STRANGE LANDS.
[1842-1847.]
A journey across the Atlantic in midwinter is no child's-play even at the
present day, when, bad though their passage may have been, few people
would venture to confess doubts, as Dickens did, concerning the safety of
such a voyage by steam in heavy weather. The travellers--for Dickens was
accompanied by his wife--had an exceptionally rough crossing, the horrors
of which he has described in his _American Notes_. His powers of
observation were alive in the midst of the lethargy of sea-sickness, and
when he could not watch others he found enough amusement in watching
himself. At last, on January 28, 1842, they found themselves in Boston
harbour. Their stay in the United States lasted about four months, during
which time they saw Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington,
Richmond, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, and Buffalo. Then they passed by
Niagara into Canada, and after a pleasant visit to Montreal, diversified
by private theatricals with the officers there, were safe at home again in
July.
Dickens had met with an enthusiastic welcome in every part of the States
where he had not gone out of the way of it; in New York, in particular,
he had been feted, with a fervour unique even in the history of American
enthusiasms, under the resounding title of "the Guest of the Nation."
Still, even this imposed no moral obligation upon him to take the advice
tendered to him in America, and to avoid writing about that country--"we
are so very suspicious." On the other hand, whatever might be his
indignation at the obstinate unwillingness of the American public to be
moved a hair's-breadth by his championship of the cause of international
copyright,[5] this failure could not, in a mind so reasonable as his, have
outweighed the remembrance of the kindness shown to him and to his fame.
But the truth seems to be that he had, if not at first, at least very
speedily, taken a dislike to American ways which proved too strong for him
to the last. In strange lands, most of all in a country which, like the
United States, is not in the least ashamed to be what it is, travellers
are necessarily at the outset struck by details; and Dickens's habit of
minute observation was certain not to let him lose many of them. He was
neither long enough in the country to study very closely, nor was it in
his way to ponder very deeply, the problems involved in the existence of
many of the institutions with which he found fault. Thus, he was indignant
at the sight of slavery, and even ventured to "tell a piece of his mind"
on the subject to a judge in the South; but when, twenty years later, the
great struggle came, at the root of which this question lay, his
sympathies were with the cause of disunion and slavery in its conflict
with the "mad and villanous" North. In short, his knowledge of America
and its affairs was gained in such a way and under such circumstances as
to entitle him, if he chose, to speak to the vast public which he
commanded as an author of men and manners as observed by him; but he had
no right to judge the destinies and denounce the character of a great
people on evidence gathered in the course of a holiday tour.
Nor, indeed, did the _American Notes_, published by him after his return
home, furnish any serious cause of offence. In an introductory chapter,
which was judiciously suppressed, he had taken credit for the book as not
having "a grain of any political ingredient in its whole composition."
Indeed, the contents were rather disappointing from their meagreness. The
author showed good taste in eschewing all reference to his personal
reception, and good judgment in leaving the copyright question
undiscussed. But though his descriptions were as vivid as usual--whether
of the small steamboat, "of about half a pony power," on the Connecticut
river, or of the dismal scenery on the Mississippi, "great father of
rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him!"--and
though some of the figure-sketches were touched off with the happiest of
hands, yet the public, even in 1842, was desirous to learn something more
about America than this. It is true that Dickens had, with his usual
conscientiousness, examined and described various interesting public
institutions in the States--prisons, asylums, and the like; but the book
was not a very full one; it was hardly anything but a sketch-book, with
more humour, but with infinitely less poetic spirit, than the
_Sketch-book_ of the illustrious American author whose friendship had been
one of the chief personal gains of Dickens's journey.
The _American Notes_, for which the letters to Forster had furnished ample
materials, were published in the year of Dickens's return, after he had
refreshed himself with a merry Cornish trip in the company of his old
friend, and his two other intimates, "Stanny" and "Mac." But he had not
come home, as he had not gone out, to be idle. On the first day of the
following year, 1843, appeared the first number of the story which was to
furnish the real _casus discriminis_ between Dickens and the enemies, as
well no doubt as a very large proportion of the friends, whom he had left
behind him across the water. The American scenes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_
did not, it is true, begin till the fifth number of the story; nor is it
probable from the accounts of the sale, which was much smaller than
Dickens had expected, that these particular episodes at first produced any
strong feeling in the English public. But the merits of the book gradually
obtained for it a popularity at home which has been surpassed by that of
but one or two other of Dickens's works; and in proportion to this
popularity was the effect exercised by its American chapters. What that
effect has been, it would be hypocrisy to question.
Dickens, it is very clear, had been unable to resist the temptation of at
once drawing upon the vast addition to his literary capital as a
humourist. That the satire of many of the American scenes in _Martin
Chuzzlewit_ is, as satire, not less true than telling, it needs but a
small acquaintance with American journalism and oratory even at the
present day to perceive; and the heartrending history of Eden, as a type
of some of the settlements "vaunted in England as a mine of Golden Hope,"
at least had the warrant of something more than hearsay and a look in
passing. Nor, as has already been observed, would it have been in
accordance either with human nature, or with the fitness of things, had
Dickens allowed his welcome in America to become to him (as he termed it
in the suppressed Preface to the _Notes_) "an iron muzzle disguised
beneath a flower or two." But the frankness, to say the least, of the
mirror into which he now invited his late hosts to gaze was not likely to
produce grateful compliments to its presenter, nor was the effect softened
by the despatch with which this _souvenir_ of the "guest of the nation"
was pressed upon its attention. No doubt it would have been easy to
reflect that only the evil, not the good, sides of social life in America
were held up to derision and contempt, and that an honourable American
journalist had no more reason to resent the portraiture of Mr. Jefferson
Brick than a virtuous English paterfamilias had to quarrel with that of
Mr. Pecksniff. Unfortunately, offence is usually taken where offence is
meant; and there can be little doubt as to the _animus_ with which Dickens
had written. Only two months after landing at Boston Dickens had declared
to Macready, that "however much he liked the ingredients of this great
dish, he could not but say that the dish itself went against the grain
with him, and that he didn't like it." It was not, and could not be,
pleasant for Americans to find the "_New York Sewer_, in its twelfth
thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their
names printed," introduced as the first expression of "the bubbling
passions of their country;" or to be certified, apropos of a conversation
among American "gentlemen" after dinner, that dollars, and dollars only,
at the risk of honesty and honour, filled their souls. "No satirist,"
Martin Chuzzlewit is told by a candid and open-minded American, "could, I
believe, breathe this air." But satire in such passages as these borders
too closely on angry invective; and neither the irresistible force nor the
earnest pathos of the details which follow can clear away the suspicion
that at the bottom lay a desire to depreciate. Nor was the general effect
of the American episodes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ materially modified by
their conclusion, to which, with the best of intentions, the author could
not bring himself to give a genuinely complimentary turn. The Americans
did not like all this, and could not be expected to like it. The tone of
the whole satire was too savage, and its tenor was too hopelessly
one-sided, for it to pass unresented; while much in it was too near the
truth to glance off harmless. It is well known that in time Dickens came
himself to understand this. Before quitting America, in 1868, he declared
his intention to publish in every future edition of his _American Notes_
and _Martin Chuzzlewit_ his testimony to the magnanimous cordiality of his
second reception in the States, and to the amazing changes for the better
which he had seen everywhere around him during his second sojourn in the
country. But it is not likely that the postscript, all the more since it
was added under circumstances so honourable to both sides, has undone, or
will undo, the effect of the text. Very possibly the Americans may, in the
eyes of the English people as well as in their own, cease to be chargeable
with the faults and foibles satirised by Dickens; but the satire itself
will live, and will continue to excite laughter and loathing, together
with the other satire of the powerful book to which it belongs.
