Dickens' career as a reader reading for money commenced on the 29th of
April, 1858, while the trouble about his wife was at the thickest;
and, after reading in London on sixteen nights, he made a reading tour
in the provinces, and in Scotland and Ireland. In the following year
he read likewise. But meanwhile, which is more important to us than
his readings, he was writing another book. On the 30th of April, 1859,
in the first number of _All the Year Round_,[26] was begun "The Tale
of Two Cities," a simultaneous publication in monthly parts being also
commenced.
"The Tale of Two Cities" is a tale of the great French Revolution of
1793, and the two cities in question are London and Paris,--London as
it lay comparatively at peace in the days when George III. was king,
and Paris running blood and writhing in the fierce fire of anarchy and
mob rule. A powerful book, unquestionably. No doubt there is in its
heat and glare a reflection from Carlyle's "French Revolution," a book
for which Dickens had the greatest admiration. But that need not be
regarded as a demerit. Dickens is no pale copyist, and adds fervour
to what he borrows. His pictures of Paris in revolution are as fine as
the London scenes in "Barnaby Rudge;" and the interweaving of the
story with public events is even better managed in the later book than
in the earlier story of the Gordon riots. And the story, what does it
tell? It tells of a certain Dr. Manette, who, after long years of
imprisonment in the Bastille, is restored to his daughter in London;
and of a young French noble, who has assumed the name of Darnay, and
left France in horror of the doings of his order, and who marries Dr.
Manette's daughter; and of a young English barrister, able enough in
his profession, but careless of personal success, and much addicted to
port wine, and bearing a striking personal resemblance to the young
French noble. These persons, and others, being drawn to Paris by
various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a
_ci-devant_ noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great
pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That
is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is
in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion
of the world's history such a thorough piece of melodrama as the
French Revolution.
With "The Tale of Two Cities" Hablôt K. Browne's connection with
Dickens, as the illustrator of his books, came to an end. The
"Sketches" had been illustrated by Cruikshank, who was the great
popular illustrator of the time, and it is amusing to read, in the
preface to the first edition of the first series, published in 1836,
how the trembling young author placed himself, as it were, under the
protection of the "well-known individual who had frequently
contributed to the success of similar undertakings." Cruikshank also
illustrated "Oliver Twist;" and indeed, with an arrogance which
unfortunately is not incompatible with genius, afterwards set up a
rather preposterous claim to have been the real originator of that
book, declaring that he had worked out the story in a series of
etchings, and that Dickens had illustrated _him_, and not he
Dickens.[27] But apart from the drawings for the "Sketches" and
"Oliver Twist," and the first few drawings by Seymour, and two
drawings by Buss,[28] in "Pickwick," and some drawings by Cattermole
in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, and by Samuel Palmer in the "Pictures
from Italy," and by various hands in the Christmas stories--apart from
these, Browne, or "Phiz," had executed the illustrations to Dickens'
novels. Nor, with all my admiration for certain excellent qualities
which his work undeniably possessed, do I think that this was
altogether a good thing. Such, I know, is not a popular opinion. But I
confess I am unable to agree with those critics who, from their
remarks on the recent jubilee edition of "Pickwick," seem to think his
illustrations so pre-eminently fine that they should be permanently
associated with Dickens' stories. The editor of that edition was, in
my view, quite right in treating Browne's illustrations as practically
obsolete. The value of Dickens' works is perennial, and Browne's
illustrations represent the art fashion of a time only. So, too, I am
unable to see any great cause to regret that Cruikshank's artistic
connection with Dickens came to an end so soon.[29] For both Browne
and Cruikshank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and caricaturists of
an old school. The latter had no idea of beauty. His art, very great
art in its way, was that of grotesqueness and exaggeration. He never
drew a lady or gentleman in his life. And though Browne, in my view
much the lesser artist, was superior in these respects to Cruikshank,
yet he too drew the most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, and Joey
