In Dickens's literary life _Dombey and Son_ represents a break so
important as to necessitate our casting back to a summary and a
generalisation. In order fully to understand what this break is, we must
say something of the previous character of Dickens's novels, and even
something of the general character of novels in themselves. How
essential this is we shall see shortly.
It must first be remembered that the novel is the most typical of modern
forms. It is typical of modern forms especially in this, that it is
essentially formless. All the ancient modes or structures of literature
were definite and severe. Any one composing them had to abide by their
rules; they were what their name implied. Thus a tragedy might be a bad
tragedy, but it was always a tragedy. Thus an epic might be a bad epic,
but it was always an epic. Now in the sense in which there is such a
thing as an epic, in that sense there is no such thing as a novel. We
call any long fictitious narrative in prose a novel, just as we call any
short piece of prose without any narrative an essay. Both these forms
are really quite formless, and both of them are really quite new. The
difference between a good epic by Mr. John Milton and a bad epic by Mr.
John Smith was simply the difference between the same thing done well
and the same thing done badly. But it was not (for instance) like the
difference between _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _The Time Machine_. If we
class Richardson's book with Mr. Wells's book it is really only for
convenience; if we say that they are both novels we shall certainly be
puzzled in that case to say what on earth a novel is. But the note of
our age, both for good and evil, is a highly poetical and largely
illogical faith in liberty. Liberty is not a negation or a piece of
nonsense, as the cheap reactionaries say; it is a belief in variety and
growth. But it is a purely poetic and even a merely romantic belief. The
nineteenth century was an age of romance as certainly as the Middle Ages
was an age of reason. Mediaevals liked to have everything defined and
defensible; the modern world prefers to run some risks for the sake of
spontaneity and diversity. Consequently the modern world is full of a
phenomenon peculiar to itself--I mean the spectacle of small or
originally small things swollen to enormous size and power. The modern
world is like a world in which toadstools should be as big as trees, and
insects should walk about in the sun as large as elephants. Thus, for
instance, the shopkeeper, almost an unimportant figure in carefully
ordered states, has in our time become the millionaire, and has more
power than ten kings. Thus again a practical knowledge of nature, of the
habits of animals or the properties of fire and water, was in the old
ordered state either an almost servile labour or a sort of joke; it was
left to old women and gamekeepers and boys who went birds'-nesting. In
our time this commonplace daily knowledge has swollen into the enormous
miracle of physical size, weighing the stars and talking under the sea.
In short, our age is a sort of splendid jungle in which some of the most
towering weeds and blossoms have come from the smallest seed.
And this is, generally speaking, the explanation of the novel. The novel
is not so much the filling up of an artistic plan, however new or
fantastic. It is a thing that has grown from some germ of suggestion,
and has often turned out much larger than the author intended. And this,
lastly, is the final result of these facts, that the critic can
generally trace in a novel what was the original artistic type or shape
of thought from which the whole matter started, and he will generally
find that this is different in every case. In one novel he will find
that the first impulse is a character. In another novel he will find
that the first impulse is a landscape, the atmosphere of some special
countryside. In another novel he will find that the first impulse is the
last chapter. Or it may be a thrust with sword or dagger, it may be a
theology, it may be a song. Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book
are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.
Some of our enterprising editors who set their readers to hunt for
banknotes and missing ladies might start a competition for finding those
words in every novel. But whether or no this is possible, there is no
doubt that the principle in question is of great importance in the case
of Dickens, and especially in the case of _Dombey and Son_.
In all the Dickens novels can be seen, so to speak, the original thing
that they were before they were novels. The same may be observed, for
the matter of that, in the great novels of most of the great modern
novelists. For example, Sir Walter Scott wrote poetical romances before
he wrote prose romances. Hence it follows that, with all their much
greater merit, his novels may still be described as poetical romances in
prose. While adding a new and powerful element of popular humours and
observation, Scott still retains a certain purely poetical right--a
right to make his heroes and outlaws and great kings speak at the great
moments with a rhetoric so rhythmical that it partakes of the nature of
song, the same quite metrical rhetoric which is used in the metrical
speeches of Marmion or Roderick Dhu. In the same way, although _Don
Quixote_ is a modern novel in its irony and subtlety, we can see that it
comes from the old long romances of chivalry. In the same way, although
_Clarissa_ is a modern novel in its intimacy and actuality, we can see
that it comes from the old polite letter-writing and polite essays of
the period of the _Spectator_. Any one can see that Scott formed in _The
Lay of the Last Minstrel_ the style that he applied again and again
afterwards, like the reappearances of a star taking leave of the stage.
