"DAVID COPPERFIELD."
[1847-1851.]
The five years, reckoned roughly, from the beginning of 1847 to the close
of 1851, were most assuredly the season in which the genius of Dickens
produced its richest and rarest fruit. When it opened he was still at work
upon _Dombey and Son_; towards its end he was already engaged upon the
earliest portions of _Bleak House_. And it was during the interval that he
produced a book cherished by himself with an affection differing in kind,
as well as in degree, from the common fondness of an author for his
literary offspring, and a pearl without a peer amongst the later fictions
of our English school--_David Copperfield_. To this period also belong, it
is true, not a few lesser productions of the same ready pen; for the last
of his Christmas books was written in 1848, and in 1850 his weekly
periodical, _Household Words_, began to run its course. There was much
play too in these busy years, but all more or less of the kind which his
good-humoured self-irony afterwards very correctly characterised:
"'Play!' said Thomas Idle. 'Here is a man goes systematically tearing
himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant course of
training, as if he were always under articles to fight a match for the
champion's belt, and he calls it "Play." Play!' exclaimed Thomas
Idle, scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air; 'you can't
play. You don't know what it is. You make work of everything!'"
"A man," added the same easy philosopher, "who can do nothing by halves
appears to me to be a fearful man." And as at all times in Dickens's life,
so most emphatically in these years when his physical powers seemed ready
to meet every demand, and the elasticity of his mind seemed equal to every
effort, he did nothing by halves. Within this short space of time not only
did he write his best book, and conduct a weekly journal of solid merit
through its most trying stage, but he also established his reputation as
one of the best "unpolitical" speakers in the country; and as an amateur
actor and manager successfully weathered what may be called three
theatrical seasons, to the labours and glories of which it would be
difficult to find a parallel even in the records of that most exacting of
all social amusements. One likes to think of him in these years of
vigorous manhood, no longer the fair youth with the flowing locks of
Maclise's charming portrait, but not yet, I suppose, altogether the
commanding and rather stern presence of later years. Mr. Frith's portrait
was not painted till 1859, by which time the face occasionally had a more
set expression, and the entire personality a more weather-beaten
appearance, than this well-known picture suggests. But even eight years
before this date, when Dickens was acting in Lord Lytton's comedy the part
of a young man of _mode_, Mr. Sala's well-known comparison of his outward
man to "some prosperous sea-captain home from a sea-voyage," was thought
applicable to him by another shrewd observer, Mr. R. H. Horne, who says
that, fashionable "make-up" notwithstanding, "he presented a figure that
would have made a good portrait of a Dutch privateer after having taken a
capital prize." And in 1856 Ary Scheffer, to whom when sitting for his
portrait he had excused himself for being a difficult subject, "received
the apology as strictly his due, and said, with a vexed air, 'At this
moment, _mon cher_ Dickens, you look more like an energetic Dutch admiral
than anything else;' for which I apologised again." In 1853, in the
sympathetic neighbourhood of Boulogne, he was "growing a mustache," and,
by 1856, a beard of the _Henri Quatre_ type had been added; but even
before that time we may well believe that he was, as Mr. Sala says, "one
of the few men whose individuality was not effaced by the mournful
conventionality of evening-dress." Even in morning-dress he unconsciously
contrived, born actor as he was, to have something unusual about him; and,
if report speaks the truth, even at the sea-side, when most prodigal of
ease, he was careful to dress the character.
