrait of a Dutch privateer after having taken a +capital prize." And in 1856 Ary Scheffer, to whom when sitting for his +portrait he had excused himself for being a difficult subject, "received +the apology as strictly his due, and said, with a vexed air, 'At this +moment, _mon cher_ Dickens, you look more like an energetic Dutch admiral +than anything else;' for which I apologised again." In 1853, in the +sympathetic neighbourhood of Boulogne, he was "growing a mustache," and, +by 1856, a beard of the _Henri Quatre_ type had been added; but even +before that time we may well believe that he was, as Mr. Sala says, "one +of the few men whose individuality was not effaced by the mournful +conventionality of evening-dress." Even in morning-dress he unconsciously +contrived, born actor as he was, to have something unusual about him; and, +if report speaks the truth, even at the sea-side, when most prodigal of +ease, he was careful to dress the character. + +The five years of which more especially I am speaking brought him +repeatedly face to face with the public, and within hearing of the +applause that was becoming more and more of a necessity to him. They were +thus unmistakably amongst the very happiest years of his life. The shadow +that was to fall upon his home can hardly yet have been visible even in +the dim distance. For this the young voices were too many and too fresh +around him behind the garden-wall in Devonshire Terrace, and amongst the +autumnal corn on the cliffs at Broadstairs. "They are all in great force," +he writes to his wife, in September, 1850, and "much excited with the +expectation of receiving you on Friday;" and I only wish I had space to +quote the special report sent on this occasion to the absent mother +concerning her precocious three-year-old. What sorrowful experiences he in +these years underwent were such as few men escape amongst the chances of +life. In 1848 he lost the sister who had been the companion of his +earliest days, and three years later his father, whom he had learned to +respect as well as love. Not long afterwards his little Dora, the youngest +of his flock, was suddenly taken from him. Meanwhile, his old friends +clung to him. Indeed, I never heard that he lost the affection of any one +who had been attached to him; and though the circle of his real intimates +was never greatly widened, yet he was on friendly or even familiar terms +with many whose names belong to the history of their times. Amongst these +were the late Lord Lytton--then Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton--whose splendid +abilities were still devoted mainly to literary labours, and between whom +and Dickens there were more points of contrast than might at first sight +appear. Of Thackeray, too, he seems to have been coming to know more; and +with Leech, more especially during a summer sojourn of both their families +at Bonchurch, in 1849, he grew intimate. Mr. Monckton Milnes--then, and +since as Lord Houghton, _semper amicus, semper hospes_ both to successful +merit and to honest endeavour--Lord Carlisle, and others who adorned the +great world under more than one of its aspects, were, of course, welcome +friends and acquaintances; and even Carlyle occasionally found his way to +the house of his staunch admirer, though he might declare that he was, in +the language of Mr. Peggotty's house-keeper, "a lorn lone creature, and +everything went contrairy with him." + +It is not very easy to describe the personal habits of a man who is found +seeing the spring in at Brighton and the autumn out at Broadstairs, and in +the interval "strolling" through the chief towns of the kingdom at the +head of a large company of ladies and gentlemen, according to the +description which he put into Mrs. Gamp's mouth, "with a great box of +papers under his arm, a-talking to everybody wery indistinct, and exciting +of himself dreadful." But since under ordinary circumstances he made, even +in outward matters and arrangements of detail, a home for himself wherever +he was, and as a rule cared little for the society of companions whose +ideas and ways of life were foreign to his own, certain habits had become +second nature to him, and to others he adhered with sophistical tenacity. +He was an early riser, if for no other reason, because every man in whose +work imagination plays its part must sometimes be alone; and Dickens has +told us that there was to him something incomparably solemn in the still +solitude of the morning. But it was only exceptionally, and when +hard-pressed by the necessities of his literary labours, that he wrote +before breakfast; in general he was contented with the ordinary working +hours of the morning, not often writing after luncheon, and, except in +early life, never in the evening. Ordinarily, when engaged on a work of +fiction, he considered three of his not very large MS. pages a good, and +four an excellent, day's work; and, while very careful in making his +corrections clear and unmistakable, he never rewrote what a morning's +labour had ultimately produced. On the other hand, he was frequently slow +in beginning a story, being, as he himself says, affected by something +like despondency at such times, or, as he elsewhere humorously puts it, +"going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go about +and about his sugar before he touches it." A temperate liver, he was at +the same time a zealous devotee of bodily exercise. He had not as yet +given up riding, and is found, in 1848, spending the whole of a March day, +with Forster, Leech, and Mark Lemon, in riding over every part of +Salisbury Plain. But walking exercise was at once his forte and his +fanaticism. He is said to have constructed for himself a theory that, to +every portion of the day given to intellectual labour should correspond an +equal number of hours spent in walking; and frequently, no doubt, he gave +up his morning's chapter before he had begun it, "entirely persuading +himself that he was under a moral obligation" to do his twenty miles on +the road. By day he found in the London thoroughfares stimulative variety, +and at a later date he states it to be "one of his fancies that even his +idlest walk must have its appointed destination;" and by night, in seasons +of intellectual excitement, he found in these same streets the refreshment +of isolation among crowds. But the walks he loved best were long stretches +on the cliffs or across the downs by the sea, where, following the track +of his "breathers," one half expects to meet him coming along against the +wind at four and a half miles an hour, the very embodiment of energy and +brimful of life. + +And besides this energy he carried with him, wheresoever he pitched his +tent, what was the second cause of his extraordinary success in so much of +the business of life as it fell to him to perform. He hated disorder as +Sir Artegal hated injustice; and if there was anything against which he +took up his parable with burning indignation, it was slovenliness, and +half-done work, and "shoddiness" of all kinds. His love of order made him +always the most regular of men. "Everything with him," Miss Hogarth told +me, "went as by clock-work; his movements, his absences from home, and the +times of his return were all fixed beforehand, and it was seldom that he +failed to adhere to what he had fixed." Like most men endowed with a +superfluity of energy, he prided himself on his punctuality. He could not +live in a room or in a house till he had put every piece of furniture into +its proper place, nor could he begin to work till all his writing-gear was +at hand, with no item missing or misplaced. Yet he did not, like so many, +combine with these habits and tendencies a saving disposition. "No man," +he said of himself, "attaches less importance to the possession of money, +or less disparagement to the want of it, than I do." His circumstances, +though easy, were never such as to warrant a display to which, perhaps, +certain qualities of his character might have inclined him; even at a much +later date he described himself--rather oddly, perhaps--as "a man of +moderate savings, always supporting a very expensive public position." +But, so far as I can gather, he never had a reasonable want which he could +not and did not satisfy, though at the same time he cared for very few of +the pursuits or amusements that are apt to drain much larger resources +than his. He never had to think twice about country or sea-side quarters; +wherever it might suit his purpose or fancy to choose them, at one of his +south-coast haunts or, for his wife's health, at Malvern, thither he went; +and when the whim seized him for a trip _en garcon_ to any part of England +or to Paris, he had only to bid the infallible Anne pack his trunk. He was +a provident as well as an affectionate father; but the cost of educating +his numerous family seems to have caused him no serious anxiety. In 1849 +he sent his eldest son to Eton. And while he had sworn a kind of +_vendetta_ against begging-letter writers, and afterwards used to parry +the attacks of his pertinacious enemies by means of carefully-prepared +written forms, his hand seems to have been at all times open for charity. + +Some of these personal characteristics of Dickens were to be brought out +with remarkable vividness during the period of his life which forms the +special subject of the present chapter. Never was he more thoroughly +himself than as a theatrical manager and actor, surrounded by congenial +associates. He starred it to his heart's content at the country seat of +his kind Lausanne friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watson. But the first occasion on +which he became publicly known in both the above-mentioned capacities was +the reproduction of the amateur performance of _Every Man in his Humour_. +This time the audiences were to be in Manchester and Liverpool, where it +was hoped that a golden harvest might be reaped for Leigh Hunt, who was at +that time in sore straits. As it chanced, a civil-list pension was just +about this time--1847--conferred upon the most unaffectedly graceful of +all modern writers of English verse. It was accordingly resolved to divert +part of the proceeds of the undertaking in favour of a worthy playwright, +the author of _Paul Pry_. The comedy was acted with brilliant success at +Manchester, on July 26, and at Liverpool two days later; and then the +"managerial miseries," which Dickens had enjoyed with his whole heart and +soul, were over for the nonce. Already, however, in the following year, +1848, an excellent reason was found for their recommencement; and nine +performances of Ben Jonson's play, this time alternated with _The Merry +Wives of Windsor_, were given by Dickens's "company of amateurs"--the +expression is his own--at the Haymarket, and in the theatres of five of +the largest towns in the kingdom, for the benefit of Sheridan Knowles. +Nothing could have been more honourable than Dickens's readiness to serve +the interests of an actor with whom, but for his own generous temper, he +would only a few months before have been involved in a wordy quarrel. In +_The Merry Wives_, the manager acted Justice Shallow to Mark Lemon's +Falstaff. Dame Quickly was played by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who speedily +became a favourite correspondent of Dickens. But the climax of these +excitements arrived in the year of wonders, 1851, when, with a flourish of +trumpets resounding through the world of fashion as well as of letters, +the comedy _Not so Bad as We Seem_, written for the occasion by Bulwer +Lytton, was performed under Dickens's management at Devonshire House, in +the presence of the Queen, for the benefit of the Guild of Literature and +Art. The object was a noble one, though the ultimate result of the scheme +has been an almost pitiable failure; and nothing was spared, by the host +or the actors, to make the effect worthy of it. While some of the most +popular men of letters took parts in the clever and effective play, its +scenery was painted by some of the most eminent among the English artists. +Dickens was fired by the ardour of the enterprise, and, proceeding on his +principle that the performance could not possibly "be a success if the +smallest pepper-corn of arrangement were omitted," covered himself and his +associates with glory. From Devonshire House play and theatre were +transferred to the Hanover Square Rooms, where the farce of _Mr. +Nightingale's Diary_ was included in the performance, of which some vivid +reminiscences have been published by one of the few survivors of that +noble company, Mr. R. H. Horne. Other accounts corroborate his +recollections of the farce, which was the triumph of "gag," and would have +been reckoned a masterpiece in the old _commedia dell' arte_. The +characters played by Dickens included Sam Weller turned waiter; a voluble +barrister by the name of Mr. Gabblewig; a hypochondriac suffering from a +prescription of mustard and milk; the Gampish mother of a charity-boy +(Mr. Egg); and her brother, a stone-deaf old sexton, who appeared to be +"at least ninety years of age." The last-named assumption seems to have +been singularly effective: + + "After repeated shoutings ('It's of no use whispering to me, young + man') of the word 'buried'--'_Brewed!_ Oh yes, sir, I have brewed many + a good gallon of ale in my time. The last batch I brewed, sir, was + finer than all the rest--the best ale ever brewed in the county. It + used to be called in our parts here "Samson with his hair on!" in + allusion'--here his excitement shook the tremulous frame into coughing + and wheezing--'in allusion to its great strength.' He looked from face + to face to see if his feat was duly appreciated, and his venerable + jest understood by those around; and then, softly repeating, with a + glimmering smile, 'in allusion to its great strength,' he turned + about, and made his exit, like one moving towards his own grave while + he thinks he is following the funeral of another." + +From London the company travelled into the country, where their series of +performances was not closed till late in the succeeding year, 1852. +Dickens was from first to last the manager, and the ruling spirit of the +undertaking. Amongst his latest recruits Mr. Wilkie Collins is specially +mentioned by Forster. The acquaintance which thus began soon ripened into +a close and lasting friendship, and became, with the exception of that +with Forster himself, the most important of all Dickens's personal +intimacies for the history of his career as an author. + +Speech-making was not in quite the same sense, or to quite the same +degree, as amateur acting and managing, a voluntary labour on Dickens's +part. Not that he was one of those to whom the task of occasionally +addressing a public audience is a pain or even a burden. Indeed, he was a +born orator; for he possessed both that strong and elastic imaginative +power which enables a man to place himself at once in sympathy with his +audience, and that gift of speech, pointed, playful, and where necessary +impetuous, which pleads well in any assembly for any cause. He had +moreover the personal qualifications of a handsome manly presence, a +sympathetic eye, and a fine flexible voice, which, as his own hints on +public speaking show, he managed with care and intelligence. He had, he +says, "fought with beasts (oratorically) in divers arenas." But though a +speaker in whom ease bred force, and force ease, he was the reverse of a +mere builder of phrases and weaver of periods. "Mere holding forth," he +declared, "I utterly detest, abominate, and abjure." His innate hatred of +talk for mere talk's sake had doubtless been intensified by his early +reporting experiences, and by what had become his stereotyped notion of +our parliamentary system. At the Administration Reform meeting in 1855 he +stated that he had never before attended a public meeting. On the other +hand, he had been for already several years in great request for meetings +of a different kind, concerned with the establishment or advancement of +educational or charitable institutions in London and other great towns of +the country. His addresses from the chair were often of remarkable +excellence; and this not merely because crowded halls and increased +subscription-lists were their concomitants, and because the happiness of +his humour--never out of season, and even on such occasions often +singularly prompt--sent every one home in good spirits. In these now +forgotten speeches on behalf of Athenaeums and Mechanics' Institutes, or of +actors' and artists' and newsmen's charities, their occasional advocate +never appears occasional. Instead of seeming to have just mastered his +brief while the audience was taking its seats, or to have become for the +first time deeply interested in his subject in the interval between his +soup and his speech, the cause which Dickens pleads never has in him +either an imperfectly informed or a half-indifferent representative. +Amongst many charming illustrations of a vein of oratory in which he has +been equalled by very few if by any public men of his own or the +succeeding generation, I will instance only one address, though it belongs +to a considerably later date than the time of _David Copperfield_. +Nothing, however, that Dickens has ever written--not even _David +Copperfield_ itself--breathes a tenderer sympathy for the weakness of +unprotected childhood than the beautiful little speech delivered by him on +February 9, 1858, on behalf of the London Hospital for Sick Children. +Beginning with some touches of humour concerning the spoilt children of +the rich, the orator goes on to speak of the "spoilt children" of the +poor, illustrating with concrete directness both the humorous and the +pathetic side of his subject, and after a skilfully introduced sketch of +the capabilities and wants of the "infant institution" for which he +pleads, ending with an appeal, founded on a fancy of Charles Lamb, to the +support of the "dream-children" belonging to each of his hearers: "the +dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might +have had, the child you certainly have been." This is true eloquence, of a +kind which aims at something besides opening purse-strings. In 1851 he had +spoken in the same vein of mixed humour and pathos on behalf of his +clients, the poor actors, when, unknown to him, a little child of his own +was lying dead at home. But in these years of his life, as indeed at all +times, his voice was at the service of such causes as had his sympathy; it +was heard at Birmingham, at Leeds, at Glasgow; distance was of little +moment to his energetic nature; and as to trouble, how could he do +anything by halves? + +There was yet a third kind of activity, distinct from that of literary +work pure and simple, in which Dickens in these years for the first time +systematically engaged. It has been seen how he had long cherished the +notion of a periodical conducted by himself, and marked by a unity of +design which should make it in a more than ordinary sense his own paper. +With a genius like his, which attached itself to the concrete, very much +depended at the outset upon the choice of a title. _The Cricket_ could not +serve again, and for some time the notion of an omnipresent _Shadow_, with +something, if possible, tacked to it "expressing the notion of its being +cheerful, useful, and always welcome," seemed to promise excellently. For +a rather less ambitious design, however, a rather less ambitious title was +sought, and at last fortunately found, in the phrase, rendered proverbial +by Shakspeare, "_Household Words_." "We hope," he wrote a few weeks before +the first number appeared, on March 30, 1850, "to do some solid good, and +we mean to be as cheery and pleasant as we can." But _Household Words_, +which in form and in cost was to be a paper for the multitude, was to be +something more than agreeable and useful and cheap. It was to help in +casting out the many devils that had taken up their abode in popular +periodical literature, the "bastards of the Mountain," and the foul fiends +who dealt in infamous scurrility, and to do this with the aid of a charm +more potent than the most lucid argument and the most abundant facts. "In +the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor," says +the _Preliminary Word_ in the first number, "we would tenderly cherish +that light of fancy which is inherent in the human breast." To this +purpose it was the editor's constant and deliberate endeavour to bind his +paper. "KEEP 'HOUSEHOLD WORDS' IMAGINATIVE!" is the "solemn and continual +Conductorial Injunction" which three years after the foundation of the +journal he impresses, with the artful aid of capitals, upon his faithful +coadjutor, Mr. W. H. Wills. In his own contributions he was not forgetful +of this maxim, and the most important of them, the serial story, _Hard +Times_, was written with the express intention of pointing it as a moral. + +There are, I suppose, in addition to the many mysterious functions +performed by the editor of a literary journal, two of the very highest +significance; in the first place, the choice of his contributors, and +then, if the expression may be used, the management of them. In both +respects but one opinion seems to exist of Dickens's admirable qualities +as an editor. Out of the many contributors to _Household Words_, and its +kindred successor, _All the Year Round_--some of whom are happily still +among living writers--it would be invidious to select for mention a few in +proof of the editor's discrimination. But it will not be forgotten that +the first number of the earlier journal contained the beginning of a tale +by Mrs. Gaskell, whose name will long remain a household word in England, +both North and South. And a periodical could hardly be deemed one-sided +which included among its contributors scholars and writers of the +distinction belonging to the names of Forster and Mr. Henry Morley, +together with humorous observers of men and things such as Mr. Sala and +Albert Smith. On the other hand, _Household Words_ had what every literary +journal ought to have, an individuality of its own; and this individuality +was, of course, that of its editor. The mannerisms of Dickens's style +afterwards came to be imitated by some among his contributors; but the +general unity perceptible in the journal was the natural and legitimate +result of the fact that it stood under the independent control of a +vigorous editor, assisted by a sub-editor--Mr. W. H. Wills--of rare +trustworthiness. Dickens had a keen eye for selecting subjects from a +definite field, a ready skill for shaping, if necessary, the articles +accepted by him, and a genius for providing them with expressive and +attractive titles. Fiction and poetry apart, these articles have mostly a +social character or bearing, although they often deviate into the pleasant +paths of literature or art; and usually, but by no means always, the +scenes or associations with which they connect themselves are of England, +English. + +Nothing could surpass the unflagging courtesy shown by Dickens towards his +contributors, great or small, old or new, and his patient interest in +their endeavours, while he conducted _Household Words_, and afterwards +_All the Year Round_. Of this there is evidence enough to make the records +of the office in Wellington Street a pleasant page in the history of +journalism. He valued a good workman when he found him, and was far too +reasonable and generous to put his own stamp upon all the good metal that +passed through his hands. Even in his Christmas Numbers he left the utmost +possible freedom to his associates. Where he altered or modified it was as +one who had come to know the pulse of the public; and he was not less +considerate with novices, than he was frank and explicit with experts, in +the writer's art. The articles in his journal being anonymous, he was not +tempted to use names as baits for the public, though many who wrote for +him were men or women of high literary reputation. And he kept his doors +open. While some editors deem it their duty to ward off would-be +contributors, as some ministers of state think it theirs to get rid of +deputations, Dickens sought to ignore instead of jealously guarding the +boundaries of professional literature. Nothing in this way ever gave him +greater delight than to have welcomed and published several poems sent to +him under a feigned name, but which he afterwards discovered to be the +first-fruits of the charming poetical talent of Miss Adelaide Procter, the +daughter of his old friend "Barry Cornwall." + +In the preparation of his own papers, or of those which, like the +Christmas Numbers, he composed conjointly with one or more of his +familiars, he spared no labour and thought no toil too great. At times, of +course, he, like all periodical writers who cannot be merry every +Wednesday or caustic every Saturday, felt the pressure of the screw. "As +to two comic articles," he exclaims on one occasion, "or two any sort of +articles, out of me, that's the intensest extreme of no-goism." But, as a +rule, no great writer ever ran more gaily under his self-imposed yoke. His +"Uncommercial Travels," as he at a later date happily christened them, +familiarised him with whatever parts or aspects of London his long walks +had still left unexplored; and he was as conscientious in hunting up the +details of a complicated subject as in finding out the secrets of an +obscure pursuit or trade. Accomplished antiquarians and "commissioners" +assisted him in his labours; but he was no _roi faineant_ on the editorial +sofa which he so complacently describes. Whether he was taking _A Walk in +a Workhouse_, or knocking at the door of another with the supernumerary +waifs in Whitechapel, or _On_ (night) _Duty with Inspector Field_ among +the worst of the London slums, he was always ready to see with his own +eyes; after which the photographic power of his pen seemed always capable +of doing the rest. Occasionally he treats topics more properly +journalistic, but he is most delightful when he takes his ease in his +_English_ or his _French Watering-place_, or carries his readers with him +on _A Flight to Paris_, bringing before them, as it were, in breathless +succession, every inch of the familiar journey. Happiest of all is he +when, with his friend Mr. Wilkie Collins--this, however, not until the +autumn of 1857--he starts on _The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_, the +earlier chapters of which furnish some of the best specimens of his most +humorous prose. Neither at the same time does he forget himself to enforce +the claim of his journal to strengthen the imaginary side of literature. +In an assumed character he allows a veteran poet to carry him _By Rail to +Parnassus_, and even good-humouredly banters an old friend, George +Cruikshank, for having committed _Frauds on the Fairies_ by re-editing +legendary lore with the view of inculcating the principle of total +abstinence. + +Such, then, were some of the channels in which the intense mental and +physical energy of Dickens found a congenial outlet in these busy years. +Yet in the very midst of this multifarious activity the mysterious and +controlling power of his genius enabled him to collect himself for the +composition of a work of fiction which, as I have already said, holds, and +will always continue to hold, a place of its own among its works. "Of all +my books," he declares, "I like this the best. It will be easily believed +that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can +ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond +parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child--and his name is +DAVID COPPERFIELD!" He parted from the story with a pang, and when in +after life he returned to its perusal, he was hardly able to master the +emotions which it recalled; perhaps even he hardly knew what the effort +of its production had cost him. + +The first number of _David Copperfield_ was published in May, 1849--the +last in November, 1850. To judge from the difficulty which Dickens found +in choosing a title for his story--of which difficulty plentiful evidence +remains in MS. at South Kensington--he must have been fain to delay longer +even than usual on the threshold. In the end the name of the hero evolved +itself out of a series of transformations, from Trotfield and Trotbury to +Copperboy, Copperstone--"Copperfull" being reserved as a _lectio varians_ +for Mrs. Crupp--and _Copperfield_. Then at last the pen could fall +seriously to work, and, proceeding slowly at first--for the first page of +the MS. contains a great number of alterations--dip itself now into black, +now into blue ink, and in a small writing, already contrasting with the +bolder hand of earlier days, produce page upon page of an incomparable +book. No doubt what so irresistibly attracted Dickens to _David +Copperfield_, and what has since fascinated many readers, more or less +conscious of the secret of the charm, is the autobiographical element in +the story. Until the publication of Forster's _Life_ no reader of +_Copperfield_ could be aware of the pang it must have cost Dickens to lay +bare, though to unsuspecting eyes, the story of experiences which he had +hitherto kept all but absolutely secret, and to which his own mind could +not recur without a quivering sensitiveness. No reader could trace, as the +memory of Dickens always must have traced, some of the most vivid of those +experiences, imbued though they were with the tints of a delightfully +playful humor, in the doings and dealings of Mr. Wilkins Micawber, whose +original, by a strange coincidence, was passing tranquilly away out of +life, while his comic counterpart was blossoming into a whimsical +immortality. And no reader could divine, what very probably even the +author may hardly have ventured to confess to himself, that in the lovely +little idyl of the loves of Doady and Dora--with Jip, as Dora's father +might have said, intervening--there were, besides the reminiscences of an +innocent juvenile amour, the vestiges of a man's unconfessed though not +altogether unrepressed disappointment--the sense that "there was always +something wanting." But in order to be affected by a personal or +autobiographical element in a fiction or poem, it is by no means necessary +to be aware of its actual bearing and character, or even of its very +existence. _Amelia_ would gain little by illustrative notes concerning the +experiences of the first Mrs. Fielding. To excite in a work of fiction the +peculiar kind of interest of which I am speaking the existence of an +autobiographical substratum need not be apparent in it, nor need its +presence be even suspected. Enough, if it be _there_. But it had far +better be away altogether, unless the novelist has so thoroughly fused +this particular stream of metal with the mass filling his mould that the +result is an integral artistic whole. Such was, however, the case with +_David Copperfield_, which of all Dickens's fictions is on the whole the +most perfect as a work of art. Personal reminiscences which lay deep in +the author's breast are, as effects, harmonised with local associations +old and new. Thus, Yarmouth, painted in the story with singular poetic +truthfulness, had only quite recently been seen by Dickens for the first +time, on a holiday trip. His imagination still subdued to itself all the +elements with which he worked; and, whatever may be thought of the +construction of this story, none of his other books equals it in that +harmony of tone which no artist can secure unless by recasting all his +materials. + +As to the construction of _David Copperfield_, however, I frankly confess +that I perceive no serious fault in it. It is a story with a plot, and not +merely a string of adventures and experiences, like little Davy's old +favourites upstairs at Blunderstone. In the conduct of this plot blemishes +may here and there occur. The boy's flight from London, and the direction +which it takes, are insufficiently accounted for. A certain amount of +obscurity, as well perhaps as of improbability, pervades the relations +between Uriah and the victim, round whom the unspeakably slimy thing +writhes and wriggles. On the other hand, the mere conduct of the story has +much that is beautiful in it. Thus, there is real art in the way in which +the scene of Barkis's death--written with admirable moderation--prepares +for the "greater loss" at hand for the mourning family. And in the entire +treatment of his hero's double love story Dickens has, to my mind, avoided +that discord which, in spite of himself, jars upon the reader both in +_Esmond_ and in _Adam Bede_. The best constructed part of _David +Copperfield_ is, however, unmistakably the story of Little Emily and her +kinsfolk. This is most skilfully interwoven with the personal experiences +of David, of which--except in its very beginnings--it forms no integral +part; and throughout the reader is haunted by a presentiment of the coming +catastrophe, though unable to divine the tragic force and justice of its +actual accomplishment. A touch altered here and there in Steerforth, with +the Rosa Dartle episode excluded or greatly reduced, and this part of +_David Copperfield_ might challenge comparison as to workmanship with the +whole literature of modern fiction. + +Of the idyl of Davy and Dora what shall I say? Its earliest stages are +full of the gayest comedy. What, for instance, could surpass the history +of the picnic--where was it? perhaps it was near Guildford. At that feast +an imaginary rival, "Red Whisker," made the salad--how could they eat +it?