his adventuring thus upon a delineation so really startling in its
character, he was not unnaturally desirous of testing its fitness for
representation before the public, first of all in the presence of
those who were probably the best qualified to pronounce a perfectly
dispassionate opinion. It certainly appeared somewhat dubious at the
first, that question as to the suitability for portrayal before mixed
assemblages, of one of the most powerfully tragic incidents ever
depicted by him in the whole range of his voluminous contributions
to imaginative literature. The passages selected to this end from his
famous story of Oliver Twist were those relating more particularly to
the Murder of Nancy by Bill Sikes. A ghastlier atrocity than that murder
could hardly be imagined. In the book itself, as will be remembered, the
crime is painted as with a brush dipped in blood rather than pigment.
The infamous deed is there described in language worthy of one of the
greatest realists in fictitious narrative. Henri de Balzac, even in
his more sanguinary imaginings, never showed a completer mastery of the
horrible.
Remembering all this, and feeling perfectly assured at the same time,
that the scene then about to be depicted by the Author in person, would
most certainly lose nothing of its terror in the representation, the
acknowledgment may here be made by the writer of these pages, that, on
entering the Hall that evening, he was in considerable doubt as to what
might be the result of the experiment. Compared with the size of the
enormous building, the group of those assembled appeared to be the
merest handful of an audience clustered together towards the front
immediately below the platform of the orchestra. Standing at the back
of this group, the writer recalls to mind, in regard to that evening,
a circumstance plainly enough indicating how fully his own unexpressed
uncertainty was akin to that of the Author-Reader himself. The
circumstance, namely, that Charles Dickens, immediately on entering the
hall, before taking his place at his reading-desk upon the platform,
came round, and after exchanging a few words with him, uttered this
earnest Aside,--“I want you to watch this particularly, for I am very
doubtful about it myself!” Before that Experimental Reading was half
over, however, all doubt upon the matter was utterly dissipated. In the
powerful effect of it, the murder-scene immeasurably surpassed anything
he had ever achieved before as an impersonator of his own creations. In
its climax, it was as splendid a piece of tragic acting as had for many
years been witnessed.
What, in effect, was Macready's comment upon it some months afterwards,
when, with an especial eye to the great tragedian's opinion, “Sikes and
Nancy” was given at Cheltenham? It was laconic enough, but it afforded a
world of pleasure to the Author-Actor when his old friend--himself the
hero of so many tragic triumphs--summed up his estimate, by saying,
characteristically, “Two Macbeths!”
Four of the imaginary beings of the novel were introduced, or, it should
rather be said, were severally produced before us as actual embodiments.
Occasionally, during one of the earlier scenes, it is true that the
gentle voice of Rose Maylie was audible, while a few impressive words
were spoken there also at intervals by Mr. Brownlow. But, otherwise,
the interlocutors were four, and four only: to wit--Nancy, Bill Sikes,
Morris Bolter, otherwise Noah Claypole, and the Jew Fagin. Than those
same characters no four perhaps in the whole range of fiction could
be more widely contrasted. Yet, widely contrasted, utterly dissimilar,
though they are, in themselves, the extraordinary histrionic powers of
their creator, enabled him to present them to view, with a rapidity
of sequence or alternation, so astonishing in its mingled facility and
precision, that the characters themselves seemed not only to be before
us in the flesh, but sometimes one might almost have said were there
simultaneously. Each in turn as portrayed hy him--meaning portrayed hy
him not simply in the hook hut hy himself in person--was in its way a
finished masterpiece.