The five years of which more especially I am speaking brought him
repeatedly face to face with the public, and within hearing of the
applause that was becoming more and more of a necessity to him. They were
thus unmistakably amongst the very happiest years of his life. The shadow
that was to fall upon his home can hardly yet have been visible even in
the dim distance. For this the young voices were too many and too fresh
around him behind the garden-wall in Devonshire Terrace, and amongst the
autumnal corn on the cliffs at Broadstairs. "They are all in great force,"
he writes to his wife, in September, 1850, and "much excited with the
expectation of receiving you on Friday;" and I only wish I had space to
quote the special report sent on this occasion to the absent mother
concerning her precocious three-year-old. What sorrowful experiences he in
these years underwent were such as few men escape amongst the chances of
life. In 1848 he lost the sister who had been the companion of his
earliest days, and three years later his father, whom he had learned to
respect as well as love. Not long afterwards his little Dora, the youngest
of his flock, was suddenly taken from him. Meanwhile, his old friends
clung to him. Indeed, I never heard that he lost the affection of any one
who had been attached to him; and though the circle of his real intimates
was never greatly widened, yet he was on friendly or even familiar terms
with many whose names belong to the history of their times. Amongst these
were the late Lord Lytton--then Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton--whose splendid
abilities were still devoted mainly to literary labours, and between whom
and Dickens there were more points of contrast than might at first sight
appear. Of Thackeray, too, he seems to have been coming to know more; and
with Leech, more especially during a summer sojourn of both their families
at Bonchurch, in 1849, he grew intimate. Mr. Monckton Milnes--then, and
since as Lord Houghton, _semper amicus, semper hospes_ both to successful
merit and to honest endeavour--Lord Carlisle, and others who adorned the
great world under more than one of its aspects, were, of course, welcome
friends and acquaintances; and even Carlyle occasionally found his way to
the house of his staunch admirer, though he might declare that he was, in
the language of Mr. Peggotty's house-keeper, "a lorn lone creature, and
everything went contrairy with him."
It is not very easy to describe the personal habits of a man who is found
seeing the spring in at Brighton and the autumn out at Broadstairs, and in
the interval "strolling" through the chief towns of the kingdom at the
head of a large company of ladies and gentlemen, according to the
description which he put into Mrs. Gamp's mouth, "with a great box of
papers under his arm, a-talking to everybody wery indistinct, and exciting
of himself dreadful." But since under ordinary circumstances he made, even
in outward matters and arrangements of detail, a home for himself wherever
he was, and as a rule cared little for the society of companions whose
ideas and ways of life were foreign to his own, certain habits had become
second nature to him, and to others he adhered with sophistical tenacity.
He was an early riser, if for no other reason, because every man in whose
work imagination plays its part must sometimes be alone; and Dickens has
told us that there was to him something incomparably solemn in the still
solitude of the morning. But it was only exceptionally, and when
hard-pressed by the necessities of his literary labours, that he wrote
before breakfast; in general he was contented with the ordinary working
hours of the morning, not often writing after luncheon, and, except in
early life, never in the evening. Ordinarily, when engaged on a work of
fiction, he considered three of his not very large MS. pages a good, and
four an excellent, day's work; and, while very careful in making his
corrections clear and unmistakable, he never rewrote what a morning's
labour had ultimately produced. On the other hand, he was frequently slow
in beginning a story, being, as he himself says, affected by something
like despondency at such times, or, as he elsewhere humorously puts it,
"going round and round the idea, as you see a bird in his cage go about
and about his sugar before he touches it." A temperate liver, he was at
the same time a zealous devotee of bodily exercise. He had not as yet
given up riding, and is found, in 1848, spending the whole of a March day,
with Forster, Leech, and Mark Lemon, in riding over every part of
Salisbury Plain. But walking exercise was at once his forte and his
fanaticism. He is said to have constructed for himself a theory that, to
every portion of the day given to intellectual labour should correspond an
equal number of hours spent in walking; and frequently, no doubt, he gave
up his morning's chapter before he had begun it, "entirely persuading
himself that he was under a moral obligation" to do his twenty miles on
the road. By day he found in the London thoroughfares stimulative variety,
and at a later date he states it to be "one of his fancies that even his
idlest walk must have its appointed destination;" and by night, in seasons
of intellectual excitement, he found in these same streets the refreshment
of isolation among crowds. But the walks he loved best were long stretches
on the cliffs or across the downs by the sea, where, following the track
of his "breathers," one half expects to meet him coming along against the
wind at four and a half miles an hour, the very embodiment of energy and
brimful of life.
