It is quite indispensable to include a criticism of _Master Humphrey's
Clock_ in any survey of Dickens, although it is not one of the books of
which his admirers would chiefly boast; although perhaps it is almost
the only one of which he would not have boasted himself. As a triumph of
Dickens, at least, it is not of great importance. But as a sample of
Dickens it happens to be of quite remarkable importance. The very fact
that it is for the most part somewhat more level and even monotonous
than most of his creations, makes us realise, as it were, against what
level and monotony those creations commonly stand out. This book is the
background of his mind. It is the basis and minimum of him which was
always there. Alone, of all written things, this shows how he felt when
he was not writing. Dickens might have written it in his sleep. That is
to say, it is written by a sluggish Dickens, a half automatic Dickens, a
dreaming and drifting Dickens; but still by the enduring Dickens.
But this truth can only be made evident by beginning nearer to the root
of the matter. _Nicholas Nickleby_ had just completed, or, to speak more
strictly, confirmed, the popularity of the young author; wonderful as
_Pickwick_ was it might have been a nine days' wonder; _Oliver Twist_
had been powerful but painful; it was _Nicholas Nickleby_ that proved
the man to be a great productive force of which one could ask more, of
which one could ask all things. His publishers, Chapman and Hall, seem
to have taken at about this point that step which sooner or later most
publishers do take with regard to a half successful man who is becoming
wholly successful. Instead of asking him for something, they asked him
for anything. They made him, so to speak, the editor of his own works.
And indeed it is literally as the editor of his own works that he next
appears; for the next thing to which he proposes to put his name is not
a novel, but for all practical purposes a magazine. Yet although it is a
magazine, it is a magazine entirely written by himself; the publishers,
in point of fact, wanted to create a kind of Dickens Miscellany, in a
much more literal sense than that in which we speak of a Bentley
Miscellany. Dickens was in no way disposed to dislike such a job; for
the more miscellaneous he was the more he enjoyed himself. And indeed
this early experiment of his bears a great deal of resemblance to those
later experiences in which he was the editor of two popular periodicals.
The editor of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ was a kind of type or precursor
of the editor of _Household Words_ and _All the Year Round_. There was
the same sense of absolute ease in an atmosphere of infinite gossip.
There was the same great advantage gained by a man of genius who wrote
best scrappily and by episodes. The omnipotence of the editor helped the
eccentricities of the author. He could excuse himself for all his own
shortcomings. He could begin a novel, get tired of it, and turn it into
a short story. He could begin a short story, get fond of it, and turn
it into a novel. Thus in the days of _Household Words_ he could begin a
big scheme of stories, such as _Somebody's Luggage_, or _Seven Poor
Travellers_, and after writing a tale or two toss the rest to his
colleagues. Thus, on the other hand, in the time of _Master Humphrey's
Clock_, he could begin one small adventure of Master Humphrey and find
himself unable to stop it. It is quite clear I think (though only from
moral evidence, which some call reading between the lines) that he
originally meant to tell many separate tales of Master Humphrey's
wanderings in London, only one of which, and that a short one, was to
have been concerned with a little girl going home. Fortunately for us
that little girl had a grandfather, and that grandfather had a curiosity
shop and also a nephew, and that nephew had an entirely irrelevant
friend whom men and angels called Richard Swiveller. Once having come
into the society of Swiveller it is not unnatural that Dickens stayed
there for a whole book. The essential point for us here, however, is
that _Master Humphrey's Clock_ was stopped by the size and energy of the
thing that had come of it. It died in childbirth.
There is, however, another circumstance which, even in ordinary public
opinion, makes this miscellany important, besides the great novel that
came out of it. I mean that the ordinary reader can remember one great
thing about _Master Humphrey's Clock_, besides the fact that it was the
frame-work of _The Old Curiosity Shop_. He remembers that Mr. Pickwick
and the Wellers rise again from the dead. Dickens makes Samuel Pickwick
become a member of Master Humphrey's Clock Society; and he institutes a
parallel society in the kitchen under the name of Mr. Weller's Watch.