All his other romances were positively last appearances of the
positively last Minstrel. Any one can see that Thackeray formed in
fragmentary satires like _The Book of Snobs_ or _The Yellowplush Papers_
the style, the rather fragmentary style, in which he was to write
_Vanity Fair_. In most modern cases, in short (until very lately, at any
rate), the novel is an enormous outgrowth from something that was not a
novel. And in Dickens this is very important. All his novels are
outgrowths of the original notion of taking notes, splendid and
inspired notes, of what happens in the street. Those in the modern
world who cannot reconcile themselves to his method--those who feel that
there is about his books something intolerably clumsy or
superficial--have either no natural taste for strong literature at all,
or else have fallen into their error by too persistently regarding
Dickens as a modern novelist and expecting all his books to be modern
novels. Dickens did not know at what exact point he really turned into a
novelist. Nor do we. Dickens did not know, in his deepest soul, whether
he ever really did turn into a novelist. Nor do we. The novel being a
modern product is one of the few things to which we really can apply
that disgusting method of thought--the method of evolution. But even in
evolution there are great gaps, there are great breaks, there are great
crises. I have said that the first of these breaks in Dickens may be
placed at the point when he wrote _Nicholas Nickleby_. This was his
first serious decision to be a novelist in any sense at all, to be
anything except a maker of momentary farces. The second break, and that
a far more important break, is in _Dombey and Son_. This marks his final
resolution to be a novelist and nothing else, to be a serious
constructor of fiction in the serious sense. Before _Dombey and Son_
even his pathos had been really frivolous. After _Dombey and Son_ even
his absurdity was intentional and grave.
In case this transition is not understood, one or two tests may be taken
at random. The episodes in _Dombey and Son_, the episodes in _David
Copperfield_, which came after it, are no longer episodes merely stuck
into the middle of the story without any connection with it, like most
of the episodes in _Nicholas Nickleby_, or most of the episodes even in
_Martin Chuzzlewit_. Take, for instance, by way of a mere coincidence,
the fact that three schools for boys are described successively in
_Nicholas Nickleby_, in _Dombey and Son_, and in _David Copperfield_.
But the difference is enormous. Dotheboys Hall does not exist to tell us
anything about Nicholas Nickleby. Rather Nicholas Nickleby exists
entirely in order to tell us about Dotheboys Hall. It does not in any
way affect his history or psychology; he enters Mr. Squeers's school and
leaves Mr. Squeers's school with the same character, or rather absence
of character. It is a mere episode, existing for itself. But when little
Paul Dombey goes to an old-fashioned but kindly school, it is in a very
different sense and for a very different reason from that for which
Nicholas Nickleby goes to an old-fashioned and cruel school. The sending
of little Paul to Dr. Blimber's is a real part of the history of little
Paul, such as it is. Dickens deliberately invents all that elderly
pedantry in order to show up Paul's childishness. Dickens deliberately
invents all that rather heavy kindness in order to show up Paul's
predestination and tragedy. Dotheboys Hall is not meant to show up
anything except Dotheboys Hall. But although Dickens doubtless enjoyed
Dr. Blimber quite as much as Mr. Squeers, it remains true that Dr.
Blimber is really a very good foil to Paul; whereas Squeers is not a
foil to Nicholas; Nicholas is merely a lame excuse for Squeers. The
change can be seen continued in the school, or rather the two schools,
to which David Copperfield goes. The whole idea of David Copperfield's
life is that he had the dregs of life before the wine of it. He knew
the worst of the world before he knew the best of it. His childhood at
Dr. Strong's is a second childhood. Now for this purpose the two schools
are perfectly well adapted. Mr. Creakle's school is not only, like Mr.