And besides this energy he carried with him, wheresoever he pitched his
tent, what was the second cause of his extraordinary success in so much of
the business of life as it fell to him to perform. He hated disorder as
Sir Artegal hated injustice; and if there was anything against which he
took up his parable with burning indignation, it was slovenliness, and
half-done work, and "shoddiness" of all kinds. His love of order made him
always the most regular of men. "Everything with him," Miss Hogarth told
me, "went as by clock-work; his movements, his absences from home, and the
times of his return were all fixed beforehand, and it was seldom that he
failed to adhere to what he had fixed." Like most men endowed with a
superfluity of energy, he prided himself on his punctuality. He could not
live in a room or in a house till he had put every piece of furniture into
its proper place, nor could he begin to work till all his writing-gear was
at hand, with no item missing or misplaced. Yet he did not, like so many,
combine with these habits and tendencies a saving disposition. "No man,"
he said of himself, "attaches less importance to the possession of money,
or less disparagement to the want of it, than I do." His circumstances,
though easy, were never such as to warrant a display to which, perhaps,
certain qualities of his character might have inclined him; even at a much
later date he described himself--rather oddly, perhaps--as "a man of
moderate savings, always supporting a very expensive public position."
But, so far as I can gather, he never had a reasonable want which he could
not and did not satisfy, though at the same time he cared for very few of
the pursuits or amusements that are apt to drain much larger resources
than his. He never had to think twice about country or sea-side quarters;
wherever it might suit his purpose or fancy to choose them, at one of his
south-coast haunts or, for his wife's health, at Malvern, thither he went;
and when the whim seized him for a trip _en garcon_ to any part of England
or to Paris, he had only to bid the infallible Anne pack his trunk. He was
a provident as well as an affectionate father; but the cost of educating
his numerous family seems to have caused him no serious anxiety. In 1849
he sent his eldest son to Eton. And while he had sworn a kind of
_vendetta_ against begging-letter writers, and afterwards used to parry
the attacks of his pertinacious enemies by means of carefully-prepared
written forms, his hand seems to have been at all times open for charity.
Some of these personal characteristics of Dickens were to be brought out
with remarkable vividness during the period of his life which forms the
special subject of the present chapter. Never was he more thoroughly
himself than as a theatrical manager and actor, surrounded by congenial
associates. He starred it to his heart's content at the country seat of
his kind Lausanne friends, Mr. and Mrs. Watson. But the first occasion on
which he became publicly known in both the above-mentioned capacities was
the reproduction of the amateur performance of _Every Man in his Humour_.
This time the audiences were to be in Manchester and Liverpool, where it
was hoped that a golden harvest might be reaped for Leigh Hunt, who was at
that time in sore straits. As it chanced, a civil-list pension was just
about this time--1847--conferred upon the most unaffectedly graceful of
all modern writers of English verse. It was accordingly resolved to divert
part of the proceeds of the undertaking in favour of a worthy playwright,
the author of _Paul Pry_. The comedy was acted with brilliant success at
Manchester, on July 26, and at Liverpool two days later; and then the
"managerial miseries," which Dickens had enjoyed with his whole heart and
soul, were over for the nonce. Already, however, in the following year,
1848, an excellent reason was found for their recommencement; and nine
performances of Ben Jonson's play, this time alternated with _The Merry
Wives of Windsor_, were given by Dickens's "company of amateurs"--the
expression is his own--at the Haymarket, and in the theatres of five of
the largest towns in the kingdom, for the benefit of Sheridan Knowles.
Nothing could have been more honourable than Dickens's readiness to serve
the interests of an actor with whom, but for his own generous temper, he
would only a few months before have been involved in a wordy quarrel. In
_The Merry Wives_, the manager acted Justice Shallow to Mark Lemon's
Falstaff. Dame Quickly was played by Mrs. Cowden Clarke, who speedily
became a favourite correspondent of Dickens. But the climax of these
excitements arrived in the year of wonders, 1851, when, with a flourish of
trumpets resounding through the world of fashion as well as of letters,
the comedy _Not so Bad as We Seem_, written for the occasion by Bulwer
Lytton, was performed under Dickens's management at Devonshire House, in
the presence of the Queen, for the benefit of the Guild of Literature and
Art. The object was a noble one, though the ultimate result of the scheme
has been an almost pitiable failure; and nothing was spared, by the host
or the actors, to make the effect worthy of it. While some of the most
popular men of letters took parts in the clever and effective play, its
scenery was painted by some of the most eminent among the English artists.
Dickens was fired by the ardour of the enterprise, and, proceeding on his
principle that the performance could not possibly "be a success if the
smallest pepper-corn of arrangement were omitted," covered himself and his
associates with glory. From Devonshire House play and theatre were
transferred to the Hanover Square Rooms, where the farce of _Mr.
