In this book Dickens is really trying to write a new kind of book, and
the enterprise is almost as chivalrous as a cavalry charge. He is making
a romantic attempt to be realistic. That is almost the definition of
_David Copperfield_. In his last book, _Dombey and Son_, we see a
certain maturity and even a certain mild exhaustion in his earlier
farcical method. He never failed to have fine things in any of his
books, and Toots is a very fine thing. Still, I could never find Captain
Cuttle and Mr. Sol Gills very funny, and the whole Wooden Midshipman
seems to me very wooden. In _David Copperfield_ he suddenly unseals a
new torrent of truth, the truth out of his own life. The impulse of the
thing is autobiography; he is trying to tell all the absurd things that
have happened to himself, and not the least absurd thing is himself. Yet
though it is Dickens's ablest and clearest book, there is in it a
falling away of a somewhat singular kind.
Generally speaking there was astonishingly little of fatigue in
Dickens's books. He sometimes wrote bad work; he sometimes wrote even
unimportant work; but he wrote hardly a line which is not full of his
own fierce vitality and fancy. If he is dull it is hardly ever because
he cannot think of anything; it is because, by some silly excitement or
momentary lapse of judgment, he has thought of something that was not
worth thinking of. If his joke is feeble, it is as an impromptu joke at
an uproarious dinner-table may be feeble; it is no indication of any
lack of vitality. The joke is feeble, but it is not a sign of
feebleness. Broadly speaking, this is true of Dickens. If his writing is
not amusing us, at least it is amusing him. Even when he is tiring he is
not tired.
But in the case of _David Copperfield_ there is a real reason for noting
an air of fatigue. For although this is the best of all Dickens's books,
it constantly disappoints the critical and intelligent reader. The
reason is that Dickens began it under his sudden emotional impulse of
telling the whole truth about himself and gradually allowed the whole
truth to be more and more diluted, until towards the end of the book we
are back in the old pedantic and decorative art of Dickens, an art which
we justly admired in its own place and on its own terms, but which we
resent when we feel it gradually returning through a tale pitched
originally in a more practical and piercing key. Here, I say, is the one
real example of the fatigue of Dickens. He begins his story in a new
style and then slips back into an old one. The earlier part is in his
later manner. The later part is in his earlier manner.
There are many marks of something weak and shadowy in the end of _David
Copperfield_. Here, for instance, is one of them which is not without
its bearing on many tendencies of modern England. Why did Dickens at the
end of this book give way to that typically English optimism about
emigration? He seems to think that he can cure the souls of a whole
cartload, or rather boatload, of his characters by sending them all
to the Colonies. Peggotty is a desolate and insulted parent whose house
has been desecrated and his pride laid low; therefore let him go to
Australia. Emily is a woman whose heart is broken and whose honour is
blasted; but she will be quite happy if she goes to Australia. Mr.
Micawber is a man whose soul cannot be made to understand the tyranny of
time or the limits of human hope; but he will understand all these
things if he goes to Australia. For it must be noted that Dickens does
not use this emigration merely as a mode of exit. He does not send these
characters away on a ship merely as a symbol suggesting that they pass
wholly out of his hearer's life. He does definitely suggest that
Australia is a sort of island Valley of Avalon, where the soul may heal
it of its grievous wound. It is seriously suggested that Peggotty finds
peace in Australia. It is really indicated that Emily regains her
dignity in Australia. It is positively explained of Mr. Micawber not
that he was happy in Australia (for he would be that anywhere), but that
he was definitely prosperous and practically successful in Australia;
and that he would certainly be nowhere. Colonising is not talked of
merely as a coarse, economic expedient for going to a new market. It is
really offered as something that will cure the hopeless tragedy of
Peggotty; as something that will cure the still more hopeless comedy of
Micawber.
I will not dwell here on the subsequent adventures of this very
sentimental and extremely English illusion. It would be an exaggeration
to say that Dickens in this matter is something of a forerunner of much
modern imperialism. His political views were such that he would have
regarded modern imperialism with horror and contempt. Nevertheless there
is here something of that hazy sentimentalism which makes some
Imperialists prefer to talk of the fringe of the empire of which they
know nothing, rather than of the heart of the empire which they know is
diseased. It is said that in the twilight and decline of Rome, close to
the dark ages, the people in Gaul believed that Britain was a land of
ghosts (perhaps it was foggy), and that the dead were ferried across to
it from the northern coast of France. If (as is not entirely impossible)
our own century appears to future ages as a time of temporary decay and
twilight, it may be said that there was attached to England a blessed
island called Australia to which the souls of the socially dead were
ferried across to remain in bliss for ever.
