_Barnaby Rudge_ was written by Dickens in the spring and first flowing
tide of his popularity; it came immediately after _The Old Curiosity
Shop_, and only a short time after _Pickwick_. Dickens was one of those
rare but often very sincere men in whom the high moment of success
almost coincides with the high moment of youth. The calls upon him at
this time were insistent and overwhelming; this necessarily happens at a
certain stage of a successful writer's career. He was just successful
enough to invite offers and not successful enough to reject them. At the
beginning of his career he could throw himself into _Pickwick_ because
there was nothing else to throw himself into. At the end of his life he
could throw himself into _A Tale of Two Cities_, because he refused to
throw himself into anything else. But there was an intervening period,
early in his life, when there was almost too much work for his
imagination, and yet not quite enough work for his housekeeping. To this
period _Barnaby Rudge_ belongs. And it is a curious tribute to the quite
curious greatness of Dickens that in this period of youthful strain we
do not feel the strain but feel only the youth. His own amazing wish to
write equalled or outstripped even his readers' amazing wish to read.
Working too hard did not cure him of his abstract love of work.
Unreasonable publishers asked him to write ten novels at once; but he
wanted to write twenty novels at once. All this period is strangely full
of his own sense at once of fertility and of futility; he did work which
no one else could have done, and yet he could not be certain as yet that
he was anybody.
_Barnaby Rudge_ marks this epoch because it marks the fact that he is
still confused about what kind of person he is going to be. He has
already struck the note of the normal romance in _Nicholas Nickleby_; he
has already created some of his highest comic characters in _Pickwick_
and _The Old Curiosity Shop_, but here he betrays the fact that it is
still a question what ultimate guide he shall follow. _Barnaby Rudge_ is
a romantic, historical novel. Its design reminds us of Scott; some parts
of its fulfilment remind us, alas! of Harrison Ainsworth. It is a very
fine romantic historical novel; Scott would have been proud of it. But
it is still so far different from the general work of Dickens that it is
permissible to wonder how far Dickens was proud of it. The book,
effective as it is, is almost entirely devoted to dealings with a
certain artistic element, which (in its mere isolation) Dickens did not
commonly affect; an element which many men of infinitely less genius
have often seemed to affect more successfully; I mean the element of the
picturesque.
It is the custom in many quarters to speak somewhat sneeringly of that
element which is broadly called the picturesque. It is always felt to be
an inferior, a vulgar, and even an artificial form of art. Yet two
things may be remarked about it. The first is that, with few
exceptions, the greatest literary artists have been not only
particularly clever at the picturesque, but particularly fond of it.
Shakespeare, for instance, delighted in certain merely pictorial
contrasts which are quite distinct from, even when they are akin to, the
spiritual view involved. For instance, there is admirable satire in the
idea of Touchstone teaching worldly wisdom and worldly honour to the
woodland yokels. There is excellent philosophy in the idea of the fool
being the representative of civilisation in the forest. But quite apart
from this deeper meaning in the incident, the mere figure of the jester,
in his bright motley and his cap and bells, against the green background
of the forest and the rude forms of the shepherds, is a strong example
of the purely picturesque. There is excellent tragic irony in the
confrontation of the melancholy philosopher among the tombs with the
cheerful digger of the graves. It sums up the essential point, that dead
bodies can be comic; it is only dead souls that can be tragic. But quite
apart from such irony, the mere picture of the grotesque gravedigger,
the black-clad prince, and the skull is a picture in the strongest sense
picturesque. Caliban and the two shipwrecked drunkards are an admirable
symbol; but they are also an admirable scene. Bottom, with the ass's
head, sitting in a ring of elves, is excellent moving comedy, but also
excellent still life. Falstaff with his huge body, Bardolph with his
burning nose, are masterpieces of the pen; but they would be fine
sketches even for the pencil. King Lear, in the storm, is a landscape as
well as a character study. There is something decorative even about the
insistence on the swarthiness of Othello, or the deformity of Richard
III. Shakespeare's work is much more than picturesque; but it is
picturesque. And the same which is said here of him by way of example is
largely true of the highest class of literature. Dante's _Divine Comedy_
is supremely important as a philosophy; but it is important merely as a
panorama. Spenser's _Faery Queen_ pleases us as an allegory; but it
would please us even as a wall-paper. Stronger still is the case of
Chaucer who loved the pure picturesque, which always includes something
of what we commonly call the ugly. The huge stature and startling
scarlet face of the Sompnour is in just the same spirit as Shakespeare's
skulls and motley; the same spirit gave Chaucer's miller bagpipes, and
clad his doctor in crimson. It is the spirit which, while making many
other things, loves to make a picture.
