There are those who deny with enthusiasm the existence of a God and are
happy in a hobby which they call the Mistakes of Moses. I have not
studied their labours in detail, but it seems that the chief mistake of
Moses was that he neglected to write the Pentateuch. The lesser errors,
apparently, were not made by Moses, but by another person equally
unknown. These controversialists cover the very widest field, and their
attacks upon Scripture are varied to the point of wildness. They range
from the proposition that the unexpurgated Bible is almost as unfit for
an American girls' school as is an unexpurgated Shakespeare; they
descend to the proposition that kissing the Book is almost as
hygienically dangerous as kissing the babies of the poor. A superficial
critic might well imagine that there was not one single sentence left of
the Hebrew or Christian Scriptures which this school had not marked with
some ingenious and uneducated comment. But there is one passage at least
upon which they have never pounced, at least to my knowledge; and in
pointing it out to them I feel that I am, or ought to be, providing
material for quite a multitude of Hyde Park orations. I mean that
singular arrangement in the mystical account of the Creation by which
light is created first and all the luminous bodies afterwards. One could
not imagine a process more open to the elephantine logic of the
Bible-smasher than this: that the sun should be created after the
sunlight. The conception that lies at the back of the phrase is indeed
profoundly antagonistic to much of the modern point of view. To many
modern people it would sound like saying that foliage existed before the
first leaf; it would sound like saying that childhood existed before a
baby was born. The idea is, as I have said, alien to most modern
thought, and like many other ideas which are alien to most modern
thought, it is a very subtle and a very sound idea. Whatever be the
meaning of the passage in the actual primeval poem, there is a very real
metaphysical meaning in the idea that light existed before the sun and
stars. It is not barbaric; it is rather Platonic. The idea existed
before any of the machinery which made manifest the idea. Justice
existed when there was no need of judges, and mercy existed before any
man was oppressed.
However this may be in the matter of religion and philosophy, it can be
said with little exaggeration that this truth is the very key of
literature. The whole difference between construction and creation is
exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is
constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the
mother can love the unborn child. In creative art the essence of a book
exists before the book or before even the details or main features of
the book; the author enjoys it and lives in it with a kind of prophetic
rapture. He wishes to write a comic story before he has thought of a
single comic incident. He desires to write a sad story before he has
thought of anything sad. He knows the atmosphere before he knows
anything. There is a low priggish maxim sometimes uttered by men so
frivolous as to take humour seriously--a maxim that a man should not
laugh at his own jokes. But the great artist not only laughs at his own
jokes; he laughs at his own jokes before he has made them. In the case
of a man really humorous we can see humour in his eye before he has
thought of any amusing words at all. So the creative writer laughs at
his comedy before he creates it, and he has tears for his tragedy before
he knows what it is. When the symbols and the fulfilling facts do come
to him, they come generally in a manner very fragmentary and inverted,
mostly in irrational glimpses of crisis or consummation. The last page
comes before the first; before his romance has begun, he knows that it
has ended well. He sees the wedding before the wooing; he sees the death
before the duel. But most of all he sees the colour and character of the
whole story prior to any possible events in it. This is the real
argument for art and style, only that the artists and the stylists have
not the sense to use it. In one very real sense style is far more
important than either character or narrative. For a man knows what style
of book he wants to write when he knows nothing else about it.
_Pickwick_ is in Dickens's career the mere mass of light before the
creation of sun or moon. It is the splendid, shapeless substance of
which all his stars were ultimately made. You might split up _Pickwick_
into innumerable novels as you could split up that primeval light into
innumerable solar systems. The _Pickwick Papers_ constitute first and
foremost a kind of wild promise, a pre-natal vision of all the children
of Dickens. He had not yet settled down into the plain, professional
habit of picking out a plot and characters, of attending to one thing at
a time, of writing a separate, sensible novel and sending it off to his
publishers. He is still in the youthful whirl of the kind of world that
he would like to create. He has not yet really settled what story he
will write, but only what sort of story he will write. He tries to tell
ten stories at once; he pours into the pot all the chaotic fancies and
crude experiences of his boyhood; he sticks in irrelevant short stories
shamelessly, as into a scrap-book; he adopts designs and abandons them,
begins episodes and leaves them unfinished; but from the first page to
the last there is a nameless and elemental ecstasy--that of the man who
is doing the kind of thing that he can do. Dickens, like every other
honest and effective writer, came at last to some degree of care and
self-restraint. He learned how to make his _dramatis personae_ assist his
drama; he learned how to write stories which were full of rambling and
perversity, but which were stories. But before he wrote a single real
story, he had a kind of vision. It was a vision of the Dickens world--a
maze of white roads, a map full of fantastic towns, thundering coaches,
clamorous market-places, uproarious inns, strange and swaggering
figures. That vision was _Pickwick_.