This element which is represented by the colonial optimism at the end of
_David Copperfield_ is a moral element. The truth is that there is
something a little mean about this sort of optimism. I do not like the
notion of David Copperfield sitting down comfortably to his tea-table
with Agnes, having got rid of all the inconvenient or distressing
characters of the story by sending them to the other side of the world.
The whole thing has too much about it of the selfishness of a family
which sends a scapegrace to the Colonies to starve with its blessing.
There is too much in the whole thing of that element which was satirised
by an ironic interpretation of the epitaph "Peace, perfect peace, with
loved ones far away." We should have thought more of David Copperfield
(and also of Charles Dickens) if he had endeavoured for the rest of his
life, by conversation and comfort, to bind up the wounds of his old
friends from the seaside. We should have thought more of David
Copperfield (and also of Charles Dickens) if he had faced the
possibility of going on till his dying day lending money to Mr. Wilkins
Micawber. We should have thought more of David Copperfield (and also of
Charles Dickens) if he had not looked upon the marriage with Dora merely
as a flirtation, an episode which he survived and ought to survive. And
yet the truth is that there is nowhere in fiction where we feel so
keenly the primary human instinct and principle that a marriage is a
marriage and irrevocable, that such things do leave a wound and also a
bond as in this case of David's short connection with his silly little
wife. When all is said and done, when Dickens has done his best and his
worst, when he has sentimentalised for pages and tried to tie up
everything in the pink tape of optimism, the fact, in the psychology of
the reader, still remains. The reader does still feel that David's
marriage to Dora was a real marriage; and that his marriage to Agnes was
nothing, a middle-aged compromise, a taking of the second best, a sort
of spiritualised and sublimated marriage of convenience. For all the
readers of Dickens Dora is thoroughly avenged. The modern world (intent
on anarchy in everything, even in Government) refuses to perceive the
permanent element of tragic constancy which inheres in all passion, and
which is the origin of marriage. Marriage rests upon the fact that you
cannot have your cake and eat it; that you cannot lose your heart and
have it. But, as I have said, there is perhaps no place in literature
where we feel more vividly the sense of this monogamous instinct in man
than in David Copperfield. A man is monogamous even if he is only
monogamous for a month; love is eternal even if it is only eternal for a
month. It always leaves behind it the sense of something broken and
betrayed.
But I have mentioned Dora in this connection only because she
illustrates the same fact which Micawber illustrates; the fact that
there is at the end of this book too much tendency to bless people and
get rid of them. Micawber is a nuisance. Dickens the despot condemns him
to exile. Dora is a nuisance. Dickens the despot condemns her to death.
But it is the whole business of Dickens in the world to express the fact
that such people are the spice and interest of life. It is the whole
point of Dickens that there is nobody more worth living with than a
strong, splendid, entertaining, immortal nuisance. Micawber interrupts
practical life; but what is practical life that it should venture to
interrupt Micawber? Dora confuses the housekeeping; but we are not angry
with Dora because she confuses the housekeeping. We are angry with the
housekeeping because it confuses Dora. I repeat, and it cannot be too
much repeated that the whole lesson of Dickens is here. It is better to
know Micawber than not to know the minor worries that arise out of
knowing Micawber. It is better to have a bad debt and a good friend. In
the same way it is better to marry a human and healthy personality which
happens to attract you than to marry a mere housewife; for a mere
housewife is a mere housekeeper. All this was what Dickens stood for;
that the very people who are most irritating in small business
circumstances are often the people who are most delightful in long
stretches of experience of life. It is just the man who is maddening
when he is ordering a cutlet or arranging an appointment who is probably
the man in whose company it is worth while to journey steadily towards
the grave. Distribute the dignified people and the capable people and
the highly business-like people among all the situations which their
ambition or their innate corruption may demand; but keep close to your
heart, keep deep in your inner councils the absurd people. Let the
clever people pretend to govern you, let the unimpeachable people
pretend to advise you, but let the fools alone influence you; let the
laughable people whose faults you see and understand be the only people
who are really inside your life, who really come near you or accompany
you on your lonely march towards the last impossibility. That is the
whole meaning of Dickens; that we should keep the absurd people for our
friends. And here at the end of _David Copperfield_ he seems in some dim
way to deny it. He seems to want to get rid of the preposterous people
simply because they will always continue to be preposterous. I have a
horrible feeling that David Copperfield will send even his aunt to
Australia if she worries him too much about donkeys.