Squeers's school, a bad school, it is a bad influence upon David
Copperfield. Dr. Strong's school is not only a good school, it is a good
influence upon David Copperfield. I have taken this case of the schools
as a case casual but concrete. The same, however, can be seen in any of
the groups or incidents of the novels on both sides of the boundary. Mr.
Crummles's theatrical company is only a society that Nicholas happens to
fall into. America is only a place to which Martin Chuzzlewit happens to
go. These things are isolated sketches, and nothing else. Even Todgers's
boarding-house is only a place where Mr. Pecksniff can be delightfully
hypocritical. It is not a place which throws any new light on Mr.
Pecksniff's hypocrisy. But the case is different with that more subtle
hypocrite in _Dombey and Son_--I mean Major Bagstock. Dickens does mean
it as a deliberate light on Mr. Dombey's character that he basks with a
fatuous calm in the blazing sun of Major Bagstock's tropical and
offensive flattery. Here, then, is the essence of the change. He not
only wishes to write a novel; this he did as early as _Nicholas
Nickleby_. He wishes to have as little as possible in the novel that
does not really assist it as a novel. Previously he had asked with the
assistance of what incidents could his hero wander farther and farther
from the pathway. Now he has really begun to ask with the assistance of
what incidents his hero can get nearer and nearer to the goal.
The change made Dickens a greater novelist. I am not sure that it made
him a greater man. One good character by Dickens requires all eternity
to stretch its legs in; and the characters in his later books are always
being tripped up by some tiresome nonsense about the story. For
instance, in _Dombey and Son_, Mrs. Skewton is really very funny. But
nobody with a love of the real smell of Dickens would compare her for a
moment, for instance, with Mrs. Nickleby. And the reason of Mrs.
Skewton's inferiority is simply this, that she has something to do in
the plot; she has to entrap or assist to entrap Mr. Dombey into marrying
Edith. Mrs. Nickleby, on the other hand, has nothing at all to do in the
story, except to get in everybody's way. The consequence is that we
complain not of her for getting in everyone's way, but of everyone for
getting in hers. What are suns and stars, what are times and seasons,
what is the mere universe, that it should presume to interrupt Mrs.
Nickleby? Mrs. Skewton (though supposed, of course, to be a much viler
sort of woman) has something of the same quality of splendid and
startling irrelevancy. In her also there is the same feeling of wild
threads hung from world to world like the webs of gigantic spiders; of
things connected that seem to have no connection save by this one
adventurous filament of frail and daring folly. Nothing could be better
than Mrs. Skewton when she finds herself, after convolutions of speech,
somehow on the subject of Henry VIII., and pauses to mention with
approval "his dear little peepy eyes and his benevolent chin." Nothing
could be better than her attempt at Mahomedan resignation when she feels
almost inclined to say "that there is no What's-his-name but Thingummy,
and What-you-may-call-it is his prophet!" But she has not so much time
as Mrs. Nickleby to say these good things; also she has not sufficient
human virtue to say them constantly. She is always intent upon her
worldly plans, among other things upon the worldly plan of assisting
Charles Dickens to get a story finished. She is always "advancing her
shrivelled ear" to listen to what Dombey is saying to Edith. Worldliness
is the most solemn thing in the world; it is far more solemn than
other-worldliness. Mrs. Nickleby can afford to ramble as a child does in
a field, or as a child does to laugh at nothing, for she is like a
child, innocent. It is only the good who can afford to be frivolous.