For in none of his books is that power, which at times filled their author
himself with astonishment, more strikingly and abundantly revealed than in
_The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit_. Never was his inventive
force more flexible and more at his command; yet none of his books cost
him more hard work. The very names of hero and novel were only the final
fortunate choice out of a legion of notions; though "Pecksniff" as well as
"Charity" and "Mercy" ("not unholy names, I hope," said Mr. Pecksniff to
Mrs. Todgers) were first inspirations. The MS. text too is full of the
outward signs of care. But the author had his reward in the general
impression of finish which is conveyed by this book as compared with its
predecessors; so that _Martin Chuzzlewit_ may be described as already one
of the masterpieces of Dickens's maturity as a writer. Oddly enough, the
one part of the book which moves rather heavily is the opening chapter, an
effort in the mock-heroic, probably suggested by the author's eighteenth
century readings.
A more original work, however, than _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was never
composed, or one which more freshly displays the most characteristic
qualities of its author's genius. Though the actual construction of the
story is anything but faultless--for what could be more slender than the
thread by which the American interlude is attached to the main action, or
more wildly improbable than the hazardous stratagem of old Martin upon
which that action turns?--yet it is so contrived as to fulfil the author's
avowed intention of exhibiting under various forms the evil and the folly
of selfishness. This vice is capable of both serious and comic treatment,
and commended itself in each aspect to Dickens as being essentially
antagonistic to his moral and artistic ideals of human life. A true comedy
of humours thus unfolded itself with the progress of his book, and one for
which the types had not been fetched from afar: "Your homes the scene;
yourselves the actors here," had been the motto which he had at first
intended to put upon his title-page. Thus, while in "the old-established
firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son" selfishness is cultivated as a growth
excellent in itself, and the son's sentiment, "Do other men, for they
would do you," is applauded by his admiring father, in young Martin the
vice rather resembles a weed strong and rank, yet not so strong but that
it gives way at last before a manly endeavour to uproot it. The character
of the hero, though very far from heroic, is worked out with that reliance
upon the fellow-feeling of candid readers which in our great novelists of
the eighteenth century has obtained sympathy for much less engaging
personages. More especially is the young man's loss of self-respect in the
season of his solitary wretchedness depicted with admirable feeling. It
would not, I think, be fanciful to assert that in this story Dickens has
with equal skill distinguished between two species of unselfishness. Mark
Tapley's is the actively unselfish nature, and though his reiteration of
his guiding motive is wearisome and occasionally absurd, yet the power of
coming out jolly under unpropitious circumstances is a genuinely English
ideal of manly virtue. Tom Pinch's character, on the other hand, is
unselfish from innate sweetness; and never has the art of Dickens drawn a
type which, while closely approaching the border-line of the grotesque, is
yet so charmingly true to nature.
Grotesque characters proper are numerous enough in this book, but all the
others pale before the immortal presence of Mrs. Gamp. She had been traced
to an original in real life, but her literary right to stand on her own
legs has been most properly vindicated against any supposition of likeness
to the different type, the subject of Leigh Hunt's _Monthly Nurse_--a
paper, by-the-way, distinguished by shrewdness as well as feeling.
Imagination has never taken bolder flights than those requisite for the
development of Mrs. Gamp's mental processes:
"'And which of all them smoking monsters is the Ankworks boat, I
wonder? Goodness me!' cried Mrs. Gamp.
"'What boat did you want?' asked Ruth.
"'The Ankworks package,' Mrs. Gamp replied. 'I will not deceive you,
my sweet. Why should I?'
"'That is the Antwerp packet in the middle,' said Ruth.
"'And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do!' cried Mrs. Gamp,
appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in this miraculous
aspiration."
A hardly inferior exertion of creative power was needed in order to fix in
distinct forms the peculiarities of her diction, nay, to sustain the
unique rhythm of her speech:
"'I says to Mrs. Harris,' Mrs. Gamp continued, 'only t' other day, the
last Monday fortnight as ever dawned upon this Piljian's Projiss of a
mortal wale; I says to Mrs. Harris, when she says to me, "Years and
our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us all"--"Say not the words,
Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to be continual friends, for sech is not
the case."'"
Yet the reality of Mrs. Gamp has been acknowledged to be such that she has
been the death of her sisterhood in a great part (to say the least) of our
hospital wards and sick-rooms; and as for her oddities of tongue, they
are, with the exception of her boldest figures, but the glorified type of
all the utterances heard to this day from charwomen, laundresses, and
single gentlemen's house-keepers. Compared with her, even her friend and
patron, Mr. Mould, and her admirer, Mr. Bailey, and in other parts of the
book the low company at Todgers's and the fine company at Mr. Tigg
Montague's sink into insignificance. The aged Chuffey is a grotesque study
of a very different kind, of which the pathos never loses itself in
exaggeration. As for Pecksniff, he is as far out of the range of
grotesque as, except when moralising over the banisters at Todgers's, he
is out of that of genial characters. He is the richest comic type, while
at the same time one of the truest, among the innumerable reproductions in
English imaginative literature of our favourite national vice--hypocrisy.