Nightingale's Diary_ was included in the performance, of which some vivid
reminiscences have been published by one of the few survivors of that
noble company, Mr. R. H. Horne. Other accounts corroborate his
recollections of the farce, which was the triumph of "gag," and would have
been reckoned a masterpiece in the old _commedia dell' arte_. The
characters played by Dickens included Sam Weller turned waiter; a voluble
barrister by the name of Mr. Gabblewig; a hypochondriac suffering from a
prescription of mustard and milk; the Gampish mother of a charity-boy
(Mr. Egg); and her brother, a stone-deaf old sexton, who appeared to be
"at least ninety years of age." The last-named assumption seems to have
been singularly effective:
"After repeated shoutings ('It's of no use whispering to me, young
man') of the word 'buried'--'_Brewed!_ Oh yes, sir, I have brewed many
a good gallon of ale in my time. The last batch I brewed, sir, was
finer than all the rest--the best ale ever brewed in the county. It
used to be called in our parts here "Samson with his hair on!" in
allusion'--here his excitement shook the tremulous frame into coughing
and wheezing--'in allusion to its great strength.' He looked from face
to face to see if his feat was duly appreciated, and his venerable
jest understood by those around; and then, softly repeating, with a
glimmering smile, 'in allusion to its great strength,' he turned
about, and made his exit, like one moving towards his own grave while
he thinks he is following the funeral of another."
From London the company travelled into the country, where their series of
performances was not closed till late in the succeeding year, 1852.
Dickens was from first to last the manager, and the ruling spirit of the
undertaking. Amongst his latest recruits Mr. Wilkie Collins is specially
mentioned by Forster. The acquaintance which thus began soon ripened into
a close and lasting friendship, and became, with the exception of that
with Forster himself, the most important of all Dickens's personal
intimacies for the history of his career as an author.
Speech-making was not in quite the same sense, or to quite the same
degree, as amateur acting and managing, a voluntary labour on Dickens's
part. Not that he was one of those to whom the task of occasionally
addressing a public audience is a pain or even a burden. Indeed, he was a
born orator; for he possessed both that strong and elastic imaginative
power which enables a man to place himself at once in sympathy with his
audience, and that gift of speech, pointed, playful, and where necessary
impetuous, which pleads well in any assembly for any cause. He had
moreover the personal qualifications of a handsome manly presence, a
sympathetic eye, and a fine flexible voice, which, as his own hints on
public speaking show, he managed with care and intelligence. He had, he
says, "fought with beasts (oratorically) in divers arenas." But though a
speaker in whom ease bred force, and force ease, he was the reverse of a
mere builder of phrases and weaver of periods. "Mere holding forth," he
declared, "I utterly detest, abominate, and abjure." His innate hatred of
talk for mere talk's sake had doubtless been intensified by his early
reporting experiences, and by what had become his stereotyped notion of
our parliamentary system. At the Administration Reform meeting in 1855 he
stated that he had never before attended a public meeting. On the other
hand, he had been for already several years in great request for meetings
of a different kind, concerned with the establishment or advancement of
educational or charitable institutions in London and other great towns of
the country. His addresses from the chair were often of remarkable
excellence; and this not merely because crowded halls and increased
subscription-lists were their concomitants, and because the happiness of
his humour--never out of season, and even on such occasions often
singularly prompt--sent every one home in good spirits. In these now
forgotten speeches on behalf of Athenaeums and Mechanics' Institutes, or of
actors' and artists' and newsmen's charities, their occasional advocate
never appears occasional. Instead of seeming to have just mastered his
brief while the audience was taking its seats, or to have become for the
first time deeply interested in his subject in the interval between his
soup and his speech, the cause which Dickens pleads never has in him
either an imperfectly informed or a half-indifferent representative.
Amongst many charming illustrations of a vein of oratory in which he has
been equalled by very few if by any public men of his own or the
succeeding generation, I will instance only one address, though it belongs
to a considerably later date than the time of _David Copperfield_.
Nothing, however, that Dickens has ever written--not even _David
Copperfield_ itself--breathes a tenderer sympathy for the weakness of
unprotected childhood than the beautiful little speech delivered by him on
February 9, 1858, on behalf of the London Hospital for Sick Children.
