There is a certain quality or element which broods over the whole of
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ to which it is difficult for either friends or foes
to put a name. I think the reader who enjoys Dickens's other books has
an impression that it is a kind of melancholy. There are grotesque
figures of the most gorgeous kind; there are scenes that are farcical
even by the standard of the farcical license of Dickens; there is humour
both of the heaviest and of the lightest kind; there are two great comic
personalities who run like a rich vein through the whole story,
Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp; there is one blinding patch of brilliancy, the
satire on American cant; there is Todgers's boarding-house; there is
Bailey; there is Mr. Mould, the incomparable undertaker. But yet in
spite of everything, in spite even of the undertaker, the book is sad.
No one I think ever went to it in that mixed mood of a tired tenderness
and a readiness to believe and laugh in which most of Dickens's novels
are most enjoyed. We go for a particular novel to Dickens as we go for a
particular inn. We go to the sign of the Pickwick Papers. We go to the
sign of the Rudge and Raven. We go to the sign of the Old Curiosities.
We go to the sign of the Two Cities. We go to each or all of them
according to what kind of hospitality and what kind of happiness we
require. But it is always some kind of hospitality and some kind of
happiness that we require. And as in the case of inns we also remember
that while there was shelter in all and food in all and some kind of
fire and some kind of wine in all, yet one has left upon us an
indescribable and unaccountable memory of mortality and decay, of
dreariness in the rooms and even of tastelessness in the banquet. So any
one who has enjoyed the stories of Dickens as they should be enjoyed has
a nameless feeling that this one story is sad and almost sodden. Dickens
himself had this feeling, though his breezy vanity forbade him to
express it in so many words. In spite of Pecksniff, in spite of Mrs.
Gamp, in spite of the yet greater Bailey, the story went lumberingly and
even lifelessly; he found the sales falling off; he fancied his
popularity waning, and by a sudden impulse most inartistic and yet most
artistic, he dragged in the episode of Martin's visit to America, which
is the blazing jewel and the sudden redemption of the book. He wrote it
at an uneasy and unhappy period of his life; when he had ceased
wandering in America, but could not cease wandering altogether; when he
had lost his original routine of work which was violent but regular, and
had not yet settled down to the full enjoyment of his success and his
later years. He poured into this book genius that might make the
mountains laugh, invention that juggled with the stars. But the book was
sad; and he knew it.
The just reason for this is really interesting. Yet it is one that is
not easy to state without guarding one's self on the one side or the
other against great misunderstandings; and these stipulations or
preliminary allowances must in such a case as this of necessity be made
first. Dickens was among other things a satirist, a pure satirist. I
have never been able to understand why this title is always specially
and sacredly reserved for Thackeray. Thackeray was a novelist; in the
strict and narrow sense at any rate, Thackeray was a far greater
novelist than Dickens. But Dickens certainly was the satirist. The
essence of satire is that it perceives some absurdity inherent in the
logic of some position, and that it draws that absurdity out and
isolates it, so that all can see it. Thus for instance when Dickens
says, "Lord Coodle would go out; Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in; and
there being no people to speak of in England except Coodle and Doodle
the country has been without a Government"; when Dickens says this he
suddenly pounces on and plucks out the one inherent absurdity in the
English party system which is hidden behind all its paraphernalia of
Parliaments and Statutes, elections and ballot papers. When all the
dignity and all the patriotism and all the public interest of the
English constitutional party conflict have been fully allowed for, there
does remain the bold, bleak question which Dickens in substance asks,
"Suppose I want somebody else who is neither Coodle nor Doodle." This is
the great quality called satire; it is a kind of taunting
reasonableness; and it is inseparable from a certain insane logic which
is often called exaggeration. Dickens was more of a satirist than
Thackeray for this simple reason: that Thackeray carried a man's
principles as far as that man carried them; Dickens carried a man's
principles as far as a man's principles would go. Dickens in short (as
people put it) exaggerated the man and his principles; that is to say
he emphasised them. Dickens drew a man's absurdity out of him; Thackeray
left a man's absurdity in him. Of this last fact we can take any example
we like; take for instance the comparison between the city man as
treated by Thackeray in the most satiric of his novels, with the city
man as treated by Dickens in one of the mildest and maturest of his.