His friendliness is the very quintessence of falsehood: "Mr. Pinch," he
cries to poor Tom over the currant-wine and captain's biscuits, "if you
spare the bottle, we shall quarrel!" His understanding with his daughters
is the very perfection of guile, for they confide in him, even when
ignorant of his intentions, because of their certainty "that in all he
does he has his purpose straight and full before him." And he is a man who
understands the times as well as the land in which he lives; for, as M.
Taine has admirably pointed out, where Tartuffe would have been full of
religious phrases, Pecksniff presents himself as a humanitarian
philosopher. Comic art has never more successfully fulfilled its highest
task after its truest fashion than in this picture of the rise and fall of
a creature who never ceases to be laughable, and yet never ceases to be
loathsome. Nothing is wanting in this wonderful book to attest the
exuberance of its author's genius. The kindly poetic spirit of the
Christmas books breathes in sweet Ruth Pinch; and the tragic power of the
closing chapters of _Oliver Twist_ is recalled by the picture of Jonas
before and after his deed of blood. I say nothing of merely descriptive
passages, though in none of his previous stories had Dickens so completely
mastered the secret of describing scenery and weather in their relation to
his action or his characters.
_Martin Chuzzlewit_ ran its course of twenty monthly numbers; but already
a week or two before the appearance of the first of these, Dickens had
bestowed upon the public, young and old, the earliest of his delightful
_Christmas Books_. Among all his productions perhaps none connected him so
closely, and as it were personally, with his readers. Nor could it well
have been otherwise; since nowhere was he so directly intent upon
promoting kindliness of feeling among men--more especially good-will,
founded upon respect, towards the poor. Cheerfulness was, from his point
of view, twin-sister to charity; and sulkiness, like selfishness,
belonged, as an appropriate ort, to the dust-heap of "Tom Tiddler's
Ground." What more fit than that he should mingle such sentiments as these
with the holly and the mistletoe of the only English holiday in which
remains a vestige of religious and poetic feeling? Beyond all doubt there
is much that is tedious in the _cultus_ of Father Christmas, and there was
yet more in the days when the lower classes in England had not yet come to
look upon a sufficiency of periodical holidays as part of their democratic
inheritance. But that Dickens should constitute himself its chief minister
and interpreter was nothing but fit. Already one of the _Sketches_ had
commended a Christmas-dinner at which a seat is not denied even to "poor
Aunt Margaret;" and Mr. Pickwick had never been more himself than in the
Christmas game of Blind-man's-buff at Dingley Dell, in which "the poor
relations caught the people who they thought would like it," and, when the
game flagged, "got caught themselves." But he now sought to reach the
heart of the subject; and the freshness of his fancy enabled him
delightfully to vary his illustrations of a text of which it can do no man
harm to be reminded in as well as out of season.
Dickens's Christmas books were published in the Christmas seasons of
1843-1846, and of 1848. If the palm is to be granted to any one among
them above its fellows, few readers would hesitate, I think, to declare
themselves in favour of _The Cricket on the Hearth_, as tender and
delicate a domestic idyl as any literature can boast. But the informing
spirit proper of these productions, the desire to stir up a feeling of
benevolence, more especially towards the poor and lowly, nowhere shows
itself more conspicuously than in the earliest, _A Christmas Carol in
Prose_, and nowhere more combatively than in the second in date, the
"Goblin Story" of _The Chimes_. Of the former its author declared that he
"wept and laughed and wept again" over it, "and excited himself in a most
extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking thereof he walked
about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a night,
when all the sober folks had gone to bed." Simple in its romantic design
like one of Andersen's little tales, the _Christmas Carol_ has never lost
its hold upon a public in whom it has called forth Christmas thoughts
which do not all centre on "holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys,
geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies,
puddings, fruit, and punch;" and the Cratchit household, with Tiny Tim,
who did not die, are living realities even to those who have not seen Mr.
Toole--an actor after Dickens's own heart--as the father of the family,
shivering in his half-yard of comforter.
In _The Chimes_, composed in self-absorbed solitude at Genoa, he imagined
that "he had written a tremendous book, and knocked the _Carol_ out of the
field." Though the little work failed to make "the great uproar" he had
confidently anticipated, its purpose was certainly unmistakable; but the
effect of hard exaggerations such as Mr. Filer and Alderman Cute, and of a
burlesque absurdity like Sir Joseph Bowley, was too dreary to be
counteracted by the more pleasing passages of the tale. In his novel _Hard
Times_ Dickens afterwards reproduced some of the ideas, and repeated some
of the artistic mistakes, to be found in _The Chimes_, though the design
of the later work was necessarily of a more mixed kind. The Christmas book
has the tone of a _doctrinaire_ protest against _doctrinaires_, and, as
Forster has pointed out, is manifestly written under the influence of
Carlyle. But its main doctrine was one which Dickens lost no opportunity
of proclaiming, and which here breaks forth in the form of an indignant
appeal by Richard Fern, the outlaw in spite of himself: "Gentlefolks, be
not hard upon the poor!" No feeling was more deeply rooted in Dickens's
heart than this; nor could he forbear expressing it by invective and
satire as well as by humorous and pathetic pictures of his clients, among
whom Trotty Veck too takes a representative place.
_The Cricket on the Hearth_, as a true work of art, is not troubled about
its moral, easily though half-a-dozen plain morals might be drawn from it;
a purer and more lightsome creation of the fancy has never been woven out
of homespun materials. Of the same imaginative type, though not executed
with a fineness so surpassing, is _The Battle of Life_, the treatment of a
fancy in which Dickens appears to have taken great pleasure. Indeed, he
declared that he was "thoroughly wretched at having to use the idea for so
short a story." As it stands, it is a pretty idyl of resignation, very
poetical in tone as well as in conception, though here and there,
notwithstanding the complaint just quoted, rather lengthy. It has been
conjectured, with much probability, that the success which had attended
dramatic versions of Dickens's previous Christmas books caused "those
admirable comedians, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley," to be in his mind "when he drew
the charming characters of Britain and Clemency Newcome." At all events
the pair serve as good old bits of English pottery to relieve the delicate
Sevres sentiment of Grace and Marion. In the last of Dickens's Christmas
books, _The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain_, he returns once more to
a machinery resembling those of the earliest. But the fancy on which the
action turns is here more forced, and the truth which it illustrates is
after all only a half-truth, unless taken as part of the greater truth,
that the moral conditions of man's life are more easily marred than
mended. Once more the strength of the book lies in its humorous side. The
picture of the good Milly's humble proteges, the Tetterby family, is to
remind us that happiness consists precisely in that which the poor and the
rich may alike obtain, but which it is so difficult for the poor, amidst
their shifts and shabbiness, to keep fresh and green. Even without the
evil influence of an enchanted chemist, it is hard enough for the Mrs.