Broadly speaking, what is said here of Mrs. Skewton applies to the great
part of _Dombey and Son_, even to the comic part of it. It shows an
advance in art and unity; it does not show an advance in genius and
creation. In some cases, in fact, I cannot help feeling that it shows a
falling off. It may be a personal idiosyncrasy, but there is only one
comic character really prominent in Dickens, upon whom Dickens has
really lavished the wealth of his invention, and who does not amuse me
at all, and that character is Captain Cuttle. But three great exceptions
must be made to any such disparagement of _Dombey and Son_. They are all
three of that royal order in Dickens's creation which can no more be
described or criticised than strong wine. The first is Major Bagstock,
the second is Cousin Feenix, the third is Toots. In Bagstock Dickens has
blasted for ever that type which pretends to be sincere by the simple
operation of being explosively obvious. He tells about a quarter of the
truth, and then poses as truthful because a quarter of the truth is much
simpler than the whole of it. He is the kind of man who goes about with
posers for Bishops or for Socialists, with plain questions to which he
wants a plain answer. His questions are plain only in the same sense
that he himself is plain--in the sense of being uncommonly ugly. He is
the man who always bursts with satisfaction because he can call a spade
a spade, as if there were any kind of logical or philosophical use in
merely saying the same word twice over. He is the man who wants things
down in black and white, as if black and white were the only two
colours; as if blue and green and red and gold were not facts of the
universe. He is too selfish to tell the truth and too impatient even to
hear it. He cannot endure the truth, because it is subtle. This man is
almost always like Bagstock--a sycophant and a toad-eater. A man is not
any the less a toad-eater because he eats his toads with a huge appetite
and gobbles them up, as Bagstock did his breakfast, with the eyes
starting out of his purple face. He flatters brutally. He cringes with a
swagger. And men of the world like Dombey are always taken in by him,
because men of the world are probably the simplest of all the children
of Adam.
Cousin Feenix again is an exquisite suggestion, with his rickety
chivalry and rambling compliments. It was about the period of _Dombey
and Son_ that Dickens began to be taken up by good society. (One can use
only vulgar terms for an essentially vulgar process.) And his sketches
of the man of good family in the books of this period show that he had
had glimpses of what that singular world is like. The aristocrats in his
earliest books are simply dragons and griffins for his heroes to fight
with--monsters like Sir Mulberry Hawk or Lord Verisopht. They are merely
created upon the old principle, that your scoundrel must be polite and
powerful--a very sound principle. The villain must be not only a
villain, but a tyrant. The giant must be larger than Jack. But in the
books of the Dombey period we have many shrewd glimpses of the queer
realities of English aristocracy. Of these Cousin Feenix is one of the
best. Cousin Feenix is a much better sketch of the essentially decent
and chivalrous aristocrat than Sir Leicester Dedlock. Both of the men
are, if you will, fools, as both are honourable gentlemen. But if one
may attempt a classification among fools, Sir Leicester Dedlock is a
stupid fool, while Cousin Feenix is a silly fool--which is much better.
The difference is that the silly fool has a folly which is always on the
borderland of wit, and even of wisdom; his wandering wits come often
upon undiscovered truths. The stupid fool is as consistent and as
homogeneous as wood; he is as invincible as the ancestral darkness.
Cousin Feenix is a good sketch of the sort of well-bred old ass who is
so fundamentally genuine that he is always saying very true things by
accident. His whole tone also, though exaggerated like everything in
Dickens, is very true to the bewildered good nature which marks English
aristocratic life. The statement that Dickens could not describe a
gentleman is, like most popular animadversions against Dickens, so very
thin and one-sided a truth as to be for serious purposes a falsehood.
When people say that Dickens could not describe a gentleman, what they
mean is this, and so far what they mean is true. They mean that Dickens
could not describe a gentleman as gentlemen feel a gentleman. They mean
that he could not take that atmosphere easily, accept it as the normal
atmosphere, or describe that world from the inside. This is true. In
Dickens's time there was such a thing as the English people, and Dickens
belonged to it. Because there is no such thing as an English people now,
almost all literary men drift towards what is called Society; almost all
literary men either are gentlemen or pretend to be. Hence, as I say,
when we talk of describing a gentleman, we always mean describing a
gentleman from the point of view of one who either belongs to, or is
interested in perpetuating, that type. Dickens did not describe
gentlemen in the way that gentlemen describe gentlemen. He described
them in the way in which he described waiters, or railway guards, or men
drawing with chalk on the pavement. He described them, in short (and
this we may freely concede), from the outside, as he described any other
oddity or special trade. But when it comes to saying that he did not
describe them well, then that is quite another matter, and that I should
emphatically deny. The things that are really odd about the English
upper class he saw with startling promptitude and penetration, and if
the English upper class does not see these odd things in itself, it is
not because they are not there, but because we are all blind to our own
oddities; it is for the same reason that tramps do not feel dirty, or
that niggers do not feel black. I have often heard a dear old English
oligarch say that Dickens could not describe a gentleman, while every
note of his own voice and turn of his own hand recalled Sir Leicester
Dedlock. I have often been told by some old buck that Dickens could not
describe a gentleman, and been told so in the shaky voice and with all
the vague allusiveness of Cousin Feenix.