B.'s, and a whole host of characters quite unreal and absurd. The
mischief of it is, too, that Dickens' humour will not bear
caricaturing. The defect of his own art as a writer is that it verges
itself too often on caricature. Exaggeration is its bane. When, for
instance, he makes the rich alderman in "The Chimes" eat up poor
Trotty Veck's little last tit-bit of tripe, we are clearly in the
region of broad farce. When Mr. Pancks, in "Little Dorrit," so far
abandons the ordinary ways of mature rent collectors as to ask a
respectable old accountant to "give him a back," in the Marshalsea
court, and leaps over his head, we are obviously in a world of
pantomime. Dickens' comic effects are generally quite forced enough,
and should never be further forced when translated into the sister art
of drawing. Rather, if anything, should they be attenuated. But
unfortunately exaggeration happened to be inherent in the
draftsmanship of both Cruikshank and Browne. And, having said this, I
may as well finish with the subject of the illustrations to Dickens'
books. "Our Mutual Friend" was illustrated by Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A.,
then a rising young artist, and the son of Dickens' old friend, Frank
Stone. Here the designs fall into the opposite defect. They are, some
of them, pretty enough, but they want character. Mr. Fildes' pictures
for "Edwin Drood" are a decided improvement. As to the illustrations
for the later _Household Edition_, they are very inferior. The designs
for a great many are clearly bad, and the mechanical execution almost
uniformly so. Even Mr. Barnard's skill has had no fair chance against
poor woodcutting, careless engraving, and inferior paper. And this is
the more to be regretted, in that Mr. Barnard, by natural affinity of
talent, has, to my thinking, done some of the best art work that has
been done at all in connection with Dickens. His _Character Sketches_,
especially the lithographed series, are admirable. The Jingle is a
masterpiece; but all are good, and he even succeeds in making
something pictorially acceptable of Little Nell and Little Dorrit.
Just a year, almost to a day, elapsed between the conclusion of "The
Tale of Two Cities," and the commencement of "Great Expectations." The
last chapter of the former appeared in the number of _All the Year
Round_ for the 26th of November, 1859, and the first chapter of the
latter in the number of the same periodical for the 1st of December,
1860. Poor Pip--for such is the name of the hero of the book--poor
Pip, I think he is to be pitied. Certainly he lays himself open to the
charge of snobbishness, and is unduly ashamed of his connections. But
then circumstances were decidedly against him. Through some occult
means he is removed from his natural sphere, from the care of his
"rampageous" sister and of her husband, the good, kind, honest Joe,
and taken up to London, and brought up as a gentleman, and started in
chambers in Barnard's Inn. All this is done through the
instrumentality of Mr. Jaggers, a barrister in highest repute among
the criminal brotherhood. But Pip not unnaturally thinks that his
unknown benefactress is a certain Miss Havisham, who, having been
bitterly wronged in her love affairs, lives in eccentric fashion near
his native place, amid the mouldering mementoes of her wedding day.
What is his horror when he finds that his education, comfort, and
prospects have no more reputable foundation than the bounty of a
murderous criminal called Magwitch, who has showered all these
benefits upon him from the antipodes, in return for the gift of food
and a file when he, Magwitch, was trying to escape from the hulks, and
Pip was a little lad. Magwitch, the transported convict, comes back to
England, at the peril of his life, to make himself known to Pip, and
to have the pleasure of looking at that young gentleman. He is again
tracked by the police, and caught, notwithstanding Pip's efforts to
get him off, and dies in prison. Pip ultimately, very ultimately,
marries a young lady oddly brought up by the queer Miss Havisham, and
who turns out to be Magwitch's daughter.
Such, as I have had occasion to say before in speaking of similar
analyses, such are the dry bones of the story. Pip's character is well
drawn. So is that of Joe. And Mr. Jaggers, the criminal's friend, and
his clerk, Wemmick, are striking and full of a grim humour. Miss
Havisham and her _protégée_, Estella, whom she educates to be the
scourge of men, belong to what may be called the melodramatic side of
Dickens' art. They take their place with Mrs. Dombey and with Miss
Dartle in "David Copperfield," and Miss Wade in "Little
Dorrit"--female characters of a fantastic and haughty type, and quite
devoid, Miss Dartle and Miss Wade especially, of either verisimilitude
or the milk of human kindness.