--and "voted himself into the charge of the wine-cellar, which he +constructed, _being an ingenious beast_, in the hollow trunk of a tree." +Better still are the backward ripples in the course of true love; best of +all the deep wisdom of Miss Mills, in whose nature mental trial and +suffering supplied, in some measure, the place of years. In the narrative +of the young house-keeping David's real trouble is most skilfully mingled +with the comic woes of the situation; and thus the idyl almost +imperceptibly passes into the last phase, where the clouds dissolve in a +rain of tears. The genius which conceived and executed these closing +scenes was touched by a pity towards the fictitious creatures of his own +imagination, which melted his own heart; and thus his pathos is here +irresistible. + +The inventive power of Dickens in none of his other books indulged itself +so abundantly in the creation of eccentric characters, but neither was it +in any so admirably tempered by taste and feeling. It contains no +character which could strictly be called grotesque, unless it be little +Miss Mowcher. Most of her outward peculiarities Dickens had copied from a +living original; but receiving a remonstrance from the latter, he +good-humouredly altered the use he had intended to make of the character, +and thereby spoiled what there was in it--not much, in my opinion--to +spoil. Mr. Dick belongs to a species of eccentric personages--mad people, +in a word--for which Dickens as a writer had a curious liking; but though +there is consequently no true humour in this character, it helps to bring +out the latent tenderness in another. David's Aunt is a figure which none +but a true humourist such as Sterne or Dickens could have drawn, and she +must have sprung from the author's brain armed _cap-a-pie_ as she appeared +in her garden before his little double. Yet even Miss Betsey Trotwood was +not altogether a creation of the fancy, for at Broadstairs the locality is +still pointed out where the "one great outrage of her life" was daily +renewed. In the other chief characters of this story the author seems to +rely entirely on natural truthfulness. He must have had many opportunities +of noting the ways of seamen and fishermen, but the occupants of the old +boat near Yarmouth possess the typical characteristics with which the +experience and the imagination of centuries have agreed to credit the +"salt" division of mankind. Again, he had had his own experience of +shabby-genteel life, and of the struggle which he had himself seen a happy +and a buoyant temperament maintaining against a sea of trouble. But Mr. +Micawber, whatever features may have been transferred to him, is the type +of a whole race of men who will not vanish from the face of the earth so +long as the hope which lives eternal in the human breast is only +temporarily suspended by the laws of debtor and creditor, and is always +capable of revival with the aid of a bowl of milk-punch. A kindlier and a +merrier, a more humorous and a more genuine character was never conceived +than this; and if anything was wanted to complete the comicality of the +conception, it was the wife of his bosom with the twins at her own, and +her mind made up _not_ to desert Mr. Micawber. Delightful too in his way, +though of a class more common in Dickens, is Tommy Traddles, the genial +picture of whose married life in chambers in Gray's Inn, with the dearest +girl in the world and her five sisters, including the beauty, on a visit, +may have been suggested by kindly personal reminiscences of youthful days. +In contrast to these characters, the shambling, fawning, villanous +hypocrisy of Uriah Heep is a piece of intense and elaborate workmanship, +almost cruelly done without being overdone. It was in his figures of +hypocrites that Dickens's satirical power most diversely displayed itself; +and by the side of Uriah Heep in this story, literally so in the +prison-scene at the close, stands another species of the race, the valet +Littimer, a sketch which Thackeray himself could not have surpassed. + +Thus, then, I must leave the book, with its wealth of pathos and humour, +with the glow of youth still tinging its pages, but with the gentler mood +of manhood pervading it from first to last. The _reality_ of _David +Copperfield_ is, perhaps, the first feature in it likely to strike the +reader new to its charms; but a closer acquaintance will produce, and +familiarity will enhance, the sense of its wonderful _art_. Nothing will +ever destroy the popularity of a work of which it can truly be said that, +while offering to his muse a gift not less beautiful than precious, its +author put into it his life's blood. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +CHANGES. + +[1852-1858.] + + +I have spoken of both the intellectual and the physical vigour of Charles +Dickens as at their height in the years of which the most enduring fruit +was the most delightful of all his fictions. But there was no break in his +activity after the achievement of this or any other of his literary +successes, and he was never harder at work than during the seven years of +which I am about to speak, although in this period also occasionally he +was to be found hard at play. Its beginning saw him settled in his new and +cheerfully-furnished abode at Tavistock House, of which he had taken +possession in October, 1851. At its close he was master of the country +residence which had been the dream of his childhood, but he had become a +stranger to that tranquillity of mind without which no man's house is +truly his home. Gradually, but surely, things had then, or a little +before, come to such a pass that he wrote to his faithful friend: "I am +become incapable of rest. I am quite confident I should rust, break, and +die, if I spared myself. Much better to die, doing. What I am in that way +Nature made me first, and my way of life has of late, alas! confirmed." +Early in 1852 the youngest of his children had been born to him--the boy +whose babyhood once more revived in him a tenderness the depth of which +no eccentric humours and fantastic _sobriquets_ could conceal. In May, +1858, he had separated from the mother of his children; and though +self-sacrificing affection was at hand to watch over them and him, yet +that domestic life of which he had become the prophet and poet to hundreds +of thousands was in its fairest and fullest form at an end for himself. + +In the earlier of these years Dickens's movements were still very much of +the same kind, and varied much after the same fashion, as in the period +described in my last chapter. In 1852 the series of amateur performances +in the country was completed; but time was found for a summer residence in +Camden Crescent, Dover. During his stay there, and during most of his +working hours in this and the following year--the spring of which was +partly spent at Brighton--he was engaged upon his new story, _Bleak +House_, published in numbers dating from March, 1852, to September, 1853. +"To let you into a secret," he had written to his lively friend, Miss Mary +Boyle, from Dover, "I am not quite sure that I ever did like, or ever +shall like, anything quite so well as _Copperfield_. But I foresee, I +think, some very good things in _Bleak House_." There is no reason to +believe that, by the general public, this novel was at the time of its +publication a whit less favourably judged or less eagerly read than its +predecessor. According to the author's own testimony it "took +extraordinarily, especially during the last five or six months" of its +issue, and "retained its immense circulation from the first, beating dear +old _Copperfield_ by a round ten thousand or more." To this day the book +has its staunch friends, some of whom would perhaps be slow to confess by +which of the elements in the story they are most forcibly attracted. On +the other hand, _Bleak House_ was probably the first of Dickens's works +which furnished a suitable text to a class of censors whose precious balms +have since descended upon his head with constant reiteration. The power of +amusing being graciously conceded to the "man of genius," his book was +charged with "absolute want of construction," and with being a +heterogeneous compound made up of a meagre and melodramatic story, and a +number of "odd folks that have to do with a long Chancery suit." Of the +characters themselves it was asserted that, though in the main excessively +funny, they were more like caricatures of the stage than studies from +nature. Some approval was bestowed upon particular figures, but rather as +types of the influence of externals than as real individualities; and +while the character of the poor crossing-sweeper was generously praised, +it was regretted that Dickens should never have succeeded in drawing "a +man or woman whose lot is cast among the high-born or wealthy." He +belonged, unfortunately, "in literature to the same class as his +illustrator, Hablot Browne, in design, though he far surpasses the +illustrator in range and power." In other words, he was essentially a +caricaturist. + +As applied to _Bleak House_, with which I am at present alone concerned, +this kind of censure was in more ways than one unjust. So far as +constructive skill was concerned, the praise given by Forster to _Bleak +House_ may be considered excessive; but there can be no doubt that, as +compared, not with _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_, but with its immediate +predecessor, _David Copperfield_, this novel exhibits a decided advance in +that respect. In truth, Dickens in _Bleak House_ for the first time +emancipated himself from that form of novel which, in accordance with his +great eighteenth-century favourites, he had hitherto more or less +consciously adopted--the novel of adventure, of which the person of the +hero, rather than the machinery of the plot, forms the connecting element. +It may be that the influence of Mr. Wilkie Collins was already strong upon +him, and that the younger writer, whom Dickens was about this time +praising for his unlikeness to the "conceited idiots who suppose that +volumes are to be tossed off like pancakes," was already teaching +something to, as well as learning something from, the elder. It may also +be that the criticism which as editor of _Household Words_ Dickens was now +in the habit of judiciously applying to the fictions of others, +unconsciously affected his own methods and processes. Certain it is that +from this point of view _Bleak House_ may be said to begin a new series +among his works of fiction. The great Chancery suit and the fortunes of +those concerned in it are not a disconnected background from which the +mystery of Lady Dedlock's secret stands forth in relief; but the two main +parts of the story are skilfully interwoven as in a Spanish double-plot. +Nor is the success of the general action materially affected by the +circumstance that the tone of Esther Summerson's diary is not altogether +true. At the same time there is indisputably some unevenness in the +construction of _Bleak House_. It drags, and drags very perceptibly, in +some of its earlier parts. On the other hand, the interest of the reader +is strongly revived when that popular favourite, Mr. Inspector Bucket, +appears on the scene, and when, more especially in the admirably vivid +narrative of Esther's journey with the detective, the nearness of the +catastrophe exercises its exciting influence. Some of the machinery, +moreover--such as the Smallweed family's part in the plot--is tiresome; +and particular incidents are intolerably horrible or absurd--such as on +the one hand the spontaneous combustion (which is proved possible by the +analogy of historical facts!), and on the other the intrusion of the +oil-grinding Mr. Chadband into the solemn presence of Sir Leicester +Dedlock's grief. But in general the parts of the narrative are well knit +together; and there is a subtle skill in the way in which the two main +parts of the story converge towards their common close. + +The idea of making an impersonal object like a great Chancery suit the +centre round which a large and manifold group of characters revolves, +seems to savour of a drama rather than of a story. No doubt the theme +suggested itself to Dickens with a very real purpose, and on the basis of +facts which he might well think warranted him in his treatment of it; for, +true artist though he was, the thought of exposing some national defect, +of helping to bring about some real reform, was always paramount in his +mind over any mere literary conception. _Prima facie_, at least, and with +all due deference to Chancery judges and eminent silk gowns like Mr. +Blowers, the length of Chancery suits was a real public grievance, as well +as a frequent private calamity. But even as a mere artistic notion the +idea of Jarndyce _v._ Jarndyce as diversely affecting those who lived by +it, those who rebelled against it, those who died of it, was, in its way, +of unique force; and while Dickens never brought to any other of his +subjects so useful a knowledge of its external details--in times gone by +he had served a "Kenge and Carboys" of his own--hardly any one of those +subjects suggested so wide a variety of aspects for characteristic +treatment. + +For never before had his versatility in drawing character filled his +canvas with so multitudinous and so various a host of personages. The +legal profession, with its servitors and hangers-on of every degree, +occupies the centre of the picture. In this group no figure is more +deserving of admiration than that of Mr. Tulkinghorn, the eminently +respectable family solicitor, at whose very funeral, by a four-wheeled +affliction, the good-will of the aristocracy manifests itself. We learn +very little about him, and probably care less; but he interests us +precisely as we should be interested by the real old family lawyer, about +whom we might know and care equally little, were we to find him alone in +the twilight, drinking his ancient port in his frescoed chamber in those +fields where the shepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop. (Mr. +Forster, by-the-way, omitted to point out to his readers, what the piety +of American research has since put on record, that Mr. Tulkinghorn's house +was a picture of the biographer's own residence.) The portrait of Mr. +Vholes, who supports an unassailable but unenviable professional +reputation for the sake of "the three dear girls at home," and a father +whom he has to support "in the Vale of Taunton," is less attractive; but +nothing could be more in its place in the story than the clammy tenacity +of this legal ghoul and his "dead glove." Lower down in the great system +of the law we come upon Mr. Guppy and his fellows, the very quintessence +of cockney vulgarity, seasoned with a flavour of legal sharpness without +which the rankness of the mixture would be incomplete. To the legal group +Miss Flite, whose original, if I remember right, used to haunt the Temple +as well as the precincts of the Chancery courts, may likewise be said to +belong. She is quite legitimately introduced into the story--which cannot +be said of all Dickens's madmen--because her madness associates itself +with its main theme. + +Much admiration has been bestowed upon the figures of an eccentric by or +under plot in this story, in which the family of the Jellybys and the +august Mr. Turveydrop are, actively, or by passive endurance, engaged. The +philanthropic section of _le monde ou l'on s'ennuie_ has never been +satirised more tellingly, and, it must be added, more bitterly. Perhaps at +the time of the publication of _Bleak House_ the activity of our Mrs. +Jellybys took a wider and more cosmopolitan sweep than in later days; for +we read at the end of Esther's diary how Mrs. Jellyby "has been +disappointed in Borrioboola Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence +of the King of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody--who survived the +climate--for rum; but she has taken up with the rights of women to sit in +Parliament, and Caddy tells me it is a mission involving more +correspondence than the old one." But Mrs. Jellyby's interference in the +affairs of other people is after all hurtful only because in busying +herself with theirs she forgets her own. The truly offensive benefactress +of her fellow-creatures is Mrs. Pardiggle, who, maxim in mouth and tract +in hand, turns everything she approaches to stone. Among her victims are +her own children, including Alfred, aged five, who has been induced to +take an oath "never to use tobacco in any form." + +The particular vein of feeling that led Dickens to the delineation of +these satirical figures was one which never ran dry with him, and which +suggested some forcible-feeble satire in his very last fiction. I call it +a vein of feeling only; for he could hardly have argued in cold blood that +the efforts which he ridicules were not misrepresented as a whole by his +satire. When poor Jo on his death-bed is "asked whether he ever knew a +prayer," and replies that he could never make anything out of those spoken +by the gentlemen who "came down Tom-all-Alone's a-prayin'," but who +"mostly sed as the t'other wuns prayed wrong," the author brings a charge +which he might not have found it easy to substantiate. Yet--with the +exception of such isolated passages--the figure of Jo is in truth one of +the most powerful protests that have been put forward on behalf of the +friendless outcasts of our streets. Nor did the romantic element in the +conception interfere with the effect of the realistic. If Jo, who seems at +first to have been intended to be one of the main figures of the story, is +in Dickens's best pathetic manner, the Bagnet family is in his happiest +vein of quiet humour. Mr. Inspector Bucket, though not altogether free +from mannerism, well deserves the popularity which he obtained. For this +character, as the pages of _Household Words_ testify, Dickens had made +many studies in real life. The detective police-officer had at that time +not yet become a standing figure of fiction and the drama, nor had the +detective of real life begun to destroy the illusion. + +_Bleak House_ was least of all among the novels hitherto published by its +author obnoxious to the charge persistently brought against him, that he +was doomed to failure in his attempts to draw characters taken from any +but the lower spheres of life--in his attempts, in short, to draw ladies +and gentlemen. To begin with, one of the most interesting characters in +the book--indeed, in its relation to the main idea of the story, the most +interesting of all--is the youthful hero, if he is to be so called, +Richard Carson. From the very nature of the conception the character is +passive only; but the art and feeling are in their way unsurpassed with +which the gradual collapse of a fine nature is here exhibited. Sir +Leicester Dedlock, in some measure intended as a type of his class, has +been condemned as wooden and unnatural; and no doubt the machinery of that +part of the story in which he is concerned creaks before it gets under +way. On the other hand, after the catastrophe has overwhelmed him and his +house, he becomes a really fine picture, unmarred by any Grandisonianisms +in either thought or phrase, of a true gentleman, bowed but not warped by +distress. Sir Leicester's relatives, both dead and living; Volumnia's +sprightly ancestress on the wall, and that "fair Dedlock" herself; the +whole cousinhood, debilitated and otherwise, but of one mind on such +points as William Buffy's blameworthy neglect of his duty _when in +office_; all these make up a very probable picture of a house great +enough--or thinking itself great enough--to look at the affairs of the +world from the family point of view. In Lady Dedlock alone a failure must +be admitted; but she, with her wicked double, the uncanny French maid +Hortense, exists only for the sake of the plot. + +With all its merits, _Bleak House_ has little of that charm which belongs +to so many of Dickens's earlier stories, and to _David Copperfield_ above +all. In part, at least, this may be due to the excessive severity of the +task which Dickens had set himself in _Bleak House_; for hardly any other +of his works is constructed on so large a scale, or contains so many +characters organically connected with the progress of its plot; and in +part, again, to the half-didactic, half-satirical purport of the story, +which weighs heavily on the writer. An overstrained tone announces itself +on the very first page; an opening full of power--indeed, of genius--but +pitched in a key which we feel at once will not, without effort, be +maintained. On the second page the prose has actually become verse; or how +else can one describe part of the following apostrophe? + + "'This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its + blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in + every mad-house, and its dead in every church-yard; which has its + ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, borrowing + and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance; which gives + to moneyed might the means abundantly of wearing out the right; which + so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain + and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its + practitioners who would not give--who does not often give--the + warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come + here!"'" + +It was possibly with some thought of giving to _Bleak House_ also, though +in a different way, the close relation to his experiences of living men to +which _David Copperfield_ had owed so much, that Dickens introduced into +it two _portraits_. Doubtless, at first, his intention had by no means +gone so far as this. His constant counsellor always disliked his mixing up +in his fictitious characters any personal reminiscences of particular men, +experience having shown that in such cases the whole character came out +_more like_ than the author was aware. Nor can Dickens himself have failed +to understand how such an experiment is always tempting, and always +dangerous; how it is often irreconcilable with good feeling, and quite as +often with good taste. In _Bleak House_, however, it occurred to him to +introduce likenesses of two living men, both more or less well known to +the public and to himself; and both of individualities too clearly marked +for a portrait, or even a caricature, of either to be easily mistaken. Of +that art of mystification which the authors of both English and French +_romans a clef_ have since practised with so much transient success, he +was no master, and fortunately so; for what could be more ridiculous than +that the reader's interest in a character should be stimulated, first, by +its being evidently the late Lord P-lm-rst-n or the P---- of O----, and +then by its being no less evidently somebody else? It should be added +that neither of the two portrait characters in _Bleak House_ possesses the +least importance for the conduct of the story, so that there is nothing to +justify their introduction except whatever excellence may belong to them +in themselves. + +Lawrence Boythorn is described by Mr. Sydney Colvin as drawn from Walter +Savage Landor with his intellectual greatness left out. It was, of course, +unlikely that his intellectual greatness should be left in, the intention +obviously being to reproduce what was eccentric in the ways and manner, +with a suggestion of what was noble in the character, of Dickens's famous +friend. Whether, had he attempted to do so, Dickens could have drawn a +picture of the whole Landor, is another question. Landor, who could put +into a classic dialogue that sense of the _naif_ to which Dickens is +generally a stranger, yet passionately admired the most _sentimental_ of +all his young friend's poetic figures; and it might almost be said that +the intellectual natures of the two men were drawn together by the force +of contrast. They appear to have first become intimate with one another +during Landor's residence at Bath--which began in 1837--and they +frequently met at Gore House. At a celebration of the poet's birthday in +his lodgings at Bath, so Forster tells us in his biography of Landor, "the +fancy which took the form of Little Nell in the _Curiosity Shop_ first +dawned on the genius of its creator." In Landor's spacious mind there was +room for cordial admiration of an author the bent of whose genius differed +widely from that of his own; and he could thus afford to sympathise with +his whole heart in a creation which men of much smaller intellectual build +have pronounced mawkish and unreal. Dickens afterwards gave to one of his +sons the names of Walter Landor; and when the old man died at last, +_after_ his godson, paid him an eloquent tribute of respect in _All the +Year Round_. In this paper the personal intention of the character of +Boythorn is avowed by implication; but though Landor esteemed and loved +Dickens, it might seem matter for wonder, did not eccentrics after all +sometimes cherish their own eccentricity, that his irascible nature failed +to resent a rather doubtful compliment. For the character of Boythorn is +whimsical rather than, in any but the earlier sense of the word, humorous. +But the portrait, however imperfect, was in this instance, beyond all +doubt, both kindly meant and kindly taken; though it cannot be said to +have added to the attractions of the book into which it is introduced. + +While no doubt ever existed as to this likeness, the case may not seem so +clear with regard to the original of Harold Skimpole. It would be far more +pleasant to pass by without notice the controversy--if controversy it can +be called--which this character provoked; but a wrong done by one eminent +man of letters to another, however unforeseen its extent may have been, +and however genuine the endeavour to repair its effect, becomes part of +literary history. That the original of Harold Skimpole was Leigh Hunt +cannot reasonably be called into question. This assertion by no means +precludes the possibility, or probability, that a second original +suggested certain features in the portrait. Nor does it contradict the +substantial truthfulness of Dickens's own statement, published in _All the +Year Round_ after Leigh Hunt's death, on the appearance of the new edition +of the _Autobiography_ with Thornton Hunt's admirable introduction. While, +Dickens then wrote, "he yielded to the temptation of too often making the +character speak like his old friend," yet "he no more thought, God forgive +him! that the admired original would ever be charged with the imaginary +vices of the fictitious creature, than he had himself ever thought of +charging the blood of Desdemona and Othello on the innocent Academy model +who sat for Iago's leg in the picture. Even as to the mere occasional +manner," he declared that he had "altered the whole of that part of the +text, when two intimate friends of Leigh Hunt--both still +living--discovered too strong a resemblance to his 'way.'" But, while +accepting this statement, and suppressing a regret that after discovering +the dangerous closeness of the resemblance Dickens should have, quite at +the end of the story, introduced a satirical reference to Harold +Skimpole's autobiography--Leigh Hunt's having been published only a year +or two before--one must confess that the explanation only helps to prove +the rashness of the offence. While intending the portrait to keep its own +secret from the general public, Dickens at the same time must have wished +to gratify a few keen-sighted friends. In March, 1852, he writes to +Forster, evidently in reference to the apprehensions of his correspondent: +"Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him singularly unlike the +great original." The "great original" was a man for whom, both before and +after this untoward incident in the relations between them, Dickens +professed a warm regard, and who, to judge from the testimony of those who +knew him well,[9] and from his unaffected narrative of his own life, +abundantly deserved it. A perusal of Leigh Hunt's _Autobiography_ suffices +to show that he used to talk in Skimpole's manner, and even to write in +it; that he was at one period of his life altogether ignorant of money +matters, and that he cultivated cheerfulness on principle. But it likewise +shows that his ignorance of business was acknowledged by him as a +misfortune in which he was very far from exulting. "Do I boast of this +ignorance?" he writes. "Alas! I have no such respect for the pedantry of +absurdity as that. I blush for it, and I only record it out of a sheer +painful movement of conscience, as a warning to those young authors who +might be led to look upon such folly as a fine thing, which at all events +is what I never thought it myself." On the other hand, as his son showed, +his cheerfulness, which was not inconsistent with a natural proneness to +intervals of melancholy, rested on grounds which were the result of a fine +as well as healthy morality. "The value of cheerful opinions," he wrote, +in words embodying a moral that Dickens himself was never weary of +enforcing, "is inestimable; they will retain a sort of heaven round a man, +when everything else might fail him, and consequently they ought to be +religiously inculcated upon his children." At the same time, no quality +was more conspicuous in his life than his readiness for hard work, even +under the most depressing circumstances; and no