It must be remembered that this is true even in connection with the
man's contemporaneous biography. Apart from anything else about it,
_Pickwick_ was his first great chance. It was a big commission given in
some sense to an untried man, that he might show what he could do. It
was in a strict sense a sample. And just as a sample of leather can be
only a piece of leather, or a sample of coal a lump of coal, so this
book may most properly be regarded as simply a lump of Dickens. He was
anxious to show all that was in him. He was more concerned to prove that
he could write well than to prove that he could write this particular
book well. And he did prove this, at any rate. No one ever sent such a
sample as the sample of Dickens. His roll of leather blocked up the
street; his lump of coal set the Thames on fire.
The book originated in the suggestion of a publisher; as many more good
books have done than the arrogance of the man of letters is commonly
inclined to admit. Very much is said in our time about Apollo and
Admetus, and the impossibility of asking genius to work within
prescribed limits or assist an alien design. But after all, as a matter
of fact, some of the greatest geniuses have done it, from Shakespeare
botching up bad comedies and dramatising bad novels down to Dickens
writing a masterpiece as the mere framework for a Mr. Seymour's
sketches. Nor is the true explanation irrelevant to the spirit and power
of Dickens. Very delicate, slender, and _bizarre_ talents are indeed
incapable of being used for an outside purpose, whether of public good
or of private gain. But about very great and rich talent there goes a
certain disdainful generosity which can turn its hand to anything. Minor
poets cannot write to order; but very great poets can write to order.
The larger the man's mind, the wider his scope of vision, the more
likely it will be that anything suggested to him will seem significant
and promising; the more he has a grasp of everything the more ready he
will be to write anything. It is very hard (if that is the question) to
throw a brick at a man and ask him to write an epic; but the more he is
a great man the more able he will be to write about the brick. It is
very unjust (if that is all) to point to a hoarding of Colman's mustard
and demand a flood of philosophical eloquence; but the greater the man
is the more likely he will be to give it to you. So it was proved, not
for the first time, in this great experiment of the early employment of
Dickens. Messrs. Chapman and Hall came to him with a scheme for a string
of sporting stories to serve as the context, and one might almost say
the excuse, for a string of sketches by Seymour, the sporting artist.
Dickens made some modifications in the plan, but he adopted its main
feature; and its main feature was Mr. Winkle. To think of what Mr.
Winkle might have been in the hands of a dull _farceur_, and then to
think of what he is, is to experience the feeling that Dickens made a
man out of rags and refuse. Dickens was to work splendidly and
successfully in many fields, and to send forth many brilliant books and
brave figures. He was destined to have the applause of continents like a
statesman, and to dictate to his publishers like a despot; but perhaps
he never worked again so supremely well as here, where he worked in
chains. It may well be questioned whether his one hack book is not his
masterpiece.