Tetterbys of real life always to be ministering angels to their families;
for the hand of every little Tetterby not occasionally to be against the
other little Tetterbys, and even for a devoted Johnny's temper never to
rise against Moloch. All the more is that to be cherished in the poor
which makes them love one another.
More than one of these Christmas books, both the humour and the sentiment
of which are so peculiarly English, was written on foreign soil. Dickens's
general conceptions of life, not less than his literary individuality, had
been formed before he became a traveller and sojourner in foreign lands.
In Italy, as elsewhere, a man will, in a sense, find only what he takes
there. At all events the changed life brought with it for Dickens, though
not at once, a refreshment and a brief repose which invigorated him for
some of the truest efforts of his genius. His resolution to spend some
time on the Continent had not been taken rashly, although it was at least
hastened by business disappointments. He seems at this time, as was
virtually inevitable, to have seen a good deal of society in London, and
more especially to have become a welcome guest of Lady Blessington and
Count d'Orsay at Gore House. Moreover, his services were beginning to be
occasionally claimed as a public speaker; and altogether he must have
found more of his time than he wished slipping through his hands. Lastly,
he very naturally desired to see what was to be seen, and to enjoy what
was to be enjoyed, by one gifted with a sleepless observation and animated
by a genuine love of nature and art. The letters, public and private,
which he wrote from Italy, are not among the most interesting productions
of his pen; even his humour seems now and then ill at ease in them, and
his descriptive power narrow in its range. His eyes were occasionally
veiled, as are those of most travellers in quest of "first impressions."
Thus I cannot but think his picture of Naples inadequate, and that of its
population unjust. Again, although he may have told the truth in asserting
that the Eternal City, at first sight, "looked like--I am half afraid to
write the word--like LONDON," and although his general description of Rome
has been pronounced correct by competent judgment, yet it is impossible to
ignore in it the undertone of Bow Bells. On the other hand, not even in
his newspaper letters can he be said to fall into affectation; his
impressions are never given pretentiously, and are accordingly seldom
altogether worthless; while his criticisms of works of art, when offered,
are candid and shrewd, besides being invariably his own.
Thus, there was never anything truer in its way than the account which he
gave to Maclise of his first impressions a few days after his arrival at
Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where he found himself settled with his family
in July, 1844. He re-christened his abode, the Villa Bagnerello ("it
sounds romantic, but Signor Banderello is a butcher hard by"), "the Pink
Jail." Here, with abundance of space and time, and with a view from his
writing-table of "the sea, the mountains, the washed-out villas, the
vineyards, the blistering hot fort, with a sentry on the drawbridge
standing in a bit of shadow no broader than his own musket, and the sky,"
he began his _villeggiatura_, and resolving not to know, or to be known
where it could be helped, looked round him at his leisure. This looking
round very naturally took up some time; for the circuit of Dickens's daily
observation was unusually wide. Soon he was seeking winter-quarters in
Genoa it self, and by October was established in the Palazzo Peschiere,
situate on a height within the walls of the city, and overlooking the
whole of it, with the harbour and the sea beyond. "There is not in Italy,
they say (and I believe them), a lovelier residence." Even here, however,
among fountains and frescoes, it was some time before he could set
steadily to work at his Christmas story. At last the bells of Genoa chimed
a title for it into his restless ears; and, though longing with a nostalgy
that was specially strong upon him at periods of mental excitement for his
nightly walks in the London streets, he settled down to his task. I have
already described the spirit in which he executed it. No sooner was the
writing done than the other half of his double artist-nature was seized
with another craving. The rage which possesses authors to read their
writings aloud to sympathizing ears, if such can be found, is a well-worn
theme of satire; but in Dickens the actor was almost as strong as the
author, and he could not withstand the desire to interpret in person what
he had written, and to watch its effect with his own eyes and ears. In the
first days of November, therefore, he set off from Genoa, and made his way
home by Bologna, Venice, Milan, and the Simplon Pass. Of this journey his
_Pictures from Italy_ contains the record, including a chapter about
Venice, pitched in an unusually poetic key. But not all the memories of
all the Doges could have stayed the execution of his set purpose. On the
30th of November he reached London, and on the 2d of December he was
reading the _Chimes_, from the proofs, to the group of friends
immortalised in Maclise's inimitable sketch. Three days afterwards the
reading was repeated to a slightly different audience; and, indeed, it
would seem, from an enthusiastic postscript to a letter addressed to his
wife, that he had read at least part of the book to Macready on the night
before that of the first conclave. The distance was no doubt wide between
the intimacy of these friendly readings and the stormy seas of public
audiences; but, however unconsciously, the first step had been taken. It
may be worth noticing, in connexion with this, that the scheme of a
private dramatic performance, which was to occupy much of Dickens's
"leisure" in the year following, was proposed for the first time on the
occasion of the first reading of the _Chimes_. Before Christmas he was
back again in his "Italian bowers." If the strain of his effort in writing
the _Chimes_ had been severe, the holiday which followed was long. In the
later winter and early spring of 1845 he and the ladies of his family saw
Rome and Naples, and in June their Italian life came to an end, and they
were in London before the close of the month. Projects of work remained in
abeyance until the absorbing fancy of a private play had been realised
with an earnestness such as only Dickens could carry into his amusements,
and into this particular amusement above all others. The play was _Every
Man in his Humour_; the theatre, the little house in Dean Street, of whose
chequered fortunes no theatrical history has succeeded in exhausting the
memories; and the manager was, of course, "Bobadil," as Dickens now took
to signing himself. His joking remark to Macready, that he "thought of
changing his present mode of life, and was open to an engagement," was
after all not so very wide of the mark. According to the inevitable rule
in such things, he and his friends--among whom Mark Lemon, Douglas
Jerrold, and Forster were conspicuous--were "induced" to repeat their
performance at a larger house for a public charity, and later in the year
they played _The Elder Brother_ for Miss Fanny Kelly's benefit. Leigh
Hunt, whose opinion, however, could hardly fail to be influenced by the
circumstances under which Ben Jonson's comedy was afterwards performed by
the amateurs, and who was no longer the youthful Draco of the _News_,
afterwards spoke very highly of Dickens's Bobadil. It had "a spirit in it
of intellectual apprehension beyond anything the existing stage has
shown." His acting in the farce which followed Leigh Hunt thought
"throughout admirable; quite rich and filled up."