Cousin Feenix has really many of the main points of the class that
governs England. Take, for an instance, his hazy notion that he is in a
world where everybody knows everybody; whenever he mentions a man, it is
a man "with whom my friend Dombey is no doubt acquainted." That pierces
to the very helpless soul of aristocracy. Take again the stupendous
gravity with which he leads up to a joke. That is the very soul of the
House of Commons and the Cabinet, of the high-class English politics,
where a joke is always enjoyed solemnly. Take his insistence upon the
technique of Parliament, his regrets for the time when the rules of
debate were perhaps better observed than they are now. Take that
wonderful mixture in him (which is the real human virtue of our
aristocracy) of a fair amount of personal modesty with an innocent
assumption of rank. Of a man who saw all these genteel foibles so
clearly it is absurd merely to say without further explanation that he
could not describe a gentleman. Let us confine ourselves to saying that
he did not describe a gentleman as gentlemen like to be described.
Lastly, there is the admirable study of Toots, who may be considered as
being in some ways the masterpiece of Dickens. Nowhere else did Dickens
express with such astonishing insight and truth his main contention,
which is that to be good and idiotic is not a poor fate, but, on the
contrary, an experience of primeval innocence, which wonders at all
things. Dickens did not know, anymore than any great man ever knows,
what was the particular thing that he had to preach. He did not know it;
he only preached it. But the particular thing that he had to preach was
this: That humility is the only possible basis of enjoyment; that if one
has no other way of being humble except being poor, then it is better to
be poor, and to enjoy; that if one has no other way of being humble
except being imbecile, then it is better to be imbecile, and to enjoy.
That is the deep unconscious truth in the character of Toots--that all
his externals are flashy and false; all his internals unconscious,
obscure, and true. He wears loud clothes, and he is silent inside them.
His shirts and waistcoats are covered with bright spots of pink and
purple, while his soul is always covered with the sacred shame. He
always gets all the outside things of life wrong, and all the inside
things right. He always admires the right Christian people, and gives
them the wrong Christian names. Dimly connecting Captain Cuttle with the
shop of Mr. Solomon Gills, he always addresses the astonished mariner as
"Captain Gills." He turns Mr. Walter Gay, by a most improving
transformation, into "Lieutenant Walters." But he always knows which
people upon his own principles to admire. He forgets who they are, but
he remembers what they are. With the clear eyes of humility he perceives
the whole world as it is. He respects the Game Chicken for being
strong, as even the Game Chicken ought to be respected for being strong.
He respects Florence for being good, as even Florence ought to be
respected for being good. And he has no doubt about which he admires
most; he prefers goodness to strength, as do all masculine men. It is
through the eyes of such characters as Toots that Dickens really sees
the whole of his tales. For even if one calls him a half-wit, it still
makes a difference that he keeps the right half of his wits. When we
think of the unclean and craven spirit in which Toots might be treated
in a psychological novel of to-day; how he might walk with a mooncalf
face, and a brain of bestial darkness, the soul rises in real homage to
Dickens for showing how much simple gratitude and happiness can remain
in the lopped roots of the most simplified intelligence. If scientists
must treat a man as a dog, it need not be always as a mad dog. They
might grant him, like Toots, a little of the dog's loyalty and the dog's
reward.
[Illustration: Charles Dickens, 1849
From a daguerreotype by Mayall.]