fantastic freaks of fancy might have been imagined by the Danish poet,
Hans Christian Andersen. In its combination of simple pathos and genial
drollery, however, it was a story that no other could by possibility
have told than the great English Humorist. If there was something really
akin to the genius of Andersen, in the notion of the Cricket with its
shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounding through the house, and seeming
to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star, Dickens, and no other
could, by any chance, have conjured up the forms of either Caleb
Plummer, or Gruff-and-Tackleton. The cuckoo on the Dutch clock, now like
a spectral voice, now hiccoughing on the assembled company, as if he
had got drunk for joy; the little haymaker over the dial mowing down
imaginary grass, jerking right and left with his scythe in front of a
Moorish palace; the hideous, hairy, red-eyed jacks-in-boxes; the flies
in the Noah's arks, that “an't on that scale neither as compared with
elephants;” the giant masks, having a certain furtive leer, “safe to
destroy the peace of mind of any young gentlemen between the ages of six
and eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer vacation,” were all of
them like dreams of the Danish poet, coloured into a semblance of life
by the grotesque humour of the English Novelist. But dear little Dot,
who was rather of the dumpling's shape--“but I don't myself object to
that”--and good, lumbering John Peerybingle, her husband, often so near
to something or another very clever, according to his own account, and
Boxer, the carrier's dog, “with that preposterous nothing of a fag-end
of a tail of his, describing circles of barks round the horse, making
savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to
sudden stops,”--all bear upon them unmistakably the sign-manual of Boz.
As originally recounted in the Christmas story-book, the whole narrative
was comprised within a very few pages, portioned out into three little
chirps. Yet the letter-press was illustrated profusely by pencils as
eminent as those of Daniel Maclise, of Clarkson Stanfield, of Richard
Doyle, of John Leech, of Sir Edwin Landseer. The charming little fairy
tale, moreover, was inscribed to Lord Jeffrey. It was a favourite of
his, as it still is of many another critic north and south of the
Tweed, light, nay trivial, though the materials out of which the homely
apologue is composed. It can hardly be wondered at, however, remembering
how less than four years prior to its first publication, a literary
reviewer, no less formidable than Professor Wilson--while abstaining,
in his then capacity as chairman of the public banquet given to Charles
Dickens at Edinburgh, from attempting, as he said, anything like “a
critical delineation of our illustrious guest”--nevertheless, added
emphatically, “I cannot but express in a few ineffectual words the
delight which every human bosom feels in the benign spirit which
pervades all his creations.” Christopher North thus further expressed
his admiration then of the young English Novelist--“How kind and good
a man he is,” the great Critic exclaimed, laying aside for a while the
crutch with which he had so often, in the Ambrosian Nights, brained many
an arrant pretender to the title of genius or of philanthropist, and
turning his lion-like eyes, at the moment beaming only with cordiality,
on the then youthful face of Dickens,--“How kind and good a man he is
I need not say, nor what strength of genius he has acquired by that
profound sympathy with his fellow-creatures, whether in prosperity and
happiness, or overwhelmed with unfortunate circumstances.” Purely and
simply, in his capacity as an imaginative writer, the Novelist had
already (then in the June of 1841) impressed thus powerfully the heart
and judgment of John Wilson, of Christopher North, of the inexorable
Rhadamanthus of _Blackwood_ and the “Noctes.” Afterwards, but a very
little more than two years afterwards, came the “Carol.” The following
winter rang out the “Chimes.” The Christmas after that was heard the
chirping of the “Cricket.”
Four years previously Professor Wilson, on the occasion referred to, had
remarked of him most truly,--“He has not been deterred by the aspect of
vice and wickedness, and misery and guilt, from seeking a spirit of good
in things evil, but has endeavoured by the might of genius to transmute
what was base into what is precious as the beaten gold;” observing,
indeed, yet further--“He has mingled in the common walks of life; he
has made himself familiar with the lower orders of society.” As if in
supplementary and conclusive justification of those words, Dickens,
within less than five years afterwards, had woven his graceful and
pathetic fancies about the homely joys and sorrows of Bob Cratchit,
of Toby Veck, and of Caleb Plummer, of a little Clerk, a little
Ticket-porter, and a little Toy-maker. His pen at these times was like
the wand of Cinderella's fairy godmother, changing the cucumber into a
gilded chariot, and the lizards into glittering retainers.