Compare the character of old Mr. Osborne in _Vanity Fair_ with the
character of Mr. Podsnap in _Our Mutual Friend_. In the case of Mr.
Osborne there is nothing except the solid blocking in of a brutal dull
convincing character. _Vanity Fair_ is not a satire on the City except
in so far as it happens to be true. _Vanity Fair_ is not a satire on the
City, in short, except in so far as the City is a satire on the City.
But Mr. Podsnap is a pure satire; he is an extracting out of the City
man of those purely intellectual qualities which happen to make that
kind of City man a particularly exasperating fool. One might almost say
that Mr. Podsnap is all Mr. Osborne's opinions separated from Mr.
Osborne and turned into a character. In short the satirist is more
purely philosophical than the novelist. The novelist may be only an
observer; the satirist must be a thinker. He must be a thinker, he must
be a philosophical thinker for this simple reason; that he exercises his
philosophical thought in deciding what part of his subject he is to
satirise. You may have the dullest possible intelligence and be a
portrait painter; but a man must have a serious intellect in order to be
a caricaturist. He has to select what thing he will caricature. True
satire is always of this intellectual kind; true satire is always, so
to speak, a variation or fantasia upon the air of pure logic. The
satirist is the man who carries men's enthusiasm further than they carry
it themselves. He outstrips the most extravagant fanatic. He is years
ahead of the most audacious prophet. He sees where men's detached
intellect will eventually lead them, and he tells them the name of the
place--which is generally hell.
Now of this detached and rational use of satire there is one great
example in this book. Even _Gulliver's Travels_ is hardly more
reasonable than Martin Chuzzlewit's travels in the incredible land of
the Americans. Before considering the humour of this description in its
more exhaustive and liberal aspects, it may be first remarked that in
this American part of _Martin Chuzzlewit_, Dickens quite specially
sharpens up his own more controversial and political intelligence. There
are more things here than anywhere else in Dickens that partake of the
nature of pamphleteering, of positive challenge, of sudden repartee, of
pugnacious and exasperating query, in a word of everything that belongs
to the pure art of controversy as distinct not only from the pure art of
fiction but even also from the pure art of satire. I am inclined to
think (to put the matter not only shortly but clumsily) that Dickens was
never in all his life so strictly clever as he is in the American part
of _Martin Chuzzlewit_. There are places where he was more inspired,
almost in the sense of being intoxicated, as, for instance, in the
Micawber feasts of _David Copperfield_; there are places where he wrote
more carefully and cunningly, as, for instance, in the mystery of _The
Mystery of Edwin Drood_; there are places where he wrote very much more
humanly, more close to the ground and to growing things, as in the whole
of that admirable book _Great Expectations_. But I do not think that his
mere abstract acuteness and rapidity of thought were ever exercised with
such startling exactitude as they are in this place in _Martin
Chuzzlewit_. It is to be noted, for instance, that his American
experience had actually worked him up to a heat and habit of argument. A
slave-owner in the Southern States tells Dickens that slave-owners do
not ill-treat their slaves, that it is not to the interest of
slave-owners to ill-treat their slaves. Dickens flashes back that it is
not to the interest of a man to get drunk, but he does get drunk. This
pugnacious atmosphere of parry and riposte must first of all be allowed
for and understood in all the satiric excursus of Martin in America.
Dickens is arguing all the time; and, to do him justice, arguing very
well. These chapters are full not merely of exuberant satire on America
in the sense that Dotheboys Hall or Mr. Bumble's Workhouse are exuberant
satires on England. They are full also of sharp argument with America as
if the man who wrote expected retort and was prepared with rejoinder.
The rest of the book, like the rest of Dickens's books, possesses
humour. This part of the book, like hardly any of Dickens's books,
possesses wit. The republican gentleman who receives Martin on landing
is horrified on hearing an English servant speak of the employer as "the
master." "There are no masters in America," says the gentleman. "All
owners are they?" says Martin. This sort of verbal promptitude is out of
the ordinary scope of Dickens; but we find it frequently in this
particular part of _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Martin himself is constantly
breaking out into a controversial lucidity, which is elsewhere not at
all a part of his character. When they talk to him about the
institutions of America he asks sarcastically whether bowie knives and
swordsticks and revolvers are the institutions of America. All this (if
I may summarise) is expressive of one main fact. Being a satirist means
being a philosopher. Dickens was not always very philosophical; but he
had this permanent quality of the philosopher about him, that he always
remembered people by their opinions. Elijah Pogram was to him the man
who said that "his boastful answer to the tyrant and the despot was that
his bright home was the land of the settin' sun." Mr. Scadder and Mr.
