book that dealt with the French Revolution, and was called 'The Tale of
Two Cities.' Chesterton does not think that Dickens really understood
this gigantic upheaval; in fact, he says his attitude to it was quite a
mistaken one. Even, thinks our critic, Carlyle didn't know what it
meant. Both see it as a bloody riot, both are mistaken. The reason that
Carlyle and Dickens didn't know all about it was that they had the good
fortune to be Englishmen; a very good supposition that Chesterton has
still something to learn of that Revolution.
After all, the main point of 'The Tale of Two Cities' is the exquisite
pathos of it. Whether its attitude to the French Revolution is
absolutely accurate does not matter very much for the reader who is not
a keen historical student.
With 'Hard Times' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' Dickens has struck a graver
note. This is peculiarly emphasized in 'Great Expectations.' This story
is 'characterized by a consistency and quietude of individuality which
is rare in Dickens.' It is really a book with a moral--that life in the
limelight is not always synonymous with getting the best out of it.
Really, the hero behaves in a sneakish manner. Probably Dickens doesn't
like him, and the writer is still on the stern side.
In 1864, so Chesterton tells us, Dickens was in a merrier mood, and
published 'Our Mutual Friend,' a book that has, as our critic says, 'a
thoroughly human hero and a thoroughly human villain.' This work is 'a
satire dealing with the whims and pleasures of the leisured class.' But
this is by no means a monopoly of the so-called idle rich: the
hardworking middle and poorer classes have whims and pleasures in a like
manner, but have not so much opportunity in indulging in them.
As I have indicated, the story is not the principal part of the Dickens'
literature; it is the drawing of characters to which he pays so much
attention. It will not be out of place at this time to see what our
critic has to say with regard to this tendency of Dickens. It is an
essential of Dickens, and is therefore of vast import to any critique on
him.
The essence of Dickens, for Chesterton, is that he makes kings out of
common men: those folks who are the ordinary people of this strange,
fascinating world, those who have no special claim to a place in the
stars, those who, when they die, do not have two lines in any but a
local paper, those who are common but are never commonplace.
There is a vast difference between the common and the commonplace, as
Chesterton points out. Death is common to all, yet it is never
commonplace; it is in its very essence a grand and noble thing, because
it is a proof of our common humanity; it gives the lie that the Pope is
of more importance than the dustman; it makes the busy editor equal to
the newsboy shouting the papers under his office windows.
The common man is he who does not receive any special distinction:
universities do not compete to do him honour, his name is but mentioned
in a small circle. These are those of whom Dickens wrote. 'It is,' says
Chesterton, 'in private life that we find the great characters. They are
too great to get into the public world.' They are people who are
natural--natural in a sense that the holders of high office never can
be. Dickens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common
men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller
like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like
Swiveller; you will find him as an unsuccessful actor like Crumples; you
will find him as an unsuccessful doctor like Sawyer; you will always
find the rich and reeking personality where Dickens found it among the
poor.'
Not only were the characters Dickens chose common men, they were also
'great fools,' because Chesterton will have us believe that a man can
be entirely great while he is entirely foolish. It is no doubt in the
spiritual sense so admirably expressed in the Pauline Epistles, where
'foolish in the eyes of the world but wise before God' is a condition
that is of merit.
'Mr. Toots is great because he is foolish.' He is great because he has a
soul that glorifies his weak and foolish body, not that he is great
because, _ipso facto_, he is foolish.
There is a great and permanent value in the writings of Dickens. I
cannot do better than quote our critic: 'If we are to look for lessons,
here at least are the last and deepest lessons of Dickens. It is in our
own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies.
This is the truth, not merely of the fixed figures of our life, the
wife, the husband, the fool that fills the day. Every day we neglect
Tootses and Swivellers, Guppys and Joblings, Simmerys and Flashers. This
is the real gospel of Dickens, the inexhaustible opportunities offered
by the liberty and variety of man. It is when we pass our own private
gate and open our own secret door that we step into the land of the
giants.'