feature was more marked in +his moral character than his conscientiousness. "In the midst of the +sorest temptations," Dickens wrote of him, "he maintained his honesty +unblemished by a single stain; and in all public and private transactions +he was the very soul of truth and honour." To mix up with the outward +traits of such a man the detestable obliquities of Harold Skimpole was an +experiment paradoxical even as a mere piece of character-drawing. The +merely literary result is a failure, while a wound was needlessly +inflicted, if not upon Leigh Hunt himself, at least upon all who +cherished his friendship or good name. Dickens seems honestly and deeply +to have regretted what he had done, and the extremely tasteful little +tribute to Leigh Hunt's poetic gifts which, some years before the death of +the latter, Dickens wrote for _Household Words_,[10] must have partaken of +the nature of an _amende honorable_. Neither his subsequent repudiation of +unfriendly intentions, nor his earlier exertions on Leigh Hunt's behalf, +are to be overlooked, but they cannot undo a mistake which forms an +unfortunate incident in Dickens's literary life, singularly free though +that life, as a whole, is from the miseries of personal quarrels, and all +the pettinesses with which the world of letters is too familiar. + +While Dickens was engaged upon a literary work such as would have absorbed +the intellectual energies of most men, he not only wrote occasionally for +his journal, but also dictated for publication in it, the successive +portions of a book altogether outside his usual range of authorship. This +was _A Child's History of England_, the only one of his works that was not +written by his own hand. A history of England, written by Charles Dickens +for his own or any one else's children, was sure to be a different work +from one written under similar circumstances by Mr. Freeman or the late M. +Guizot. The book, though it cannot be called a success, is, however, by no +means devoid of interest. Just ten years earlier he had written, and +printed, a history of England for the benefit of his eldest son, then a +hopeful student of the age of five, which was composed, as he informed +Douglas Jerrold at the time, "in the exact spirit" of that advanced +politician's paper, "for I don't know what I should do if he were to get +hold of any Conservative or High Church notions; and the best way of +guarding against any such horrible result is, I take it, to wring the +parrots' necks in his very cradle." The _Child's History of England_ is +written in the same spirit, and illustrates more directly, and, it must be +added, more coarsely, than any of Dickens's other works his hatred of +ecclesiasticism of all kinds. Thus, the account of Dunstan is pervaded by +a prejudice which is the fruit of anything but knowledge; Edward the +Confessor is "the dreary old" and "the maudlin Confessor;" and the Pope +and what belongs to him are treated with a measure of contumely which +would have satisfied the heart of Leigh Hunt himself. To be sure, if King +John is dismissed as a "miserable brute," King Henry the Eighth is not +more courteously designated as a "blot of blood and grease upon the +history of England." On the other hand, it could hardly be but that +certain passages of the national story should be well told by so great a +master of narrative; and though the strain in which parts of the history +of Charles the Second are recounted strikes one as hardly suitable to the +young, to whom irony is in general _caviare_ indeed, yet there are touches +both in the story of "this merry gentleman"--a designation which almost +recalls Fagin--and elsewhere in the book not unworthy of its author. Its +patriotic spirit is quite as striking as its Radicalism; and vulgar as +some of its expressions must be called, there is a pleasing glow in the +passage on King Alfred, which declares the "English-Saxon" character to +have been "the greatest character among the nations of the earth;" and +there is a yet nobler enthusiasm, such as it would indeed be worth any +writer's while to infuse into the young, in the passionate earnestness +with which, by means of the story of Agincourt, the truth is enforced that +"nothing can make war otherwise than horrible." + +This book must have been dictated, and some at least of the latter portion +of _Bleak House_ written, at Boulogne, where, after a spring sojourn at +Brighton, Dickens spent the summer of 1853, and where were also passed the +summers of 1854 and 1856. Boulogne, where Le Sage's last years were spent, +was _Our French Watering-place_, so graphically described in a paper in +_Household Words_ as a companion picture to the old familiar Broadstairs. +The family were comfortably settled on a green hill-side close to the +town, "in a charming garden in a very pleasant country," with "excellent +light wines on the premises, French cookery, millions of roses, two +cows--for milk-punch--vegetables cut for the pot, and handed in at the +kitchen window; five summer-houses, fifteen fountains--with no water in +'em--and thirty-seven clocks--keeping, as I conceive, Australian time, +having no reference whatever to the hours on this side of the globe." The +energetic owner of the Villa des Moulineaux was the "M. Loyal Devasseur" +of _Our French Watering-place_--jovial, convivial, genial, sentimental too +as a Buonapartist and a patriot. In 1854 the same obliging personage +housed the Dickens family in another abode, at the top of the hill, close +to the famous Napoleonic column; but in 1856 they came back to the +Moulineaux. The former year had been an exciting one for Englishmen in +France, with royal visits to and fro to testify to the _entente cordiale_ +between the governments. Dickens, notwithstanding his humorous assertions, +was only moderately touched by the Sebastopol fever; but when a concrete +problem came before him in the shape of a festive demonstration, he +addressed himself to it with the irrepressible ardour of the born +stage-manager. "In our own proper illumination," he writes, on the +occasion of the Prince Consort's visit to the camp at Boulogne, "I laid +on all the servants, all the children now at home, all the visitors, one +to every window, with everything ready to light up on the ringing of a big +dinner-bell by your humble correspondent. St. Peter's on Easter Monday was +the result." + +Of course, at Boulogne, Dickens was cut off neither from his business nor +from his private friends. His hospitable invitations were as urgent to his +French villa in the summer as to his London house in the winter, and on +both sides of the water the _Household Words_ familiars were as sure of a +welcome from their chief. During his absences from London he could have +had no trustier lieutenant than Mr. W. H. Wills, with whom, being always +ready to throw himself into a part, he corresponded in an amusing +paragraphed, semi-official style. And neither in his working nor in his +leisure hours had he by this time any more cherished companion than Mr. +Wilkie Collins, whose progress towards brilliant success he was watching +with the keenest and kindliest interest. With him and his old friend +Augustus Egg, Dickens, in October, 1853, started on a tour to Switzerland +and Italy, in the course of which he saw more than one old friend, and +revisited more than one known scene--ascending Vesuvius with Mr. Layard +and drinking punch at Rome with David Roberts. It would be absurd to make +any lofty demands upon the brief records of a holiday journey; and, for my +part, I would rather think of Dickens assiduous over his Christmas number +at Rome and at Venice, than weigh his moralisings about the electric +telegraph running through the Coliseum. His letters written to his wife +during this trip are bright and gay, and it was certainly no roving +bachelor who "kissed almost all the children he encountered in remembrance +of the sweet faces" of his own, and "talked to all the mothers who +carried them." By the middle of December the travellers were home again, +and before the year was out he had read to large audiences at Birmingham, +on behalf of a public institution, his favourite Christmas stories of _The +Christmas Carol_ and _The Cricket on the Hearth_. As yet, however, his +mind was not seriously intent upon any labours but those proper to his +career as an author, and the year 1854 saw, between the months of April +and August, the publication in his journal of a new story, which is among +the most characteristic, though not among the most successful, of his +works of fiction. + +In comparison with most of Dickens's novels, _Hard Times_ is contained +within a narrow compass; and this, with the further necessity of securing +to each successive small portion of the story a certain immediate degree +of effectiveness, accounts, in some measure, for the peculiarity of the +impression left by this story upon many of its readers. Short as the story +relatively is, few of Dickens's fictions were elaborated with so much +care. He had not intended to write a new story for a twelvemonth, when, as +he says, "the idea laid hold of him by the throat in a very violent +manner," and the labour, carried on under conditions of peculiar +irksomeness, "used him up" after a quite unaccustomed fashion. The book +thus acquired a precision of form and manner which commends it to the +French school of criticism rather than to lovers of English humour in its +ampler forms and more flowing moods. At the same time the work has its +purpose so visibly imprinted on its front, as almost to forbid our +regarding it in the first instance apart from the moral which avowedly it +is intended to inculcate. This moral, by no means new with Dickens, has +both a negative and a positive side. "Do not harden your hearts," is the +negative injunction, more especially do not harden them against the +promptings of that human kindness which should draw together man and man, +old and young, rich and poor; and keep your sympathies fresh by bringing +nourishment to them through channels which prejudice or short-sightedness +would fain narrow or stop up. This hortatory purpose assumes the form of +invective and even of angry menace; and "utilitarian economists, skeletons +of school-masters, commissioners of facts, genteel and used-up infidels, +gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds," are warned: "The poor you +have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the +utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives, so much +in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is +utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand +face to face, reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you." + +No authority, however eminent, not even Mr. Ruskin's, is required to teach +reflecting minds the infinite importance of the principles which _Hard +Times_ was intended to illustrate. Nor is it of much moment whether the +illustrations are always exact; whether the "commissioners of facts" have +reason to protest that the unimaginative character of their processes does +not necessarily imply an unimaginative purpose in their ends; whether +there is any actual Coketown in existence within a hundred miles of +Manchester; or whether it suffices that "everybody knew what was meant, +but every cotton-spinning town said it was the other cotton-spinning +town." The chief personal grievance of Stephen Blackpool has been removed +or abated, but the "muddle" is not yet altogether cleared up which +prevents the nation and the "national dustmen," its law-givers, from +impartially and sympathetically furthering the interest of all classes. In +a word, the moral of _Hard Times_ has not yet lost its force, however +imperfect or unfair the method may have been in which it is urged in the +book. + +Unfortunately, however, a work of art with a didactic purpose is only too +often prone to exaggerate what seems of special importance for the purpose +in question, and to heighten contrasts which seem likely to put it in the +clearest light. "Thomas Gradgrind, sir"--who announces himself with +something of the genuine Lancashire roll--and his system are a sound and a +laughable piece of satire, to begin with, only here and there marred by +the satirist's imperfect knowledge of the details which he caricatures. +The "Manchester School," which the novel strives to expose, is in itself +to a great extent a figment of the imagination, which to this day serves +to round many a hollow period in oratory and journalism. Who, it may +fairly be asked, were the parliamentary politicians satirized in the +member for Coketown, deaf and blind to any consideration but the +multiplication-table? But in any case the cause hardly warrants one of its +consequences as depicted in the novel--the utter brutalization of a stolid +nature like "the Whelp's." When Gradgrind's son is about to be shipped +abroad out of reach of the penalties of his crime, he reminds his father +that he merely exemplifies the statistical law that "so many people out of +so many will be dishonest." When the virtuous Bitzer is indignantly asked +whether he has a heart, he replies that he is physiologically assured of +the fact; and to the further inquiry whether this heart of his is +accessible to compassion, makes answer that "it is accessible to reason, +and to nothing else." These returnings of Mr. Gradgrind's philosophy upon +himself savour of the moral justice represented by Gratiano in the fourth +act. So, again, Coketown, with its tall chimneys and black river, and its +thirteen religious denominations, to which whoever else belonged the +working-men did _not_, is no perverse contradiction of fact. But the +influence of Coketown, or of a whole wilderness of Coketowns, cannot +justly be charged with a tendency to ripen such a product as Josiah +Bounderby, who is not only the "bully of humanity," but proves to be a +mean-spirited impostor in his pretensions to the glory of self-help. In +short, _Hard Times_ errs by its attempt to prove too much. + +Apart, however, from the didactic purposes which overburden it, the pathos +and humour of particular portions of this tale appear to me to have been +in no wise overrated. The domestic tragedy of Stephen and Rachael has a +subdued intensity of tenderness and melancholy of a kind rare with +Dickens, upon whom the example of Mrs. Gaskell in this instance may not +have been without its influence. Nor is there anything more delicately and +at the same time more appropriately conceived in any of his works than +poor Rachael's dominion over the imagination as well as over the +affections of her noble-minded and unfortunate lover: "As the shining +stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the +rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life." The +love-story of poor Louisa is of a different kind, and more wordy in the +telling; yet here also the feelings painted are natural and true. The +humorous interest is almost entirely concentrated upon the company of +horse-riders; and never has Dickens's extraordinary power of humorous +observation more genially asserted itself. From Mr. Sleary--"thtout man, +game-eye"--and his protagonist, Mr. E. W. B. Childers, who, when he shook +his long hair, caused it to "shake all at once," down to Master +Kidderminster, who used to form the apex of the human pyramids, and "in +whose young nature there was an original flavour of the misanthrope," +these honest equestrians are more than worthy to stand by the side of Mr. +Vincent Crummles and his company of actors; and the fun has here, in +addition to the grotesqueness of the earlier picture, a mellowness of its +own. Dickens's comic genius was never so much at its ease and so +inexhaustible in ludicrous fancies as in the depiction of such groups as +this; and the horse-riders, skilfully introduced to illustrate a truth, +wholesome if not novel, would have insured popularity to a far less +interesting and to a far less powerful fiction. + +The year after that which saw the publication of _Hard Times_ was one in +which the thoughts of most Englishmen were turned away from the problems +approached in that story. But if the military glories of 1854 had not +aroused in him any very exuberant enthusiasm, the reports from the Crimea +in the ensuing winter were more likely to appeal to his patriotism as well +as to his innate impatience of disorder and incompetence. In the first +instance, however, he contented himself with those grumblings to which, as +a sworn foe of red tape and a declared disbeliever in our parliamentary +system, he might claim to have a special right; and he seems to have been +too restless in and about himself to have entered very closely into the +progress of public affairs. The Christmas had been a merry one at +Tavistock House; and the amateur theatricals of its juvenile company had +passed through a most successful season. Their history has been written by +one of the performers--himself not the least distinguished of the company, +since it was he who, in Dickens's house, caused Thackeray to roll off his +seat in a fit of laughter. Dickens, who with Mark Lemon disported himself +among these precocious minnows, was, as our chronicler relates, like +Triplet, "author, manager, and actor too," organiser, deviser, and +harmoniser of all the incongruous assembled elements; it was he "who +improvised costumes, painted and corked our innocent cheeks, and suggested +all the most effective business of the scene." But, as was usual with him, +the transition was rapid from play to something very like earnest; and +already, in June, 1855, the Tavistock House theatre produced Mr. Wilkie +Collins's melodrama of _The Light-house_, which afterwards found its way +to the public stage. To Dickens, who performed in it with the author, it +afforded "scope for a piece of acting of great power," the old sailor +Aaron Gurnock, which by its savage picturesqueness earned a tribute of +recognition from Carlyle. No less a hand than Stanfield painted the +scenery, and Dickens himself, besides writing the prologue, introduced +into the piece a ballad called _The Story of the Wreck_, a not +unsuccessful effort in Cowper's manner. At Christmas, 1856-'57, there +followed _The Frozen Deep_, another melodrama by the same author; and by +this time the management of his private theatricals had become to Dickens +a serious business, to be carried on seriously for its own sake. "It was +to him," he wrote, "like writing a book in company;" and his young people +might learn from it "that kind of humility which is got from the earned +knowledge that whatever the right hand finds to do must be done with the +heart in it, and in a desperate earnest." _The Frozen Deep_ was several +times repeated, on one occasion for the benefit of the daughter of the +recently deceased Douglas Jerrold; but by the end of January the little +theatre was finally broken up; and though Dickens spent one more winter +season at Tavistock House, the shadow was then already falling upon his +cheerful home. + +In the midst of his children's Christmas gaieties of the year 1855 Dickens +had given two or three public readings to "wonderful audiences" in various +parts of the country. A trip to Paris with Mr. Wilkie Collins had +followed, during which, as he wrote home, he was wandering about Paris all +day, dining at all manner of places, and frequenting the theatres at the +rate of two or three a night. "I suppose," he adds, with pleasant +self-irony, "as an old farmer said of Scott, I am 'makin' mysel'' all the +time; but I seem to be rather a free-and-easy sort of superior vagabond." +And in truth a roving, restless spirit was strong upon him in these years. +Already, in April, he speaks of himself as "going off; I don't know where +or how far, to ponder about I don't know what." France, Switzerland, +Spain, Constantinople, in Mr. Layard's company, had been successively in +his thoughts, and, for aught he knew, Greenland and the North Pole might +occur to him next. At the same time he foresaw that the end of it all +would be his shutting himself up in some out-of-the-way place of which he +had not yet thought, and going desperately to work there. + +Before, however, these phantasmagoric schemes had subsided into the quiet +plan of an autumn visit to Folkestone, followed during the winter and +spring by a residence at Paris, he had at least found a subject to ponder +on, which was to suggest an altogether novel element in his next work of +fiction. I have said that though, like the majority of his +fellow-countrymen, Dickens regarded our war with Russia as inevitable, yet +his hatred of all war, and his impatience of the exaggerations of passion +and sentiment which all war produces, had preserved him from himself +falling a victim to their contagion. On the other hand, when in the winter +of 1854-'55 the note of exultation in the bravery of our soldiers in the +Crimea began to be intermingled with complaints against the grievously +defective arrangements for their comfort and health, and when these +complaints, stimulated by the loud-voiced energy of the press, and +extending into censures upon the whole antiquated and perverse system of +our army administration, speedily swelled into a roar of popular +indignation, sincere conviction ranged him on the side of the most +uncompromising malcontents. He was at all times ready to give vent to that +antipathy against officialism which is shared by so large a number of +Englishmen. Though the son of a dock-yard official, he is found roundly +asserting that "more obstruction of good things and patronage of bad +things has been committed in the dock-yards--as in everything connected +with the misdirection of the navy--than in every other branch of the +public service put together, including"--the particularisation is +hard--"even the Woods and Forests." He had listened, we may be sure, to +the scornful denunciations launched by the prophet of the _Latter-Day +Pamphlets_ against Downing Street and all its works, and to the +proclamation of the great though rather vague truth that "reform in that +Downing Street department of affairs is precisely the reform which were +worth all others." And now the heart-rending sufferings of multitudes of +brave men had brought to light, in one department of the public +administration, a series of complications and perversities which in the +end became so patent to the Government itself that they had to be roughly +remedied in the very midst of the struggle. The cry for administrative +reform, which arose in the year 1855, however crude the form it +frequently took, was in itself a logical enough result of the situation; +and there is no doubt that the angriness of the complaint was intensified +by the attitude taken up in the House of Commons by the head of the +Government towards the pertinacious politician who made himself the +mouthpiece of the extreme demands of the feeling outside. Mr. Layard was +Dickens's valued friend; and the share is thus easily explained +which--against his otherwise uniform practice of abstaining from public +meetings--the most popular writer of the day took in the Administrative +Reform meetings, held in Drury Lane Theatre, on June 27, 1855. The speech +which he delivered on this occasion, and which was intended to aid in +forcing the "whole question" of Administrative Reform upon the attention +of an unwilling Government, possesses no value whatever in connexion with +its theme, though of course it is not devoid of some smart and telling +hits. Not on the platform, but at his desk as an author, was Dickens to do +real service to the cause of administrative efficiency. For whilst +invective of a general kind runs off like water from the rock of usage, +even Circumlocution Offices are not insensible to the acetous force of +satire. + +Dickens's caricature of British officialism formed the most generally +attractive element in the story of _Little Dorrit_--originally intended to +be called _Nobody's Fault_--which he published in monthly numbers, from +December, 1855, that year, to June, 1857. He was solemnly taken to task +for his audacity by the _Edinburgh Review_, which reproached him for his +persistent ridicule of "the institutions of the country, the laws, the +administration, in a word, the government under which we live." His +"charges" were treated as hardly seriously meant, but as worthy of severe +reprobation, because likely to be seriously taken by the poor, the +uneducated, and the young. And the caricaturist, besides being reminded of +the names of several eminent public servants, was specially requested to +look, as upon a picture contrasting with his imaginary Circumlocution +Office, upon the Post Office, or--for the choice offered was not more +extensive--upon the London police, so liberally praised by himself in his +own journal. The delighted author of _Little Dorrit_ replied to this not +very skilful diatribe in a short and spirited rejoinder in _Household +Words_. In this he judiciously confined himself to refuting an unfounded +incidental accusation in the Edinburgh article, and to dwelling, as upon a +"Curious Misprint," upon the indignant query: "How does he account for the +career of _Mr. Rowland Hill_?" whose name, as an example of the ready +intelligence of the Circumlocution Office, was certainly an odd _erratum_. +Had he, however, cared to make a more general reply to the main article of +the indictment, he might have pointed out that, as a matter of fact, our +official administrative machinery _had_ recently broken down in one of its +most important branches, and that circumlocution in the literal sense of +the word--circumlocution between department and department, or office and +office--had been one of the principal causes of the collapse. The general +drift of the satire was, therefore, in accordance with fact, and the +satire itself salutary in its character. To quarrel with it for not taking +into consideration what might be said on the other side, was to quarrel +with the method of treatment which satire has at all times considered +itself entitled to adopt; while to stigmatise a popular book as likely to +mislead the ill-informed, was to suggest a restraint which would have +deprived wit and humour of most of their opportunities of rendering +service to either a good or an evil cause. + +A far more legitimate exception has been taken to these Circumlocution +Office episodes as defective in art by the very reason of their being +exaggerations. Those best acquainted with the interiors of our government +offices may be right in denying that the Barnacles can be regarded as an +existing type. Indeed, it would at no time have been easy to point to any +office quite as labyrinthine, or quite as bottomless, as that permanently +presided over by Mr. Tite Barnacle; to any chief secretary or commissioner +so absolutely wooden of fibre as he; or to any private secretary so +completely absorbed in his eye-glass as Barnacle junior. But as satirical +figures they one and all fulfil their purpose as thoroughly as the picture +of the official sanctum itself, with its furniture "in the higher official +manner," and its "general bamboozling air of how not to do it." The only +question is, whether satire which, if it is to be effective, must be of a +piece and in its way exaggerated, is not out of place in a pathetic and +humorous fiction, where, like a patch of too diverse a thread, it +interferes with the texture into which it is introduced. In themselves +these passages of _Little Dorrit_ deserve to remain unforgotten amongst +the masterpieces of literary caricature; and there is, I do not hesitate +to say, something of Swiftian force in their grotesque embodiment of a +popular current of indignation. The mere name of the Circumlocution Office +was a stroke of genius, one of those phrases of Dickens which Professor +Masson justly describes as, whether exaggerated or not, "efficacious for +social reform." As usual, Dickens had made himself well acquainted with +the formal or outside part of his subject; the very air of Whitehall seems +to gather round us as Mr. Tite Barnacle, in answer to a persistent +enquirer who "wants to know" the position of a particular matter, +concedes that it "may have been, in the course of official business, +referred to the Circumlocution Office for its consideration," and that +"the department may have either originated, or confirmed, a minute on the +subject." In the _Household Words_ paper called _A Poor Man's Tale of a +Patent_ (1850) will be found a sufficiently elaborate study for Mr. +Doyce's experiences of the government of his country, as wrathfully +narrated by Mr. Meagles. + +With the exception of the Circumlocution Office passages--adventitious as +they are to the progress of the action--_Little Dorrit_ exhibits a +palpable falling-off in inventive power. Forster illustrates by a striking +fac-simile the difference between the "labour and pains" of the author's +short notes for _Little Dorrit_ and the "lightness and confidence of +handling" in what hints he had jotted down for _David Copperfield_. +Indeed, his "tablets" had about this time begun to be an essential part of +his literary equipment. But in _Little Dorrit_ there are enough internal +signs of, possibly unconscious, lassitude. The earlier, no doubt, is, in +every respect, the better part of the book; or, rather, the later part +shows the author wearily at work upon a canvas too wide for him, and +filling it up with a crowd of personages in whom it is difficult to take +much interest. Even Mr. Merdle and his catastrophe produce the effect +rather of a ghastly allegory than of an "extravagant conception," as the +author ironically called it in his preface, derived only too directly from +real life. In the earlier part of the book, in so far as it is not once +again concerned with enforcing the moral of _Hard Times_ in a different +way, by means of Mrs. Clennam and her son's early history, the humour of +Dickens plays freely over the figure of the Father of the Marshalsea. It +is a psychological masterpiece in its way; but the revolting selfishness +of Little Dorrit's father is not redeemed artistically by her own +long-suffering; for her pathos lacks the old irresistible ring. Doubtless +much in this part of the story--the whole episode, for instance, of the +honest turnkey--is in the author's best manner. But, admirable as it is, +this new picture of prison-life and prison-sentiment has an undercurrent +of bitterness, indeed, almost of contemptuousness, foreign to the best +part of Dickens's genius. This is still more perceptible in a figure not +less true to life than the Father of the Marshalsea himself--Flora, the +overblown flower of Arthur Clennam's boyish love. The humour of the +conception is undeniable, but the whole effect is cruel; and, though +greatly amused, the reader feels almost as if he were abetting a +profanation. Dickens could not have become what he is to the great +multitude of his readers had he, as a humourist, often indulged in this +cynical mood. + +There is in general little in the characters of this fiction to compensate +for the sense of oppression from which, as he follows the slow course of +its far from striking plot, the reader finds it difficult to free himself. +A vein of genuine humour shows itself in Mr. Plornish, obviously a +favourite of the author's, and one of those genuine working-men, as rare +in fiction as on the stage, where Mr. Toole has reproduced the species; +but the relation between Mr. and Mrs. Plornish is only a fainter revival +of that between Mr. and Mrs. Bagney. Nor is there anything fresh or novel +in the