Christmas, 1845, had passed, and _The Cricket on the Hearth_ had graced
the festival, when an altogether new chapter in Dickens's life seemed
about to open for him. The experience through which he now passed was one
on which his biographer, for reasons easy to guess, has touched very
slightly, while his _Letters_ throw no additional light on it at all. Most
people, I imagine, would decline to pronounce upon the qualifications
requisite in an editor of a great political journal. Yet, literary power
of a kind which acts upon the multitude rapidly and powerfully, habits of
order so confirmed as to have almost become second nature, and an interest
in the affairs of the nation fed by an ardent enthusiasm for its
welfare--these would seem to go some way towards making up the list. Of
all these qualifications Dickens at various times gave proof, and they
sufficed in later years to make him the successful conductor of a weekly
journal which aimed at the enlightenment hardly less than at the
entertainment of no inconsiderable portion of the British public. But, in
the first place, political journalism proper is a craft of which very few
men have been known to become masters by intuition, and Dickens had as yet
had no real experience of it. His zealous efforts as a reporter can hardly
be taken into account here. He had for a short time edited a miscellany of
amusement, and had failed to carry beyond a beginning the not very
carefully considered scheme of another. Recently, he had resumed the old
notion of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ in a different shape; but nothing had
come of his projected cheap weekly paper for the present, while its title,
"_The Cricket_," was reserved for a different use. Since his reporting
days he had, however, now and then appeared among the lighter combatants
of political literature. In 1841 he had thrown a few squibs in the
_Examiner_ at Sir Robert Peel and the Tories; and from about the same date
he had, besides occasionally contributing to the literary and theatrical
columns of the same weekly journal, now and then discussed in it subjects
of educational or other general interest.[6] Finally, it is stated by
Forster that in 1844, when the greatest political struggle of the last
generation was approaching its climax, Dickens contributed some articles
to the _Morning Chronicle_ which attracted attention and led to
negotiations with the editor that arrived at no positive result. If these
contributions treated any political questions whatever, they were, with
the exception of the few _Examiner_ papers, and of the letters to the
_Daily News_ to be mentioned in this chapter, the only articles of this
kind which, to my knowledge, he ever wrote.
For, from first to last, whether in the days when Oliver Twist suffered
under the maladministration of the Poor-law, or in those when Arthur
Clennam failed to make an impression upon the Circumlocution Office,
politics were with Dickens a sentiment rather than a study or a pursuit.
With his habits of application and method, it might have taken but a very
short time for him to train himself as a politician; but this short time
never actually occurred. There is, however, no reason to suppose that
when, in 1841, a feeler was put out by some more or less influential
persons at Reading, with regard to his willingness to be nominated for the
representation of that borough, he had any reason for declining the
proposal besides that which he stated in his replies. He could not afford
the requisite expense; and he was determined not to forfeit his
independence through accepting Government--by which I hope he means Whig
party--aid for meeting the cost of the contest. Still, in 1845, though
slack of faith in the "people who govern us," he had not yet become the
irreclaimable political sceptic of later days; and without being in any
way bound to the Whigs, he had that general confidence in Lord John
Russell which was all they could expect from their irregular followers. As
yet, however, he had shown no sign of any special aptitude or inclination
for political work, though if he addressed himself to questions affecting
the health and happiness of the humbler classes, he was certain to bring
to them the enthusiasm of a genuine sympathy. And a question of this kind
was uppermost in Englishmen's minds in this year 1845, when at last the
time was drawing near for the complete abolition of the tax upon the
staple article of the poor man's daily food.
The establishment of a new London morning paper, on the scale to which
those already in existence had attained, was a serious matter in itself;
but it seems to have been undertaken in no spirit of diffidence by the
projectors and first proprietors of the _Daily News_. With the early
history of the experiment I cannot here concern myself; it is, however, an
open secret that the rate of expenditure of the new journal was at first
on a most liberal, not to say lavish, scale, and that the losses of the
proprietors were for many years very large indeed. Established on those
principles of Radicalism which, on the whole, it has in both good and evil
times consistently maintained, the _Daily News_ was to rise superior to
the opportunism, if not to the advertisements, of the _Times_, and to
outstrip the cautious steps of the Whig _Morning Chronicle_. Special
attention was to be given to those industrial enterprises with which the
world teemed in that speculative age, and no doubt also to those social
questions affecting the welfare and elevation of the masses and the
relations between employers and employed, which were attracting more and
more of the public attention. But in the first instance the actual
political situation would oblige the new journal to direct the greater
part of its energies to one particular question, which had, in truth,
already been threshed out by the organs of public opinion, and as to which
the time for action had at last arrived. No Liberal journal projected in
1845, and started early in 1846, could fail to concentrate its activity
for a time upon the question of the Corn-laws, to which the session of
1846 was to give the death-blow.
It is curious enough, on opening the first number of the _Daily News_,
dated January 21, 1846, to find one's self transplanted into the midst of
one of the most memorable episodes of our more recent political history.
The very advertisements of subscriptions to the Anti-Corn-law League, with
the good old Manchester names figuring conspicuously among them, have a
historic interest; and the report of a disputation on free-trade at
Norwich, in which all the hits are made by Mr. Cobden, another report of a
great London meeting on the same subject, and some verses concerning the
people's want of its bread, probably written by Mr. Charles Mackay, occupy
an entire page of the paper. Railway news and accounts of railway meetings
fill about the same space; while the foreign news is extremely meagre.