* * * * *
It will now be convenient to consider the question of the attitude of
our critic to the 'Mystery of Edwin Drood,' that tale that has produced
one of those literary mysteries that are so dear to a number of folks of
the kind who would be disappointed were the problem to be finally
solved. 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' was cut short by the sudden death
that fell upon Dickens on a warm June night some half century ago.
For Chesterton the book 'might have proved to be the most ambitious that
Dickens ever planned.' It is non-Dickensian in the sense that its value
depends entirely on a story. The workmanship is very fine. The book was
purely and simply a detective story. 'Bleak House' was the nearest
approach to its style, but the mystery there was easy to unravel. It was
as though Dickens wished in 'Edwin Drood' to make one last 'splendid
and staggering' appearance before the curtain rang down, not to be rung
up again until the last Easter morning.
'Yes,' says Chesterton, 'there were many other Dickenses, 'an
industrious Dickens, a public spirited Dickens, but the last one (that
is Edwin Drood) was the great one. The wild epitaph of Mrs. Sapsea,
"Canst thou do likewise?" should be the serious epitaph of Dickens.'
* * * * *
It is more than fifty years since Dickens died. What is the future of
Dickens likely to be? At least, Chesterton has no doubt of the permanent
influence of Dickens; he is as sure of immortality as is Shakespeare.
The kings of the earth die, yet their works remain; the princes pass on
but are not entirely forgotten; writers write and in their turn sleep;
but there is that to which in every age we inscribe the word Immortal.
It is enough to say that Dickens is immortal because he is Dickens.
There is a further reason, that he proved what all the world had been
saying, that common humanity is a holy thing. To quote Chesterton: 'He
did for the world what the world could not do for itself.' Dickens'
creation was poetry--it dealt with the elementals; it is therefore
permanent.
In final words he says, 'We shall not be further troubled with the
little artists who found Dickens too sane for their sorrows and too
clear for their delights. But we have a long way to travel before we get
back to what Dickens meant; and the passage is a long, rambling English
road, a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick travelled.'
'But the road leads to eternity, because the inn is at the end of the
road, and at that inn is a goodly company of common men who are immortal
because Dickens made them. Here we shall meet Dickens and all his
characters, and when we shall drink again it shall be from great flagons
in the tavern at the end of the world.'
* * * * *
What, then, is the essential part of Chesterton's study of Charles
Dickens? It is certainly not a biography; it is for all practical
purposes a keen study of what Dickens was, what he wrote, why he wrote
as he did, why he has a place in literature no one else has.
There are faults in the book--it would be a poor book if it had none. At
times I think Chesterton allows his genius to overcome his critical
judgment. Particularly is this so in his strange misconstruction of the
character of Scrooge. But this merely demonstrates yet once more that
Dickens, like Christ, is unique, because no one has ever completely
understood him.
The book is a tribute by a great writer to a greater writer, by a great
man to a great man, by a complex personality to a complex personality;
above all it is a tribute by a lover of the things of the 'doorstep' to
a writer who has made the doorstep and the street the road to heaven,
because the beings who pass along have been made immortal.
When the critics of Dickens meet at the inn there will be none more
worthy of a place close to the Master Writer than Chesterton.
_Chapter Three_
THACKERAY
There are no doubt thousands of people who would be annoyed to be
thought the reverse of well read who nevertheless know Thackeray only as
a name. They know that he was a really great English novelist--they may
even know that he lived as a contemporary of Dickens--but they do not
know a line of any of his works.
In lesser manner Dickens is unknown to very many people of the present
day who could tell you intelligently of every modern book that is
produced. The reason is, I think, one that is not so generally thought
of as might be expected.
It is often said that Thackeray and Dickens are out of date, that they
have had their day, that this era of tube trains and other abominations
cannot fall into the background of lumbering stage coaches.