Before we consider the question of whether Dickens was wise when he did
this, it is worth remarking how really odd it is that this is the only
place where he did it. Dickens, one would have thought, was the one man
who might naturally have introduced old characters into new stories.
Dickens, as a matter of fact, was almost the one man who never did it.
It would have seemed natural in him for a double reason; first, that his
characters were very valuable to him, and second that they were not very
valuable to his particular stories. They were dear to him, and they are
dear to us; but they really might as well have turned up (within reason)
in one environment as well as in another. We, I am sure, should be
delighted to meet Mr. Mantalini in the story of _Dombey and Son_. And he
certainly would not be much missed from the plot of Nicholas Nickleby.
"I am an affectionate father," said Dickens, "to all the children of my
fancy; but like many other parents I have in my heart of hearts a
favourite child; and his name is David Copperfield." Yet although his
heart must often have yearned backwards to the children of his fancy
whose tale was already told, yet he never touched one of them again even
with the point of his pen. The characters in _David Copperfield_, as in
all the others, were dead for him after he had done the book; if he
loved them as children, it was as dead and sanctified children. It is a
curious test of the strength and even reticence that underlay the
seeming exuberance of Dickens, that he never did yield at all to
exactly that indiscretion or act of sentimentalism which would seem most
natural to his emotions and his art. Or rather he never did yield to it
except here in this one case; the case of _Master Humphrey's Clock_.
And it must be remembered that nearly everybody else did yield to it.
Especially did those writers who are commonly counted Dickens's
superiors in art and exactitude and closeness to connected reality.
Thackeray wallowed in it; Anthony Trollope lived on it. Those modern
artists who pride themselves most on the separation and unity of a work
of art have indulged in it often; thus, for instance, Stevenson gave a
glimpse of Alan Breck in _The Master of Ballantrae_, and meant to give a
glimpse of the Master of Ballantrae in another unwritten tale called
_The Rising Sun_. The habit of revising old characters is so strong in
Thackeray that _Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_, and _Philip_
are in one sense all one novel. Certainly the reader sometimes forgets
which one of them he is reading. Afterwards he cannot remember whether
the best description of Lord Steyne's red whiskers or Mr. Wagg's rude
jokes occurred in _Vanity Fair_, or _Pendennis_; he cannot remember
whether his favourite dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis occurred
in _The Newcomes_, or in _Philip_. Whenever two Thackeray characters in
two Thackeray novels could by any possibility have been contemporary,
Thackeray delights to connect them. He makes Major Pendennis nod to Dr.
Firmin, and Colonel Newcome ask Major Dobbin to dinner. Whenever two
characters could not possibly have been contemporary he goes out of his
way to make one the remote ancestor of the other. Thus he created the
great house of Warrington solely to connect a "blue-bearded" Bohemian
journalist with the blood of Henry Esmond. It is quite impossible to
conceive Dickens keeping up this elaborate connection between all his
characters and all his books, especially across the ages. It would give
us a kind of shock if we learnt from Dickens that Major Bagstock was the
nephew of Mr. Chester. Still less can we imagine Dickens carrying on an
almost systematic family chronicle as was in some sense done by
Trollope. There must be some reason for such a paradox; for in itself it
is a very curious one. The writers who wrote carefully were always
putting, as it were, after-words and appendices to their already
finished portraits; the man who did splendid and flamboyant but faulty
portraits never attempted to touch them up. Or rather (we may say again)
he attempted it once, and then he failed.
The reason lay, I think, in the very genius of Dickens's creation. The
child he bore of his soul quitted him when his term was passed like a
veritable child born of the body. It was independent of him, as a child
is of its parents. It had become dead to him even in becoming alive.
When Thackeray studied Pendennis or Lord Steyne he was studying
something outside himself, and therefore something that might come
nearer and nearer. But when Dickens brought forth Sam Weller or Pickwick
he was creating something that had once been inside himself and
therefore when once created could only go further and further away. It
may seem a strange thing to say of such laughable characters and of so
lively an author, yet I say it quite seriously; I think it possible that
there arose between Dickens and his characters that strange and almost
supernatural shyness that arises often between parents and children;
because they are too close to each other to be open with each other. Too
much hot and high emotion had gone to the creation of one of his great
figures for it to be possible for him without embarrassment ever to
speak with it again. This is the thing which some fools call fickleness;
but which is not the death of feeling, but rather its dreadful
perpetuation; this shyness is the final seal of strong sentiment; this
coldness is an eternal constancy.