Looking at the Author as he himself embodied these creations--Fagin,
the Jew, was there completely, audibly, visibly before us, by a sort
of transformation! Here, in effect--as several years previously in the
midst of his impersonation of Wilmot in Lord Lytton's comedy of Not
so Bad as we Seem, namely, where, in the garret, the young
patrician affects for a while to be Edmund Curll the bookseller--the
impersonator's very stature, each time Fagin opened his lips, seemed
to be changed instantaneously. Whenever he spoke, there started before
us--high-shouldered, with contracted chest, with birdlike claws, eagerly
anticipating hy their every movement the passionate words fiercely
struggling for utterance at his lips--that most villainous old tutor of
young thieves, receiver of stolen goods, and very devil incarnate: his
features distorted with rage, his penthouse eyebrows (those wonderful
eyebrows!) working like the antennæ of some deadly reptile, his whole
aspect, half-vulpine, half-vulture-like, in its hungry wickedness.
Whenever _he_ spoke, again, Morris Bolter--quite as instantly, just as
visibly and as audibly--was there upon the platform. Listening to him,
though we were all of us perfectly conscious of doing, through the
Protean voice, and looking at him through the variable features of the
Novelist, we somehow saw, no longer the Novelist, but--each time Noah
Clay-pole said a word--that chuckle-headed, long-limbed, clownish,
sneaking varlet, who is the spy on Nancy, the tool of Fagin, and
the secret evil-genius of Sikes, hounding the latter on, as he does,
unwittingly, to the dreadful deed of homicide.
As for the Author's embodiment of Sikes--the burly ruffian with thews of
iron and voice of Stentor--it was only necessary to hear that infuriated
voice, and watch the appalling blows dealt by his imaginary bludgeon
in the perpetration of the crime, to realise the force, the power, the
passion, informing the creative mind of the Novelist at once in
the original conception of the character, and then, so many years
afterwards, in its equally astonishing representation.
It was in the portrayal of Nancy, however, that the genius of the
Author-Actor found the opportunity, beyond all others, for its most
signal manifestation. Only that the catastrophe was in itself, by
necessity so utterly revolting, there would have been something
exquisitely pathetic in many parts of that affecting delineation. The
character was revealed with perfect consistency throughout--from the
scene of suppressed emotion upon the steps of London Bridge, when she
is scared with the eltrich horror of her forebodings, down to her last
gasping, shrieking apostrophes, to “Bill, clear Bill,” when she sinks,
blinded by blood, under the murderous blows dealt upon her upturned face
by her brutal paramour.
Then, again, the horror experienced by the assassin afterwards! So far
as it went, it was as grand a reprehension of all murderers as hand
could well have penned or tongue have uttered. It had about it something
of the articulation of an avenging voice not against Sikes only, but
against all who ever outraged, or ever dreamt of outraging, the sanctity
of human life. And it was precisely this which tended to sublimate an
incident otherwise of the ghastliest horror into a homily of burning
eloquence, the recollection of which among those who once saw it
revealed through the lips, the eyes, the whole aspect of Charles Dickens
will not easily be obliterated. The moral drawn from it--and there
was this moral interpenetrating or impregnating the whole--became
appreciable, it might even have been by Sikes himself, from the
first moment the ruffian realised that the crime had been actually
accomplished. It spoke trumpet-tongued from the very instant when he
recoiled from “it!” Nancy no more, but thenceforth flesh and blood--“But
such flesh, and so much blood!” Nevertheless, in that Experimental
Reading of the 14th of November, 1868, the effect of all this appeared,
in the estimation of the present writer, to have been in a great measure
marred by the abruptness with which, almost the instant after the crime
had been committed, the Reading was terminated. Sikes burnt upon
the hearth the blood-stained weapon with which the murder had been
perpetrated---was startled for a moment by the hair upon the end of the
club shrinking to a light cinder and whirling up the chimney--and then,
dragging the dog (whose very feet were bloody) after him, and locking
the door, left the house. There, the Experimental Reading abruptly
terminated. It seemed not only insufficient, but a lost opportunity.