This is, I think, a profound and grave error. It is an error because it
presupposes that human interest changes with the advent of different
means of transport: that Squeers is no longer of interest because he
would now travel to Yorkshire by the Great Northern Railway and would
have lunch in a luncheon car instead of inside a four-horse stage coach.
The fundamental reason that modern people do not read these great
authors is that they are not encouraged to do so. The very best way to
instil a love of Thackeray into the modern world is to make the modern
world read just so much of him that its voracious appetite is sharpened
to wish for more.
In an altogether admirable series of the masters of literature Thackeray
finds a place, and treatment of him is left to Chesterton, who writes a
fine introductory 'Biography' and then takes picked passages from his
writings. This is, I think, the most useful means possible of
popularizing an author. It requires a good deal of pluck in these days
to sit down and steadily pursue a way through a long book of Thackeray
unless it has been proved, by the perusal of a selected passage, that
riches in the book warrant the act of courage in beginning the work.
In this chapter it will be convenient to pay special attention to the
introduction that is so ably contributed by Chesterton. It will only be
possible to refer to the passages he has selected from Thackeray, and
the reader must judge of the merit of the choosing. It is one of the
hardest things possible to choose representative passages from a great
writer. Shall he choose those that display the literary qualities of the
writer, shall he choose those which depict his powers of drama, shall he
select those which bring out the humour of the writer, shall he pick at
random and let the passage stand or fall on its own merits? These are
questions that must be faced in a work of the nature of Chesterton's
Thackeray. What the method has been will, I hope, be clear at the end of
this chapter.
It was Thackeray's expressed wish that there should be no biography
written of him, a position that might indicate extreme modesty, colossal
conceit, or distinct cowardice. Whatever the reason, it has not been
entirely obeyed, and rightly. A man of the power of Thackeray cannot
live without the world being in some way better; it is only good that
those who never knew him in the flesh should at least know him in a
book. It is not enough that, as Chesterton points out, he 'was of all
novelists the most autobiographical,' which is not to say that he wrote
unending personal confessions with a very large I, but rather that his
books were drawn from the experiences of his life, a field that is
productive of the richest literary worth.
Thackeray was born, we are told, in the year 1811, so that he was a year
old when the world received two babies who were like ten thousand other
babies, except that they happened to be Browning and Dickens. It was the
time when the world trembled, because that mighty soldier Napoleon stood
with arms folded, waiting to strike, it knew not where. It was the time
when military genius reached its height, a height that could be only
brought low by one thing, and that was an English General with a long
nose and a cocked hat.
Although Thackeray was born in Calcutta, he was as English as he could
possibly be. But he did not forget his Eastern beginning. 'A certain
vague cosmological quality was always mixed with his experience, and it
was his favourite boast that he had seen men and cities like Ulysses.'
Which is to say that he had not only seen the world, he had felt it; if
he had not seen a one-eyed giant, he had at least seen a two-eyed Hindu.
His early life followed the ordinary life of a thousand other boys born
of Anglo-Indian parents; that was, he went to school, where 'a girl
broke his heart and a boy broke his nose,' and he discovered that the
nose took longer to mend.
At Cambridge, Chesterton tells us, Thackeray found that it was a quite
easy thing to sit down and play cards and lose L1,500 in an evening, a
fact that very probably was more useful to him than twenty degrees.
Trinity College was the Thackeray College: it has had no more famous
son. It was said that Thackeray could order a dinner in every language
in Europe, which is to say he could have dined in comfort in any
restaurant in Soho.
From Cambridge, we learn, he made his way to the Bar, and at the same
time wrote articles in the hope that some editor might keep them from
the waste-paper basket. Chesterton tells us an interesting legend that
about this time Thackeray offered to illustrate the books of Dickens.
The offer was declined, which he thinks was 'a good thing for Dickens'
books and a good thing for Thackeray's.' Whether Thackeray ever really
did meet Dickens does not matter much; it is at least picturesque; 'it
affects the imagination as much as the meeting with Napoleon.'