Jefferson Brick were to him the men who said (in cooperation) that "the
libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood." And in these
chapters more than anywhere else he falls into the extreme habit of
satire, that of treating people as if there were nothing about them
except their opinions. It is therefore difficult to accept these pages
as pages in a novel, splendid as they are considered as pages in a
parody. I do not dispute that men have said and do say that "the
libation of freedom must sometimes be quaffed in blood," that "their
bright homes are the land of the settin' sun," that "they taunt that
lion," that "alone they dare him," or "that softly sleeps the calm ideal
in the whispering chambers of imagination." I have read too much
American journalism to deny that any of these sentences and any of these
opinions may at some time or other have been uttered. I do not deny
that there are such opinions. But I do deny that there are such people.
Elijah Pogram had some other business in life besides defending
defaulting postmasters; he must have been a son or a father or a husband
or at least (admirable thought) a lover. Mr. Chollop had some moments in
his existence when he was not threatening his fellow-creatures with his
sword-stick and his revolver. Of all this human side of such American
types Dickens does not really give any hint at all. He does not suggest
that the bully Chollop had even such coarse good-humour as bullies
almost always have. He does not suggest that the humbug Elijah Pogram
had even as much greasy amiability as humbugs almost invariably have. He
is not studying them as human beings, even as bad human beings; he is
studying them as conceptions, as points of view, as symbols of a state
of mind with which he is in violent disagreement. To put it roughly, he
is not describing characters, he is satirising fads. To put it more
exactly, he is not describing characters; he is persecuting heresies.
There is one thing really to be said against his American satire; it is
a serious thing to be said: it is an argument, and it is true. This can
be said of Martin's wanderings in America, that from the time he lands
in America to the time he sets sail from it he never meets a living man.
He has travelled in the land of Laputa. All the people he has met have
been absurd opinions walking about. The whole art of Dickens in such
passages as these consisted in one thing. It consisted in finding an
opinion that had not a leg to stand on, and then giving it two legs to
stand on.
So much may be allowed; it may be admitted that Dickens is in this sense
the great satirist, in that he can imagine absurd opinions walking by
themselves about the street. It may be admitted that Thackeray would not
have allowed an absurd opinion to walk about the street without at least
tying a man on to it for the sake of safety. But while this first truth
may be evident, the second truth which is the complement of it may
easily be forgotten. On the one hand there was no man who could so much
enjoy mere intellectual satire apart from humanity as Dickens. On the
other hand there was no man who, with another and more turbulent part of
his nature, demanded humanity, and demanded its supremacy over
intellect, more than Dickens. To put it shortly: there never was a man
so much fitted for saying that everything was wrong; and there never was
a man who was so desirous of saying that everything was right. Thus,
when he met men with whom he violently disagreed, he described them as
devils or lunatics; he could not bear to describe them as men. If they
could not think with him on essentials he could not stand the idea that
they were human souls; he cast them out; he forgot them; and if he could
not forget them he caricatured them. He was too emotional to regard them
as anything but enemies, if they were not friends. He was too humane not
to hate them. Charles Lamb said with his inimitable sleek pungency that
he could read all the books there were; he excluded books that obviously
were not books, as cookery books, chessboards bound so as to look like
books, and all the works of modern historians and philosophers. One
might say in much the same style that Dickens loved all the men in the
world; that is he loved all the men whom he was able to recognise as
men; the rest he turned into griffins and chimeras without any serious
semblance to humanity. Even in his books he never hates a human being.
If he wishes to hate him he adopts the simple expedient of making him an
inhuman being. Now of these two strands almost the whole of Dickens is
made up; they are not only different strands, they are even antagonistic
strands. I mean that the whole of Dickens is made up of the strand of
satire and the strand of sentimentalism; and the strand of satire is
quite unnecessarily merciless and hostile, and the strand of
sentimentalism is quite unnecessarily humanitarian and even maudlin. On
the proper interweaving of these two things depends the great part of
Dickens's success in a novel. And by the consideration of them we can
probably best arrive at the solution of the particular emotional enigma
of the novel called _Martin Chuzzlewit_.