There remain the leading articles, four in number--of which three are on
the burning question of the day--and the first of a series of _Travelling
Letters Written on the Road, by Charles Dickens_ (the Avignon chapter in
the _Pictures from Italy_.)[7] The hand of the editor is traceable only
in this _feuilleton_ and in the opening article of the new paper. On
internal evidence I conclude that this article, which has little to
distinguish it from similar manifestoes, unless it be a moderation of tone
that would not have suited Captain Shandon, was not written by Dickens
alone or unassisted. But his hand is traceable in the concluding
paragraphs, which contain the following wordy but spirited assertion of a
cause that Dickens lost no opportunity of advocating:
"We seek, so far as in us lies, to elevate the character of the Public
Press in England. We believe it would attain a much higher position,
and that those who wield its powers would be infinitely more respected
as a class, and an important one, if it were purged of a disposition
to sordid attacks _upon itself_, which only prevails in England and
America. We discern nothing in the editorial plural that justifies a
gentleman, or body of gentlemen, in discarding a gentleman's
forbearance and responsibility, and venting ungenerous spleen against
a rival, by a perversion of a great power--a power, however, which is
only great so long as it is good and honest. The stamp on newspapers
is not like the stamp on universal medicine-bottles, which licenses
anything, however false and monstrous; and we are sure this misuse of
it, in any notorious case, not only offends and repels right-minded
men in that particular instance, but naturally, though unjustly,
involves the whole Press, as a pursuit or profession, in the feeling
so awakened, and places the character of all who are associated with
it at a great disadvantage.
"Entering on this adventure of a new daily journal in a spirit of
honourable competition and hope of public usefulness, we seek, in our
new station, at once to preserve our own self-respect, and to be
respected, for ourselves and for it, by our readers. Therefore, we
beg them to receive, in this our first number, the assurance that no
recognition or interchange of trade abuse, by us, shall be the
destruction of either sentiment; and that we intend proceeding on our
way, and theirs, without stooping to any such flowers by the
roadside."
I am unable to say how many days it was after the appearance of this first
number that Dickens, or the proprietors of the journal, or, as seems most
likely, both sides simultaneously, began to consider the expediency of
ending the connexion between them. He was "revolving plans for quitting
the paper" on January 30, and resigned his editorship on February 9
following. In the interval, with the exception of two or three more of the
_Travelling Letters_, very few signs of his hand appear in the journal.
The number of January 24, however, contains an editorial contribution, in
the shape of "a new song, but an old story," concerning _The British
Lion_, his accomplishment of eating Corn-law Leagues, his principal
keeper, _Wan Humbug_, and so forth. This it would be cruel to unearth. A
more important indication of a line of writing that his example may have
helped to domesticate in the _Daily News_ appears in the number of
February 4, which contains a long letter, with his signature, urging the
claims of Ragged Schools, and giving a graphic account of his visit to one
in Saffron Hill. After he had placed his resignation in the hands of the
proprietors, and was merely holding on at his post till the time of his
actual withdrawal, he was naturally not anxious to increase the number of
his contributions. The _Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers_--which appeared
on February 14--is, of course, an echo of the popular cry of the day; but
the subtler pathos of Dickens never found its way into his verse. The most
important, and so far as I know, the last, of his contributions to the
_Daily News_, consisted of a series of three letters (March 9, 13, and
16) on capital punishment. It was a question which much occupied him at
various times of his life, and on which it cannot be shown that he really
changed his opinions. The letters in the _Daily News_, based in part on
the arguments of one of the ablest men of his day, the "unlucky" Mr.
Wakefield, are an interesting contribution to the subject; and the first
of them, with its Hogarthian sketch of the temptation and fall of Thomas
Hocker, Sunday-school teacher and murderer, would be worth reprinting as
an example of Dickens's masterly use of the argument _ex concreto_.
The few traditions which linger in the _Daily News_ office concerning
Dickens as editor of the paper, agree with the conjecture that his labours
on its behalf were limited, or very nearly so, to the few pieces
enumerated above. Of course there must have been some inevitable business;
but of this much may have been taken off his hands by his sub-editor, Mr.
W. H. Wills, who afterwards became his _alter ego_ at the office of his
own weekly journal and his intimate personal friend. In the days of the
first infancy of the _Daily News_, Mr. Britton, the present publisher of
that journal, was attached to the editor as his personal office attendant;
and he remembers very vividly what little there can have been to remember
about Dickens's performance of his functions. His habit, following a
famous precedent, was to make up for coming late--usually about half-past
ten P.M.--by going away early--usually not long after midnight. There were
frequently sounds of merriment, if not of modest revelry, audible from the
little room at the office in Lombard Street, where the editor sat in
conclave with Douglas Jerrold and one or two other intimates. Mr. Britton
is not sure that the work did not sometimes begin _after the editor had
left_; but at all events he cannot recollect that Dickens ever wrote
anything at the office--that he ever, for instance, wrote about a debate
that had taken place in Parliament on the same night. And he sums up his
reminiscences by declaring his conviction that Dickens was "not a
newspaper man, at least not when in 'the chair.'" And so Dickens seems on
this occasion to have concluded; for when, not long after quitting the
paper, he republished with additions the _Travelling Letters_ which during
his conduct of it had been its principal ornaments, he spoke of "a brief
mistake he had made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between
himself and his readers, and departing for a moment from his old
pursuits." He had been virtually out of "the chair" almost as soon as he
had taken it. His successor, but only for a few months, was his friend
Forster.
Never has captive released made a more eager or a better use of his
recovered freedom. Before the summer had fairly set in Dickens had let his
house, and was travelling with his family up the Rhine towards
Switzerland. This was, I think, Dickens's only passage through Germany,
which in language and literature remained a _terra incognita_ to him,
while in various ways so well known to his friendly rivals, Lord Lytton
and Thackeray. He was on the track of poor Thomas Hood's old journeyings,
whose facetious recollections of Rhineland he had some years before
reviewed in a spirit of admiration rather for the author than for the
book, funny as it is. His point of destination was Lausanne, where he had
resolved to establish his household for the summer, and where by the
middle of June they were most agreeably settled in a little villa or
cottage which did not belie its name of Rosemont, and from which they
looked upon the lake and the mighty Alpine chain beyond. If Rome had
reminded Dickens of London, the green woods near Lausanne recalled to him
his Kentish glades; but he had the fullest sense and the truest enjoyment
of the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, and lost no opportunity of becoming
acquainted with them. Thus his letters contain an admirable description
(not untinged with satire) of a trip to the Great St. Bernard and its
convent, many years afterwards reproduced in one of the few enjoyable
chapters of the Second Part of _Little Dorrit_. More interesting, however,
because more characteristic, is the freshness and candour with which in
Switzerland, where by most English visitors the native inhabitants are
"taken for granted," he set himself to observe, and, so far as he could,
to appreciate, the people among whom he was a temporary resident. His
solutions of some of the political difficulties, which were mostly
connected with religious differences, at that time rife in Switzerland,
are palpably one-sided. But the generosity of spirit which reveals itself
in his kindly recognition of the fine qualities of the people around him
is akin to what was best and noblest in Dickens.