I repeat, then, that this wrong ending of _David Copperfield_ is one of
the very few examples in Dickens of a real symptom of fatigue. Having
created splendid beings for whom alone life might be worth living, he
cannot endure the thought of his hero living with them. Having given his
hero superb and terrible friends, he is afraid of the awful and
tempestuous vista of their friendship. He slips back into a more
superficial kind of story and ends it in a more superficial way. He is
afraid of the things he has made; of that terrible figure Micawber; of
that yet more terrible figure Dora. He cannot make up his mind to see
his hero perpetually entangled in the splendid tortures and sacred
surprises that come from living with really individual and unmanageable
people. He cannot endure the idea that his fairy prince will not have
henceforward a perfectly peaceful time. But the wise old fairy tales
(which are the wisest things in the world, at any rate the wisest things
of worldly origin), the wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to
say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards.
The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever
afterwards: and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very
likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
Most marriages, I think, are happy marriages; but there is no such thing
as a contented marriage. The whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a
perpetual crisis. David Copperfield and Dora quarrelled over the cold
mutton; and if they had gone on quarrelling to the end of their lives,
they would have gone on loving each other to the end of their lives; it
would have been a human marriage. But David Copperfield and Agnes would
agree about the cold mutton. And that cold mutton would be very cold.
I have here endeavoured to suggest some of the main merits of Dickens
within the framework of one of his faults. I have said that _David
Copperfield_ represents a rather sad transition from his strongest
method to his weakest. Nobody would ever complain of Charles Dickens
going on writing his own kind of novels, his old kind of novels. If
there be anywhere a man who loves good books, that man wishes that there
were four _Oliver Twists_ and at least forty-four _Pickwicks_. If there
be any one who loves laughter and creation, he would be glad to read a
hundred of _Nicholas Nickleby_ and two hundred of _The Old Curiosity
Shop_. But while any one would have welcomed one of Dickens's own
ordered and conventional novels, it was not in this spirit that they
welcomed _David Copperfield_.
_David Copperfield_ begins as if it were going to be a new kind of
Dickens novel; then it gradually turns into an old kind of Dickens
novel. It is here that many readers of this splendid book have been
subtly and secretly irritated. Nicholas Nickleby is all very well; we
accept him as something which is required to tie the whole affair
together. Nicholas is a sort of string or clothes-line on which are hung
the limp figure of Smike, the jumping-jack of Mr. Squeers and the twin
dolls named Cheeryble. If we do not accept Nicholas Nickleby as the hero
of the story, at least we accept him as the title of the story. But in
_David Copperfield_ Dickens begins something which looks for the moment
fresh and startling. In the earlier chapters (the amazing earlier
chapters of this book) he does seem to be going to tell the living truth
about a living boy and man. It is melancholy to see that sudden fire
fading. It is sad to see David Copperfield gradually turning into
Nicholas Nickleby. Nicholas Nickleby does not exist at all; he is a
quite colourless primary condition of the story. We look through
Nicholas Nickleby at the story just as we look through a plain pane of
glass at the street. But David Copperfield does begin by existing; it is
only gradually that he gives up that exhausting habit.
Any fair critical account of Dickens must always make him out much
smaller than he is. For any fair criticism of Dickens must take account
of his evident errors, as I have taken account of one of the most
evident of them during the last two or three pages. It would not even be
loyal to conceal them. But no honest criticism, no criticism, though it
spoke with the tongues of men and angels, could ever really talk about
Dickens. In all this that I have said I have not been talking about
Dickens at all. I say it with equanimity; I say it even with arrogance.
I have been talking about the gaps of Dickens. I have been talking about
the omissions of Dickens. I have been talking about the slumber of
Dickens and the forgetfulness and unconsciousness of Dickens. In one
word, I have been talking not about Dickens, but about the absence of
Dickens. But when we come to him and his work itself, what is there to
be said? What is there to be said about earthquake and the dawn? He has
created, especially in this book of _David Copperfield_, he has created,
creatures who cling to us and tyrannise over us, creatures whom we would
not forget if we could, creatures whom we could not forget if we would,
creatures who are more actual than the man who made them.
This is the excuse for all that indeterminate and rambling and sometimes
sentimental criticism of which Dickens, more than any one else, is the
victim, of which I fear that I for one have made him the victim in this
place. When I was a boy I could not understand why the Dickensians
worried so wearily about Dickens, about where he went to school and
where he ate his dinners, about how he wore his trousers and when he cut
his hair. I used to wonder why they did not write something that I could
read about a man like Micawber. But I have come to the conclusion that
this almost hysterical worship of the man, combined with a comparatively
feeble criticism on his works, is just and natural. Dickens was a man
like ourselves; we can see where he went wrong, and study him without
being stunned or getting the sunstroke. But Micawber is not a man;
Micawber is the superman. We can only walk round and round him wondering
what we shall say. All the critics of Dickens, when all is said and
done, have only walked round and round Micawber wondering what they
should say. I am myself at this moment walking round and round Micawber
wondering what I shall say. And I have not found out yet.