Beginning with some touches of humour concerning the spoilt children of
the rich, the orator goes on to speak of the "spoilt children" of the
poor, illustrating with concrete directness both the humorous and the
pathetic side of his subject, and after a skilfully introduced sketch of
the capabilities and wants of the "infant institution" for which he
pleads, ending with an appeal, founded on a fancy of Charles Lamb, to the
support of the "dream-children" belonging to each of his hearers: "the
dear child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might
have had, the child you certainly have been." This is true eloquence, of a
kind which aims at something besides opening purse-strings. In 1851 he had
spoken in the same vein of mixed humour and pathos on behalf of his
clients, the poor actors, when, unknown to him, a little child of his own
was lying dead at home. But in these years of his life, as indeed at all
times, his voice was at the service of such causes as had his sympathy; it
was heard at Birmingham, at Leeds, at Glasgow; distance was of little
moment to his energetic nature; and as to trouble, how could he do
anything by halves?
There was yet a third kind of activity, distinct from that of literary
work pure and simple, in which Dickens in these years for the first time
systematically engaged. It has been seen how he had long cherished the
notion of a periodical conducted by himself, and marked by a unity of
design which should make it in a more than ordinary sense his own paper.
With a genius like his, which attached itself to the concrete, very much
depended at the outset upon the choice of a title. _The Cricket_ could not
serve again, and for some time the notion of an omnipresent _Shadow_, with
something, if possible, tacked to it "expressing the notion of its being
cheerful, useful, and always welcome," seemed to promise excellently. For
a rather less ambitious design, however, a rather less ambitious title was
sought, and at last fortunately found, in the phrase, rendered proverbial
by Shakspeare, "_Household Words_." "We hope," he wrote a few weeks before
the first number appeared, on March 30, 1850, "to do some solid good, and
we mean to be as cheery and pleasant as we can." But _Household Words_,
which in form and in cost was to be a paper for the multitude, was to be
something more than agreeable and useful and cheap. It was to help in
casting out the many devils that had taken up their abode in popular
periodical literature, the "bastards of the Mountain," and the foul fiends
who dealt in infamous scurrility, and to do this with the aid of a charm
more potent than the most lucid argument and the most abundant facts. "In
the bosoms of the young and old, of the well-to-do and of the poor," says
the _Preliminary Word_ in the first number, "we would tenderly cherish
that light of fancy which is inherent in the human breast." To this
purpose it was the editor's constant and deliberate endeavour to bind his
paper. "KEEP 'HOUSEHOLD WORDS' IMAGINATIVE!" is the "solemn and continual
Conductorial Injunction" which three years after the foundation of the
journal he impresses, with the artful aid of capitals, upon his faithful
coadjutor, Mr. W. H. Wills. In his own contributions he was not forgetful
of this maxim, and the most important of them, the serial story, _Hard
Times_, was written with the express intention of pointing it as a moral.
There are, I suppose, in addition to the many mysterious functions
performed by the editor of a literary journal, two of the very highest
significance; in the first place, the choice of his contributors, and
then, if the expression may be used, the management of them. In both
respects but one opinion seems to exist of Dickens's admirable qualities
as an editor. Out of the many contributors to _Household Words_, and its
kindred successor, _All the Year Round_--some of whom are happily still
among living writers--it would be invidious to select for mention a few in
proof of the editor's discrimination. But it will not be forgotten that
the first number of the earlier journal contained the beginning of a tale
by Mrs. Gaskell, whose name will long remain a household word in England,
both North and South. And a periodical could hardly be deemed one-sided
which included among its contributors scholars and writers of the
distinction belonging to the names of Forster and Mr. Henry Morley,
together with humorous observers of men and things such as Mr. Sala and
Albert Smith. On the other hand, _Household Words_ had what every literary
journal ought to have, an individuality of its own; and this individuality
was, of course, that of its editor. The mannerisms of Dickens's style
afterwards came to be imitated by some among his contributors; but the
general unity perceptible in the journal was the natural and legitimate
result of the fact that it stood under the independent control of a
vigorous editor, assisted by a sub-editor--Mr. W. H. Wills--of rare
trustworthiness. Dickens had a keen eye for selecting subjects from a
definite field, a ready skill for shaping, if necessary, the articles
accepted by him, and a genius for providing them with expressive and
attractive titles. Fiction and poetry apart, these articles have mostly a
social character or bearing, although they often deviate into the pleasant
paths of literature or art; and usually, but by no means always, the
scenes or associations with which they connect themselves are of England,
English.