He had, at the same time, been peculiarly fortunate in finding at Lausanne
a circle of pleasant acquaintances, to whom he dedicated the Christmas
book which he wrote among the roses and the foliage of his lake-side
cottage. Of course _The Battle of Life_ was read aloud by its author to so
kindly an audience. The day of parting, however, soon came; on the 16th of
November _paterfamilias_ had his "several tons of luggage, other tons of
servants, and other tons of children," in travelling order, and soon had
safely stowed them away at Paris "in the most preposterous house in the
world. The like of it cannot, and so far as my knowledge goes, does not,
exist in any other part of the globe. The bedrooms are like opera-boxes;
the dining-rooms, staircases, and passages quite inexplicable. The
dining-room"--which in another letter he describes as "mere midsummer
madness"--"is a sort of cavern, painted (ceiling and all) to represent a
grove, with unaccountable bits of looking-glass sticking in among the
branches of the trees. There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room, but
it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints in a
telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery." Here, with the
exception of two brief visits to England, paid before his final departure,
he spent three months, familiarising himself for the first time of his
life with the second of his "Two Cities."
Dickens came to know the French language well enough to use it with ease,
if not with elegance; and he lost no opportunity, it need hardly be said,
of resorting to the best of schools for the purpose. Macready, previously
addressed from "Altorf," had made him acquainted with Regnier, of the
Theatre Francais, who in his turn had introduced him to the greenroom of
the house of Moliere. Other theatres were diligently visited by him and
Forster, when the latter arrived on a visit; and celebrities were polite
and hospitable to their distinguished English _confrere_. With these,
however, Dickens was not cosmopolitan enough to consort except in passing;
the love of literary society _because_ it is literary society was at no
time one of his predilections or foibles. The streets of Paris were to him
more than its _salons_, more even than its theatres. They are so to a
larger number of Englishmen than that which cares to confess it, but
Dickens would have been the last to disown the impeachment. They were the
proper sphere for his powers of humorous observation, as he afterwards
showed in more than one descriptive paper as true to life as any of his
London _Sketches_. And, moreover, he _needed_ the streets for the work
which he had in hand. _Dombey and Son_ had been begun at Rosemont, and the
first of its twenty monthly numbers had been published in October, 1846.
No reader of the book is likely to forget how, after writing the chapter
which relates the death of little Paul, Dickens during the greater part of
the night wandered restlessly with a heavy heart about the Paris streets.
Sooner, however, than he had intended, his residence abroad had to come to
a close; and early in 1847 he and his family were again in London.
_Dombey and Son_ has, perhaps, been more criticised than any other amongst
the stories of its author; and yet it certainly is not the one which has
been least admired, or least loved. Dickens himself, in the brief preface
which he afterwards prefixed to the story, assumed a half-defiant air
which sits ill upon the most successful author, but which occasionally he
was tempted to assume. Before condescending to defend the character of Mr.
Dombey as in accordance with both probability and experience, he "made so
bold as to believe that the faculty (or the habit) of correctly observing
the characters of men is a rare one." Yet, though the drawing of this
character is only one of the points which have been objected against the
story, not only did the book at the time of publication far surpass its
predecessor in popularity, but it has, I believe, always preserved to
itself a special congregation of enthusiastic admirers. Manifestly, this
novel is one of its author's most ambitious endeavours. In it, more
distinctly even than in _Chuzzlewit_, he has chosen for his theme one of
the chief vices of human nature, and has striven to show what pride
cannot achieve, what it cannot conquer, what it cannot withstand. This
central idea gives to the story, throughout a most varied succession of
scenes, a unity of action to be found in few of Dickens's earlier works.
On the other hand, _Dombey and Son_ shares with these earlier productions,
and with its successor, _David Copperfield_, the freshness of invention
and spontaneous flow of both humour and pathos which at times are wanting
in the more powerfully conceived and more carefully constructed romances
of Dickens's later years. If there be any force at all in the common
remark that the most interesting part of the book ends together with the
life of little Paul, the censure falls upon the whole design of the
author. Little Paul, in something besides the ordinary meaning of the
words, was born to die; and though, like the writer, most readers may have
dreaded the hour which was to put an end to that frail life, yet in this
case there could be no question--such as was possible in the story of
Little Nell--of any other issue. Indeed, deep as is the pathos of the
closing scene, its beauty is even surpassed by those which precede it. In
death itself there is release for a child as for a man, and for those
sitting by the pillow of the patient; but it is the gradual approach of
death which seems hardest of all for the watchers to bear; it is the
sinking of hope which seems even sadder than its extinction. What old
fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so
visibly expressed in him, so plainly seen by so many people? Every heart
is softened and every eye dimmed as the innocent child passes on his way
to his grave. The hand of God's angel is on him; he is no longer
altogether of this world. The imagination which could picture and present
this mysterious haze of feeling, through which the narrative moves, half
like a reality, half like a dream, is that of a true poet, and of a great
one.
What even the loss of his son could not effect in Mr. Dombey is to be
accomplished in the progress of the story by a yet stronger agency than
sorrow. His pride is to be humbled to the dust, where he is to be sought
and raised up by the love of his despised and ill-used daughter. Upon the
relations between this pair, accordingly, it was necessary for the author
to expend the greatest care, and upon the treatment of those relations the
criticism to which the character of Mr. Dombey has been so largely
subjected must substantially turn. The unfavourable judgments passed upon
it have, in my opinion, not been altogether unjust. The problem obviously
was to show how the father's cold indifference towards the daughter
gradually becomes jealousy, as he finds that upon her is concentrated,
first, the love of his innocent little son, and then that of his haughty
second wife; and how hereupon this jealousy deepens into hate. But, unless
we are to suppose that Mr. Dombey hated his daughter from the first, the
disfavour shown by him on her account to young Walter Gay remains without
adequate explanation. His dislike of Florence is not manifestly founded
upon his jealousy of what Mrs. Chick calls her brother's "infatuation" for
her; and the main motives at work in the unhappy man are either not very
skilfully kept asunder, or not very intelligibly intermixed. Nor are the
later stages of the relations between father and daughter altogether
satisfactorily conceived. The momentary yielding of Mr. Dombey, after his
"coming home" with his new wife, is natural and touching; but his threat
to visit his daughter with the consequences of her step-mother's conduct
is sheer brutality. The passage in which Mr. Dombey's ultimatum to Mrs.