At the commencement of this Reading but very little indeed was said
about the Cricket, hardly anything at all about the kettle. Yet, as
everybody knows, “the kettle began it” in the story-book. The same right
of precedence was accorded to the kettle in the author's delivery of his
fairy tale by word of mouth, but otherwise its comfortable purring song
was in a manner hushed. One heard nothing about its first appearance on
the hearth, when “it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble,
a very idiot of a kettle,” any more than of its final pæan, when, after
its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire, the lid itself, the
recently rebellious lid, performed a sort of jig, and clattered “like
a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin
brother.” Here, again, in fact, as with so many other of these Readings
from his own books by our Novelist, the countless good things scattered
abundantly up and down the original descriptions--inimitable touches of
humour that had each of them, on the appreciative palate, the effect of
that verbal bon-bon, the bon-mot--were sacrificed inexorably, apparently
without a qualm, and certainly by wholesale. What the Reader looked to
throughout, was the human element in his imaginings when they were to be
impersonated.
Let but one of these tid-bits be associated directly with the fanciful
beings introduced in the gradual unfolding of the incidents, and it
might remain there untouched, Thus, for example, when the Carrier's
arrival at his home came to be mentioned, and the Reader related how
John Peerybingle, being much taller, as well as much older than his
wife, little Dot, “had to stoop a long way down to kiss her”--the words
that followed thereupon were happily _not_ omitted: “but she was worth
the trouble,--six foot six with the lumbago might have done it.” Several
of John's choicest--all-but jokes were also retained. As, where Dot
is objecting to be called by that pet diminutive, “'Why, what else are
you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her
waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give, 'A dot
and'--here he glanced at the baby--'a dot and carry'--I won't say it,
for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don't know as
ever I was nearer.” Tilly Slowboy and her charge, the baby, were, upon
every mention of them in the Reading, provocative of abundant laughter.
The earliest allusion to Miss Slowboy recording these characteristic
circumstances in regard to her costume, that it “was remarkable for the
partial development, on all possible and impossible occasions, of some
flannel vestment of a singular structure, also for affording glimpses in
the region of the back of a pair of stays, in colour a dead green.” On
the introduction of the Mysterious Stranger--apparently all but stone
deaf--from the Carrier's cart, where he had been forgotten, the comic
influence of the Reading became irresistible.
Stranger (on noticing Dot) interrogatively to John.--“Your Daughter?”
Carrier, with the voice of a boatswain.--“Wife.”
Stranger, with his hand to his ear, being not quite certain that he has
caught it.--“Niece?”
Carrier, with a roar.--“Wife.”
Satisfied at last upon that point, the stranger asks of John, as a new
matter of curiosity to him, “Baby, yours?” Whereupon the Reader, _as_
John, “gave a gigantic nod, equivalent to an answer in the affirmative,
delivered through a speaking-trumpet.”
Stranger, still unsatisfied, inquiring,--“Girl?”.--“Bo-o-oy!” was
bellowed back by John Peerybingle. It was when Mrs. Peerybingle herself
took up the parable, however, that the merriment excited among the
audience became fairly irrepressible. Scarcely had the nearly stone-deaf
stranger added, in regard to the “Bo-o-oy,”--“Also very young, eh?”
(a comment previously applied by him to Dot) when the Reader, as Mrs.