Insomuch, that the writer, on the following day, remonstrated with the
Novelist as earnestly as possible, urging him to append to the Reading
as it then stood some fragmentary portion, at least, of the chapter
descriptive of the flight, so that the remorseful horror of Sikes
might be more fully realised. Of the reasonableness of this objection,
however, Dickens himself was so wholly unconvinced, that, in the midst
of his arguments against it, he wrote, in a tone of good-humoured
indignation, “My dear fellow, believe me that no audience on earth could
be held for ten minutes after the girl's death. Give them time, and they
would be revengeful for having had such a strain put upon them. Trust
me to be right. I stand there, and I know.” Than this nothing could very
well have been more strongly expressed, as indicative of the conclusion
at which he had deliberately arrived.
So frankly open to conviction was he, nevertheless, that, not disdaining
to defer to the judgment of another when his own had been convinced, the
Reading was eventually, after all, lengthened out by a very remarkable
addition. The printed copy of this fragment of Oliver Twist,
artistically compacted together as “A Reading,” has, appended to it,
in blue ink, three pages of manuscript in the Novelist's familiar
handwriting, in which, with a cunning mastery of all the powers of
condensation, he has compacted together in a few sentences what he
always gave with wonderful effect before the public, the salient
incidents of the murderer's flight, ending with his own destruction, and
even his dog's, from the housetop.
Nothing that could most powerfully realise to the audience the ruffian's
sense of horror and abhorrence has been there overlooked. The ghastly
figure follows him everywhere. He hears its garments rustling in the
leaves. “If _he_ stopped, _it_ stopped. If _he_ ran, _it_ followed.”
Turning at times to beat the phantom off, though it should strike him
dead, the hair rises on his head, and his blood stands still, for it has
turned with him and is behind him! Throwing himself on his back upon
the road--“At his head it stood, silent, erect, and still: a human
gravestone with its epitaph in Blood.”
What is as striking as anything in all this Reading, however--that is,
in the Reading copy of it now lying before us as we write--is the mass
of hints as to byplay in the stage directions for himself, so to speak,
scattered up and down the margin. “Fagin raised his right hand, and
shook his trembling forefinger in the air,” is there, on p. 101, in
print. Beside it, on the margin in MS., is the word “Action.” Not a word
of it was said. It was simply _done_. Again, immediately below that on
the same page--Sikes' loquitur--“'Oh! you haven't, haven't you?' passing
a pistol into a more convenient pocket ['Action,' again, in MS. on the
margin.]' That's lucky for one of us--which one that is don't matter.'”
Not a word was said about the pistol--the marginal direction was simply
attended to. On the opposite page, in print, “Fagin laid his hand upon
the bundle, and locked it in the cupboard. But he did not take his
eyes off the robber for an instant.” On the margin in MS., oddly but
significantly underlined, are the words, “Cupboard Action.” So
again afterwards, as a rousing self-direction, one sees notified in
manuscript, on p. 107, the grim stage direction, “Murder Coming.”
As certainly as the “Trial from Pickwick” was the most laughter-moving
of all the Readings, and as the “Story of Little Dombey,” again, was the
most pathetic, “Sikes and Nancy” was in all respects the most powerfully
dramatic and, in the grand tragic force of it, in many ways, the most
impressive and remarkable.
THE FAREWELL READING.
In recording the incident of his Farewell Reading, there comes back to
us a yet later recollection of the great Novelist; and illustrating,
as it does, his passionate love for the dramatic art, it may here be
mentioned not inappropriately.
It relates simply to a remark suddenly made by him--and which had been
suggested, so far as we can remember, by nothing we had been talking
about previously--towards the close of our very last suburban walk
together. Going round by way of Lambeth one afternoon in the early
summer of 1870, we had skirted the Thames along the Surrey bank, had
crossed the river higher up, and on our way back were returning at
our leisure through Westminster; when, just as we were approaching the
shadow of the old Abbey at Poet's Corner, under the roof-beams of
which he was so soon to be laid in his grave, with a rain of tears and
flowers, he abruptly asked--
“What do you think would be the realisation of one of my most cherished
day-dreams?” Adding, instantly, without waiting for airy answer, “To
settle down now for the remainder of my life within easy distance of
a great theatre, in the direction of which I should hold supreme
authority. It should be a house, of course, having a skilled and noble
company, and one in every way magnificently appointed. The pieces acted
should be dealt with according to my pleasure, and touched up here and
there in obedience to my own judgment; the players as well as the plays
being absolutely under my command. There,” said he, laughingly, and in a
glow at the mere fancy, “_that's_ my daydream!”