Dombey is conveyed by him in her presence through a third person is so
artificial as to fall not very far short of absurdity. The closing scene
which leads to the flight of Florence is undeniably powerful; but it is
the development of the relations between the pair in which the art of the
author is in my judgment occasionally at fault.
As to the general effect of the latter part of the story--or rather of its
main plot--which again has been condemned as melodramatic and unnatural, a
distinction should be drawn between its incidents and its characters.
Neither Edith Dombey nor Mr. Carker is a character of real life. The pride
of the former comes very near to bad breeding, and her lapses into
sentiment seem artificial lapses. How differently Thackeray would have
managed the "high words" between her and her frivolous mother! how
differently, for that matter, he _has_ managed a not altogether dissimilar
scene in the _Newcomes_ between Ethel Newcome and old Lady Kew! As for Mr.
Carker, with his white teeth and glistening gums, who calls his unhappy
brother "Spaniel," and contemplates a life of sensual ease in Sicily, he
has the semi-reality of the stage. Possibly the French stage had helped to
suggest the _scene de la piece_ between the fugitives at Dijon--an
effective situation, but one which many a novelist might have worked out
not less skilfully than Dickens. His own master-hand, however, re-asserts
itself in the wondrously powerful narrative of Carker's flight and death.
Here again he excites terror--as in the same book he had evoked pity--by
foreshadowing, without prematurely revealing, the end. We know what the
morning is to bring which rises in awful tranquillity over the victim of
his own sins; and, as in Turner's wild but powerful picture, the engine
made by the hand of man for peaceful purposes seems a living agent of
wrath.[8]
No other of Dickens's books is more abundantly stocked than this with
genuinely comic characters; but nearly all of them, in accordance with the
pathetic tone which is struck at the outset, and which never dies out till
the story has run its course, are in a more subdued strain of humour. Lord
Jeffrey was, I think, warranted in his astonishment that Dickens should
devote so much pains to characters like Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox. Probably
the habit remained with him from his earliest times of authorship, when he
had not always distinguished very accurately between the humorous and the
_bizarre_. But Polly and the Toodles household, Mrs. Pipchin and her
"select infantine boarding-house," and the whole of Doctor Blimber's
establishment, from the Doctor himself down to Mr. Toots, and up again, in
the scale of intellect, to Mr. Feeder, B.A., are among the most admirable
of all the great humourist's creations. Against this ample provision for
her poor little brother's nursing and training Florence has to set but her
one Susan Nipper; but she is a host in herself, an absolutely original
character among the thousands of _soubrettes_ that are known to comedy and
fiction, and one of the best tonic mixtures ever composed out of much
humour and not a few grains of pathos. Her tartness has a cooling flavour
of its own; but it is the Mrs. Pipchinses only upon whom she acts, as
their type acted upon her, "like early gooseberries." Of course she has a
favourite figure of speech belonging to herself, which rhetoricians would
probably class among the figures "working by surplusage:"
"'Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth,
Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole
set.'"
Dickens was to fall very largely into this habit of "labelling" his
characters, as it has been called, by particular tricks or terms of
speech; and there is a certain excess in this direction already in _Dombey
and Son_, where not only Miss Nipper and Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots, but
Major Bagstock too and Cousin Feenix, are thus furnished forth. But the
invention is still so fresh and the play of humour so varied, that this
mannerism cannot be said as yet seriously to disturb them. A romantic
charm of a peculiar kind clings to honest Captain Cuttle and the quaint
home over which he mounts guard during the absence of its owner. The
nautical colouring and concomitant fun apart--for only Smollett could have
drawn Jack Bunsby's fellow, though the character in his hands would have
been differently accentuated--Dickens has never approached more nearly to
the manner of Sir Walter Scott than in this singularly attractive part of
his book. Elsewhere the story passes into that sphere of society in
describing which Dickens was, as a novelist, rarely very successful. But
though Edith is cold and unreal, there is, it cannot be denied, human
nature in the pigments and figments of her hideous old mother; and, to
outward appearance at all events, the counterparts of her apoplectic
admirer, Major Bagstock, still pace those pavements and promenades which
it suits them to frequent. Cousin Feenix is likewise very far from
impossible, and is besides extremely delightful--and a good fellow too at
bottom, so that the sting of the satire is here taken away. On the other
hand, the meeting between the _sacs et parchemins_ at Mr. Dombey's house
is quite out of focus.
The book has other heights and depths, and pleasant and unpleasant parts
and passages. But enough has been said to recall the exuberant creative
force, and the marvellous strength of pathos and humour which _Dombey and
Son_ proves that Dickens, now near the very height of his powers as a
writer of fiction, possessed. In one of his public readings many years
afterwards, when he was reciting the adventures of Little Dombey, he
narrates that "a very good fellow," whom he noticed in the stalls, could
not refrain from wiping the tears out of his eyes as often as he thought
that Toots was coming on. And just as Toots had become a reality to this
good fellow, so Toots and Toots's little friend, and divers other
personages in this story, have become realities to half the world that
reads the English tongue, and to many besides. What higher praise could be
given to this wonderful book? Of all the works of its author none has more
powerfully and more permanently taken hold of the imagination of its
readers. Though he conjured up only pictures familiar to us from the
aspect of our own streets and our own homes, he too wielded a wizard's
wand.
After the success of _Dombey_ it might have seemed that nothing further
was wanting to crown the prosperity of Dickens's literary career. While
the publication of this story was in progress he had concluded
arrangements for the issue of his collected writings, in a cheap edition,
which began in the year 1847, and which he dedicated "to the English
people, in whose approval, if the books be true in spirit, they will
live, and out of whose memory, if they be false, they will very soon die."
He who could thus proudly appeal to posterity was already, beyond all
dispute, the people's chosen favourite among its men of letters. That
position he was not to lose so long as he lived; but even at this time the
height had not been reached to which (in the almost unanimous judgment of
those who love his writings) he was in his next work to attain.