Of course it is true that as he went on his independence increased, and
he kicked quite free of the influences that had suggested his story. So
Shakespeare declared his independence of the original chronicle of
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, eliminating altogether (with some wisdom)
another uncle called Wiglerus. At the start the Nimrod Club of Chapman
and Hall may have even had equal chances with the Pickwick Club of young
Mr. Dickens; but the Pickwick Club became something much better than any
publisher had dared to dream of. Some of the old links were indeed
severed by accident or extraneous trouble; Seymour, for whose sake the
whole had perhaps been planned, blew his brains out before he had drawn
ten pictures. But such things were trifles compared to _Pickwick_
itself. It mattered little now whether Seymour blew his brains out, so
long as Charles Dickens blew his brains in. The work became
systematically and progressively more powerful and masterly. Many
critics have commented on the somewhat discordant and inartistic change
between the earlier part of _Pickwick_ and the later; they have pointed
out, not without good sense, that the character of Mr. Pickwick changes
from that of a silly buffoon to that of a solid merchant. But the case,
if these critics had noticed it, is much stronger in the minor
characters of the great company. Mr. Winkle, who has been an idiot
(even, perhaps, as Mr. Pickwick says, "an impostor"), suddenly becomes a
romantic and even reckless lover, scaling a forbidden wall and planning
a bold elopement. Mr. Snodgrass, who has behaved in a ridiculous manner
in all serious positions, suddenly finds himself in a ridiculous
position--that of a gentleman surprised in a secret love affair--and
behaves in a manner perfectly manly, serious, and honourable. Mr.
Tupman alone has no serious emotional development, and for this reason
it is, presumably, that we hear less and less of Mr. Tupman towards the
end of the book. Dickens has by this time got into a thoroughly serious
mood--a mood expressed indeed by extravagant incidents, but none the
less serious for that; and into this Winkle and Snodgrass, in the
character of romantic lovers, could be made to fit. Mr. Tupman had to be
left out of the love affairs; therefore Mr. Tupman is left out of the
book.
Much of the change was due to the entrance of the greatest character in
the story. It may seem strange at the first glance to say that Sam
Weller helped to make the story serious. Nevertheless, this is strictly
true. The introduction of Sam Weller had, to begin with, some merely
accidental and superficial effects. When Samuel Weller had appeared,
Samuel Pickwick was no longer the chief farcical character. Weller
became the joker and Pickwick in some sense the butt of his jokes. Thus
it was obvious that the more simple, solemn, and really respectable this
butt could be made the better. Mr. Pickwick had been the figure capering
before the footlights. But with the advent of Sam, Mr. Pickwick had
become a sort of black background and had to behave as such. But this
explanation, though true as far as it goes, is a mean and unsatisfactory
one, leaving the great elements unexplained. For a much deeper and more
righteous reason Sam Weller introduces the more serious tone of
Pickwick. He introduces it because he introduces something which it was
the chief business of Dickens to preach throughout his life--something
which he never preached so well as when he preached it unconsciously.
Sam Weller introduces the English people.
Sam Weller is the great symbol in English literature of the populace
peculiar to England. His incessant stream of sane nonsense is a
wonderful achievement of Dickens: but it is no great falsification of
the incessant stream of sane nonsense as it really exists among the
English poor. The English poor live in an atmosphere of humour; they
think in humour. Irony is the very air that they breathe. A joke comes
suddenly from time to time into the head of a politician or a gentleman,
and then as a rule he makes the most of it; but when a serious word
comes into the mind of a coster it is almost as startling as a joke. The
word "chaff" was, I suppose, originally applied to badinage to express
its barren and unsustaining character; but to the English poor chaff is
as sustaining as grain. The phrase that leaps to their lips is the
ironical phrase. I remember once being driven in a hansom cab down a
street that turned out to be a _cul de sac_, and brought us bang up
against a wall. The driver and I simultaneously said something. But I
said: "This'll never do!" and he said: "This is all right!" Even in the
act of pulling back his horse's nose from a brick wall, that confirmed
satirist thought in terms of his highly-trained and traditional satire;
while I, belonging to a duller and simpler class, expressed my feelings
in words as innocent and literal as those of a rustic or a child.