characters belonging to another social sphere. Henry Gowan, +apparently intended as an elaborate study in psychology, is only a very +tedious one; and his mother at Hampton Court, whatever phase of a +dilapidated aristocracy she may be intended to caricature, is merely +ill-bred. As for Mrs. General, she is so sorry a burlesque that she could +not be reproduced without extreme caution even on the stage--to the +reckless conventionalities of which, indeed, the whole picture of the +Dorrit family as _nouveaux riches_ bears a striking resemblance. There is, +on the contrary, some good caricature, which, in one instance at least, +was thought transparent by the knowing, in the _silhouettes_ of the great +Mr. Merdle's professional guests; but these are, like the Circumlocution +Office puppets, satiric sketches, not the living figures of creative +humour. + +I have spoken of this story with a censure which may be regarded as +exaggerated in its turn. But I well remember, at the time of its +publication in numbers, the general consciousness that _Little Dorrit_ was +proving unequal to the high-strung expectations which a new work by +Dickens then excited in his admirers, both young and old. There were new +and striking features in it, with abundant comic and serious effect, but +there was no power in the whole story to seize and hold, and the feeling +could not be escaped that the author was not at his best. And Dickens was +not at his best when he wrote _Little Dorrit_. Yet while nothing is more +remarkable in the literary career of Dickens than this apparently speedy +decline of his power, nothing is more wonderful in it than the degree to +which he righted himself again, not, indeed, with his public, for the +public never deserted its favourite, but with his genius. + +A considerable part of _Little Dorrit_ must have been written in Paris, +where, in October, after a quiet autumn at Folkestone, Dickens had taken a +family apartment in the Avenue des Champs Elysees, "about half a quarter +of a mile above Franconi's." Here, after his fashion, he lived much to +himself, his family, and his guests, only occasionally finding his way +into a literary or artistic _salon_; but he sat for his portrait to both +Ary and Henri Scheffer, and was easily persuaded to read his _Cricket on +the Hearth_ to an audience in the atelier. Macready and Mr. Wilkie Collins +were in turn the companions of many "theatrical and lounging" evenings. +Intent as Dickens now had become upon the technicalities of his own form +of composition, this interest must have been greatly stimulated by the +frequent comparison of modern French plays, in most of which nicety of +construction and effectiveness of situation have so paramount a +significance. At Boulogne, too, Mr. Wilkie Collins was a welcome summer +visitor. And in the autumn the two friends started on the _Lazy Tour of +Two Idle Apprentices_. It came to an untimely end as a pedestrian +excursion, but the record of it is one of the pleasantest memorials of a +friendship which brightened much of Dickens's life and intensified his +activity in work as well as in pleasure. + +"Mr. Thomas Idle" had indeed a busy time of it in this year 1857. The +publication of _Little Dorrit_ was not finished till June, and in August +we find him, between a reading and a performance of _The Frozen Deep_ at +Manchester--then in the exciting days of the great Art Exhibition--thus +describing to Macready his way of filling up his time: "I hope you have +seen my tussle with the _Edinburgh_. I saw the chance last Friday week, as +I was going down to read the _Carol_ in St. Martin's Hall. Instantly +turned to, then and there, and wrote half the article, flew out of bed +early next morning, and finished it by noon. Went down to Gallery of +Illustration (we acted that night), did the day's business, corrected the +proofs in Polar costume in dressing-room, broke up two numbers of +_Household Words_ to get it out directly, played in _Frozen Deep_ and +_Uncle John_, presided at supper of company, made no end of speeches, went +home and gave in completely for four hours, then got sound asleep, and +next day was as fresh as you used to be in the far-off days of your lusty +youth." It was on the occasion of the readings at St. Martin's Hall, for +the benefit of Douglas Jerrold's family, that the thought of giving +readings for his own benefit first suggested itself to Dickens; and, as +will be seen, by April, 1858, the idea had been carried into execution, +and a new phase of life had begun for him. And yet at this very time, when +his home was about to cease being in the fullest sense a home to Dickens, +by a strange irony of fortune, he had been enabled to carry out a +long-cherished fancy and to take possession, in the first instance as a +summer residence, of the house on Gad's Hill, of which a lucky chance had +made him the owner rather more than a twelvemonth before. + +"My little place," he wrote in 1858, to his Swiss friend Cerjat, "is a +grave red-brick house (time of George the First, I suppose), which I have +added to and stuck bits upon in all manner of ways, so that it is as +pleasantly irregular, and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas, +as the most hopeful man could possibly desire. It is on the summit of +Gad's Hill. The robbery was committed before the door, on the man with the +treasure, and Falstaff ran away from the identical spot of ground now +covered by the room in which I write. A little rustic ale-house, called +'The Sir John Falstaff,' is over the way--has been over the way ever +since, in honour of the event.... The whole stupendous property is on the +old Dover road...." + +Among "the blessed woods and fields" which, as he says, had done him "a +world of good," in a season of unceasing bodily and mental unrest, the +great English writer had indeed found a habitation fitted to become +inseparable from his name and fame. It was not till rather later, in 1860, +that, after the sale of Tavistock House, Gad's Hill Place became his +regular abode, a London house being only now and then taken for the +season, while furnished rooms were kept at the office in Wellington Street +for occasional use. And it was only gradually that he enlarged and +improved his Kentish place so as to make it the pretty and comfortable +country-house which at the present day it appears to be; constructing, in +course of time, the passage under the high-road to the shrubbery, where +the Swiss chalet given to him by Mr. Fechter was set up, and building the +pretty little conservatory, which, when completed, he was not to live many +days to enjoy. But an old-fashioned, homely look, free from the slightest +affectation of quietness, belonged to Gad's Hill Place, even after all +these alterations, and belongs to it even at this day, when Dickens's +solid old-fashioned furniture has been changed. In the pretty little front +hall still hangs the illuminated tablet recalling the legend of Gad's +Hill; and on the inside panels of the library door remain the facetious +sham book-titles: "Hudson's _Complete Failure_," and "_Ten Minutes in +China_," and "Cats' _Lives_" and, on a long series of leather backs, +"Hansard's _Guide to Refreshing Sleep_." The rooms are all of a modest +size, and the bedrooms--amongst them Dickens's own--very low; but the +whole house looks thoroughly habitable, while the views across the +cornfields at the back are such as in their undulation of soft outline are +nowhere more pleasant than in Kent. Rochester and the Medway are near, +even for those who do not--like Dickens and his dogs--count a stretch past +three or four "mile-stones on the Dover road" as the mere beginning of an +afternoon's walk. At a distance little greater there are in one direction +the green glades of Cobham Park, with Chalk and Gravesend beyond; and in +another the flat country towards the Thames, with its abundance of +market-gardens. There, too, are the marshes on the border of which lie +the massive ruin of Cooling Castle, the refuge of the Lollard martyr who +was _not_ concerned in the affair on Gad's Hill, and Cooling Church and +church-yard, with the quaint little gravestones in the grass. London and +the office were within easy reach, and Paris itself was, for practical +purposes, not much farther away, so that, in later days at all events, +Dickens found himself "crossing the Channel perpetually." + +The name of Dickens still has a good sound in and about Gad's Hill. He was +on very friendly terms with some families whose houses stand near to his +own; and though nothing was farther from his nature, as he says, than to +"wear topboots" and play the squire, yet he had in him not a little of +what endears so many a resident country gentleman to his neighbourhood. He +was head organiser rather than chief patron of village sports, of cricket +matches and foot races; and his house was a dispensary for the poor of the +parish. He established confidential relations between his house and the +Falstaff Inn over the way, regulating his servants' consumption of beer on +a strict but liberal plan of his own devising; but it is not for this +reason only that the successor of Mr. Edwin Trood--for such was the +veritable name of mine host of the "Falstaff" in Dickens's time--declares +that it was a bad day for the neighbourhood when Dickens was taken away +from it. In return, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm which surrounded +him in his own country, and Forster has described his astonishment at the +manifestation of it on the occasion of the wedding of the youngest +daughter of the house in 1860. And, indeed, he was born to be popular, and +specially among those by whom he was beloved as a friend or honoured as a +benefactor. + +But it was not for long intervals of either work or rest that Dickens was +to settle down in his pleasant country house, nor was he ever, except +quite at the last, to sit down under his own roof in peace and quiet, a +wanderer no more. Less than a year after he had taken up his residence for +the summer on Gad's Hill, his home, and that of his younger children, was +his wife's home no longer. The separation, which appears to have been +preparing itself for some, but no very long, time, took place in May, +1858, when, after an amicable arrangement, Mrs. Dickens left her husband, +who henceforth allowed her an ample separate maintenance, and occasionally +corresponded with her, but never saw her again. The younger children +remained in their father's house under the self-sacrificing and devoted +care of Mrs. Dickens's surviving sister, Miss Hogarth. Shortly afterwards, +Dickens thought it well, in printed words which may be left forgotten, to +rebut some slanderous gossip which, as the way of the world is, had +misrepresented the circumstances of this separation. The causes of the +event were an open secret to his friends and acquaintances. If he had ever +loved his wife with that affection before which so-called +incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition fade into nothingness, +there is no indication of it in any of his numerous letters addressed to +her. Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the direction of +that resignation which love and duty together made possible to David +Copperfield, or even that he remained in every way master of himself, as +many men have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded life and its +disappointments has never been written in history or figured in fiction. +It was not incumbent upon his faithful friend and biographer, and much +less can it be upon one whom nothing but a sincere admiration of Dickens's +genius entitles to speak of him at all, to declare the standard by which +the most painful transaction in his life is to be judged. I say the most +painful, for it is with a feeling akin to satisfaction that one reads, in +a letter three years afterwards to a lady in reference to her daughter's +wedding: "I want to thank you also for thinking of me on the occasion, but +I feel that I am better away from it. I should really have a misgiving +that I was a sort of a shadow on a young marriage, and you will understand +me when I say so, and no more." A shadow, too--who would deny it?--falls +on every one of the pictures in which the tenderest of modern humourists +has painted the simple joys and the sacred sorrows of that home life of +which to his generation he had become almost the poet and the prophet, +when we remember how he was himself neither blessed with its full +happiness nor capable of accepting with resignation the imperfection +inherent in it, as in all things human. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +LAST YEARS. + +[1858-1870.] + + +The last twelve years of Dickens's life were busy years, like the others; +but his activity was no longer merely the expression of exuberant force, +and long before the collapse came he had been repeatedly warned of the +risks he continued to defy. When, however, he first entered upon those +public readings, by persisting in which he indisputably hastened his end, +neither he nor his friends took into account the fear of bodily +ill-effects resulting from his exertions. Their misgivings had other +grounds. Of course, had there been any pressure of pecuniary difficulty or +need upon Dickens when he began, or when on successive occasions he +resumed, his public readings, there would be nothing further to be said. +But I see no suggestion of any such pressure. "My worldly circumstances," +he wrote before he had finally made up his mind to read in America, "are +very good. I don't want money. All my possessions are free and in the best +order. Still," he added, "at fifty-five or fifty-six, the likelihood of +making a very great addition to one's capital in half a year is an immense +consideration." Moreover, with all his love of doing as he chose, and his +sense of the value of such freedom to him as a writer, he was a man of +simple though liberal habits of life, with no taste for the gorgeous or +capricious extravagances of a Balzac or a Dumas, nor can he have been at +a loss how to make due provision for those whom in the course of nature he +would leave behind him. Love of money for its own sake, or for that of the +futilities it can purchase, was altogether foreign to his nature. At the +same time, the rapid making of large sums has potent attractions for most +men; and these attractions are perhaps strongest for those who engage in +the pursuit for the sake of the race as well as of the prize. Dickens's +readings were virtually something new; their success was not only all his +own, but unique and unprecedented--what nobody but himself ever had +achieved or ever could have achieved. Yet the determining motive--if I +read his nature rightly--was, after all, of another kind. "Two souls dwelt +in his breast;" and when their aspirations united in one appeal it was +irresistible. The author who craved for the visible signs of a sympathy +responding to that which he felt for his multitudes of readers, and the +actor who longed to impersonate creations already beings of flesh and +blood to himself, were both astir in him, and in both capacities he felt +himself drawn into the very publicity deprecated by his friends. He liked, +as one who knew him thoroughly said to me, to be face to face with his +public; and against this liking, which he had already indulged as fully as +he could without passing the boundaries between private and professional +life, arguments were in vain. It has been declared sheer pedantry to speak +of such boundaries; and to suggest that there is anything degrading in +paid readings such as those of Dickens would, on the face of it, be +absurd. On the other hand, the author who, on or off the stage, becomes +the interpreter of his writings to large audiences, more especially if he +does his best to stereotype his interpretation by constantly repeating it, +limits his own prerogative of being many things to many men; and where +the author of a work, more particularly of a work of fiction, adjusts it +to circumstances differing from those of its production, he allows the +requirements of the lesser art to prejudice the claims of the greater. + +Dickens cannot have been blind to these considerations; but to others his +eyes were never opened. He found much that was inspiriting in his success +as a reader, and this not only in the large sums he gained, or even in the +"roaring sea of response," to use his own fine metaphor, of which he had +become accustomed to "stand upon the beach." His truest sentiment as an +author was touched to the quick; and he was, as he says himself, "brought +very near to what he had sometimes dreamed might be his fame," when, at +York, a lady, whose face he had never seen, stopped him in the street, and +said to him, "Mr. Dickens, will you let me touch the hand that has filled +my house with many friends?" or when, at Belfast, he was almost +overwhelmed with entreaties "to shake hands, Misther Dickens, and God +bless you, sir; not ounly for the light you've been in mee house, sir--and +God love your face!--this many a year." On the other hand--and this, +perhaps, a nature like his would not be the quickest to perceive--there +was something vulgarising in the constant striving after immediate success +in the shape of large audiences, loud applause, and satisfactory receipts. +The conditions of the actor's art cannot forego these stimulants; and this +is precisely his disadvantage in comparison with artists who are able to +possess themselves in quiet. To me, at least, it is painful to find +Dickens jubilantly recording how at Dublin "eleven bank-notes were thrust +into the pay-box--Arthur saw them--at one time for eleven stalls;" how at +Edinburgh "neither Grisi, nor Jenny Lind, nor anything, nor anybody, +seems to make the least effect on the draw of the readings;" while, every +allowance being made, there is something almost ludicrous in the double +assertion, that "the most delicate audience I had ever seen in any +provincial place is Canterbury; but the audience with the greatest sense +of humour certainly is Dover." What subjects for parody Dickens would have +found in these innocent ecstasies if uttered by any other man! +Undoubtedly, this enthusiasm was closely connected with the very +thoroughness with which he entered into the work of his readings. "You +have no idea," he tells Forster, in 1867, "how I have worked at them. +Finding it necessary, as their reputation widened, that they should be +better than at first, _I have learnt them all_, so as to have no +mechanical drawback in looking after the words. I have tested all the +serious passion in them by everything I know; made the humorous points +much more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; cultivated a +self-possession not to be disturbed; and made myself master of the +situation." "From ten years ago to last night," he writes to his son from +Baltimore in 1868, "I have never read to an audience but I have watched +for an opportunity of striking out something better somewhere." The +freshness with which he returned night after night and season after season +to the sphere of his previous successes, was itself a genuine actor's +gift. "So real," he declares, "are my fictions to myself, that, after +hundreds of nights, I come with a feeling of perfect freshness to that +little red table, and laugh and cry with my hearers as if I had never +stood there before." + +Dickens's first public readings were given at Birmingham, during the +Christmas week of 1853-'54, in support of the new Midland Institute; but a +record--for the authenticity of which I cannot vouch--remains, that with +true theatrical instinct he, before the Christmas in question, gave a +trial reading of the _Christmas Carol_ to a smaller public audience at +Peterborough. He had since been repeatedly found willing to read for +benevolent purposes; and the very fact that it had become necessary to +decline some of these frequent invitations had again suggested the +possibility--which had occurred to him eleven years before--of meeting the +demand in a different way. Yet it may, after all, be doubted whether the +idea of undertaking an entire series of paid public readings would have +been carried out, had it not been for the general restlessness which had +seized upon Dickens early in 1858, when, moreover, he had no special task +either of labour or of leisure to absorb him, and when he craved for +excitement more than ever. To go home--in this springtime of 1858--was not +to find there the peace of contentment. "I must do _something_," he wrote +in March to his faithful counsellor, "or I shall wear my heart away. I can +see no better thing to do that is half so hopeful in itself, or half so +well suited to my restless state." + +So by April the die was cast, and on the 29th of that month he had entered +into his new relation with the public. One of the strongest and most +genuine impulses of his nature had victoriously asserted itself, and +according to his wont he addressed himself to his task with a relentless +vigour which flinched from no exertion. He began with a brief series at +St. Martin's Hall, and then, his invaluable friend Arthur Smith continuing +to act as his manager, he contrived to cram not less than eighty-seven +readings into three months and a half of travelling in the "provinces," +including Scotland and Ireland. A few winter readings in London, and a +short supplementary course in the country during October, 1859, completed +this first series. Already, in 1858, we find him, in a letter from +Ireland, complaining of the "tremendous strain," and declaring, "I seem to +be always either in a railway carriage, or reading, or going to bed. I get +so knocked up, whenever I have a minute to remember it, that then I go to +bed as a matter of course." But the enthusiasm which everywhere welcomed +him--I can testify to the thrill of excitement produced by his visit to +Cambridge, in October, 1859--repaid him for his fatigues. Scotland thawed +to him, and with Dublin--where his success was extraordinary--he was so +smitten as to think it at first sight "pretty nigh as big as Paris." In +return, the Boots at Morrison's expressed the general feeling in a +patriotic point of view: "'Whaat sart of a hoose, sur?' he asked me. +'Capital.' 'The Lard be praised, for the 'onor o' Dooblin.'" + +The books, or portions of books, to which he confined himself during this +first series of readings were few in number. They comprised the _Carol_ +and the _Chimes_, and two stories from earlier Christmas numbers of +_Household Words_--may the exclamation of the soft-hearted chambermaid at +the Holly Tree Inn, "It's a shame to part 'em!" never vanish from my +memory!--together with the episodic readings of the _Trial_ in _Pickwick_, +_Mrs. Gamp_, and _Paul Dombey_. Of these the _Pickwick_, which I heard +more than once, is still vividly present to me. The only drawback to the +complete enjoyment of it was the lurking fear that there had been some +tampering with the text, not to be condoned even in its author. But in the +way of assumption Charles Mathews the elder himself could have +accomplished no more Protean effort. The lack-lustre eye of Mr. Justice +Stareleigh, the forensic hitch of Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, and the hopeless +impotence of Mr. Nathaniel Winkle were alike incomparable. And if the +success of the impersonation of Mr. Samuel Weller was less +complete--although Dickens had formerly acted the character on an amateur +stage--the reason probably was that, by reason of his endless store of +ancient and modern instances, Sam had himself become a quasi-mythical +being, whom it was almost painful to find reproduced in flesh and blood. + +I have not hesitated to treat these readings by Dickens as if they had +been the performances of an actor; and the description would apply even +more strongly to his later readings, in which he seemed to make his points +in a more accentuated fashion than before. "His readings," says Mr. C. +Kent, in an interesting little book about them, "were, in the fullest +meaning of the words, singularly ingenious and highly-elaborated +histrionic performances." As such they had been prepared with a care such +as few actors bestow upon their parts, and--for the book was prepared not +less than the reading--not all authors bestow upon their plays. Now, the +art of reading, even in the case of dramatic works, has its own laws, +which even the most brilliant readers cannot neglect except at their +peril. A proper pitch has to be found, in the first instance, before the +exceptional passages can be, as it were, marked off from it; and the +absence of this ground-tone sometimes interfered with the total effect of +a reading by Dickens. On the other hand, the exceptional passages were, if +not uniformly, at least generally excellent; nor am I at all disposed to +agree with Forster in preferring, as a rule, the humorous to the pathetic. +At the same time, there was noticeable in these readings a certain +hardness which competent critics likewise discerned in Dickens's acting, +and which could not, at least in the former case, be regarded as an +ordinary characteristic of dilettanteism. The truth is that he isolated +his parts too sharply--a frequent fault of English acting, and one more +detrimental to the total effect of a reading than even to that of an acted +play. + +No sooner had the heaviest stress of the first series of readings ceased +than Dickens was once more at work upon a new fiction. The more immediate +purpose was to insure a prosperous launch to the journal which, in the +spring of 1859, took the place of _Household Words_. A dispute, painful in +its origin, but ending in an amicable issue, had resulted in the purchase +of that journal by Dickens; but already a little earlier he had--as he was +entitled to do--begun the new venture of _All the Year Round_, with which +_Household Words_ was afterwards incorporated. The first number, published +on April 30, contained the earliest instalment of _A Tale of Two Cities_, +which was completed by November 20 following. + +This story holds a unique place amongst the fictions of its author. +Perhaps the most striking difference between it and his other novels may +seem to lie in the all but entire absence from it of any humour or attempt +at humour; for neither the brutalities of that "honest tradesman," Jerry, +nor the laconisms of Miss Pross, can well be called by that name. Not that +his sources of humour were drying up, even though, about this time, he +contributed to an American journal a short "romance of the real world," +_Hunted Down_, from which the same relief is again conspicuously absent. +For the humour of Dickens was to assert itself with unmistakable force in +his next longer fiction, and was even before that, in some of his +occasional papers, to give delightful proofs of its continued vigour. In +the case of the _Tale of Two Cities_, he had a new and distinct design in +his mind which did not, indeed, exclude humour, but with which a liberal +indulgence in it must have seriously interfered. "I set myself," he +writes, "the little task of writing a picturesque story, rising in every +chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should +express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean, in +other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written, in place +of the bestiality that is written under that pretence, pounding the +characters out in its own mortar, and beating their own interests out of +them." He therefore renounced his more usual method in favour of one +probably less congenial to him. Yet, in his own opinion at least, he +succeeded so well in the undertaking, that when the story was near its end +he could venture to express a hope that it was "the best story he had +written." So much praise will hardly be given to this novel even by +admirers of the French art of telling a story succinctly, or by those who +can never resist a rather hysterical treatment of the French Revolution. + +In my own opinion _A Tale of Two Cities_ is a skilfully though not +perfectly constructed novel, which needed but little substantial +alteration in order to be converted into a not less effective stage-play. +And with such a design Dickens actually sent the proof-sheets of the book +to his friend Regnier, in the fearful hope that he might approve of the +project of its dramatisation for a French theatre. Cleverly or clumsily +adapted, the tale of the Revolution and its sanguinary vengeance was +unlikely to commend itself to the Imperial censorship; but an English +version was, I believe, afterwards very fairly successful on the boards of +the Adelphi, where Madame Celeste was certainly in her right place as +Madame Defarge, an excellent character for a melodrama, though rather +wearisome as she lies in wait through half a novel. + +The construction of this story is, as I have said, skilful but not +perfect. Dickens himself successfully defended his use of accident in +bringing about the death of Madame Defarge. The real objection to the +conduct of this episode, however, lies in the inadequacy of the +contrivance for leaving Miss Pross behind in Paris. Too much is also, I +think, made to turn upon the three words "and their +descendants"--non-essential in the original connexion--by which Dr. +Manette's written denunciation becomes fatal to those he loves. Still, the +general edifice of the plot is solid; its interest is, notwithstanding the +crowded background, concentrated with much skill upon a small group of +personages; and Carton's self-sacrifice, admirably prepared from the very +first, produces a legitimate tragic effect. At the same time the +novelist's art vindicates its own claims. Not only does this story contain +several narrative episodes of remarkable power--such as the flight from +Paris at the close, and the touching little incident of the seamstress, +told in Dickens's sweetest pathetic manner--but it is likewise enriched by +some descriptive pictures of unusual excellence: for instance, the sketch +of Dover in the good old smuggling times, and the mezzo-tint of the stormy +evening in Soho. Doubtless the increased mannerism of the style is +disturbing, and this not only in the high-strung French scenes. As to the +historical element in this novel, Dickens modestly avowed his wish that he +might by his story have been able "to add something to the popular and +picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can +hope to add anything to Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book." But if Dickens +desired to depict the noble of the _ancien regime_, either according to +Carlyle or according to intrinsic probability, he should not have +offered, in his Marquis, a type historically questionable, and unnatural +besides. The description of the Saint Antoine, before and during the +bursting of the storm, has in it more of truthfulness, or of the semblance +of truthfulness; and Dickens's perception of the physiognomy of the French +workman is, I think, remarkably accurate. Altogether, the book is an +extraordinary _tour de force_, which Dickens never repeated. + +The opening of a new story by Dickens gave the necessary _impetus_ to his +new journal at its earliest stage; nor was the ground thus gained ever +lost. Mr. W. H. Wills stood by his chief's side as of old, taking, more +especially in later years, no small share of responsibility upon him. The +prospectus of _All the Year Round_ had not in vain promised an identity of +principle in its conduct with that of its predecessor; in energy and +spirit it