Now the second thing to be remarked in apology for the picturesque is,
that the very thing which makes it seem trivial ought really to make it
seem important; I mean the fact that it consists necessarily of
contrasts. It brings together types that stand out from their
background, but are abruptly different from each other, like the clown
among the fairies or the fool in the forest. And his audacious
reconciliation is a mark not of frivolity but of extreme seriousness. A
man who deals in harmonies, who only matches stars with angels or lambs
with spring flowers, he indeed may be frivolous; for he is taking one
mood at a time, and perhaps forgetting each mood as it passes. But a man
who ventures to combine an angel and an octopus must have some serious
view of the universe. The man who should write a dialogue between two
early Christians might be a mere writer of dialogues. But a man who
should write a dialogue between an early Christian and the Missing Link
would have to be a philosopher. The more widely different the types
talked of, the more serious and universal must be the philosophy which
talks of them. The mark of the light and thoughtless writer is the
harmony of his subject matter; the mark of the thoughtful writer is its
apparent diversity. The most flippant lyric poet might write a pretty
poem about lambs; but it requires something bolder and graver than a
poet, it requires an ecstatic prophet, to talk about the lion lying down
with the lamb.
Dickens, at any rate, strongly supports this conception: that great
literary men as such do not despise the purely pictorial. No man's works
have so much the quality of illustrating themselves. Few men's works
have been more thoroughly and eagerly illustrated; few men's works can
it have been better fun to illustrate. As a rule this fascinating
quality in the mere fantastic figures of the tale was inseparable from
their farcical quality in the tale. Stiggins's red nose is distinctly
connected with the fact that he is a member of the Ebenezer Temperance
Association; Quilp is little, because a little of him goes a long way.
Mr. Carker smiles and smiles and is a villain; Mr. Chadband is fat
because in his case to be fat is to be hated. The story is immeasurably
more important than the picture; it is not mere indulgence in the
picturesque. Generally it is an intellectual love of the comic; not a
pure love of the grotesque.
But in one book Dickens suddenly confesses that he likes the grotesque
even without the comic. In one case he makes clear that he enjoys pure
pictures with a pure love of the picturesque. That place is _Barnaby
Rudge_. There had indeed been hints of it in many episodes in his books;
notably, for example, in that fine scene of the death of Quilp--a scene
in which the dwarf remains fantastic long after he has ceased to be in
any way funny. Still, the dwarf was meant to be funny. Humour of a
horrible kind, but still humour, is the purpose of Quilp's existence and
position in the book. Laughter is the object of all his oddities. But
laughter is not the object of Barnaby Rudge's oddities. His idiot
costume and his ugly raven are used for the purpose of the pure
grotesque; solely to make a certain kind of Gothic sketch.
It is commonly this love of pictures that drives men back upon the
historical novel. But it is very typical of Dickens's living interest in
his own time, that though he wrote two historical novels they were
neither of them of very ancient history. They were both, indeed, of very
recent history; only they were those parts of recent history which were
specially picturesque. I do not think that this was due to any mere
consciousness on his part that he knew no history. Undoubtedly he knew
no history; and he may or may not have been conscious of the fact. But
the consciousness did not prevent him from writing a _History of
England_. Nor did it prevent him from interlarding all or any of his
works with tales of the pictorial past, such as the tale of the broken
swords in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, or the indefensibly delightful
nightmare of the lady in the stage-coach, which helps to soften the
amiable end of Pickwick. Neither, worst of all, did it prevent him from
dogmatising anywhere and everywhere about the past, of which he knew
nothing; it did not prevent him from telling the bells to tell Trotty
Veck that the Middle Ages were a failure, nor from solemnly declaring
that the best thing that the mediaeval monks ever did was to create the
mean and snobbish quietude of a modern cathedral city. No, it was not
historical reverence that held him back from dealing with the remote
past; but rather something much better--a living interest in the living
century in which he was born. He would have thought himself quite
intellectually capable of writing a novel about the Council of Trent or
the First Crusade. He would have thought himself quite equal to
analysing the psychology of Abelard or giving a bright, satiric sketch
of St. Augustine. It must frankly be confessed that it was not a sense
of his own unworthiness that held him back; I fear it was rather a sense
of St. Augustine's unworthiness. He could not see the point of any
history before the first slow swell of the French Revolution. He could
understand the revolutions of the eighteenth century; all the other
revolutions of history (so many and so splendid) were unmeaning to him.
But the revolutions of the eighteenth century he did understand; and to
them therefore he went back, as all historical novelists go back, in
search of the picturesque. And from this fact an important result
follows.
The result that follows is this: that his only two historical novels are
both tales of revolutions--of eighteenth-century revolutions. These two
eighteenth-century revolutions may seem to differ, and perhaps do
differ in everything except in being revolutions and of the eighteenth
century. The French Revolution, which is the theme of _A Tale of Two
Cities_, was a revolt in favour of all that is now called enlightenment
and liberation. The great Gordon Riot, which is the theme of _Barnaby
Rudge_, was a revolt in favour of something which would now be called
mere ignorant and obscurantist Protestantism. Nevertheless both belonged
more typically to the age out of which Dickens came--the great sceptical
and yet creative eighteenth century of Europe. Whether the mob rose on
the right side or the wrong they both belonged to the time in which a
mob could rise, in which a mob could conquer. No growth of intellectual
science or of moral cowardice had made it impossible to fight in the
streets, whether for the republic or for the Bible. If we wish to know
what was the real link, existing actually in ultimate truth, existing
unconsciously in Dickens's mind, which connected the Gordon Riots with
the French Revolution, the link may be defined though not with any great
adequacy. The nearest and truest way of stating it is that neither of
the two could possibly happen in Fleet Street to-morrow evening.