Peerybingle, instantly struck in, at the highest pitch of his
voice, that is, of her voice (the comic effect of this being simply
indescribable)--“Two months and three da-ays! Vaccinated six weeks
ago-o! Took very fine-ly! Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably
beautiful chi-ild! Equal to the general run of children at five months
o-old! Takes notice in a way quite won-der-ful! May seem impossible to
you, but feels his feet al-ready!” Directly afterwards, Caleb
Plummer appeared upon the scene, little imagining that in the
Mysterious-Stranger would be discovered, later on, under the disguise
of that nearly stone-deaf old gentleman, his (Caleb's) own dear boy,
Edward, supposed to have died in the golden South Americas. Little
Caleb's inquiry of Mrs. Peerybingle,--“You couldn't have the goodness to
let me pinch Boxer's tail, Mum, for half a moment, could you?” was
one of the welcome whimsicalities of the Reading. “Why, Caleb! what a
question!” naturally enough was Dot's instant exclamation. “Oh, never
mind, Mum!” said the little toy-maker, apologetically, “He mightn't like
it perhaps”--adding, by way of explanation--“There's a small order just
come in, for barking dogs; and I should wish to go as close to Natur' as
I could, for sixpence!” Caleb's employer, Tackleton, in his large
green cape and bull-headed looking mahogany tops, was then described as
entering pretty much in the manner of what one might suppose to be that
of an ogrish toy-merchant. His character came out best perhaps--meaning,
in another sense, that is, at its worst--when the fairy spirit of
John's house, the Cricket, was heard chirping; and Tackleton asked,
grumpily,--“Why don't you kill that cricket? I would! I always do!
I hate their noise!” John exclaiming, in amazement,--“You kill your
crickets, eh?” “Scrunch 'em, sir!” quoth Tackleton. One of the most
wistfully curious thoughts uttered in the whole of the Reading was the
allusion to the original founder of the toy-shop of Gruff and Tackleton,
where it was remarked (such a quaint epitome of human life!) that under
that same crazy roof, beneath which Caleb Plummer and Bertha, his blind
daughter, found shelter as their humble home,--“the Gruff before last
had, in a small way, _made toys for a generation of old boys and girls,
who had played with them, and found them out, and broken them, and gone
to sleep_.” Another wonderfully comic minor character was introduced
later on in the eminently ridiculous person of old Mrs. Fielding--in
regard to in-door gloves, a foreshadowing of Mrs. Wilfer--in the matter
of her imaginary losses through the indigo trade, a spectral precursor,
or dim prototype, as one might say, of Mrs. Pipchin and the Peruvian
mines. Throughout the chief part of the dreamy, dramatic little story,
the various characters, it will be remembered, are involved in a mazy
entanglement of cross purposes. Mystery sometimes, pathos often, terror
for one brief interval, rose from the Reading of the “Home Fairy-Tale.”
There was a subdued tenderness which there was no resisting in the
revelation to the blind girl, Bertha, of the illusions in which she had
been lapped for years by her sorcerer of a lather, poor little Caleb,
the toy-maker. There was at once a tearful and a laughing earnestness
that took the Reader's audience captive, not by any means unwillingly,
when little Dot was, at the last, represented as “clearing it all up at
home” (indirectly, to the great honour of the Cricket's reputation,
by the way) to her burly husband--good, stupid, worthy, “clumsy man in
general,”--John Peerybingle, the Carrier. The one inconsistent person in
the whole story, it must be admitted, was Tackleton, who turned out
at the very end to be rather a good fellow than otherwise. Fittingly
enough, in the Reading as in the book, when the “Fairy Tale of Home”
was related to its close, when Dot and all the rest were spoken of as
vanished, a broken child's-toy, we were told, yet lay upon the ground,
and still upon the hearth was heard the song of the Cricket.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.
A variety of attractive Readings might readily have been culled from
Nicholas Nickleby's Life and Adventures. His comical experiences as
a strolling-player in the Company of the immortal Crummleses--his
desperate encounter with Sir Mulberry Hawk on the footboard of the
cabriolet--his exciting rescue of Madeline from an unholy alliance
with Gride, the miser, on the very morning fixed for the revolting
marriage--his grotesque association for a while with the Kenwigses and
their uncle Lilliyick--his cordial relations with the Brothers Cheeryble
and old Tim Linkinwater--any one of these incidents in the career of the
most high spirited of all the young heroes of our Novelist, would have
far more than simply justified its selection as the theme of one of
these illustrative entertainments. Instead of choosing any one of those
later episodes in the fictitious history of Nicholas Nickleby, however,
the author of that enthralling romance of everyday life, picked out, by
preference, the earliest of all his young hero's experiences--those
in which, at nineteen years of age, he was brought into temporary
entanglement with the domestic economy of Dotheboys Hall, and at the
last into personal conflict with its one-eyed principal, the rascally
Yorkshire school-master.