This one case where Dickens broke through his rule was not such a
success as to tempt him in any case to try the thing again.
There is weakness in the strict sense of the word in this particular
reappearance of Samuel Pickwick and Samuel Weller. In the original
_Pickwick Papers_ Dickens had with quite remarkable delicacy and
vividness contrived to suggest a certain fundamental sturdiness and
spirit in that corpulent and complacent old gentleman. Mr. Pickwick was
a mild man, a respectable man, a placid man; but he was very decidedly a
man. He could denounce his enemies and fight for his nightcap. He was
fat; but he had a backbone. In _Master Humphrey's Clock_ the backbone
seems somehow to be broken; his good nature seems limp instead of alert.
He gushes out of his good heart; instead of taking a good heart for
granted as a part of any decent gentleman's furniture as did the older
and stronger Pickwick. The truth is, I think, that Mr. Pickwick in
complete repose loses some part of the whole point of his existence. The
quality which makes the _Pickwick Papers_ one of the greatest of human
fairy tales is a quality which all the great fairy tales possess, and
which marks them out from most modern writing. A modern novelist
generally endeavours to make his story interesting, by making his hero
odd. The most typical modern books are those in which the central figure
is himself or herself an exception, a cripple, a courtesan, a lunatic, a
swindler, or a person of the most perverse temperament. Such stories,
for instance, are _Sir Richard Calmady_, _Dodo_, _Quisante_, _La Bete
Humaine_, even the _Egoist_. But in a fairy tale the boy sees all the
wonders of fairyland because he is an ordinary boy. In the same way Mr.
Samuel Pickwick sees an extraordinary England because he is an ordinary
old gentleman. He does not see things through the rosy spectacles of the
modern optimist or the green-smoked spectacles of the pessimist; he sees
it through the crystal glasses of his own innocence. One must see the
world clearly even in order to see its wildest poetry. One must see it
sanely even in order to see that it is insane.
Mr. Pickwick, then, relieved against a background of heavy kindliness
and quiet club life does not seem to be quite the same heroic figure as
Mr. Pickwick relieved against a background of the fighting police
constables at Ipswich or the roaring mobs of Eatanswill. Of the
degeneration of the Wellers, though it has been commonly assumed by
critics, I am not so sure. Some of the things said in the humorous
assembly round Mr. Weller's Watch are really human and laughable and
altogether in the old manner. Especially, I think, the vague and awful
allusiveness of old Mr. Weller when he reminds his little grandson of
his delinquencies under the trope or figure of their being those of
another little boy, is really in the style both of the irony and the
domesticity of the poorer classes. Sam also says one or two things
really worthy of himself. We feel almost as if Sam were a living man,
and could not appear for an instant without being amusing.
The other elements in the make-up of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ come
under the same paradox which I have applied to the whole work. Though
not very important in literature they are somehow quite important in
criticism. They show us better than anything else the whole unconscious
trend of Dickens, the stuff of which his very dreams were made. If he
had made up tales to amuse himself when half-awake (as I have no doubt
he did) they would be just such tales as these. They would have been
ghostly legends of the nooks and holes of London, echoes of old love and
laughter from the taverns or the Inns of Court. In a sense also one may
say that these tales are the great might-have-beens of Dickens. They are
chiefly designs which he fills up here slightly and unsatisfactorily,
but which he might have filled up with his own brightest and most
incredible colours. Nothing, for instance, could have been nearer to the
heart of Dickens than his great Gargantuan conception of Gog and Magog
telling London legends to each other all through the night. Those two
giants might have stood on either side of some new great city of his
invention, swarming with fanciful figures and noisy with new events.
But as it is, the two giants stand alone in a wilderness, guarding
either side of a gate that leads nowhere.