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ is, I think, vaguely unsatisfactory to the reader,
vaguely sad and heavy even to the reader who loves Dickens, because in
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ more than anywhere else in Dickens's works, more
even than in _Oliver Twist_, there is a predominance of the harsh and
hostile sort of humour over the hilarious and the humane. It is absurd
to lay down any such little rules for the testing of literature. But
this may be broadly said and yet with confidence: that Dickens is always
at his best when he is laughing at the people whom he really admires. He
is at his most humorous in writing of Mr. Pickwick, who represents
passive virtue. He is at his most humorous in writing of Mr. Sam
Weller, who represents active virtue. He is never so funny as when he is
speaking of people in whom fun itself is a virtue, like the poor people
in the Fleet or the Marshalsea. And in the stories that had immediately
preceded _Martin Chuzzlewit_ he had consistently concerned himself in
the majority of cases with the study of such genial and honourable
eccentrics; if they are lunatics they are amiable lunatics. In the last
important novel before _Martin Chuzzlewit_, _Barnaby Rudge_, the hero
himself is an amiable lunatic. In the novel before that, _The Old
Curiosity Shop_, the two comic figures, Dick Swiveller and the
Marchioness, are not only the most really entertaining, but also the
most really sympathetic characters in the book. Before that came _Oliver
Twist_ (which is, I have said, an exception), and before that
_Pickwick_, where the hero is, as Mr. Weller says, "an angel in
gaiters." Hitherto, then, on the whole, the central Dickens character
had been the man who gave to the poor many things, gold and wine and
feasting and good advice; but among other things gave them a good laugh
at himself. The jolly old English merchant of the Pickwick type was
popular on both counts. People liked to see him throw his money in the
gutter. They also liked to see him throw himself there occasionally. In
both acts they recognised a common quality of virtue.
Now I think it is certainly the disadvantage of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ that
none of its absurd characters are thus sympathetic. There are in the
book two celebrated characters who are both especially exuberant and
amusing even for Dickens, and who are both especially heartless and
abominable even for Dickens--I mean of course Mr. Pecksniff on the one
hand and Mrs. Gamp on the other. The humour of both of them is
gigantesque. Nobody will ever forget the first time he read the words
"Now I should be very glad to see Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg."
It is like remembering first love: there is still some sort of ancient
sweetness and sting. I am afraid that, in spite of many criticisms to
the contrary, I am still unable to take Mr. Pecksniff's hypocrisy
seriously. He does not seem to me so much a hypocrite as a rhetorician;
he reminds me of Serjeant Buzfuz. A very capable critic, Mr. Noyes, said
that I was wrong when I suggested in another place that Dickens must
have loved Pecksniff. Mr. Noyes thinks it clear that Dickens hated
Pecksniff. I cannot believe it. Hatred does indeed linger round its
object as much as love; but not in that way. Dickens is always making
Pecksniff say things which have a wild poetical truth about them. Hatred
allows no such outbursts of original innocence. But however that may be
the broad fact remains--Dickens may or may not have loved Pecksniff
comically, but he did not love him seriously; he did not respect him as
he certainly respected Sam Weller. The same of course is true of Mrs.
Gamp. To any one who appreciates her unctuous and sumptuous conversation
it is difficult indeed not to feel that it would be almost better to be
killed by Mrs. Gamp than to be saved by a better nurse. But the fact
remains. In this book Dickens has not allowed us to love the most absurd
people seriously, and absurd people ought to be loved seriously.
Pecksniff has to be amusing all the time; the instant he ceases to be
laughable he becomes detestable. Pickwick can take his ease at his inn;
he can be leisurely, he can be spacious; he can fall into moods of
gravity and even of dulness; he is not bound to be always funny or to
forfeit the reader's concern, for he is a good man, and therefore even
his dulness is beautiful, just as is the dulness of the animal. We can
leave Pickwick a little while by the fire to think; for the thoughts of
Pickwick, even if they were to go slowly, would be full of all the
things that all men care for--old friends and old inns and memory and
the goodness of God. But we dare not leave Pecksniff alone for a moment.
We dare not leave him thinking by the fire, for the thoughts of
Pecksniff would be too frightful.