This eternal output of divine derision has never been so truly typified
as by the character of Sam; he is a grotesque fountain which gushes the
living waters for ever. Dickens is accused of exaggeration and he is
often guilty of exaggeration; but here he does not exaggerate: he merely
symbolises and sublimates like any other great artist. Sam Weller does
not exaggerate the wit of the London street arab one atom more than
Colonel Newcome, let us say, exaggerates the stateliness of an ordinary
soldier and gentleman, or than Mr. Collins exaggerates the fatuity of a
certain kind of country clergyman. And this breath from the boisterous
brotherhood of the poor lent a special seriousness and smell of reality
to the whole story. The unconscious follies of Winkle and Tupman are
blown away like leaves before the solid and conscious folly of Sam
Weller. Moreover, the relations between Pickwick and his servant Sam are
in some ways new and valuable in literature. Many comic writers had
described the clever rascal and his ridiculous dupe; but here, in a
fresh and very human atmosphere, we have a clever servant who was not a
rascal and a dupe who was not ridiculous. Sam Weller stands in some ways
for a cheerful knowledge of the world; Mr. Pickwick stands for a still
more cheerful ignorance of the world. And Dickens responded to a
profound human sentiment (the sentiment that has made saints and the
sanctity of children) when he made the gentler and less-travelled
type--the type which moderates and controls. Knowledge and innocence are
both excellent things, and they are both very funny. But it is right
that knowledge should be the servant and innocence the master.
The sincerity of this study of Sam Weller has produced one particular
effect in the book which I wonder that critics of Dickens have never
noticed or discussed. Because it has no Dickens "pathos," certain parts
of it are truly pathetic. Dickens, realising rightly that the whole tone
of the book was fun, felt that he ought to keep out of it any great
experiments in sadness and keep within limits those that he put in. He
used this restraint in order not to spoil the humour; but (if he had
known himself better) he might well have used it in order not to spoil
the pathos. This is the one book in which Dickens was, as it were,
forced to trample down his tender feelings; and for that very reason it
is the one book where all the tenderness there is is quite
unquestionably true. An admirable example of what I mean may be found in
the scene in which Sam Weller goes down to see his bereaved father after
the death of his step-mother. The most loyal admirer of Dickens can
hardly prevent himself from giving a slight shudder when he thinks of
what Dickens might have made of that scene in some of his more expansive
and maudlin moments. For all I know old Mrs. Weller might have asked
what the wild waves were saying; and for all I know old Mr. Weller might
have told her. As it is, Dickens, being forced to keep the tale taut and
humorous, gives a picture of humble respect and decency which is manly,
dignified, and really sad. There is no attempt made by these simple and
honest men, the father and son, to pretend that the dead woman was
anything greatly other than she was; their respect is for death, and for
the human weakness and mystery which it must finally cover. Old Tony
Weller does not tell his shrewish wife that she is already a
white-winged angel; he speaks to her with an admirable good nature and
good sense:
"'Susan,' I says, 'you've been a wery good vife to me altogether:
keep a good heart, my dear, and you'll live to see me punch that
'ere Stiggins's 'ead yet.' She smiled at this, Samivel ... but she
died arter all."
That is perhaps the first and the last time that Dickens ever touched
the extreme dignity of pathos. He is restraining his compassion, and
afterwards he let it go. Now laughter is a thing that can be let go;
laughter has in it a quality of liberty. But sorrow has in it by its
very nature a quality of confinement; pathos by its very nature fights
with itself. Humour is expansive; it bursts outwards; the fact is
attested by the common expression, "holding one's sides." But sorrow is
not expansive; and it was afterwards the mistake of Dickens that he
tried to make it expansive. It is the one great weakness of Dickens as a
great writer, that he did try to make that sudden sadness, that abrupt
pity, which we call pathos, a thing quite obvious, infectious, public,
as if it were journalism or the measles. It is pleasant to think that in
this supreme masterpiece, done in the dawn of his career, there is not
even this faint fleck upon the sun of his just splendour. Pickwick will
always be remembered as the great example of everything that made
Dickens great; of the solemn conviviality of great friendships, of the
erratic adventures of old English roads, of the hospitality of old
English inns, of the great fundamental kindliness and honour of old
English manners. First of all, however, it will always be remembered for
its laughter, or, if you will, for its folly. A good joke is the one
ultimate and sacred thing which cannot be criticised. Our relations
with a good joke are direct and even divine relations. We speak of
"seeing" a joke just as we speak of "seeing" a ghost or a vision. If we
have seen it, it is futile to argue with us; and we have seen the vision
of _Pickwick_. _Pickwick_ may be the top of Dickens's humour; I think
upon the whole it is. But the broad humour of _Pickwick_ he broadened
over many wonderful kingdoms; the narrow pathos of _Pickwick_ he never
found again.