Dickens's delighted enjoyment, in fact, of everything in any way
connected with the theatrical profession, was second only to that shown
by him in the indulgence of the master-passion of his life, his love of
literature.
The way in which he threw himself into his labours, as a Reader, was
only another indication of his intense affection for the dramatic art.
For, as we have already insisted, the Readings were more than simply
Readings, they were in the fullest meaning of the words singularly
ingenious and highly elaborated histrionic performances. And his
sustained success in them during fifteen years altogether, and, as
we have seen, through as many as five hundred representations, may be
accounted for in the same way as his still more prolonged success, from
the beginning of his career as a Novelist down to its very close, from
the Pickwick Papers to Edwin Drood, otherwise, during an interval of
four-and-thirty consecutive years, as the most popular author of his
generation.
The secret of his original success, and of the long sustamment of it
in each of these two careers--as Writer and as Reader--is in a great
measure discoverable in this, that whatever powers he possessed he
applied to their very uttermost. Whether as Author or as Impersonator,
he gave himself up to his appointed task, not partially or
intermittingly, but thoroughly and indefatigably.
His rule in life, in this way, he has himself clearly explained in the
forty-second chapter of David Copperfield. What he there says about
David's industry and perseverance, applies as directly to himself, as
what he also relates in regard to his young hero's earlier toils as a
parliamentary reporter, and his precocious fame as a writer of fiction.
Speaking at once for David and for himself, he there writes for both or
for either, “Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all
my heart to do well; whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted
myself to completely; in great aims and in small I have always been
thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any
natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship
of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its
end. There is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere
earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything on which I could throw
my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever
it was, I find now to have been my golden rules.” What is there said
applies far more recognisably to the real Charles Dickens than to the
imaginary David Copperfield.
Attestations of the truth of this were discoverable, at every turn, in
regard to his regular system, his constant method, nay, his minutest
tricks of habit, so to speak, both as Reader and as Novelist. It was
so when as an Author, for example, note was taken, now of his careful
forecast of a serial tale on as many slips as there were to be green
monthly numbers; now of his elaborately corrected and recorrected
manuscripts; now of the proof-sheets lying about, for revision at any
and every spare moment, during the month immediately before publication.
Or, when, on the other hand, in his capacity as a Reader, regard was had
to the scrupulous exactitude with which the seemingly trivial minutiae
of what one might call the mere accompaniments, were systematically
cared for or methodised. Announced to read, for instance, for the first
time in some town he had never before visited for that purpose, or in
some building in which his voice had never before been raised, he
would go down to the empty hall long before the hour appointed for the
Reading, to take the bearings, as he would say, or, in other words,
to familiarise himself with the place beforehand. His interest in his
audience, again, was something delightful. He was hardly less keenly
observant of them than they of him. Through a hole in the curtain at
the side, or through a chink in the screen upon the platform, he would
eagerly direct your attention to what never palled upon his own, namely,
the effect of the suddenly brightened sea of faces on the turning up
of the gas, immediately before the moment of his own appearance at the
reading-desk.
The evening at length came for his very last appearance at that familiar
little reading-desk, on Tuesday, the 15th of March, 1870, on the
platform of the St. James's Hall, Piccadilly. The largest audience ever
assembled in that immense building, the largest, as already intimated,
that ever can be assembled there for purely Reading purposes, namely,
when the orchestra and the upper end of the two side-galleries have
necessarily to be barred or curtained off from the auditorium, were
collected together there under the radiant pendants of the glittering
ceiling, every available nook and corner, and all the ordinary gangways
of the Great Hall being completely occupied. The money value of the
house that night was £422. Crowds were unable to obtain admittance at
the entrances in the Quadrant and in Piccadilly, long before the hour
fixed for the Farewell Reading. Inside the building 2034 persons were
seated there, eagerly awaiting the Novelist's appearance. The enthusiasm
of his reception when eight o'clock came, and he advanced to the centre
of the platform, of itself told plainly enough, as plainly as the
printed hills announcing the fact in red, back, and yellow, that it was
his last appearance.