showed no falling off; and, though not in all respects, the +personality of Dickens made itself felt as distinctly as ever. Besides the +_Tale of Two Cities_ he contributed to it his story of _Great +Expectations_. Amongst his contributors Mr. Wilkie Collins took away the +breath of multitudes of readers; Mr. Charles Reade disported himself +amongst the facts which gave stamina to his fiction; and Lord Lytton made +a daring voyage into a mysterious country. Thither Dickens followed him, +for once, in his _Four Stories_, not otherwise noteworthy, and written in +a manner already difficult to discriminate from that of Mr. Wilkie +Collins. For the rest, the advice with which Dickens aided Lord Lytton's +progress in his _Strange Story_ was neither more ready nor more +painstaking than that which he bestowed upon his younger contributors, to +more than one of whom he generously gave the opportunity of publishing in +his journal a long work of fiction. Some of these younger writers were at +this period amongst his most frequent guests and associates; for nothing +more naturally commended itself to him than the encouragement of the +younger generation. + +But though longer imaginative works played at least as conspicuous a part +in the new journal as they had in the old, the conductor likewise +continued to make manifest his intention that the lesser contributions +should not be treated by readers or by writers as harmless necessary +"padding." For this purpose it was requisite not only that the choice of +subjects should be made with the utmost care, but also that the master's +hand should itself be occasionally visible. Dickens's occasional +contributions had been few and unimportant, till in a happy hour he began +a series of papers, including many of the pleasantest, as well as of the +mellowest, amongst the lighter productions of his pen. As usual, he had +taken care to find for this series a name which of itself went far to make +its fortune. + + "I am both a town and a country traveller, and am always on the road. + Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest + Brothers, and have rather a large connexion in the fancy goods way. + Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms + in Covent Garden, London--now about the city streets, now about the + country by-roads, seeing many little things, and some great things, + which, because they interest me, I think may interest others." + +The whole collection of these _Uncommercial Traveller_ papers, together +with the _Uncommercial Samples_ which succeeded them after Dickens's +return from America, and which begin with a graphic account of his +homeward voyage _Aboard Ship_, where the voice of conscience spoke in the +motion of the screw, amounts to thirty-seven articles, and spreads over a +period of nine years. They are necessarily of varying merit, but amongst +them are some which deserve a permanent place in our lighter literature. +Such are the description of the church-yards on a quiet evening in _The +City of the Absent_, the grotesque picture of loneliness in _Chambers_--a +favourite theme with Dickens--and the admirable papers on _Shy +Neighbourhoods_ and on _Tramps_. Others have a biographical interest, +though delightfully objective in treatment; yet others are mere fugitive +pieces; but there are few without some of the most attractive qualities of +Dickens's easiest style. + +Dickens contributed other occasional papers to his journal, some of which +may be forgotten without injury to his fame. Amongst these may be reckoned +the rather dreary _George Silverman's Explanation_ (1868), in which there +is nothing characteristic but a vivid picture of a set of ranters, led by +a clique of scoundrels; on the other hand, there will always be admirers +of the pretty _Holiday Romance_, published nearly simultaneously in +America and England, a nosegay of tales told by children, the only fault +of which is that, as with other children's nosegays, there is perhaps a +little too much of it. I have no room for helping to rescue from partial +oblivion an old friend, whose portrait has not, I think, found a home +amongst his master's collected sketches. Pincher's counterfeit has gone +astray, like _Pincher_ himself. Meanwhile, the special institution of the +Christmas number flourished in connexion with _All the Year Round_ down to +the year 1867, as it had during the last five years of _Household Words_. +It consisted, with the exception of the very last number, of a series of +short stories, in a framework of the editor's own devising. To the authors +of the stories, of which he invariably himself wrote one or more, he left +the utmost liberty, at times stipulating for nothing but that tone of +cheerful philanthropy which he had domesticated in his journal. In the +Christmas numbers, which gradually attained to such a popularity that of +one of the last something like a quarter of a million copies were sold, +Dickens himself shone most conspicuously in the introductory sections; and +some of these are to be reckoned amongst his very best descriptive +character-sketches. Already in _Household Words_ Christmas numbers the +introductory sketch of the _Seven Poor Travellers_ from Watt's Charity at +supper in the Rochester hostelry, and the excellent description of a +winter journey and sojourn at the _Holly Tree Inn_, with an excursus on +inns in general, had become widely popular. The _All the Year Round_ +numbers, however, largely augmented this success. After _Tom Tiddler's +Ground_, with the adventures of Miss Kitty Kimmeens, a pretty little +morality in miniature, teaching the same lesson as the vagaries of Mr. +Mopes the hermit, came _Somebody's Luggage_, with its exhaustive +disquisition on waiters; and then the memorable chirpings of _Mrs. +Lirriper_, in both _Lodgings_ and _Legacy_, admirable in the delicacy of +their pathos, and including an inimitable picture of London lodging-house +life. Then followed the _Prescriptions_ of _Dr. Marigold_, the eloquent +and sarcastic but tender-hearted Cheap Jack; and _Mugby Junction_, which +gave words to the cry of a whole nation of hungry and thirsty travellers. +In the tales and sketches contributed by him to the Christmas numbers, in +addition to these introductions, he at times gave the rein to his love for +the fanciful and the grotesque, which there was here no reason to keep +under. On the whole, written, as in a sense these compositions were, to +order, nothing is more astonishing in them than his continued freshness, +against which his mannerism is here of vanishing importance; and, +inasmuch as after issuing a last Christmas number of a different kind, +Dickens abandoned the custom when it had reached the height of popular +favour, and when manifold imitations had offered him the homage of their +flattery, he may be said to have withdrawn from this campaign in his +literary life with banners flying. + +In the year 1859 Dickens's readings had been comparatively few; and they +had ceased altogether in the following year, when the _Uncommercial +Traveller_ began his wanderings. The winter from 1859 to 1860 was his last +winter at Tavistock House; and, with the exception of his rooms in +Wellington Street, he had now no settled residence but Gad's Hill Place. +He sought its pleasant retreat about the beginning of June, after the new +experience of an attack of rheumatism had made him recognise "the +necessity of country training all through the summer." Yet such was the +recuperative power, or the indomitable self-confidence, of his nature, +that after he had in these summer months contributed some of the most +delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_ papers to his journal, we find him +already in August "prowling about, meditating a new book." + +It is refreshing to think of Dickens in this pleasant interval of country +life, before he had rushed once more into the excitement of his labours as +a public reader. We may picture him to ourselves, accompanied by his dogs, +striding along the country roads and lanes, exploring the haunts of the +country tramps, "a piece of Kentish road," for instance, "bordered on +either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and +the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on +this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing +steadily away to the ocean like a man's life. To gain the mile-stone here, +which the moss, primroses, violets, bluebells, and wild roses would soon +render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their +sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may." At the +foot of that hill, I fancy, lay Dullborough town half asleep in the summer +afternoon; and the river in the distance was that which bounded the +horizon of a little boy's vision "whose father's family name was Pirrip, +and whose Christian name was Philip, but whose infant tongue could make of +both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip." + +The story of Pip's adventures, the novel of _Great Expectations_, was +thought over in these Kentish perambulations between Thames and Medway +along the road which runs, apparently with the intention of running out to +sea, from Higham towards the marshes; in the lonely church-yard of Cooling +village by the thirteen little stone-lozenges, of which Pip counted only +five, now nearly buried in their turn by the rank grass; and in quiet +saunters through the familiar streets of Rochester, past the "queer" +Townhall; and through the "Vines" past the fine old Restoration House, +called in the book (by the name of an altogether different edifice) Satis +House. And the climax of the narrative was elaborated on a unique +steamboat excursion from London to the mouth of the Thames, broken by a +night at the "Ship and Lobster," an old riverside inn called "The Ship" in +the story. No wonder that Dickens's descriptive genius should become +refreshed by these studies of his subject, and that thus _Great +Expectations_ should have indisputably become one of the most picturesque +of his books. But it is something very much more at the same time. The +_Tale of Two Cities_ had as a story strongly seized upon the attention of +the reader. But in the earlier chapters of _Great Expectations_ every one +felt that Dickens was himself again. Since the Yarmouth scenes in _David +Copperfield_ he had written nothing in which description married itself to +sentiment so humorously and so tenderly. Uncouth, and slow, and +straightforward, and gentle of heart, like Mr. Peggotty, Joe Gargery is as +new a conception as he is a genuinely true one; nor is it easy to know +under what aspect to relish him most--whether disconsolate in his Sunday +clothes, "like some extraordinary bird, standing, as he did, speechless, +with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a +worm," or at home by his own fireside, winking at his little comrade, and, +when caught in the act by his wife, "drawing the back of his hand across +his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such occasions." Nor since +_David Copperfield_ had Dickens again shown such an insight as he showed +here into the world of a child's mind. "To be quite sure," he wrote to +Forster, "I had fallen into no unconscious repetitions, I read _David +Copperfield_ again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you +would hardly believe." His fears were unnecessary; for with all its charm +the history of Pip lacks the personal element which insures our sympathy +to the earlier story and to its hero. In delicacy of feeling, however, as +well as in humour of description, nothing in Dickens surpasses the earlier +chapters of _Great Expectations_; and equally excellent is the narrative +of Pip's disloyalty of heart toward his early friends, down to his +departure from the forge, a picture of pitiable selfishness almost +Rousseau-like in its fidelity to poor human nature; down to his comic +humiliation, when in the pride of his new position and his new clothes, +before "that unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy." The later and especially +the concluding portions of this novel contain much that is equal in power +to its opening; but it must be allowed that, before many chapters have +ended, a false tone finds its way into the story. The whole history of +Miss Havisham, and the crew of relations round the unfortunate creature, +is strained and unnatural, and Estella's hardness is as repulsive as that +of Edith Dombey herself. Mr. Jaggers and his house-keeper, and even Mr. +Wemmick, have an element of artificiality in them, whilst about the Pocket +family there is little, if anything at all, that is real. The story, +however, seems to recover itself as the main thread in its deftly-woven +texture is brought forward again: when on a dark, gusty night, ominous of +coming trouble, the catastrophe of Pip's expectations announces itself in +the return from abroad of his unknown benefactor, the convict whom he had +as a child fed on the marshes. The remainder of the narrative is +successful in conveying to the reader the sense of sickening anxiety which +fills the hero; the interest is skilfully sustained by the introduction of +a very strong situation--Pip's narrow escape out of the clutches of "Old +Orlick" in the lime-kiln on the marshes; and the climax is reached in the +admirably-executed narrative of the convict's attempt, with the aid of +Pip, to escape by the river. The actual winding-up of _Great Expectations_ +is not altogether satisfactory; but on the whole the book must be ranked +among the very best of Dickens's later novels, as combining, with the +closer construction and intenser narrative force common to several of +these, not a little of the delightfully genial humour of his earlier +works. + +Already, before _Great Expectations_ was completely published, Dickens had +given a few readings at the St. James's Hall, and by the end of October in +the same year, 1861, he was once more engaged in a full course of country +readings. They occupied him till the following January, only ten days +being left for his Christmas number, and a brief holiday for Christmas +itself; so close was the adjustment of time and work by this favourite of +fortune. The death of his faithful Arthur Smith befell most untowardly +before the country readings were begun, but their success was unbroken, +from Scotland to South Devon. The long-contemplated extract from +_Copperfield_ had at last been added to the list--a self-sacrifice _coram +publico_, hallowed by success--and another from _Nicholas Nickleby_, which +"went in the wildest manner." He was, however, nearly worn out with +fatigue before these winter readings were over, and was glad to snatch a +moment of repose before a short spring course in town began. Scarcely was +this finished, when he was coquetting in his mind with an offer from +Australia, and had already proposed to himself to throw in, as a piece of +work by the way, a series of papers to be called _The Uncommercial +Traveller Upside Down_. Meanwhile, a few readings for a charitable purpose +in Paris, and a short summer course at St. James's Hall, completed this +second series in the year 1863. + +Whatever passing thoughts overwork by day or sleeplessness at night may +have occasionally brought with them, Dickens himself would have been +strangely surprised, as no doubt would have been the great body of a +public to which he was by this time about the best known man in England, +had he been warned that weakness and weariness were not to be avoided even +by a nature endowed with faculties so splendid and with an energy so +conquering as his. He seemed to stand erect in the strength of his matured +powers, equal as of old to any task which he set himself, and exulting, +though with less buoyancy of spirit than of old, in the wreaths which +continued to strew his path. Yet already the ranks of his contemporaries +were growing thinner, while close to himself death was taking away members +of the generation before, and of that after, his own. Amongst them was his +mother--of whom his biography and his works have little to say or to +suggest--and his second son. Happy events, too, had in the due course of +things contracted the family circle at Gad's Hill. Of his intimates, he +lost, in 1863, Augustus Egg; and in 1864 John Leech, to whose genius he +had himself formerly rendered eloquent homage. + +A still older associate, the great painter Stanfield, survived till 1867. +"No one of your father's friends," Dickens then wrote to Stanfield's son, +"can ever have loved him more dearly than I always did, or can have better +known the worth of his noble character." Yet another friend, who, however, +so far as I can gather, had not at any time belonged to Dickens's most +familiar circle, had died on Christmas Eve, 1863--Thackeray, whom it had +for some time become customary to compare or contrast with him as his +natural rival. Yet in point of fact, save for the tenderness which, as +with all humourists of the highest order, was an important element in +their writings, and save for the influences of time and country to which +they were both subject, there are hardly two other amongst our great +humourists who have less in common. Their unlikeness shows itself, among +other things, in the use made by Thackeray of suggestions which it is +difficult to believe he did not in the first instance owe to Dickens. Who +would venture to call Captain Costigan a plagiarism from Mr. Snevellici, +or to affect that Wenham and Wagg were copied from Pyke and Pluck, or that +Major Pendennis--whose pardon one feels inclined to beg for the +juxtaposition--was founded upon Major Bagstock, or the Old Campaigner in +the _Newcomes_ on the Old Soldier in _Copperfield_? But that suggestions +were in these and perhaps in a few other instances derived from Dickens by +Thackeray for some of his most masterly characters, it would, I think, be +idle to deny. In any case, the style of these two great writers differed +as profoundly as their way of looking at men and things. Yet neither of +them lacked a thorough appreciation of the other's genius; and it is +pleasant to remember that, after paying in _Pendennis_ a tribute to the +purity of Dickens's books, Thackeray in a public lecture referred to his +supposed rival in a way which elicited from the latter the warmest of +acknowledgments. It cannot be said that the memorial words which, after +Thackeray's death, Dickens was prevailed upon to contribute to the +_Cornhill Magazine_ did more than justice to the great writer whom England +had just lost; but it is well that the kindly and unstinting tribute of +admiration should remain on record, to contradict any supposition that a +disagreement which had some years previously disturbed the harmony of +their intercourse, and of which the world had, according to its wont, made +the most, had really estranged two generous minds from one another. The +effort which on this occasion Dickens made is in itself a proof of his +kindly feeling towards Thackeray. Of Talfourd and Landor and Stanfield he +could write readily after their deaths, but he frankly told Mr. Wilkie +Collins that, "had he felt he could," he would most gladly have excused +himself from writing the "couple of pages" about Thackeray. + +Dickens, it should be remembered, was at no time a man of many friends. +The mere dalliance of friendship was foreign to one who worked so +indefatigably in his hours of recreation as well as of labour; and +fellowship in work of one kind or another seems to have been, in later +years at all events, the surest support to his intimacy. Yet he was most +easily drawn, not only to those who could help him, but to those whom he +could help in congenial pursuits and undertakings. Such was, no doubt, the +origin of his friendship in these later years with an accomplished French +actor on the English boards, whom, in a rather barren period of our +theatrical history, Dickens may have been justified in describing as "far +beyond any one on our stage," and who certainly was an "admirable artist." +In 1864 Mr. Fechter had taken the Lyceum, the management of which he was +to identify with a more elegant kind of melodrama than that long +domesticated lower down the Strand; and Dickens was delighted to bestow on +him counsel frankly sought and frankly given. As an author, too, he +directly associated himself with the art of his friend.[11] For I may +mention here by anticipation that the last of the _All the Year Round_ +Christmas numbers, the continuous story of _No Thoroughfare_, was written +by Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins in 1867, with a direct eye to its +subsequent adaptation to the stage, for which it actually was fitted by +Mr. Wilkie Collins in the following year. The place of its production, the +Adelphi, suited the broad effects and the rather conventional comic humour +of the story and piece. From America, Dickens watched the preparation of +the piece with unflagging interest; and his innate and irrepressible +genius for stage-management reveals itself in the following passage from a +letter written by him to an American friend soon after his return to +England: "_No Thoroughfare_ is very shortly coming out in Paris, where it +is now in active rehearsal. It is still playing here, but without Fechter, +who has been very ill. He and Wilkie raised so many pieces of stage-effect +here, that, unless I am quite satisfied with the report, I shall go over +and try my stage-managerial hand at the Vaudeville Theatre. I particularly +want the drugging and attempted robbery in the bedroom-scene at the Swiss +Inn to be done to the sound of a water-fall rising and falling with the +wind. Although in the very opening of that scene they speak of the +water-fall, and listen to it, nobody thought of its mysterious music. I +could make it, with a good stage-carpenter, in an hour." + +_Great Expectations_ had been finished in 1860, and already in the latter +part of 1861, the year which comprised the main portion of his second +series of readings, he had been thinking of a new story. He had even found +a title--the unlucky title which he afterwards adopted--but in 1862 the +tempting Australian invitation had been a serious obstacle in his way. "I +can force myself to go aboard a ship, and I can force myself to do at that +reading-desk what I have done a hundred times; but whether, with all this +unsettled, fluctuating distress in my mind, I could force an original book +out of it is another question." Nor was it the "unsettled, fluctuating +distress" which made it a serious effort for him to attempt another longer +fiction. Dickens shared with most writers the experience that both the +inventive power and the elasticity of memory decline with advancing years. +Already since the time when he was thinking of writing _Little Dorrit_ it +had become his habit to enter in a book kept for the purpose memoranda for +possible future use, hints for subjects of stories,[12] scenes, +situations, and characters; thoughts and fancies of all kinds; titles for +possible books. Of these _Somebody's Luggage_, _Our Mutual Friend_, and +_No Thoroughfare_--the last an old fancy revived--came to honourable use; +as did many names, both Christian and surnames, and combinations of both. +Thus, Bradley Headstone's _praenomen_ was derived directly from the lists +of the Education Department, and the Lammles and the Stiltstalkings, with +Mr. Merdle and the Dorrits, existed as names before the characters were +fitted to them. All this, though no doubt in part attributable to the +playful readiness of an observation never to be caught asleep, points in +the direction of a desire to be securely provided with an armoury of +which, in earlier days, he would have taken slight thought. + +Gradually--indeed, so far as I know, more gradually than in the case of +any other of his stories--he had built up the tale for which he had +determined on the title of _Our Mutual Friend_, and slowly, and without +his old self-confidence, he had, in the latter part of 1863, set to work +upon it. "I want to prepare it for the spring, but I am determined not to +begin to publish with less than four numbers done. I see my opening +perfectly, with the one main line on which the story is to turn, and if I +don't strike while the iron (meaning myself) is hot, I shall drift off +again, and have to go through all this uneasiness once more." For, +unfortunately, he had resolved on returning to the old twenty-number +measure for his new story. Begun with an effort, _Our Mutual Friend_--the +publication of which extended from May, 1864, to November, 1865--was +completed under difficulties, and difficulties of a kind hitherto unknown +to Dickens. In February, 1865, as an immediate consequence, perhaps, of +exposure at a time when depression of spirits rendered him less able than +usual to bear it, he had a severe attack of illness, of which Forster says +that it "put a broad mark between his past life and what remained to him +of the future." From this time forward he felt a lameness in his left +foot, which continued to trouble him at intervals during the remainder of +his life, and which finally communicated itself to the left hand. A +comparison of times, however, convinced Forster that the real origin of +this ailment was to be sought in general causes. + +In 1865, as the year wore on, and the pressure of the novel still +continued, he felt that he was "working himself into a damaged state," and +was near to that which has greater terrors for natures like his than for +more placid temperaments--breaking down. So, in May, he went first to the +sea-side and then to France. On his return (it was the 9th of June, the +date of his death five years afterwards) he was in the railway train which +met with a fearful accident at Staplehurst, in Kent. His carriage was the +only passenger-carriage in the train which, when the bridge gave way, was +not thrown over into the stream. He was able to escape out of the window, +to make his way in again for his brandy-flask and the MS. of a number of +_Our Mutual Friend_ which he had left behind him, to clamber down the +brickwork of the bridge for water, to do what he could towards rescuing +his unfortunate fellow-travellers, and to aid the wounded and the dying. +"I have," he wrote, in describing the scene, "a--I don't know what to call +it: constitutional, I suppose--presence of mind, and was not in the least +fluttered at the time.... But in writing these scanty words of +recollection I feel the shake, and am obliged to stop." Nineteen months +afterwards, when on a hurried reading tour in the North, he complains to +Miss Hogarth of the effect of the railway shaking which since the +Staplehurst accident "tells more and more." It is clear how serious a +shock the accident had caused. He never, Miss Hogarth thinks, quite +recovered it. Yet it might have acted less disastrously upon a system not +already nervously weakened. As evidence of the decline of Dickens's +nervous power, I hardly know whether it is safe to refer to the gradual +change in his handwriting, which in his last years is a melancholy study. + +All these circumstances should be taken into account in judging of +Dickens's last completed novel. The author would not have been himself had +he, when once fairly engaged upon his work, failed to feel something of +his old self-confidence. Nor was this feeling, which he frankly confessed +to Mr. Wilkie Collins, altogether unwarranted. _Our Mutual Friend_[13] is, +like the rest of Dickens's later writings, carefully and skilfully put +together as a story. No exception is to be taken to it on the ground that +the identity on which much of the plot hinges is long foreseen by the +reader; for this, as Dickens told his critics in his postscript, had been +part of his design, and was, in fact, considering the general nature of +the story, almost indispensable. The defect rather lies in the absence of +that element of uncertainty which is needed in order to sustain the +interest. The story is, no doubt, ingeniously enough constructed, but +admiration of an ingenious construction is insufficient to occupy the mind +of a reader through an inevitable disentanglement. Moreover, some of the +machinery, though cleverly contrived, cannot be said to work easily. Thus, +the _ruse_ of the excellent Boffin in playing the part of a skinflint +might pass as a momentary device, but its inherent improbability, together +with the likelihood of its leading to an untoward result, makes its +protraction undeniably tedious. It is not, however, in my opinion at +least, in the matter of construction that _Our Mutual Friend_ presents a +painful contrast with earlier works produced, like it, "on a large +canvas." The conduct of the story as a whole is fully vigorous enough to +enchain the attention; and in portions of it the hand of the master +displays its unique power. He is at his best in the whole of the +water-side scenes, both where "The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters" +(identified by zealous discoverers with a tavern called "The Two Brewers") +lies like an oasis in the midst of a desert of ill-favoured tidal +deposits, and where Rogue Riderhood has his lair at the lock higher up the +river. A marvellous union of observation and imagination was needed for +the picturing of a world in which this amphibious monster has his being; +and never did Dickens's inexhaustible knowledge of the physiognomy of the +Thames and its banks stand him in better stead than in these powerful +episodes. It is unfortunate, though in accordance with the common fate of +heroes and heroines, that Lizzie Hexham should, from the outset, have to +discard the colouring of her surroundings, and to talk the conventional +dialect as well as express the conventional sentiments of the heroic +world. Only at the height of the action she ceases to be commonplace, and +becomes entitled to be remembered amongst the true heroines of fiction. A +more unusual figure, of the half-pathetic, half-grotesque kind for which +Dickens had a peculiar liking, is Lizzie's friend, the doll's dressmaker, +into whom he has certainly infused an element of genuine sentiment; her +protector, Riah, on the contrary, is a mere stage-saint, though by this +character Dickens appears to have actually hoped to redeem the aspersions +he was supposed to have cast upon the Jews, as if Riah could have redeemed +Fagin, any more than Sheva redeemed Shylock. + +But in this book whole episodes and parts of the plot through which the +mystery of John Harmon winds its length along are ill-adapted for giving +pleasure to any reader. The whole Boffin, Wegg, and Venus business--if the +term may pass--is extremely wearisome; the character of Mr. Venus, in +particular, seems altogether unconnected or unarticulated with the general +plot, on which, indeed, it is but an accidental excrescence. In the Wilfer +family there are the outlines of some figures of genuine humour, but the +outlines only; nor is Bella raised into the sphere of the charming out of +that of the pert and skittish. A more ambitious attempt, and a more +noteworthy failure, was the endeavour to give to the main plot of this +novel such a satiric foil as the Circumlocution Office had furnished to +the chief action of _Little Dorrit_, in a caricature of society at large, +its surface varnish and its internal rottenness. The Barnacles, and those +who deemed it their duty to rally round the Barnacles, had, we saw, felt +themselves hard hit; but what sphere or section of society could feel +itself specially caricatured in the Veneerings, or in their +associates--the odious Lady Tippins, the