There has always been what is for Chesterton a silly discussion--a
controversy as to whether Thackeray was a cynic. This was because he
happened to write first about villains, then about heroes; villains are
always more interesting than heroes, and not infrequently are much
better mannered. A cynic is a person who doesn't take the trouble to
find the motives for things, or he takes it for granted that the motives
are never disinterested ones. To say that Thackeray was a cynic because
he drew a large number of villains is as untrue as to say Swift was a
cynic because he wrote satire. Thackeray wrote about villains because he
wished to also write about heroes; Swift was satirical because he had
the intelligence to see that his contemporaries were fools when they
might have been wise. The cynics are the people of to-day who write
books which attribute low motives to every one, which turn love into
lust, which care not what is written so long as it can be made certain
that there is nothing in the world which has not a hidden meaning.
The first appearance of Thackeray in literature was in 'Fraser's
Magazine,' under the pseudo name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. It is on
these unimportant papers that Chesterton thinks was based the attack on
Thackeray for being a cynic.
In passing, it is not necessary to say more than that Thackeray's
marriage ended in a horrible manner: Mrs. Thackeray was sent to an
asylum. 'I would do it over again,' said Thackeray; which was a 'fine
thing to say.' It was really carrying out 'for better or worse,' which
often enough really means for better only.
* * * * *
It will now be well at once to plunge into the very heart of Thackeray,
that heart which beat beneath the huge, gaunt frame. The two books which
have made his name famous, and what Chesterton thinks of them, must be
now gone into.
'The Book of Snobs' was one of those literary rarities that has genius
in its very name. No one probably really thinks himself a snob; every
one likes to read of one. Thackeray brought snobbishness to a classic.
There had been books of scoundrels, there had been books of heroes,
there had been books of nincompoops, now there was a book of those
people who abound in every community, and who are snobs.
'This work was much needed and very admirably done. The solemn
philosophic framework, the idea of treating snobbishness as a science,
was original and sound; for snobbishness is indeed a disease in our
Society.'
Unfortunately Chesterton is not nearly hard enough on snobbishness. Were
it a disease, it might be excusable as being at times unavoidable; it is
nothing of the sort, it is a deliberate thing that undermines society
more than anything; it is entirely spontaneous, and flourishes in every
community, from the Church to the Jockey Club.
'Aristocracy does not have snobs any more than democracy'; but this
'Thackeray was too restrained and early Victorian to see.' There are at
the present day a great number of people who will not see that
Bolshevism is as snobbish as Suburbia, that the poor man in the Park
Lodge is as much a snob as his master, who only knows the county folks.
Snobbery is not the monopoly of any one set; even also is it, as
Thackeray says,'a mean admiration' that thinks it is better to be a
'made' peer than an honest gardener.
'The true source of snobs in England was the refusal to take one side or
the other in the crisis of the French Revolution.'
The title of 'Vanity Fair' was an inspiration. It gives the ideas of the
disharmonies that can be found in any market place in any English market
town on any English market day. It brings out 'the irrelevancy of
Thackeray.' A good motto for the book is, for Chesterton, that
attributed to Cardinal Newman: 'Evil always fails by overleaping its aim
and good by falling short of it.' Our critic feels that the critics
have been unfair to Thackeray with respect to their denouncement of the
character of Amelia Sedley as being much too soft, whereas Chesterton
thinks she was really a fool, which is the logical outcome of being the
reverse of hard.
But Amelia was soft in a very delightful way. She was 'open to all
emotions as they came'--in fact, she was a fool who was wise because she
has retained her power of happiness, while the hard Rebecca has arrived
at hell, 'the hell of having all outward forces open, but all receptive
organs closed.'