The Readings selected were, as the very best that could have been
chosen, his own favourites--“The Christmas Carol,” and the “Trial from
Pickwick.” He never read better in his life than he did on that last
evening. Evidently enough, he was nerved to a crowning effort. And by
sympathy his audience--his last audience--responded to him throughout by
their instant and intense appreciation. Not a point was lost. Every good
thing told to the echo, that is, through the echoing laughter. Scrooge,
Fezziwig, the Fiddler, Topper, every one of the Cratchits, everybody in
“The Carol,” including the Small Boy who is so great at repartee, all
were welcomed in turn, as became them, with better than acclamations. It
was the same exactly with the “Trial from Pickwick”--Justice Stareleigh,
Serjeant Buzfuz, Mr. Winkle, Mrs. Cluppins, Sam Weller, one after
another appearing for a brief interval, and then disappearing for ever,
each of them a delightfully humorous, one of them in particular, the
Judge, a simply incomparable impersonation.
Then came the moment of parting between the great Author and his
audience--that last audience who were there as the representatives of
his immense public in both hemispheres. When the resounding applause
that greeted the close of that Final Reading had died out, there was a
breathless hush as Charles Dickens, who had for once lingered there
upon the platform, addressed to his hearers, with exquisitely clear
articulation, but with unmistakably profound emotion, these few and
simple words of farewell:--
“Ladies and Gentlemen,--It would be worse than
“idle, for it would be hypocritical and unfeeling, if I
“were to disguise that I close this episode in my life
“with feelings of very considerable pain. For some
“fifteen years in this hall, and in many kindred places,
“I have had the honour of presenting my own che-
“rished ideas before you for your recognition, and in
“closely observing your reception of them have en-
“joyed an amount of artistic delight and instruction,
“which perhaps it is given to few men to know. In
“this task and in every other I have ever undertaken
“as a faithful servant of the public, always imbued
“with the sense of duty to them, and always striving
“to do his best, I have been uniformly cheered by the
“readiest response, the most generous sympathy, and
“the most stimulating support. Nevertheless, I have
“thought it well, at the full flood-tide of your favour,
“to retire upon those older associations between us,
“which date from much further back than these,
“thenceforth to devote myself exclusively to the art
“that first brought us together. Ladies and gentle-
“men, in two short weeks from this time I hope that
“you may enter, in your own homes, on a new series
“of readings at which my assistance will be indispen-
“sable ; but from these garish lights I vanish now for
“evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and
“affectionate fare well.”
The manly, cordial voice only faltered once at the very last. The
mournful modulation of it in the utterance of the words, “From these
garish lights I vanish now for evermore” lingers to this moment like a
haunting melody in our remembrance. Within a few weeks afterwards those
very words were touchingly inscribed on the Funeral Card distributed at
the doors of Westminster Abbey on the day of the Novelist's interment in
Poet's Corner. As he moved from the platform after the utterance of the
last words of his address and, with his head drooping in emotion, passed
behind the screen on his way to his retiring-room, a cordial hand was
placed for one moment with a sympathetic grasp upon his shoulder. The
popularity won by Charles Dickens, even among the million who never saw
him or spoke with him, amounted to nothing less than personal affection.
Among his friends and intimates no great author has ever been more
truly or more tenderly beloved. The prolonged thunder of applause that
followed him to his secluded room at the back of the platform, whither
he had withdrawn alone, recalled him after the lapse of some minutes for
another instant into the presence of his last audience, from whom, with
a kiss of his hand, he then indeed parted for evermore.
THE END.
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
End of Project Gutenberg's Charles Dickens as a Reader, by Charles Kent