Another point of resemblance between the two books might be found in the
fact that they both contain the sketch of the same kind of
eighteenth-century aristocrat, if indeed that kind of aristocrat really
existed in the eighteenth century. The diabolical dandy with the rapier
and the sneer is at any rate a necessity of all normal plays and
romances; hence Mr. Chester has a right to exist in this romance, and
Foulon a right to exist in a page of history almost as cloudy and
disputable as a romance. What Dickens and other romancers do probably
omit from the picture of the eighteenth-century oligarch is probably his
liberality. It must never be forgotten that even when he was a despot in
practice he was generally a liberal in theory. Dickens and romancers
make the pre-revolution tyrant a sincere believer in tyranny; generally
he was not. He was a sceptic about everything, even about his own
position. The romantic Foulon says of the people, "Let them eat grass,"
with bitter and deliberate contempt. The real Foulon (if he ever said it
at all) probably said it as a sort of dreary joke because he couldn't
think of any other way out of the problem. Similarly Mr. Chester, a
cynic as he is, believes seriously in the beauty of being a gentleman; a
real man of that type probably disbelieved in that as in everything
else. Dickens was too bracing, one may say too bouncing himself to
understand the psychology of fatigue in a protected and leisured class.
He could understand a tyrant like Quilp, a tyrant who is on his throne
because he has climbed up into it, like a monkey. He could not
understand a tyrant who is on his throne because he is too weary to get
out of it. The old aristocrats were in a dead way quite good-natured.
They were even humanitarians; which perhaps accounts for the extent to
which they roused against themselves the healthy hatred of humanity. But
they were tired humanitarians; tired with doing nothing. Figures like
that of Mr. Chester, therefore, fail somewhat to give the true sense of
something hopeless and helpless which led men to despair of the upper
class. He has a boyish pleasure in play-acting; he has an interest in
life; being a villain is his hobby. But the true man of that type had
found all hobbies fail him. He had wearied of himself as he had wearied
of a hundred women. He was graceful and could not even admire himself in
the glass. He was witty and could not even laugh at his own jokes.
Dickens could never understand tedium.
There is no mark more strange and perhaps sinister of the interesting
and not very sane condition of our modern literature, than the fact that
tedium has been admirably described in it. Our best modern writers are
never so exciting as they are about dulness. Mr. Rudyard Kipling is
never so powerful as when he is painting yawning deserts, aching
silences, sleepless nights, or infernal isolation. The excitement in one
of the stories of Mr. Henry James becomes tense, thrilling, and almost
intolerable in all the half hours during which nothing whatever is said
or done. We are entering again into the mind, into the real mind of
Foulon and Mr. Chester. We begin to understand the deep despair of those
tyrants whom our fathers pulled down. But Dickens could never have
understood that despair; it was not in his soul. And it is an
interesting coincidence that here, in this book of _Barnaby Rudge_,
there is a character meant to be wholly grotesque, who, nevertheless,
expresses much of that element in Dickens which prevented him from being
a true interpreter of the tired and sceptical aristocrat.
Sim Tappertit is a fool, but a perfectly honourable fool. It requires
some sincerity to pose. Posing means that one has not dried up in
oneself all the youthful and innocent vanities with the slow paralysis
of mere pride. Posing means that one is still fresh enough to enjoy the
good opinion of one's fellows. On the other hand, the true cynic has not
enough truth in him to attempt affectation; he has never even seen the
truth, far less tried to imitate it. Now we might very well take the
type of Mr. Chester on the one hand, and of Sim Tappertit on the other,
as marking the issue, the conflict, and the victory which really ushered
in the nineteenth century. Dickens was very like Sim Tappertit. The
Liberal Revolution was very like a Sim Tappertit revolution. It was
vulgar, it was overdone, it was absurd, but it was alive. Dickens was
vulgar, was absurd, overdid everything, but he was alive. The
aristocrats were perfectly correct, but quite dead; dead long before
they were guillotined. The classics and critics who lamented that
Dickens was no gentleman were quite right, but quite dead. The
revolution thought itself rational; but so did Sim Tappertit. It was
really a huge revolt of romanticism against a reason which had grown
sick even of itself. Sim Tappertit rose against Mr. Chester; and, thank
God! he put his foot upon his neck.
[Illustration: Charles Dickens, 1842
From a bust by H. Dexter, executed during Dickens's first visit to
America.]