It is necessary again to refer to the charge of cynicism that is
levelled against Thackeray. The mistake is, as our critic points out,
'taking a vague word and applying it precisely.' It all depends upon
what cynicism really means. 'If it means a war on comfort, then
Thackeray was, to his eternal credit, a cynic'; 'if it means a war on
virtue, then Thackeray, to his eternal honour, was the reverse of a
cynic.' His object is to show that silly goodness is better than clever
vice. As I have indicated, the long and the short of the matter is that
Thackeray created a lot of villains, and has therefore been called a
cynic by those who don't even know what the word means, or that there is
a literary blessedness in the making of villains to bring out the more
excellent virtues of the heroes.
* * * * *
From these two monumental works that were original in every way and
might almost be called propaganda, Thackeray passed on to a novel which
bore the name of 'Pendennis.' It was 'a novel with nothing else but a
hero, only that the hero is not very heroic,' which makes him all the
more interesting, for it makes him all the more human.
But Pendennis is more than a man--he is a type or symbol. He is 'the old
mystical tragedian of the Middle Ages, Everyman.' It is an epic, because
it celebrates the universal man with all his glorious failings and
glorious virtues. The love of Pendennis for Miss Fotheringay is a
different thing to the ordinary love of man for woman; it is rather the
love that is in every man for every woman. This is what I think
Chesterton means when he says 'it is the veritable Divine disease, which
seems a part of the very health of youth.'
The Everyman of the Middle Ages was a symbol of what man really was.
Chesterton feels that every outside force that came to Everyman had to
be abnormal--for instance, 'Death had to be bony'--so he contends in
'Pendennis' that the shapes that intrude on the life of Arthur Pendennis
have aggressive and allegorical influences.
'Pendennis' is an epic because it celebrates not the strength of man but
his weakness. In the character of Major Pendennis, Chesterton feels that
Thackeray did a great work, because he showed that the life of the
so-called man of the world is not the gay and careless one that fiction
depicts. It is the religious people who can afford to be careless. 'If
you want carelessness you must go to the martyrs.' The reason is fairly
obvious. The worldling has to be careful, as he wants to remain in the
world; the religious man, of whom the martyr was the true prototype, can
afford to be careless; he is not necessarily careless of life, but he
can put things at their proper value. The martyr facing the lions in the
Roman arena knew what life really was; the worldly woman spending her
life trying to be in the company of titled people has no real idea of
the value of it. It is the religious people who know the world; it is
the worldly people who know nothing of it.
With the publication of 'Pendennis' the reputation of Thackeray reached
that position which is sought by all authors, that of being able to
write a book that should not, on publication, be put to the indignity of
being asked who the writer was. Thackeray was now in the delightful
position of being well established, a position that very often results
in careless and poor work. It has been said with some truth that once a
writer is established he can write anything he likes. This is to an
extent true, and such work may even be published and fairly popular, but
he will find sooner or later that his influence is on the wane.
In the 'Newcomes' Thackeray drew a character in Colonel Newcome, to whom
was given the highest of literary honours, that of being spoken of apart
from the book--I mean in the way that people speak of Micawber or
Scrooge, almost unconsciously, without really having the actual work in
which the character appears in mind. Of this book Chesterton says 'the
public has largely forgotten all the Newcomes except one, the Colonel
who has taken his place with Don Quixote, Sir Roger de Coverley, Uncle
Toby, and Mr. Pickwick.'
Chesterton feels that Thackeray at times falls into the trick common to
many writers, that of repeating himself, a trick that is natural, as it
does seem in some ways that the human mind, like history, is apt to move
in circles. The reason was that in some way Thackeray became tired of
Barnes Newcome; the result was that from being a convincing villain he
develops into a stereotyped one, the type who fires pistols into the air
and is the squire's runaway son, so often found at the Lyceum.
If Thackeray 'sprawled' in the Newcomes he atones for this in 'Esmond,'
if any atonement is needed for sprawling, which is probably only that
Thackeray felt that there is nothing so elastic and sprawling as a human
person, whether he be a villain or the reverse.