Nothing could surpass the unflagging courtesy shown by Dickens towards his
contributors, great or small, old or new, and his patient interest in
their endeavours, while he conducted _Household Words_, and afterwards
_All the Year Round_. Of this there is evidence enough to make the records
of the office in Wellington Street a pleasant page in the history of
journalism. He valued a good workman when he found him, and was far too
reasonable and generous to put his own stamp upon all the good metal that
passed through his hands. Even in his Christmas Numbers he left the utmost
possible freedom to his associates. Where he altered or modified it was as
one who had come to know the pulse of the public; and he was not less
considerate with novices, than he was frank and explicit with experts, in
the writer's art. The articles in his journal being anonymous, he was not
tempted to use names as baits for the public, though many who wrote for
him were men or women of high literary reputation. And he kept his doors
open. While some editors deem it their duty to ward off would-be
contributors, as some ministers of state think it theirs to get rid of
deputations, Dickens sought to ignore instead of jealously guarding the
boundaries of professional literature. Nothing in this way ever gave him
greater delight than to have welcomed and published several poems sent to
him under a feigned name, but which he afterwards discovered to be the
first-fruits of the charming poetical talent of Miss Adelaide Procter, the
daughter of his old friend "Barry Cornwall."
In the preparation of his own papers, or of those which, like the
Christmas Numbers, he composed conjointly with one or more of his
familiars, he spared no labour and thought no toil too great. At times, of
course, he, like all periodical writers who cannot be merry every
Wednesday or caustic every Saturday, felt the pressure of the screw. "As
to two comic articles," he exclaims on one occasion, "or two any sort of
articles, out of me, that's the intensest extreme of no-goism." But, as a
rule, no great writer ever ran more gaily under his self-imposed yoke. His
"Uncommercial Travels," as he at a later date happily christened them,
familiarised him with whatever parts or aspects of London his long walks
had still left unexplored; and he was as conscientious in hunting up the
details of a complicated subject as in finding out the secrets of an
obscure pursuit or trade. Accomplished antiquarians and "commissioners"
assisted him in his labours; but he was no _roi faineant_ on the editorial
sofa which he so complacently describes. Whether he was taking _A Walk in
a Workhouse_, or knocking at the door of another with the supernumerary
waifs in Whitechapel, or _On_ (night) _Duty with Inspector Field_ among
the worst of the London slums, he was always ready to see with his own
eyes; after which the photographic power of his pen seemed always capable
of doing the rest. Occasionally he treats topics more properly
journalistic, but he is most delightful when he takes his ease in his
_English_ or his _French Watering-place_, or carries his readers with him
on _A Flight to Paris_, bringing before them, as it were, in breathless
succession, every inch of the familiar journey. Happiest of all is he
when, with his friend Mr. Wilkie Collins--this, however, not until the
autumn of 1857--he starts on _The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_, the
earlier chapters of which furnish some of the best specimens of his most
humorous prose. Neither at the same time does he forget himself to enforce
the claim of his journal to strengthen the imaginary side of literature.
In an assumed character he allows a veteran poet to carry him _By Rail to
Parnassus_, and even good-humouredly banters an old friend, George
Cruikshank, for having committed _Frauds on the Fairies_ by re-editing
legendary lore with the view of inculcating the principle of total
abstinence.
Such, then, were some of the channels in which the intense mental and
physical energy of Dickens found a congenial outlet in these busy years.
Yet in the very midst of this multifarious activity the mysterious and
controlling power of his genius enabled him to collect himself for the
composition of a work of fiction which, as I have already said, holds, and
will always continue to hold, a place of its own among its works. "Of all
my books," he declares, "I like this the best. It will be easily believed
that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can
ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond
parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child--and his name is
DAVID COPPERFIELD!" He parted from the story with a pang, and when in
after life he returned to its perusal, he was hardly able to master the
emotions which it recalled; perhaps even he hardly knew what the effort
of its production had cost him.