The Gadshill collection of thin octavos, comprising the whole series of
Readings, includes within it two copies of “Mrs. Gamp” and two copies of
“Nicholas Nickleby.” Whereas, on comparing the duplicates of Mrs. Gamp,
the two versions appear to be so slightly different that they are all
but identical, a marked contrast is observable at a glance between the
two Nicklebys. Each Reading is descriptive, it is true, of his sayings
and doings at the Yorkshire school. But, even externally, one of the two
copies is marked “Short Time,”--the love-passages with Miss Squeers bemg
entirely struck out, and no mention whatever being made of John Browdie,
the corn-factor. The wretched school, the sordid rascal who keeps
it, Mrs. Squeers, poor, forlorn Smike, and a few of his scarecrow
companions--these, in the short-time version, and these alone,
constitute the young usher's surroundings. In here recalling to
recollection the “Nicholas Nickleby” Reading at all, however, we select,
as a matter of course, the completer version, the one for which the
generality of hearers had an evident preference: the abbreviated version
being always regarded as capital, so far as it went; but even at the
best, with all the go and dash of its rapid delivery, insufficient.
Everything, even, we should imagine, to one un-acquainted with the
novel, was ingeniously explained by the Reader in a sentence or two at
starting. Nicholas Nickleby was described as arriving early one November
morning, at the Saracen's Head, to join, in his new capacity (stripling
though he was) as scholastic assistant, Mr. Squeers, “the cheap--the
terribly cheap” Yorkshire schoolmaster. The words just given in inverted
commas are those written in blue ink in the Novelist's handwriting on
the margin of his longer Reading copy. As also are the following words,
epitomising in a breath the position of the young hero when the story
commences--“Inexperienced, sanguine, and thrown upon the world with
no adviser, and his bread to win,” the manuscript interpolation thus
intimates: the letterpress then relating in its integrity that Nicholas
had engaged himself as tutor at Mr. Wackford Squeers's academy, on the
strength of the memorable advertisement in the London newspapers.
The advertisement, that is, comprising within it the long series of
accomplishments imparted to the students at Dotheboys Hall, including
“single-stick” (if required), together with “fortification, and every
other branch of classical literature.” The Reader laying particular
stress, among other items in the announcement, upon “No extras, no
vacations, and diet unparalleled;” and upon the finishing touch (having
especial reference to the subject in hand), “An able assistant wanted:
annual salary, £5! A master of arts would be preferred!” Immediately
after this, in the Reading, came the description of Mr. Squeers, several
of the particulars in regard to whose villainous appearance always told
wonderfully: as, where it was said “he had but one eye, and the popular
prejudice runs in favour of two;” or, again, where in reference to his
attire--it having been mentioned that his coat-sleeves were a great deal
too-long and his trousers a great deal too short--it was added that “he
appeared ill at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual
state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable.” Listening to
the Reader, we were there, in the coffee-room of the Saracen's Head--the
rascal Squeers in the full enjoyment of his repast of hot toast and
cold round of beef, the while five little boys sat opposite hungrily and
thirstily expectant of their share in a miserable meal of two-penn'orth
of milk and thick bread and butter for three. “Just fill that mug up
with lukewarm water, William, will you?” “To the wery top, sir? Why the
milk will be drownded!” “_Serve it right for being so dear!_” Squeers
adding with a chuckle, as he pounded away at his own coffee and
viands,--“Conquer your passions, boys, and don't be eager after
wittles.” To see the Reader as Squeers, stirring the mug of lukewarm
milk and water, and then smacking his lips with an affected relish after
tasting a spoonful of it, before reverting to his own fare of buttered
toast and beef, was to be there with Nicholas, a spectator on that
wintry morning in the Snow Hill Tavern, watching the guttling pedagogue
and the five little famished expectants. Only when Squeers, immediately