impossibly brutal Podsnap, +Fascination Fledgeby, and the Lammles, a couple which suggests nothing but +antimony and the Chamber of Horrors? Caricature such as this, +representing no society that has ever in any part of the world pretended +to be "good," corresponds to the wild rhetoric of the superfluous Betty +Higden episode against the "gospel according to Podsnappery;" but it is, +in truth, satire from which both wit and humour have gone out. An angry, +often almost spasmodic, mannerism has to supply their place. Amongst the +personages moving in "society" are two which, as playing serious parts in +the progress of the plot, the author is necessarily obliged to seek to +endow with the flesh and blood of real human beings. Yet it is precisely +in these--the friends Eugene and Mortimer--that, in the earlier part of +the novel at all events, the constraint of the author's style seems least +relieved; the dialogues between these two Templars have an unnaturalness +about them as intolerable as euphuism or the effeminacies of the Augustan +age. It is true that, when the story reaches its tragic height, the +character of Eugene is borne along with it, and his affectations are +forgotten. But in previous parts of the book, where he poses as a wit, and +is evidently meant for a gentleman, he fails to make good his claims to +either character. Even the skilfully contrived contrast between the rivals +Eugene Wrayburn and the school-master, Bradley Headstone--through whom and +through whose pupil, Dickens, by-the-way, dealt another blow against a +system of mental training founded upon facts alone--fails to bring out the +conception of Eugene which the author manifestly had in his mind. Lastly, +the old way of reconciling dissonances--a marriage which "society" calls a +_mesalliance_--has rarely furnished a lamer ending than here; and, had the +unwritten laws of English popular fiction permitted, a tragic close would +have better accorded with the sombre hue of the most powerful portions of +this curiously unequal romance. + +The effort--for such it was--of _Our Mutual Friend_ had not been over for +more than a few months, when Dickens accepted a proposal for thirty +nights' readings from the Messrs. Chappell; and by April, 1866, he was +again hard at work, flying across the country into Lancashire and +Scotland, and back to his temporary London residence in Southwick Place, +Hyde Park. In any man more capable than Dickens of controlling the +restlessness which consumed him the acceptance of this offer would have +been incomprehensible; for his heart had been declared out of order by his +physician, and the patient had shown himself in some degree awake to the +significance of this opinion. But the readings were begun and accomplished +notwithstanding, though not without warnings, on which he insisted on +putting his own interpretation. Sleeplessness aggravated fatigue, and +stimulants were already necessary to enable him to do the work of his +readings without discomfort. Meanwhile, some weeks before they were +finished, he had been induced to enter into negotiations about a further +engagement to begin at the end of the year. Time was to be left for the +Christmas number, which this year could hardly find its scene anywhere +else than at a railway junction; and the readings were not to extend over +forty nights, which seem ultimately to have been increased to fifty. This +second series, which included a campaign in Ireland, brilliantly +successful despite snow and rain, and Fenians, was over in May. Then came +the climax, for America now claimed her share of the great author for her +public halls and chapels and lecture-theatres; and the question of the +summer and autumn was whether or not to follow the sound of the distant +dollar. It was closely debated between Dickens and his friend Forster and +Wills, and he describes himself as "tempest-tossed" with doubts; but his +mind had inclined in one direction from the first, and the matter was +virtually decided when it resolved to send a confidential agent to make +enquiries on the spot. Little imported another and grave attack in his +foot; the trusty Mr. Dolby's report was irresistible. Eighty readings +within half a year was the estimated number, with profits amounting to +over fifteen thousand pounds. The gains actually made were nearly five +thousand pounds in excess of this calculation. + +A farewell banquet, under the presidency of Lord Lytton, gave the +favourite author Godspeed on his journey to the larger half of his public; +on the 9th of November he sailed from Liverpool, and on the 19th landed at +Boston. The voyage, on which, with his old buoyancy, he had contrived to +make himself master of the modest revels of the saloon, seems to have done +him good, or at least to have made him, as usual, impatient to be at his +task. Barely arrived, he is found reporting himself "so well, that I am +constantly chafing at not having begun to-night, instead of this night +week." By December, however, he was at his reading-desk, first at Boston, +where he met with the warmest of welcomes, and then at New York, where +there was a run upon the tickets, which he described with his usual +excited delight. The enthusiasm of his reception by the American public +must have been heightened by the thought that it was now or never for them +to see him face to face, and, by-gones being by-gones, to testify to him +their admiration. But there may have been some foundation for his +discovery that some signs of agitation on his part were expected in +return, and "that it would have been taken as a suitable compliment if I +would stagger on the platform, and instantly drop, overpowered by the +spectacle before me." It was but a sad Christmas which he spent with his +faithful Dolby at their New York inn, tired, and with a "genuine American +catarrh upon him," of which he never freed himself during his stay in the +country. Hardly had he left the doctor's hands than he was about again, +reading in Boston and New York and their more immediate +neighbourhood--that is, within six or seven hours by railway--till +February; and then, in order to stimulate his public, beginning a series +of appearances at more distant places before returning to his +starting-points. His whole tour included, besides a number of New England +towns, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, and in the north Cleveland +and Buffalo. Canada and the West were struck out of the programme, the +latter chiefly because exciting political matters were beginning to absorb +public attention. + +During these journeyings Dickens gave himself up altogether to the +business of his readings, only occasionally allowing himself to accept the +hospitality proffered him on every side. Thus only could he breast the +difficulties of his enterprise; for, as I have said, his health was never +good during the whole of his visit, and his exertions were severe, though +eased by the self-devotion of his attendants, of which, as of his constant +kindness, both serious and sportive, towards them it is touching to read. +Already in January he describes himself as not seldom "so dead beat" at +the close of a reading "that they lay me down on a sofa, after I have been +washed and dressed, and I lie there, extremely faint, for a quarter of an +hour," and as suffering from intolerable sleeplessness at night. His +appetite was equally disordered, and he lived mainly on stimulants. Why +had he condemned himself to such a life? + +When at last he could declare the stress of his work over he described +himself as "nearly used up. Climate, distance, catarrh, travelling, and +hard work have begun--I may say so, now they are nearly all over--to tell +heavily upon me. Sleeplessness besets me; and if I had engaged to go on +into May, I think I must have broken down." Indeed, but for his wonderful +energy and the feeling of exultation which is derived from a heavy task +nearly accomplished, he would have had to follow the advice of "Longfellow +and all the Cambridge men," and give in nearly at the last. But he +persevered through the farewell readings, both at Boston and at New York, +though on the night before the last reading in America he told Dolby that +if he "had to read but twice more, instead of once, he couldn't do it." +This last reading of all was given at New York on April 20, two days after +a farewell banquet at Delmonico's. It was when speaking on this occasion +that, very naturally moved by the unalloyed welcome which had greeted him +in whatever part of the States he had visited, he made the declaration +already mentioned, promising to perpetuate his grateful sense of his +recent American experiences. This apology, which was no apology, at least +remains one amongst many proofs of the fact that with Dickens kindness +never fell on a thankless soil. + +The merry month of May was still young in the Kentish fields and lanes +when the master of Gad's Hill Place was home again at last. "I had not +been at sea three days on the passage home," he wrote to his friend Mrs. +Watson, "when I became myself again." It was, however, too much when "a +'deputation'--two in number, of whom only one could get into my cabin, +while the other looked in at my window--came to ask me to read to the +passengers that evening in the saloon. I respectfully replied that sooner +than do it I would assault the captain and be put in irons." Alas! he was +already fast bound, by an engagement concluded soon after he had arrived +in Boston, to a final series of readings at home. "Farewell" is a +difficult word to say for any one who has grown accustomed to the +stimulating excitement of a public stage, and it is not wonderful that +Dickens should have wished to see the faces of his familiar friends--the +English public--once more. But the engagement to which he had set his hand +was for a farewell of a hundred readings, at the recompense of eight +thousand pounds, in addition to expenses and percentage. It is true that +he had done this before he had fully realized the effect of his American +exertions; but even so there was a terrible unwisdom in the promise. These +last readings--and he alone is, in common fairness, to be held responsible +for the fact--cut short a life from which much noble fruit might still +have been expected for our literature, and which in any case might have +been prolonged as a blessing beyond all that gold can buy to those who +loved him. + +Meanwhile he had allowed himself a short respite before resuming his +labours in October. It was not more, his friends thought, than he needed, +for much of his old buoyancy seemed to them to be wanting in him, except +when hospitality or the intercourse of friendship called it forth. What a +charm there still was in his genial humour his letters would suffice to +show. It does one good to read his description to his kind American +friends Mr. and Mrs. Fields of his tranquillity at Gad's Hill: "Divers +birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. The place is +lovely, and in perfect order. I have put five mirrors in the Swiss chalet +where I write, and they reflect and refract in all kinds of ways the +leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving +corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up amongst the branches of the +trees, and the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green +branches shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the +clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, +and indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most +delicious." + +Part of this rare leisure he generously devoted to the preparation for the +press of a volume of literary remains from the pen of an old friend. The +_Religious Opinions of Chauncey Hare Townshend_ should not be altogether +overlooked by those interested in Dickens, to whom the loose undogmatic +theology of his friend commended itself as readily as the sincere +religious feeling underlying it. I cannot say what answer Dickens would +have returned to an enquiry as to his creed, but the nature of his +religious opinions is obvious enough. Born in the Church of England, he +had so strong an aversion from what seemed to him dogmatism of any kind, +that he for a time--in 1843--connected himself with a Unitarian +congregation; and to Unitarian views his own probably continued during his +life most nearly to approach. He described himself as "morally wide +asunder from Rome," but the religious conceptions of her community cannot +have been a matter of anxious enquiry with him, while he was too +liberal-minded to be, unless occasionally, aggressive in his +Protestantism. For the rest, his mind, though imaginative, was without +mystical tendencies, while for the transitory superstitions of the day it +was impossible but that he should entertain the contempt which they +deserved. "Although," he writes-- + + "I regard with a hushed and solemn fear the mysteries between which, + and this state of existence, is interposed the barrier of the great + trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and, although + I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them, I + cannot reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking + of boards, and such like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and + pervading analogy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to + understand." + +His piety was undemonstrative and sincere, as his books alone would +suffice to prove; and he seems to have sought to impress upon his children +those religious truths with the acceptance and practice of which he +remained himself content. He loved the New Testament, and had, after some +fashion of his own, paraphrased the Gospel narrative for the use of his +children; but he thought that "half the misery and hypocrisy of the +Christian world arises from a stubborn determination to refuse the New +Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament +into alliance with it--whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of +gnat-straining." Of Puritanism in its modern forms he was an +uncompromising, and no doubt a conscientious, opponent; and though, with +perfect sincerity, he repelled the charge that his attacks upon cant were +attacks upon religion, yet their _animus_ is such as to make the +misinterpretation intelligible. His Dissenting ministers are of the +_Bartholomew Fair_ species; and though, in his later books, a good +clergyman here and there makes his modest appearance, the balance can +hardly be said to be satisfactorily redressed. + +The performance of this pious office was not the only kind act he did +after his return from America. Of course, however, his own family was +nearest to his heart. No kinder or more judicious words were ever +addressed by a father to his children than those which, about this time, +he wrote to one of his sons, then beginning a successful career at +Cambridge, and to another--the youngest--who was setting forth for +Australia, to join an elder brother already established in that country. +"Poor Plorn," he afterward wrote, "is gone to Australia. It was a hard +parting at the last. He seemed to me to become once more my youngest and +favourite child as the day drew near, and I did not think I could have +been so shaken." + +In October his "farewell" readings began. He had never had his heart more +in the work than now. Curiously enough, not less than two proposals had +reached him during this autumn--one from Birmingham and the other from +Edinburgh--that he should allow himself to be put forward as a candidate +for Parliament; but he declined to entertain either, though in at least +one of the two cases the prospects of success would not have been small. +His views of political and parliamentary life had not changed since he had +written to Bulwer Lytton in 1865: "Would there not seem to be something +horribly rotten in the system of political life, when one stands amazed +how any man, not forced into it by his position, as you are, can bear to +live it?" Indeed, they had hardly changed since the days when he had come +into personal contact with them as a reporter. In public and in private he +had never ceased to ridicule our English system of party, and to express +his contempt for the Legislature and all its works. He had, however, +continued to take a lively interest in public affairs, and his letters +contain not a few shrewd remarks on both home and foreign questions. Like +most liberal minds of his age, he felt a warm sympathy for the cause of +Italy; and the English statesman whom he appears to have most warmly +admired was Lord Russell, in whose good intentions neither friends nor +adversaries were wont to lose faith. Meanwhile his Radicalism gradually +became of the most thoroughly independent type, though it interfered +neither with his approval of the proceedings in Jamaica as an example of +strong government, nor with his scorn of "the meeting of jawbones and +asses" held against Governor Eyre at Manchester. The political questions, +however, which really moved him deeply were those social problems to which +his sympathy for the poor had always directed his attention--the Poor-law, +temperance, Sunday observance, punishment and prisons, labour and strikes. +On all these heads sentiment guided his judgment, but he spared no pains +to convince himself that he was in the right; and he was always generous, +as when, notwithstanding his interest in _Household Words_, he declared +himself unable to advocate the repeal of the paper duty for a moment, "as +against the soap duty, or any other pressing on the mass of the poor." + +Thus he found no difficulty in adhering to the course he had marked out +for himself. The subject which now occupied him before all others was a +scheme for a new reading, with which it was his wish to vary and to +intensify the success of the series on which he was engaged. This was no +other than a selection of scenes from _Oliver Twist_, culminating in the +scene of the murder of Nancy by Sikes, which, before producing it in +public, he resolved to "try" upon a select private audience. The trial was +a brilliant success. "The public," exclaimed a famous actress who was +present, "have been looking out for a sensation these last fifty years or +so, and, by Heaven, they have got it!" Accordingly, from January, 1869, it +formed one of the most frequent of his readings, and the effort which it +involved counted for much in the collapse which was to follow. Never were +the limits between reading and acting more thoroughly effaced by Dickens, +and never was the production of an extraordinary effect more equally +shared by author and actor. But few who witnessed this extraordinary +performance can have guessed the elaborate preparation bestowed upon it, +which is evident from the following notes (by Mr. C. Kent) on the book +used in it by the reader: + + "What is as striking as anything in all this reading, however--that + is, in the reading copy of it now lying before us as we write--is the + mass of hints as to the by-play in the stage directions for himself, + so to speak, scattered up and down the margin. 'Fagin raised his right + hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air,' is there on page + 101 in print. Beside it, on the margin in MS., is the word '_Action_.' + Not a word of it was said. It was simply _done_. Again, immediately + below that, on the same page--Sikes _loquitur_: 'Oh! you haven't, + haven't you?' passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket + ('_Action_' again in MS. on the margin.) Not a word was said about the + pistol.... So again, afterwards, as a rousing self-direction, one sees + notified in MS. on page 107 the grim stage direction, '_Murder + coming!_'" + +The "Murder" was frequently read by Dickens not less than four times a +week during the early months of 1869, in which year, after beginning in +Ireland, he had been continually travelling to and fro between various +parts of Great Britain and town. Already in February the old trouble in +his foot had made itself felt, but, as usual, it had long been +disregarded. On the 10th of April he had been entertained at Liverpool, in +St. George's Hall, at a banquet presided over by Lord Dufferin, and in a +genial speech had tossed back the ball to Lord Houghton, who had +pleasantly bantered him for his unconsciousness of the merits of the House +of Lords. Ten days afterwards he was to read at Preston, but, feeling +uneasy about himself, had reported his symptoms to his doctor in London. +The latter hastened down to Preston, and persuaded Dickens to accompany +him back to town, where, after a consultation, it was determined that the +readings must be stopped for the current year, and that reading combined +with travelling must never be resumed. What his sister-in-law and daughter +feel themselves justified in calling "the beginning of the end" had come +at last. + +With his usual presence of mind Dickens at once perceived the imperative +necessity of interposing, "as it were, a fly-leaf in the book of my life, +in which nothing should be written from without for a brief season of a +few weeks." But he insisted that the combination of the reading and the +travelling was alone to be held accountable for his having found himself +feeling, "for the first time in my life, giddy, jarred, shaken, faint, +uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch, and dull of spirit." +Meanwhile, he for once kept quiet, first in London, and then at Gad's +Hill. "This last summer," say those who did most to make it bright for +him, "was a very happy one," and gladdened by the visits of many friends. +On the retirement, also on account of ill-health, from _All the Year +Round_ of his second self, Mr. W. H. Wills, he was fortunately able at +once to supply the vacant place by the appointment to it of his eldest +son, who seems to have inherited that sense of lucid order which was +amongst his father's most distinctive characteristics. He travelled very +little this year, though in September he made a speech at Birmingham on +behalf of his favourite Midland Institute, delivering himself, at its +conclusion, of an antithetical Radical commonplace, which, being +misreported or misunderstood, was commented upon with much unnecessary +wonderment. With a view to avoiding the danger of excessive fatigue, the +latter part of the year was chiefly devoted to writing in advance part of +his new book, which, like _Great Expectations_, was to grow up, and to be +better for growing up, in his own Kentish home, and almost within sound of +the bells of "Cloisterham" Cathedral. But the new book was never to be +finished. + +The first number of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ was not published till +one more short series of twelve readings, given in London during a period +extending from January to March, was at an end. He had obtained Sir Thomas +Watson's consent to his carrying out this wish, largely caused by the +desire to compensate the Messrs. Chappell in some measure for the +disappointment to which he had been obliged to subject them by the +interruption of his longer engagement. Thus, though the Christmas of 1869 +had brought with it another warning of trouble in the foot, the year 1870 +opened busily, and early in January Dickens established himself for the +season at 5 Hyde Park Place. Early in the month he made another speech at +Birmingham; but the readings were strictly confined to London. On the +other hand, it was not to be expected that the "Murder" would be excluded +from the list. It was read in January to an audience of actors and +actresses; and it is pleasant to think that he was able to testify to his +kindly feeling towards their profession on one of the last occasions when +he appeared on his own stage. "I set myself," he wrote, "to carrying out +of themselves and their observation those who were bent on watching how +the effects were got; and, I believe, I succeeded. Coming back to it +again, however, I feel it was madness ever to do it so continuously. My +ordinary pulse is seventy-two, and it runs up under this effort to one +hundred and twelve." Yet this fatal reading was repeated thrice more +before the series closed, and with even more startling results upon the +reader. The careful observations made by the physician, however, show that +the excitement of his last readings was altogether too great for any man +to have endured much longer. At last, on March 16, the night came which +closed fifteen years of personal relations between the English public and +its favourite author, such as are, after all, unparalleled in the history +of our literature. His farewell words were few and simple, and referred +with dignity to his resolution to devote himself henceforth exclusively to +his calling as an author, and to his hope that in but two short weeks' +time his audience "might enter, in their own homes, on a new series of +readings at which his assistance would be indispensable." + +Of the short time which remained to him his last book was the chief +occupation; and an association thus clings to the _Mystery of Edwin Drood_ +which would, in any case, incline us to treat this fragment--for it was to +be no more--with tenderness. One would, indeed, hardly be justified in +asserting that this story, like that which Thackeray left behind him in +the same unfinished state, bade fair to become a masterpiece in its +author's later manner; there is much that is forced in its humour, while +as to the working out of the chief characters our means of judgment are, +of course, incomplete. The outline of the design, on the other hand, +presents itself with tolerable clearness to the minds of most readers of +insight or experience, though the story deserves its name of a mystery, +instead of, like _Our Mutual Friend_, seeming merely to withhold a +necessary explanation. And it must be allowed few plots have ever been +more effectively laid than this, of which the untying will never be known. +Three such personages in relation to a deed of darkness as Jasper for its +contriver, Durden for its unconscious accomplice, and Deputy for its +self-invited witness, and all so naturally connecting themselves with the +locality of the perpetration of the crime, assuredly could not have been +brought together except by one who had gradually attained to mastership in +the adaptation of characters to the purposes of a plot. Still, the +strongest impression left upon the reader of this fragment is the evidence +it furnishes of Dickens having retained to the last powers which were most +peculiarly and distinctively his own. Having skilfully brought into +connexion, for the purposes of his plot, two such strangely-contrasted +spheres of life and death as the cathedral close at "Cloisterham" and an +opium-smoking den in one of the obscurest corners of London, he is +enabled, by his imaginative and observing powers, not only to _realise_ +the picturesque elements in both scenes, but also to convert them into a +twofold background, accommodating itself to the most vivid hues of human +passion. This is to bring out what he was wont to call "the romantic +aspect of familiar things." With the physiognomy of Cloisterham--otherwise +Rochester--with its cathedral, and its "monastery" ruin, and its "Minor +Canon Corner," and its "Nuns' House"--otherwise "Eastgate House," in the +High Street--he was, of course, closely acquainted; but he had never +reproduced its features with so artistic a cunning, and the Mystery of +Edwin Drood will always haunt Bishop Gundulph's venerable building and its +tranquil precincts. As for the opium-smoking, we have his own statement +that what he described he saw--"exactly as he had described it, penny +ink-bottle and all--down in Shadwell" in the autumn of 1869. "A couple of +the Inspectors of Lodging-houses knew the woman, and took me to her as I +was making a round with them to see for myself the working of Lord +Shaftesbury's Bill." Between these scenes John Jasper--a figure conceived +with singular force--moves to and fro, preparing his mysterious design. No +story of the kind ever began more finely; and we may be excused from +enquiring whether signs of diminished vigour of invention and freshness of +execution are to be found in other and less prominent portions of the +great novelist's last work. + +Before, in this year 1870, Dickens withdrew from London to Gad's Hill, +with the hope of there in quiet carrying his all but half-finished task to +its close, his health had not been satisfactory; he had suffered from time +to time in his foot, and his weary and aged look was observed by many of +his friends. He was able to go occasionally into society; though at the +last dinner-party which he attended--it was at Lord Houghton's, to meet +the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians--he had been unable to +mount above the dining-room floor. Already in March the Queen had found a +suitable opportunity for inviting him to wait upon her at Buckingham +Palace, when she had much gratified him by her kindly manner; and a few +days later he made his appearance at the levee. These acknowledgments of +his position as an English author were as they should be; no others were +offered, nor is it a matter of regret that there should have been no +titles to inscribe on his tomb. He was also twice seen on one of those +public occasions which no eloquence graced so readily and so pleasantly as +his: once in April, at the dinner for the Newsvenders' Charity, when he +spoke of the existence among his humble clients of that "feeling of +brotherhood and sympathy which is worth much to all men, or they would +herd with wolves;" and once in May--only a day or two before he went home +into the country--when, at the Royal Academy dinner, he paid a touching +tribute to the eminent painter, Daniel Maclise, who in the good old days +had been much like a brother to himself. Another friend and companion, +Mark Lemon, passed away a day or two afterwards; and with the most +intimate of all, his future biographer, he lamented the familiar faces of +their companions--not one of whom had passed his sixtieth year--upon which +they were not to look again. On the 30th of May he was once more at Gad's +Hill. + +Here he forthwith set to work on his book, taking walks as usual, though +of no very great length. On Thursday, the 9th of June, he had intended to +pay his usual weekly visit to the office of his journal, and accordingly, +on the 8th, devoted the afternoon as well as the morning to finishing the +sixth number of the story. When he came across to the house from the +chalet before dinner he seemed to his sister-in-law, who alone of the +family was at home, tired and silent, and no sooner had they sat down to +dinner than she noticed how seriously ill he looked. It speedily became +evident that a fit was upon him. "Come and lie down," she entreated. "Yes, +on the ground," he said, very distinctly--these were the last words he +spoke--and he slid from her arm and fell upon the floor. He was laid on a +couch in the room, and there he remained unconscious almost to the last. +He died at ten minutes past six on the evening of the 9th--by which time +his daughters and his eldest son had been able to join the faithful +watcher by his side; his sister and his son Henry arrived when all was +over. + +His own desire had been to be buried near Gad's Hill; though at one time +he is said to have expressed a wish to lie in a disused graveyard, which +is still pointed out, in a secluded corner in the moat of Rochester +Castle. Preparations had been made accordingly, when the Dean and Chapter +of Rochester urged a request that his remains might be placed in their +Cathedral. This was assented to; but at the last moment the Dean of +Westminster gave expression to a widespread wish that the great national +writer might lie in the national Abbey. There he was buried on June 14, +without the slightest attempt at the pomp which he had deprecated in his +will, and which he almost fiercely condemned in more than one of his +writings. "The funeral," writes Dean Stanley, whose own dust now mingles +with that of so many illustrious dead, "was strictly private. It took +place at an early hour in the summer morning, the grave having been dug in +secret the night before, and the vast solitary space of the Abbey was +occupied only by the small band of the mourners, and the Abbey clergy, +who, without any music except the occasional peal of the organ, read the +funeral service. For days the spot was visited by thousands. Many were the +tears shed by the poorer visitors. He rests beside Sheridan, Garrick, and +Henderson"--the first actor ever buried in the Abbey. Associations of +another kind cluster near; but his generous spirit would not have +disdained the thought that he would seem even in death the players' +friend. + +A plain memorial brass on the walls of Rochester Cathedral vindicates the +share which the ancient city and its neighbourhood will always have in his +fame. But most touching of all it is to think of him under the trees of +his own garden on the hill, in the pleasant home where, after so many +labours and so many wanderings, he died in peace, and as one who had +earned his rest. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +THE FUTURE OF DICKENS'S FAME. + + +There is no reason whatever to believe that in the few years which have +gone by since Dickens's death the delight taken in his works throughout +England and North America, as well as elsewhere, has diminished, or that +he is not still one of our few most popular writers. The mere fact that +his popularity has remained such since, nearly half a century ago, he, +like a beam of spring sunshine, first made the world gay, is a sufficient +indication of the influence which he must have exercised upon his age. In +our world of letters his followers have been many, though naturally enough +those whose original genius impelled them to follow their own course +soonest ceased to be his imitators. Amongst these I know no more signal +instance than the great novelist whose surpassing merits he had very +swiftly recognised in her earliest work. For though in the _Scenes of +Clerical Life_ George Eliot seems to be, as it were, hesitating between +Dickens and Thackeray as the models of her humorous writing, reminiscences +of the former are unmistakable in the opening of _Amos Barton_, in _Mr. +Gilfil's Love-Story_, in _Janet's Repentance_; and though it would be +hazardous to trace his influence in the domestic scenes in _Adam Bede_, +neither a Christmas exordium in one of the books of _The Mill on the +Floss_, nor the Sam Weller-like freshness of Bob Wakem in the same +powerful story, is altogether the author's own. Two of the most successful +Continental novelists of the present day have gone to school with Dickens: +the one the truly national writer whose _Debit and Credit_, a work largely +in the manner of his English model, has, as a picture of modern life, +remained unexcelled in German literature;[14] the other, the brilliant +Southerner, who may write as much of the _History of his Books_ as his +public may desire to learn, but who cannot write the pathos of Dickens +altogether out of _Jack_, or his farcical fun out of _Le Nabab_. And +again--for I am merely illustrating, not attempting to describe, the +literary influence of Dickens--who could fail to trace in the Californian +studies and sketches of Bret Harte elements of humour and of pathos, to +which that genuinely original author would be the last to deny that his +great English "master" was no stranger? + +Yet popularity and literary influence, however wide and however strong, +often pass away as they have come; and in no field of literature are there +many reputations which the sea of time fails before very long to submerge. +In prose fiction--a comparatively young literary growth--they are +certainly not the most numerous, perhaps because on works of this species +the manners and style of an age most readily impress themselves, rendering +them proportionately strange to the ages that come after. In the works of +even the lesser playwrights who pleased the liberal times of Elizabeth, +and in lyrics of even secondary merit that were admired by fantastic +Caroline cavaliers, we can still take pleasure. But who can read many of +the "standard" novels published as lately even as the days of George the +Fourth? The speculation is, therefore, not altogether idle, whether +Dickens saw truly when labouring, as most great men do labour, in the +belief that his work was not only for a day. Literary eminence was the +only eminence he desired, while it was one of the very healthiest elements +in his character, that whatever he was, he was thoroughly. He would not +have told any one, as Fielding's author told Mr. Booth at the +sponging-house, that romance-writing "is certainly the easiest work in the +world;" nor, being what he was, could he ever have found it such in his +own case. "Whoever," he declared, "is devoted to an art must be content to +give himself wholly up to it, and to find his recompense in it." And not +only did he obey his own labour-laws, but in the details of his work as a +man of letters he spared no pains and no exercise of self-control. "I am," +he generously told a beginner, to whom he was counselling patient +endeavour, "an impatient and impulsive person myself, but it has been for +many years the constant effort of my life to practise at my desk what I +preach to you." Never, therefore has a man of letters had a better claim +to be judged by his works. As he expressly said in his will, he wished for +no other monument than his writings; and with their aid we, who already +belong to a new generation, and whose children will care nothing for the +gossip and the scandal of which he, like most popular celebrities, was in +his lifetime privileged or doomed to become the theme, may seek to form +some definite conception of his future place among illustrious Englishmen. + +It would, of course, be against all experience to suppose that to future +generations Dickens, as a writer, will be all that he was to his own. +Much that constitutes the subject, or at least furnishes the background, +of his pictures of English life, like the Fleet Prison and the Marshalsea, +has vanished, or is being improved off the face of the land. The form, +again, of Dickens's principal works may become obsolete, as it was in a +sense accidental. He was the most popular novelist of his day; but should +prose fiction, or even the full and florid species of it which has enjoyed +so long-lived a favour ever be out of season, the popularity of Dickens's +books must experience an inevitable diminution. And even before that day +arrives not all the works in a particular species of literature that may +to a particular age have seemed destined to live, will have been +preserved. Nothing is more surely tested by time than that originality +which is the secret of a writer's continuing to be famous, and continuing +to be read. + +Dickens was not--and to whom in these latter ages of literature could such +a term be applied?--a self-made writer, in the sense that he owed nothing +to those who had gone before him. He was most assuredly no classical +scholar--how could he have been? But I should hesitate to call him an +ill-read man, though he certainly was neither a great nor a catholic +reader, and though he could not help thinking about _Nicholas Nickleby_ +while he was reading the _Curse of Kehama_. In his own branch of +literature his judgment was sound and sure-footed. It was, of course, a +happy accident that as a boy he imbibed that taste for good fiction which +is a thing inconceivable to the illiterate. Sneers have been directed +against the poverty of his book-shelves in his earlier days of authorship; +but I fancy there were not many popular novelists in 1839 who would have +taken down with them into the country for a summer sojourn, as Dickens did +to Petersham, not only a couple of Scott's novels, but Goldsmith, Swift, +Fielding, Smollett, and the British Essayists; nor is there one of these +national classics--unless it be Swift--with whom Dickens's books or +letters fail to show him to have been familiar. Of Goldsmith's books, he +told Forster, in a letter which the biographer of Goldsmith modestly +suppressed, he "had no indifferent perception--to the best of his +remembrance--when little more than a child." He discusses with +understanding the relative literary merits of the serious and humorous +papers in _The Spectator_; and, with regard to another work of unique +significance in the history of English fiction, _Robinson Crusoe_, he +acutely observed that "one of the most popular books on earth has nothing +in it to make any one laugh or cry." "It is a book," he added, which he +"read very much." It may be noted, by-the-way, that he was an attentive +and judicious student of Hogarth; and that thus his criticisms of humorous +pictorial art rested upon as broad a basis of comparison as did his +judgment of his great predecessors in English humorous fiction. + +Amongst these predecessors it has become usual to assert that Smollett +exercised the greatest influence upon Dickens. It is no doubt true that in +David Copperfield's library Smollett's books are mentioned first, and in +the greatest number, that a vision of Roderick Random and Strap haunted +the very wicket-gate at Blunderstone, that the poor little hero's first +thought on entering the King's Bench prison was the strange company whom +Roderick met in the Marshalsea; and that the references to Smollett and +his books are frequent in Dickens's other books and in his letters. +Leghorn seemed to him "made illustrious" by Smollett's grave, and in a +late period of his life he criticises his chief fictions with admirable +justice. "_Humphry Clinker_," he writes, "is certainly Smollett's best. I +am rather divided between _Peregrine Pickle_ and _Roderick Random_, both +extraordinarily good in their way, which is a way without tenderness; but +you will have to read them both, and I send the first volume of +_Peregrine_ as the richer of the two." An odd volume of _Peregrine_ was +one of the books with which the waiter at the _Holly Tree Inn_ endeavoured +to beguile the lonely Christmas of the snowed-up traveller, but the latter +"knew every word of it already." In the _Lazy Tour_, "Thomas, now just +able to grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, was no bad +embodiment of Commodore Trunnion." I have noted, moreover, coincidences of +detail which bear witness to Dickens's familiarity with Smollett's works. +To Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion, as to Captain Cuttle, every +man was a "brother," and to the Commodore, as to Mr. Smallweed, the most +abusive substantive addressed to a woman admitted of intensification by +the epithet "brimstone." I think Dickens had not forgotten the opening of +the _Adventures of an Atom_ when he wrote a passage in the opening of his +own _Christmas Carol_; and that the characters of Tom Pinch and Tommy +Traddles--the former more especially--were not conceived without some +thought of honest Strap. Furthermore, it was Smollett's example that +probably suggested to Dickens the attractive jingle in the title of his +_Nicholas Nickleby_. But these are for the most part mere details. The +manner of Dickens as a whole resembles Fielding's more strikingly than +Smollett's, as it was only natural that it should. The irony of Smollett +is drier than was reconcilable with Dickens's nature; it is only in the +occasional extravagances of his humour that the former anticipates +anything in the latter, and it is only the coarsest scenes of Dickens's +earlier books--such as that between Noah, Charlotte, and Mrs. Sowerbery +in _Oliver Twist_--which recall the whole manner of his predecessor. They +resemble one another in their descriptive accuracy, and in the +accumulation of detail by which they produce instead of obscuring +vividness of impression; but it was impossible that Dickens should prefer +the general method of the novel of adventure pure and simple, such as +Smollett produced after the example of _Gil Blas_, to the less crude form +adopted by Fielding, who adhered to earlier and nobler models. With +Fielding's, moreover, Dickens's whole nature was congenial; they both had +that tenderness which Smollett lacked; and the circumstance that, of all +English writers of the past, Fielding's name alone was given by Dickens to +one of his sons, shows how, like so many of Fielding's readers, he had +learnt to love him with an almost personal affection. The very spirit of +the author of _Tom Jones_--that gaiety which, to borrow the saying of a +recent historian concerning Cervantes, renders even brutality agreeable, +and that charm of sympathetic feeling which makes us love those of his +characters which he loves himself--seem astir in some of the most +delightful passages of Dickens's most delightful books. So in _Pickwick_, +to begin with, in which, by the way, Fielding is cited with a twinkle of +the eye all his own, and in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, where a chapter opens +with a passage which is pure Fielding: + + "It was morning, and the beautiful Aurora, of whom so much hath been + written, said, and sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak + Miss Pecksniff's nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the goddess, in + her intercourse with the fair Cherry, to do so; or, in more prosaic + phrase, the tip of that feature in the sweet girl's countenance was + always very red at breakfast-time." + +Amongst the writers of Dickens's own age there were only two, or perhaps +three, who in very different degrees and ways exercised a noticeable +influence upon his writings. He once declared to Washington Irving that he +kept everything written by that delightful author upon "his shelves, and +in his thoughts, and in his heart of hearts." And, doubtless, in Dickens's +early days as an author the influence of the American classic may have +aided to stimulate the imaginative element in his English admirer's +genius, and to preserve him from a grossness of humour into which, after +the _Sketches by Boz_, he very rarely allowed himself to lapse. The two +other writers were Carlyle, and, as I have frequently noted in previous +chapters, the friend and fellow-labourer of Dickens's later manhood, Mr. +Wilkie Collins. It is no unique experience that the disciple should +influence the master; and in this instance, perhaps with the co-operation +of the examples of the modern French theatre, which the two friends had +studied in common, Mr. Wilkie Collins's manner had, I think, no small +share in bringing about a transformation in that of Dickens. His stories +thus gradually lost all traces of the older masters both in general method +and in detail; whilst he came to condense and concentrate his effects in +successions of skilfully-arranged scenes. Dickens's debt to Carlyle was, +of course, of another nature; and in his works the proofs are not few of +his readiness to accept the teachings of one whom he declared he would "go +at all times farther to see than any man alive." There was something +singular in the admiration these two men felt for one another; for +Carlyle, after an acquaintance of almost thirty years, spoke of Dickens as +"a most cordial, sincere, clear-sighted, quietly decisive, just, and +loving man;" and there is not one of these epithets but seems well +considered and well chosen. But neither Carlyle nor Dickens possessed a +moral quality omitted in this list, the quality of patience, which abhors +either "quietly" or loudly "deciding" a question before considering it +under all its aspects, and in a spirit of fairness to all sides. The +_Latter-Day Pamphlets_, to confine myself to them,[15] like so much of the +political philosophy, if it is to be dignified by that name, which in part +Dickens derived from them, were at the time effective strokes of satirical +invective; now, their edge seems blunt and their energy inflation. Take +the pamphlet on Model Prisons, with its summary of a theory which Dickens +sought in every way to enforce upon his readers; or again, that entitled +_Downing Street_, which settles the question of party government as a +question of the choice between Buffy and Boodle, or, according to Carlyle, +the Honourable Felix Parvulus and the Right Honourable Felicissimus Zero. +The corrosive power of such sarcasms may be unquestionable; but the angry +rhetoric pointed by them becomes part of the nature of those who +habitually employ its utterance in lieu of argument; and not a little of +the declamatory element in Dickens, which no doubt at first exercised its +effect upon a large number of readers, must be ascribed to his reading of +a great writer who was often very much more stimulative than nutritious. + +Something, then, he owed to other writers, but it was little indeed in +comparison with what he owed to his natural gifts. First amongst these, I +think, must be placed what may, in a word, be called his sensibility--that +quality of which humour, in the more limited sense of the word, and +pathos are the twin products. And in Dickens both these were paramount +powers, almost equally various in their forms and effective in their +operation. According to M. Taine, Dickens, whilst he excels in irony of a +particular sort, being an Englishman, is incapable of being gay. Such +profundities are unfathomable to the readers of _Pickwick_; though the +French critic may have generalised from Dickens's later writings only. His +pathos is not less true than various, for the gradations are marked +between the stern, tragic pathos of _Hard Times_, the melting pathos of +the _Old Curiosity Shop_, _Dombey and Son_, and _David Copperfield_, and +the pathos of helplessness which appeals to us in Smike and Jo. But this +sensibility would not have given us Dickens's gallery of living pictures +had it not been for the powers of imagination and observation which +enabled him spontaneously to exercise it in countless directions. To the +way in which his imagination enabled him to identify himself with the +figments of his own brain he frequently testified; Dante was not more +certain in his celestial and infernal topography than was Dickens as to +"every stair in the little mid-shipman's house," and as to "every young +gentleman's bedstead in Dr. Blimber's establishment." One particular class +of phenomena may be instanced instead of many, in the observation and +poetic reproduction of which his singular natural endowment continually +manifested itself--I mean those of the weather. It is not, indeed, often +that he rises to a fine image like that in the description of the night in +which Ralph Nickleby, ruined and crushed, slinks home to his death: + + "The night was dark, and a cold wind blew, driving the clouds + furiously and fast before it. There was one black, gloomy mass that + seemed to follow him: not hurrying in the wild chase with the others, + but lingering sullenly behind, and gliding darkly and stealthily on. + He often looked back at this, and more than once stopped to let it + pass over; but, somehow, when he went forward again it was still + behind him, coming mournfully and slowly up, like a shadowy funeral + train." + +But he again and again enables us to feel as if the Christmas morning on +which Mr. Pickwick ran gaily down the slide, or as if the "very quiet" +moonlit night in the midst of which a sudden sound, like the firing of a +gun or a pistol, startled the repose of Lincoln's Inn Fields, were not +only what we have often precisely experienced in country villages or in +London squares, but as if they were the very morning and the very night +which we _must_ experience, if we were feeling the glow of wintry +merriment, or the awful chill of the presentiment of evil in a dead hour. +In its lower form this combination of the powers of imagination and +observation has the rapidity of wit, and, indeed, sometimes is wit. The +gift of suddenly finding out what a man, a thing, a combination of man and +thing, is like--this, too, comes by nature; and there is something +electrifying in its sudden exercise, even on the most trivial occasions, +as when Flora, delighted with Little Dorrit's sudden rise to fortune, +requests to know all + + "about the good, dear, quiet little thing, and all the changes of her + fortunes, carriage people now, no doubt, and horses without number + most romantic, a coat of arms, of course, and wild beasts on their + hind legs, showing it as if it was a copy they had done with mouths + from ear to ear, good gracious!" + +But Nature, when she gifted Dickens with sensibility, observation, and +imagination, had bestowed upon him yet another boon in the quality which +seems more prominent than any other in his whole being. The vigour of +Dickens--a mental and moral vigour supported by a splendid physical +organism--was the parent of some of his foibles; amongst the rest, of his +tendency to exaggeration. No fault has been more frequently found with his +workmanship than this; nor can he be said to have defended himself very +successfully on this head when he declared that he did "not recollect ever +to have heard or seen the charge of exaggeration made against a feeble +performance, though, in its feebleness, it may have been most untrue." But +without this vigour he could not have been creative as he was; and in him +there were accordingly united with rare completeness a swift +responsiveness to the impulses of humour and pathos, an inexhaustible +fertility in discovering and inventing materials for their exercise, and +the constant creative desire to give to these newly-created materials a +vivid plastic form. + +And the mention of this last-named gift in Dickens suggests the query +whether, finally, there is anything in his _manner_ as a writer which may +prevent the continuance of his extraordinary popularity. No writer can be +great without a _manner_ of his own; and that Dickens had such a manner +his most supercilious censurer will readily allow. His terse narrative +power, often intensely humorous in its unblushing and unwinking gravity, +and often deeply pathetic in its simplicity, is as characteristic of his +manner as is the supreme felicity of phrase, in which he has no equal. As +to the latter, I should hardly know where to begin and where to leave off +were I to attempt to illustrate it. But, to take two instances of +different kinds of wit, I may cite a passage in Guster's narrative of her +interview with Lady Dedlock: "And so I took the letter from her, and she +said she had nothing to give me; and _I said I was poor myself, and +consequently wanted nothing_;" and, of a different kind, the account in +one of his letters of a conversation with Macready, in which the great +tragedian, after a solemn but impassioned commendation of his friend's +reading, "put his hand upon my breast and pulled out his +pocket-handkerchief, and _I felt as if I were doing somebody to his +Werner_." These, I think, were amongst the most characteristic merits of +his style. It also, and more especially in his later years, had its +characteristic faults. The danger of degenerating into mannerism is +incident to every original manner. There is mannerism in most of the great +English prose-writers of Dickens's age--in Carlyle, in Macaulay, in +Thackeray--but in none of them is there more mannerism than in Dickens +himself. In his earlier writings, in _Nicholas Nickleby_, for instance (I +do not, of course, refer to the Portsmouth boards), and even in _Martin +Chuzzlewit_, there is much staginess; but in his later works his own +mannerism had swallowed up that of the stage, and, more especially in +serious passages, his style had become what M. Taine happily characterises +as _le style tourmente_. His choice of words remained throughout +excellent, and his construction of sentences clear. He told Mr. Wilkie +Collins that "underlining was not his nature;" and in truth he had no need +to emphasise his expressions, or to bid the reader "go back upon their +meaning." He recognised his responsibility, as a popular writer, in +keeping the vocabulary of the language pure; and in _Little Dorrit_ he +even solemnly declines to use the French word _trousseau_. In his +orthography, on the other hand, he was not free from Americanisms; and his +interpunctuation was consistently odd. But these are trifles; his more +important mannerisms were, like many really dangerous faults of style, +only the excess of characteristic excellences. Thus it was he who +elaborated with unprecedented effect that humorous species of paraphrase +which, as one of the most imitable devices of his style, has also been the +most persistently imitated. We are all tickled when Grip, the raven, +"issues orders for the instant preparation of innumerable kettles for +purposes of tea;" or when Mr. Pecksniff's eye is "piously upraised, with +something of that expression which the poetry of ages has attributed to a +domestic bird, when breathing its last amid the ravages of an electric +storm;" but in the end the device becomes a mere trick of circumlocution. +Another mannerism which grew upon Dickens, and was faithfully imitated by +several of his disciples, was primarily due to his habit of turning a +fact, fancy, or situation round on every side. This consisted in the +reiteration of a construction, or of part of a construction, in the +strained rhetorical fashion to which he at last accustomed us in spite of +ourselves, but to which we were loath to submit in his imitators. These +and certain other peculiarities, which it would be difficult to indicate +without incurring the charge of hypercriticism, hardened as the style of +Dickens hardened; and, for instance, in the _Tale of Two Cities_ his +mannerisms may be seen side by side in glittering array. By way of +compensation, the occasional solecisms and vulgarisms of his earlier style +(he only very gradually ridded himself of the cockney habit of punning) no +longer marred his pages; and he ceased to break or lapse occasionally, in +highly-impassioned passages, into blank verse. + +From first to last Dickens's mannerism, like everything which he made part +of himself, was not merely assumed on occasion, but was, so to speak, +absorbed into his nature. It shows itself in almost everything that he +wrote in his later years, from the most carefully-elaborated chapters of +his books down to the most deeply-felt passages of his most familiar +correspondence, in the midst of the most genuine pathos and most exuberant +humour of his books, and in the midst of the sound sense and unaffected +piety of his private letters. Future generations may, for this very +reason, be perplexed and irritated by what we merely stumbled at, and may +wish that what is an element hardly separable from many of Dickens's +compositions were away from them, as one wishes away from his signature +that horrible flourish which in his letters he sometimes represents +himself as too tired to append. + +But no distaste for his mannerisms is likely to obscure the sense of his +achievements in the branch of literature to which he devoted the full +powers of his genius and the best energies of his nature. He introduced, +indeed, no new species of prose fiction into our literature. In the +historical novel he made two far from unsuccessful essays, in the earlier +of which in particular--_Barnaby Rudge_--he showed a laudable desire to +enter into the spirit of a past age; but he was without the reading or the +patience of either the author of _Waverley_ or the author of _The +Virginians_, and without the fine historic enthusiasm which animates the +broader workmanship of _Westward Ho_. For the purely imaginative romance, +on the other hand, of which in some of his works Lord Lytton was the most +prominent representative in contemporary English literature, Dickens's +genius was not without certain affinities; but, to feel his full strength, +he needed to touch the earth with his feet. Thus it is no mere phrase to +say of him that he found the ideal in the real, and drew his inspirations +from the world around him. Perhaps the strongest temptation which ever +seemed likely to divert him from the sounder forms in which his +masterpieces were cast lay in the direction of the _novel with a purpose_, +the fiction intended primarily and above all things to promote the +correction of some social abuse, or the achievement of some social +reform. But in spite of himself, to whom the often voiceless cause of the +suffering and the oppressed was at all times dearer than any mere literary +success, he was preserved from binding his muse, as his friend Cruikshank +bound his art, handmaid in a service with which freedom was +irreconcilable. His artistic instinct helped him in this, and perhaps also +the consciousness that where, as in _The Chimes_ or in _Hard Times_, he +had gone furthest in this direction, there had been something jarring in +the result. Thus, under the influences described above, he carried on the +English novel mainly in the directions which it had taken under its early +masters, and more especially in those in which the essential attributes of +his own genius prompted him to excel. + +Amongst the elements on which the effect alike of the novelist's and of +the dramatist's work must, apart from style and diction, essentially +depend, that of construction is obviously one of the most significant. In +this Dickens was, in the earlier period of his authorship, very far from +strong. This was due in part to the accident that he began his literary +career as a writer of _Sketches_, and that his first continuous book, +_Pickwick_, was originally designed as little more than a string of such. +It was due in a still greater measure to the influence of those masters of +English fiction with whom he had been familiar from boyhood, above all to +Smollett. And though, by dint of his usual energy, he came to be able to +invent a plot so generally effective as that of _A Tale of Two Cities_, +or, I was about to say, of _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, yet on this head +he had had to contend against a special difficulty; I mean, of course, the +publication of most of his books in monthly or even weekly numbers. In the +case of a writer both pathetic and humorous the serial method of +publication leads the public to expect its due allowance of both pathos +and humour every month or week, even if each number, to borrow a homely +simile applied in _Oliver Twist_ to books in general, need not contain +"the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers +of red and white in a side of streaky bacon." And again, as in a melodrama +of the old school, each serial division has, if possible, to close +emphatically, effectively, with a promise of yet stranger, more touching, +more laughable things to come. On the other hand, with this form of +publication repetition is frequently necessary by way of "reminder" to +indolent readers, whose memory needs refreshing after the long pauses +between the acts. Fortunately, Dickens abhorred living, as it were, from +hand to mouth, and thus diminished the dangers to which, I cannot help +thinking, Thackeray at times almost succumbed. Yet, notwithstanding, in +the arrangement of his incidents and the contrivance of his plots it is +often impossible to avoid noting the imperfection of the machinery, or at +least the traces of effort. I have already said under what influences, in +my opinion, Dickens acquired a constructive skill which would have been +conspicuous in most other novelists. + +If in the combination of parts the workmanship of Dickens was not +invariably of the best, on the other hand in the invention of those parts +themselves he excelled, his imaginative power and dramatic instinct +combining to produce an endless succession of effective scenes and +situations, ranging through almost every variety of the pathetic and the +humorous. In no direction was nature a more powerful aid to art with him +than in this. From his very boyhood he appears to have possessed in a +developed form what many others may possess in its germ, the faculty of +converting into a scene--putting, as it were, into a frame--personages +that came under his notice, and the background on which he saw them. Who +can forget the scene in _David Copperfield_ in which the friendless little +boy attracts the wonderment of the good people of the public-house +where--it being a special occasion--he has demanded a glass of their "very +best ale, with a head to it?" In the autobiographical fragment already +cited, where the story appears in almost the same words, Dickens exclaims: + + "Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire + Terrace. The landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar + window-frame; his wife, looking over the little half-door; and I, in + some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition." + +He saw the scene while he was an actor in it. Already the _Sketches by +Boz_ showed the exuberance of this power, and in his last years more than +one paper in the delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_ series proved it to +be as inexhaustible as ever, while the art with which it was exercised had +become more refined. Who has better described (for who was more sensitive +to it?) the mysterious influence of crowds, and who the pitiful pathos of +solitude? Who has ever surpassed Dickens in his representations, varied a +thousandfold, but still appealing to the same emotions, common to us all, +of the crises or turning-points of human life? Who has dwelt with a more +potent effect on that catastrophe which the drama of every human life must +reach; whose scenes of death in its pathetic, pitiful, reverend, terrible, +ghastly forms speak more to the imagination and more to the heart? There +is, however, one species of scenes in which the genius of Dickens seems to +me to exercise a still stronger spell--those which _precede_ a +catastrophe, which are charged like thunder-clouds with the coming storm. +And here the constructive art is at work; for it is the arrangement of the +incidents, past and to come, combined by anticipation in the mind of the +reader, which gives their extraordinary force to such scenes as the +nocturnal watching of Nancy by Noah, or Carker's early walk to the railway +station, where he is to meet his doom. Extremely powerful, too, in a +rather different way, is the scene in _Little Dorrit_, described in a word +or two, of the parting of Bar and Physician at dawn, after they have +"found out Mr. Merdle's complaint:" + + "Before parting, at Physician's door, they both looked up at the sunny + morning sky, into which the smoke of a few early fires, and the breath + and voices of a few early stirrers, were peacefully rising, and then + looked round upon the immense city and said: 'If all those hundreds + and thousands of beggared people who were yet asleep could only know, + as they two spoke, the ruin that impended over them, what a fearful + cry against one miserable soul would go up to Heaven!'" + +Nor is it awe only, but pity also, which he is able thus to move +beforehand, as in _Dombey and Son_, in the incomparable scenes leading up +to little Paul's death. + +More diverse opinions have been expressed as to Dickens's mastery of that +highest part of the novelist's art, which we call characterisation. +Undoubtedly, the characters which he draws are included in a limited +range. Yet I question whether their range can be justly termed narrow as +compared with that commanded by any other great English novelist except +Scott, or with those of many novelists of other literatures except Balzac. +But within his own range Dickens is unapproached. His novels do not +altogether avoid the common danger of uninteresting heroes and insipid +heroines; but only a very few of his heroes are conventionally declamatory +like Nicholas Nickleby, and few of his heroines simper sentimentally like +Rose Maylie. Nor can I for a moment assent to the condemnation which has +been pronounced upon all the female characters in Dickens's books, as more +or less feeble or artificial. At the same time it is true that from women +of a mightier mould Dickens's imagination turns aside; he could not have +drawn a Dorothea Casaubon any more than he could have drawn Romola +herself. Similarly, heroes of the chivalrous or magnanimous type, +representatives of generous effort in a great cause, will not easily be +met with in his writings: he never even essayed the picture of an artist +devoted to Art for her own sake. + +It suited the genius, and in later years perhaps the temper, of Dickens as +an author to leave out of sight those "public virtues" to which no man was +in truth less blind than himself, and to remain content with the +illustration of types of the private or domestic kind. We may cheerfully +take to us the censure that our great humourist was in nothing more +English than in this--that his sympathy with the affections of the hearth +and the home knew almost no bounds. A symbolisation of this may be found +in the honour which, from the _Sketches_ and _Pickwick_ onwards, through a +long series of Christmas books and Christmas numbers, Dickens, doubtless +very consciously, paid to the one great festival of English family life. +Yet so far am I from agreeing with those critics who think that he is +hereby lowered to the level of the poets of the teapot and the +plum-pudding, that I am at a loss how to express my admiration for this +side of his genius--tender with the tenderness of Cowper, playful with the +playfulness of Goldsmith, natural with the naturalness of the author of +_Amelia_. Who was ever more at home with children than he, and, for that +matter, with babies to begin with? Mr. Horne relates how he once heard a +lady exclaim: "Oh, do read to us about the baby; Dickens is capital at a +baby!" Even when most playful, most farcical concerning children, his fun +is rarely without something of true tenderness, for he knew the meaning of +that dreariest solitude which he has so often pictured, but nowhere, of +course, with a truthfulness going so straight to the heart as in _David +Copperfield_--the solitude of a child left to itself. Another wonderfully +true child-character is that of Pip, in _Great Expectations_, who is also, +as his years progress, an admirable study of boy-nature. For Dickens +thoroughly understood what that mysterious variety of humankind really is, +and was always, if one may so say, on the lookout for him. He knew him in +the brightness and freshness which makes true _ingenus_ of such delightful +characters (rare enough in fiction) as Walter Gay and Mrs. Lirriper's +grandson. He knew him in his festive mood--witness the amusing letter in +which he describes a water expedition at Eton with his son and two of his +irrepressible school-fellows. He knew him in his precocity--the boy of +about three feet high, at the "George and Vulture," "in a hairy cap and +fustian overalls, whose garb bespoke a laudable ambition to attain in time +the elevation of an hostler;" and the thing on the roof of the Harrisburg +coach, which, when the rain was over, slowly upreared itself, and +patronisingly piped out the enquiry: "Well, now, stranger, I guess you +find this a'most like an English arternoon, hey?" He knew the Gavroche who +danced attendance on Mr. Quilp at his wharf, and those strangest, but by +no means least true, types of all, the pupil-teachers in Mr. Fagin's +academy. + +But these, with the exception of the last-named, which show much shrewd +and kindly insight into the paradoxes of human nature, are, of course, +the mere _croquis_ of the great humourist's pencil. His men and women, and +the passions, the desires, the loves, and hatreds that agitate them, he +has usually chosen to depict on that background of domestic life which is +in a greater or less degree common to us all. And it is thus also that he +has secured to himself the vast public which vibrates very differently +from a mere class or section of society to the touch of a popular speaker +or writer. "The more," he writes, "we see of life and its brevity, and the +world and its varieties, the more we know that no exercise of our +abilities in any art, but the addressing of it to the great ocean of +humanity in which we are drops, and not to by-ponds (very stagnant) here +and there, ever can or ever will lay the foundations of an endurable +retrospect." The types of character which in his fictions he chiefly +delights in reproducing are accordingly those which most of us have +opportunities enough of comparing with the realities around us; and this +test, a sound one within reasonable limits, was the test he demanded. To +no other author were his own characters ever more real; and Forster +observes that "what he had most to notice in Dickens at the very outset of +his career was his indifference to any praise of his performances on the +merely literary side, compared with the higher recognition of them as bits +of actual life, with the meaning and purpose, on their part, and the +responsibility on his, of realities, rather than creations of fancy." It +is, then, the favourite growths of our own age and country for which we +shall most readily look in his works, and not look in vain: avarice and +prodigality; pride in all its phases; hypocrisy in its endless varieties, +unctuous and plausible, fawning and self-satisfied, formal and moral; and, +on the other side, faithfulness, simplicity, long-suffering patience, and +indomitable heroic good-humour. Do we not daily make room on the pavement +for Mr. Dombey, erect, solemn, and icy, along-side of whom in the road Mr. +Carter deferentially walks his sleek horse? Do we not know more than one +Anthony Chuzzlewit laying up money for himself and his son, and a curse +for both along with it; and many a Richard Carston, sinking, sinking, as +the hope grows feebler that Justice or Fortune will at last help one who +has not learnt how to help himself? And will not prodigals of a more +buoyant kind, like the immortal Mr. Micawber (though, maybe, with an +eloquence less ornate than his), when _their_ boat is on the shore and +_their_ bark is on the sea, become "perfectly business-like and perfectly +practical," and propose, in acknowledgment of a parting gift we had +neither hoped nor desired to see again, "bills" or, if we should prefer +it, "a bond, or any other description of security?" All this will happen +to us, as surely as we shall be buttonholed by Pecksniffs in a state of +philanthropic exultation; and watched round corners by 'umble but +observant Uriah Heeps; and affronted in what is best in us by the worst +hypocrite of all, the hypocrite of religion, who flaunts in our eyes his +greasy substitute for what he calls the "light of terewth." To be sure, +unless it be Mr. Chadband and those of his tribe, we shall find the +hypocrite and the man-out-at-elbows in real life less endurable than their +representatives in fiction; for Dickens well understood "that if you do +not administer a disagreeable character carefully, the public have a +decided tendency to think that the _story_ is disagreeable, and not merely +the fictitious form." His economy is less strict with characters of the +opposite class, true copies of Nature's own handiwork--the Tom Pinches and +Trotty Vecks and Clara Peggottys, who reconcile us with our kind, and Mr. +Pickwick himself, "a human being replete with benevolence," to borrow a +phrase from a noble passage in Dickens's most congenial predecessor. These +characters in Dickens have a warmth which only the creations of Fielding +and Smollett had possessed before, and which, like these old masters, he +occasionally carries to excess. At the other extreme stand those +characters in which the art of Dickens, always in union with the +promptings of his moral nature, illustrates the mitigating or redeeming +qualities observable even in the outcasts of our civilisation. To me his +figures of this kind, when they are not too intensely elaborated, are not +the least touching; and there is something as pathetic in the uncouth +convict Magwitch as in the consumptive crossing-sweeper Jo. + +As a matter of course it is possible to take exceptions of one kind or +another to some of the characters created by Dickens in so extraordinary a +profusion. I hardly know of any other novelist less obnoxious to the +charge of repeating himself; though, of course, many characters in his +earlier or shorter works contained in themselves the germs of later and +fuller developments. But Bob Sawyer and Dick Swiveller, Noah Claypole and +Uriah Heep are at least sufficiently independent variations on the same +themes. On the other hand, Filer and Cute in _The Chimes_ were the first +sketches of Gradgrind and Bounderby in _Hard Times_; and Clemency in _The +Battle of Life_ prefigures Peggotty in _David Copperfield_. No one could +seriously quarrel with such repetitions as these, and there are remarkably +few of them; for the fertile genius of Dickens took delight in the variety +of its creativeness, and, as if to exemplify this, there was no relation +upon the contrasted humours of which he better loved to dwell than that of +partnership. It has been seen how rarely his inventive power condescended +to supplement itself by what in the novel corresponds to the mimicry of +the stage, and what in truth is as degrading to the one as it is to the +other--the reproduction of originals _from real life_. On the other hand, +he carries his habit too far of making a particular phrase do duty as an +index of a character. This trick also is a trick of the stage, where it +often enough makes the judicious grieve. Many may be inclined to censure +it in Dickens as one of several forms of the exaggeration which is so +frequently condemned in him. There was no charge to which he was more +sensitive; and in the preface to _Martin Chuzzlewit_ he accordingly (not +for the first time) turned round upon the objectors, declaring roundly +that "what is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions is plain +truth to another;" and hinting a doubt "whether it is _always_ the writer +who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for +colour is a little dull." I certainly do not think that the term +"exaggerated" is correctly applied to such conventional characters of +sensational romance as Rosa Dartle, who has, as it were, lost her way into +_David Copperfield_, while Hortense and Madame Defarge seem to be in their +proper places in _Bleak House_ and _A Tale of Two Cities_. In his earlier +writings, and in the fresher and less overcharged serious parts of his +later books, he rarely if ever paints black in black; even the Jew Fagin +has a moment of relenting against the sleeping Oliver; he is not that +unreal thing, a "demon," whereas Sikes is that real thing, a brute. On the +other hand, certainly he at times makes his characters more laughable than +nature; few great humourists have so persistently sought to efface the +line which separates the barely possible from the morally probable. This +was, no doubt, largely due to his inclination towards the grotesque, +which a severer literary training might have taught him to restrain. Thus +he liked to introduce insane or imbecile personages into fiction, where, +as in real life, they are often dangerous to handle. It is to his sense of +the grotesque, rather than to any deep-seated satirical intention, and +certainly not to any want of reverence or piety in his very simple and +very earnest nature, that I would likewise ascribe the exaggeration and +unfairness of which he is guilty against Little Bethel and all its works. +But in this, as in other instances, no form of humour requires more +delicate handling than the grotesque, and none is more liable to cause +fatigue. Latterly, Dickens was always adding to his gallery of eccentric +portraits, and if inner currents may be traced by outward signs, it may be +worth while to apply the test of his _names_, which become more and more +odd as their owners deviate more and more from the path of nature. Who +more simply and yet more happily named than the leading members of the +Pickwick Club--from the poet, Mr. Snodgrass, to the sportsman, Mr. +Winkle--Nathaniel, not Daniel; but with Veneering and Lammle, and Boffin +and Venus, and Crisparkle and Grewgious--be they actual names or not--we +feel instinctively that we are in the region of the transnormal. + +Lastly, in their descriptive power and the faithfulness with which they +portray the life and ways of particular periods or countries, of special +classes, professions, or other divisions of mankind, the books of Dickens +are, again of course within their range, unequalled. He sought his +materials chiefly at home, though his letters from Italy and Switzerland +and America, and his French pictures in sketch and story, show how much +wider a field his descriptive powers might have covered. The _Sketches by +Boz_ and the _Pickwick Papers_ showed a mastery, unsurpassed before or +since, in the description of the life of English society in its middle and +lower classes, and in _Oliver Twist_ he lifted the curtain from some of +the rotten parts of our civilisation. This history of a work-house child +also sounded the note of that sympathy with the poor which gave to +Dickens's descriptions of their sufferings and their struggles a veracity +beyond mere accuracy of detail. He was still happier in describing their +household virtues, their helpfulness to one another, their compassion for +those who are the poorest of all--the friendless and the outcast--as he +did in his _Old Curiosity Shop_, and in most of his Christmas books. His +pictures of middle-class life abounded in kindly humour; but the humour +and pathos of poverty--more especially the poverty which has not yet lost +its self-respect--commended themselves most of all to his descriptive +power. Where, as in _Nicholas Nickleby_ and later works, he essayed to +describe the manners of the higher classes, he was, as a rule, far less +successful; partly because there was in his nature a vein of rebellion +against the existing system of society, so that, except in his latest +books, he usually approached a description of members of its dominant +orders with a satirical intention, or at least an undertone of bitterness. +At the same time I demur to the common assertion that Dickens could not +draw a real gentleman. All that can be said is that it very rarely suited +his purpose to do so, supposing the term to include manners as well as +feelings and actions; though Mr. Twemlow, in _Our Mutual Friend_, might be +instanced as a (perhaps rather conscious) exception of one kind, and Sir +Leicester Dedlock, in the latter part of _Bleak House_, as another. +Moreover, a closer examination of Lord Frederick Verisopht and Cousin +Feenix will show that, gull as the one and ninny as the other is, neither +has anything that can be called ungentlemanly about him; on the contrary, +the characters, on the whole, rather plead in favour of the advantage than +of the valuelessness of blue blood. As for Dickens's other noblemen, whom +I find enumerated in an American dictionary of his characters, they are +nearly all mere passing embodiments of satirical fancies, which pretend to +be nothing more. + +Another ingenious enthusiast has catalogued the numerous callings, +professions, and trades of the personages appearing in Dickens's works. I +cannot agree with the criticism that in his personages the man is apt to +become forgotten in the externals of his calling--the barrister's wig and +gown, as it were, standing for the barrister, and the beadle's cocked hat +and staff for the beadle. But he must have possessed in its perfection the +curious detective faculty of deducing a man's occupation from his manners. +To him nothing wore a neutral tint, and no man or woman was featureless. +He was, it should be remembered, always observing; half his life he was +afoot. When he undertook to describe any novel or unfamiliar kind of +manners, he spared no time or trouble in making a special study of his +subject. He was not content to know the haunts of the London thieves by +hearsay, or to read the history of opium-smoking and its effects in +Blue-books. From the office of his journal in London we find him starting +on these self-imposed commissions, and from his hotel in New York. The +whole art of descriptive reporting, which has no doubt produced a large +quantity of trashy writing, but has also been of real service in arousing +a public interest in neglected corners of our social life, was, if not +actually set on foot, at any rate re-invigorated and vitalised by him. No +one was so delighted to notice the oddities which habit and tradition +stereotype in particular classes of men. A complete natural history of +the country actor, the London landlady, and the British waiter might be +compiled from his pages. This power of observation and description +extended from human life to that of animals. His habits of life could not +but make him the friend of dogs, and there is some reason for a title +which was bestowed on him in a paper in a London magazine concerning his +own dogs--the Landseer of Fiction. His letters are full of delightful +details concerning these friends and companions, Turk, Linda, and the rest +of them; nor is the family of their fictitious counterparts, culminating +(intellectually) in Merrylegs, less numerous and delightful. Cats were +less congenial to Dickens, perhaps because he had no objection to changing +house; and they appear in his works in no more attractive form than as the +attendant spirits of Mrs. Pipchin and of Mr. Krook. But for the humours of +animals in general he had a wonderfully quick eye. Of his ravens I have +already spoken. The pony Whisker is the type of kind old gentlemen's +ponies. In one of his letters occurs an admirably droll description of the +pig-market at Boulogne; and the best unscientific description ever given +of a spider was imagined by Dickens at Broadstairs, when in his solitude +he thought + + "of taming spiders, as Baron Trenck did. There is one in my cell (with + a speckled body and twenty-two very decided knees) who seems to know + me." + +In everything, whether animate or inanimate, he found out at once the +characteristic feature, and reproduced it in words of faultless precision. +This is the real secret of his descriptive power, the exercise of which it +would be easy to pursue through many other classes of subjects. Scenery, +for its own sake, he rarely cared to describe; but no one better +understood how to reproduce the combined effect of scenery and weather on +the predisposed mind. Thus London and its river in especial are, as I have +said, haunted by the memory of Dickens's books. To me it was for years +impossible to pass near London Bridge at night, or to idle in the Temple +on summer days, or to frequent a hundred other localities on or near the +Thames, without instinctively recalling pictures scattered through the +works of Dickens--in this respect, also, a real _liber veritatis_. + +Thus, and in many ways which it would be labour lost to attempt to +describe, and by many a stroke or touch of genius which it would be idle +to seek to reproduce in paraphrase, the most observing and the most +imaginative of our English humourists revealed to us that infinite +multitude of associations which binds men together, and makes us members +one of another. But though observation and imagination might discern and +discover these associations, sympathy--the sympathy of a generous human +heart with humanity--alone could breathe into them the warmth of life. +Happily, to most men, there is one place consecrated above others to the +feelings of love and good-will; "that great altar where the worst among us +sometimes perform the worship of the heart, and where the best have +offered up such sacrifices and done such deeds of heroism as, chronicled, +would put the proudest temples of old time, with all their vaunting +annals, to the blush." It was thus that Dickens spoke of the sanctity of +_home_; and, English in many things, he was most English in that love of +home to which he was never weary of testifying. But, though the "pathway +of the sublime" may have been closed to him, he knew well enough that the +interests of a people and the interests of humanity are mightier than the +domestic loves and cares of any man; and he conscientiously addressed +himself, as to the task of his life, to the endeavour to knit humanity +together. The method which he, by instinct and by choice, more especially +pursued was that of seeking to show the "good in everything." This it is +that made him, unreasonably sometimes, ignobly never, the champion of the +poor, the helpless, the outcast. He was often tempted into a rhetoric too +loud and too shrill, into a satire neither fine nor fair; for he was +impatient, but not impatient of what he thought true and good. His +purpose, however, was worthy of his powers; nor is there recorded among +the lives of English men of letters any more single-minded in its aim, and +more successful in the pursuit of it, than his. He was much criticised in +his lifetime; and he will, I am well aware, be often criticised in the +future by keener and more capable judges than myself. They may miss much +in his writings that I find in them; but, unless they find one thing +there, it were better that they never opened one of his books. He has +indicated it himself when criticising a literary performance by a clever +writer: + + "In this little MS. everything is too much patronised and condescended + to, whereas the slightest touch of feeling for the rustic who is of + the earth earthy, or of sisterhood with the homely servant who has + made her face shine in her desire to please, would make a difference + that the writer can generally imagine without trying it. You don't + want any sentiment laboriously made out in such a thing. You don't + want any maudlin show of it. But you do want a pervading suggestion + that it is there." + +The sentiment which Dickens means is the salt which will give a fresh +savour of their own to his works so long as our language endures. + + +THE END. + + + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] See _Idyll_. xv. 77. This discovery is not my own, but that of the +late Dr. Donaldson, who used to translate the passage accordingly with +great gusto. + +[2] For operas, as a form of _dramatic_ entertainment, Dickens seems +afterwards to have entertained a strong contempt, such as, indeed, it is +difficult for any man with a sense of humour wholly to avoid. + +[3] W. & D. Grant Brothers had their warehouse at the lower end of Cannon +Street, and their private house in Mosely Street. + +[4] As there is hardly a character in the whole world of fiction and the +drama without some sort of a literary predecessor, so Dickens may have +derived the first notion of Grip from the raven Ralpho--likewise the +property of an idiot--who frightened Roderick Random and Strap out of +their wits, and into the belief that he was the personage Grip so +persistently declared himself to be. + +[5] After dining at a party including the son of an eminent man of +letters, he notes in his _Remembrancer_ that he found the great man's son +"decidedly lumpish," and appends the reflexion, "Copyrights need be +hereditary, for genius isn't." + +[6] From a list of MSS. at South Kensington, kindly furnished me by Mr. R. +F. Sketchley, I find that Mr. R. H. Shepherd's _Bibliography of Dickens_ +is incomplete on this head. + +[7] By an odd coincidence, not less than four out of the six theatres +advertising their performances in this first number of the _Daily News_ +announce each a different adaptation of _The Cricket on the Hearth_. +Amongst the curiosities of the casts are observable: At the Adelphi, +Wright as Tilly Slowboy, and at the Haymarket Buckstone in the same +character, with William Farren as Caleb Plummer. The latter part is taken +at the Princess's by Compton, Mrs. Stirling playing Dot. At the Lyceum, +Mr., Mrs., and Miss Mary Keeley, and Mr. Emery, appear in the piece. + +[8] It is, perhaps, worth pointing out, though it is not surprising, that +Dickens had a strong sense of what I may call the poetry of the +railway-train. Of the effect of the weird _Signalman's Story_ in one of +his Christmas numbers it is not very easy to rid one's self. There are +excellent descriptions of the _rapidity_ of a railway journey in the first +chapter of _The Lazy Tour_, and in another _Household Words_ paper, called +_A Flight_. + +[9] Among these is Mr. Alexander Ireland, the author of the _Bibliography +of Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt_, who has kindly communicated to me part of his +collections concerning the former. The tittle-tattle against Leigh Hunt +repeated by Lord Macaulay is, on the face of it, unworthy of notice. + +[10] _By Rail to Parnassus_, June 16, 1855. + +[11] One of the last things ever written by Dickens was a criticism of M. +Fechter's acting, intended to introduce him to the American public. A +false report, by-the-way, declared Dickens to have been the author of the +dramatic version of Scott's novel, which at Christmas, 1865-'66, was +produced at the Lyceum, under the title of _The Master of Ravenswood_; but +he allowed that he had done "a great deal towards and about the piece, +having an earnest desire to put Scott, for once, on the stage in his own +gallant manner." + +[12] Dickens undoubtedly had a genius for titles. Amongst some which he +suggested for the use of a friend and contributor to his journal are, +"_What will he do with it?_" and "_Can he forgive her?_" + +[13] This title has helped to extinguish the phrase of which it consists. +Few would now be found to agree with the last clause of Flora's +parenthesis in _Little Dorrit_: "Our mutual friend--too cold a word for +me; at least I don't mean that very proper expression, mutual friend." + +[14] In the last volume of his _magnum opus_ of historical fiction Gustav +Freytag describes "Boz" as, about the year 1846, filling with boundless +enthusiasm the hearts of young men and maidens in a small Silesian country +town. + +[15] The passage in _Oliver Twist_ (chapter xxxvii.) which illustrates the +maxim that "dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes are more questions +of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine," may, or may not, be a +reminiscence of _Sartor Resartus_, then (1838) first published in a +volume. + + + + +ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS. + +EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY. + + +The following Volumes are now ready: + + SAMUEL JOHNSON By LESLIE STEPHEN. + EDWARD GIBBON By J. 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