The first number of _David Copperfield_ was published in May, 1849--the
last in November, 1850. To judge from the difficulty which Dickens found
in choosing a title for his story--of which difficulty plentiful evidence
remains in MS. at South Kensington--he must have been fain to delay longer
even than usual on the threshold. In the end the name of the hero evolved
itself out of a series of transformations, from Trotfield and Trotbury to
Copperboy, Copperstone--"Copperfull" being reserved as a _lectio varians_
for Mrs. Crupp--and _Copperfield_. Then at last the pen could fall
seriously to work, and, proceeding slowly at first--for the first page of
the MS. contains a great number of alterations--dip itself now into black,
now into blue ink, and in a small writing, already contrasting with the
bolder hand of earlier days, produce page upon page of an incomparable
book. No doubt what so irresistibly attracted Dickens to _David
Copperfield_, and what has since fascinated many readers, more or less
conscious of the secret of the charm, is the autobiographical element in
the story. Until the publication of Forster's _Life_ no reader of
_Copperfield_ could be aware of the pang it must have cost Dickens to lay
bare, though to unsuspecting eyes, the story of experiences which he had
hitherto kept all but absolutely secret, and to which his own mind could
not recur without a quivering sensitiveness. No reader could trace, as the
memory of Dickens always must have traced, some of the most vivid of those
experiences, imbued though they were with the tints of a delightfully
playful humor, in the doings and dealings of Mr. Wilkins Micawber, whose
original, by a strange coincidence, was passing tranquilly away out of
life, while his comic counterpart was blossoming into a whimsical
immortality. And no reader could divine, what very probably even the
author may hardly have ventured to confess to himself, that in the lovely
little idyl of the loves of Doady and Dora--with Jip, as Dora's father
might have said, intervening--there were, besides the reminiscences of an
innocent juvenile amour, the vestiges of a man's unconfessed though not
altogether unrepressed disappointment--the sense that "there was always
something wanting." But in order to be affected by a personal or
autobiographical element in a fiction or poem, it is by no means necessary
to be aware of its actual bearing and character, or even of its very
existence. _Amelia_ would gain little by illustrative notes concerning the
experiences of the first Mrs. Fielding. To excite in a work of fiction the
peculiar kind of interest of which I am speaking the existence of an
autobiographical substratum need not be apparent in it, nor need its
presence be even suspected. Enough, if it be _there_. But it had far
better be away altogether, unless the novelist has so thoroughly fused
this particular stream of metal with the mass filling his mould that the
result is an integral artistic whole. Such was, however, the case with
_David Copperfield_, which of all Dickens's fictions is on the whole the
most perfect as a work of art. Personal reminiscences which lay deep in
the author's breast are, as effects, harmonised with local associations
old and new. Thus, Yarmouth, painted in the story with singular poetic
truthfulness, had only quite recently been seen by Dickens for the first
time, on a holiday trip. His imagination still subdued to itself all the
elements with which he worked; and, whatever may be thought of the
construction of this story, none of his other books equals it in that
harmony of tone which no artist can secure unless by recasting all his
materials.
As to the construction of _David Copperfield_, however, I frankly confess
that I perceive no serious fault in it. It is a story with a plot, and not
merely a string of adventures and experiences, like little Davy's old
favourites upstairs at Blunderstone. In the conduct of this plot blemishes
may here and there occur. The boy's flight from London, and the direction
which it takes, are insufficiently accounted for. A certain amount of
obscurity, as well perhaps as of improbability, pervades the relations
between Uriah and the victim, round whom the unspeakably slimy thing
writhes and wriggles. On the other hand, the mere conduct of the story has
much that is beautiful in it. Thus, there is real art in the way in which
the scene of Barkis's death--written with admirable moderation--prepares
for the "greater loss" at hand for the mourning family. And in the entire
treatment of his hero's double love story Dickens has, to my mind, avoided
that discord which, in spite of himself, jars upon the reader both in
_Esmond_ and in _Adam Bede_. The best constructed part of _David
Copperfield_ is, however, unmistakably the story of Little Emily and her
kinsfolk. This is most skilfully interwoven with the personal experiences
of David, of which--except in its very beginnings--it forms no integral
part; and throughout the reader is haunted by a presentiment of the coming
catastrophe, though unable to divine the tragic force and justice of its
actual accomplishment. A touch altered here and there in Steerforth, with
the Rosa Dartle episode excluded or greatly reduced, and this part of
_David Copperfield_ might challenge comparison as to workmanship with the
whole literature of modern fiction.