before the signal for the coach starting, wiped his mouth, with a
self-satisfied “Thank God for a good breakfast,” was the mug rapidly
passed from mouth to mouth at once ravenously and tantalizingly. The
long and bitter journey on the north road, through the snow, was barely
referred to in the Reading; due mention, however, being made, and always
tellingly, of Mr. S queers's habit of getting down at nearly every
stage--“to stretch his legs, he said,--and as he always came back with
a very red nose, and composed himself to sleep directly, the stretching
seemed to answer.” Immediately on the wayfarers' arrival at Dotheboys,
Mrs. Squeers, arrayed in a dimity night-jacket, herself a head taller
than Mr. Squeers, was always introduced with great effect, as seizing
her Squeery by the throat and giving him two loud kisses in rapid
succession, like a postman's knock. The audience then scarcely had time
to laugh over the interchange of questions and answers between the happy
couple, as to the condition of the cows and pigs, and, last of all,
the boys, ending with Madame's intimation that “young Pitcher's had a
fever,” followed up by Squeers's characteristic exclamation, “No! damn
that chap, he's always at something of that sort”--when there came
the first glimpse of poor Smike, in a skeleton suit, and large boots
originally made for tops, too patched and ragged now for a beggar;
around his throat “a tattered child's frill only half concealed by a
coarse man's neckerchief.” Anxiously observing Squeers, as he emptied
his overcoat of letters and papers, the boy did this, we were told, with
an air so dispirited and hopeless, that Nicholas could hardly bear to
watch him. “Have you--did anybody--has nothing been heard--about me?”
were then (in the faintest, frightened voice!) the first stammered
utterances of the wretched drudge. Bullied into silence by the brutal
schoolmaster, Smike limped away with a vacant smile, when we heard the
female scoundrel in the dimity night-jacket saying,--“I'll tell you
what, Squeers, I think that young chap's turning silly.”
Inducted into the loathsome school-room on the following morning by
Squeers himself, Nicholas, first of all, we were informed, witnessed
the manner in which that arrant rogue presided over “the first class in
English spelling and philosophy,” practically illustrating his mode of
tuition by setting the scholars to clean the w-i-n win, d-e-r-s ders,
winders--to weed the garden--to rub down the horse, or get rubbed
down themselves if they didn't do it well. Nicholas assisted in the
afternoon, moreover, at the report given by Mr. Squeers on his return
homewards after his half-yearly visit to the metropolis. Beginning,
though this last-mentioned part of the Reading did, with Squeers's
ferocious slash on the desk with his cane, and his announcement, in the
midst of a death-like silence--
“Let any boy speak a word without leave, and I'll take the skin off that
boy's back!” many of the particulars given immediately afterwards by
the Reader were, in spite of the surrounding misery, irresistibly
provocative of laughter. Ample justification for this, in truth, is
very readily adduceable. Mr. Squeers having, through his one eye, made
a mental abstract of Cobbey's letter, for example, Cobbey and the whole
school were thus feelingly informed of its contents--“Oh! Cobbey's
grandmother is dead, and his uncle John has took to drinking. Which is
all the news his sister sends, except eighteen-pence--which will just
pay for that broken square of glass! Mrs. Squeers, my dear, will you
take the money?” Another while, Graymarsh's maternal aunt, who “thinks
Mrs. Squeers must be a angel,” and that Mr. Squeers is too good for this
world, “would have sent the two pairs of stockings, as desired, but
is short of money, so forwards a tract instead,” and so on; “Ah-! a
delightful letter--very affecting, indeed!” quoth Squeers. “It was
affecting in one sense!” observed the Reader; “for Graymarsh's maternal
aunt was strongly supposed by her more intimate friends to be his
maternal parent!” Perhaps the epistle from Mobbs's mother-in-law was the
best of all, however--the old lady who “took to her bed on hearing that
he wouldn't eat fat;” and who “wishes to know by an early post where he
expects to go to, if he quarrels with his vittles?” adding, “This was
told her in the London newspapers--not by Mr. Squeers, for he is too
kind and too good to set anybody against anybody!”