Of the idyl of Davy and Dora what shall I say? Its earliest stages are
full of the gayest comedy. What, for instance, could surpass the history
of the picnic--where was it? perhaps it was near Guildford. At that feast
an imaginary rival, "Red Whisker," made the salad--how could they eat
it?--and "voted himself into the charge of the wine-cellar, which he
constructed, _being an ingenious beast_, in the hollow trunk of a tree."
Better still are the backward ripples in the course of true love; best of
all the deep wisdom of Miss Mills, in whose nature mental trial and
suffering supplied, in some measure, the place of years. In the narrative
of the young house-keeping David's real trouble is most skilfully mingled
with the comic woes of the situation; and thus the idyl almost
imperceptibly passes into the last phase, where the clouds dissolve in a
rain of tears. The genius which conceived and executed these closing
scenes was touched by a pity towards the fictitious creatures of his own
imagination, which melted his own heart; and thus his pathos is here
irresistible.
The inventive power of Dickens in none of his other books indulged itself
so abundantly in the creation of eccentric characters, but neither was it
in any so admirably tempered by taste and feeling. It contains no
character which could strictly be called grotesque, unless it be little
Miss Mowcher. Most of her outward peculiarities Dickens had copied from a
living original; but receiving a remonstrance from the latter, he
good-humouredly altered the use he had intended to make of the character,
and thereby spoiled what there was in it--not much, in my opinion--to
spoil. Mr. Dick belongs to a species of eccentric personages--mad people,
in a word--for which Dickens as a writer had a curious liking; but though
there is consequently no true humour in this character, it helps to bring
out the latent tenderness in another. David's Aunt is a figure which none
but a true humourist such as Sterne or Dickens could have drawn, and she
must have sprung from the author's brain armed _cap-a-pie_ as she appeared
in her garden before his little double. Yet even Miss Betsey Trotwood was
not altogether a creation of the fancy, for at Broadstairs the locality is
still pointed out where the "one great outrage of her life" was daily
renewed. In the other chief characters of this story the author seems to
rely entirely on natural truthfulness. He must have had many opportunities
of noting the ways of seamen and fishermen, but the occupants of the old
boat near Yarmouth possess the typical characteristics with which the
experience and the imagination of centuries have agreed to credit the
"salt" division of mankind. Again, he had had his own experience of
shabby-genteel life, and of the struggle which he had himself seen a happy
and a buoyant temperament maintaining against a sea of trouble. But Mr.
Micawber, whatever features may have been transferred to him, is the type
of a whole race of men who will not vanish from the face of the earth so
long as the hope which lives eternal in the human breast is only
temporarily suspended by the laws of debtor and creditor, and is always
capable of revival with the aid of a bowl of milk-punch. A kindlier and a
merrier, a more humorous and a more genuine character was never conceived
than this; and if anything was wanted to complete the comicality of the
conception, it was the wife of his bosom with the twins at her own, and
her mind made up _not_ to desert Mr. Micawber. Delightful too in his way,
though of a class more common in Dickens, is Tommy Traddles, the genial
picture of whose married life in chambers in Gray's Inn, with the dearest
girl in the world and her five sisters, including the beauty, on a visit,
may have been suggested by kindly personal reminiscences of youthful days.
In contrast to these characters, the shambling, fawning, villanous
hypocrisy of Uriah Heep is a piece of intense and elaborate workmanship,
almost cruelly done without being overdone. It was in his figures of
hypocrites that Dickens's satirical power most diversely displayed itself;
and by the side of Uriah Heep in this story, literally so in the
prison-scene at the close, stands another species of the race, the valet
Littimer, a sketch which Thackeray himself could not have surpassed.
Thus, then, I must leave the book, with its wealth of pathos and humour,
with the glow of youth still tinging its pages, but with the gentler mood
of manhood pervading it from first to last. The _reality_ of _David
Copperfield_ is, perhaps, the first feature in it likely to strike the
reader new to its charms; but a closer acquaintance will produce, and
familiarity will enhance, the sense of its wonderful _art_. Nothing will
ever destroy the popularity of a work of which it can truly be said that,
while offering to his muse a gift not less beautiful than precious, its
author put into it his life's blood.