"Great Expectations" was completed in August, 1861, and the first
number of "Our Mutual Friend" appeared in May, 1864. This was an
unusual interval, but the great writer's faculty of invention was
beginning to lose its fresh spring and spontaneity. And besides he had
not been idle. Though writing no novel, he had been busy enough with
readings, and his work on _All the Year Round_. He had also written a
short, but very graceful paper[30] on Thackeray, whose death, on the
Christmas Eve of 1863, had greatly affected him. Now, however, he
again braced himself for one of his greater efforts.
Scarcely, I think, as all will agree, with the old success. In "Our
Mutual Friend" he is not at his best. It is a strange complicated
story that seems to have some difficulty in unravelling itself: the
story of a man who pretends to be dead in order that he may, under a
changed name, investigate the character and eligibility of the young
woman whom an erratic father has destined to be his bride. A
golden-hearted old dust contractor, who hides a will that will give
him all that erratic father's property, and disinherit the man
aforesaid, and who, to crown his virtues, pretends to be a miser in
order to teach the young woman, also aforesaid, how bad it is to be
mercenary, and to induce her to marry the unrecognized and seemingly
penniless son; their marriage accordingly, with ultimate result that
the bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but the original heir,
who, of course, is not dead, and is the inheritor of thousands;
subsidiary groups of characters, of course, one which I think rather
uninteresting, of some brand-new people called the Veneerings and
their acquaintances, for they have no friends; and some fine sketches
of the river-side population; striking and amusing characters
too--Silas Wegg, the scoundrelly vendor of songs, who ferrets among
the dust for wills in order to confound the good dustman, his
benefactor; and the little deformed dolls' dressmaker, with her sot of
a father; and Betty Higden, the sturdy old woman who has determined
neither in life nor death to suffer the pollution of the workhouse;
such, with more added, are the ingredients of the story.
One episode, however, deserves longer comment. It is briefly this:
Eugene Wrayburn is a young barrister of good family and education, and
of excellent abilities and address, all gifts that he has turned to no
creditable purpose whatever. He falls in with a girl, Lizzie Hexham,
of more than humble rank, but of great beauty and good character. She
interests him, and in mere wanton carelessness, for he certainly has
no idea of offering marriage, he gains her affection, neither meaning,
in any definite way, to do anything good nor anything bad with it.
There is another man who loves Lizzie, a schoolmaster, who, in his
dull, plodding way, has made the best of his intellect, and risen in
life. He naturally, and we may say properly, for no good can come of
them, resents Wrayburn's attentions, as does the girl's brother.
Wrayburn uses the superior advantages of his position to insult them
in the most offensive and brutal manner, and to torture the
schoolmaster, just as he has used those advantages to win the girl's
heart. Whereupon, after being goaded to heart's desire for a
considerable time, the schoolmaster as nearly as possible beats out
Wrayburn's life, and commits suicide. Wrayburn is rescued by Lizzie as
he lies by the river bank sweltering in blood, and tended by her, and
they are married and live happy ever afterwards.
Now the amazing part of this story is, that Dickens' sympathies
throughout are with Wrayburn. How this comes to be so I confess I do
not know. To me Wrayburn's conduct appears to be heartless, cruel,
unmanly, and the use of his superior social position against the
schoolmaster to be like a foul blow, and quite unworthy of a
gentleman. Schoolmasters ought not to beat people about the head,
decidedly. But if Wrayburn's thoughts took a right course during
convalescence, I think he may have reflected that he deserved his
beating, and also that the woman whose affection he had won was a
great deal too good for him.
Dickens' misplaced sympathy in this particular story has, I repeat,
always struck me with amazement. Usually his sympathies are so
entirely right. Nothing is more common than to hear the accusation of
vulgarity made against his books. A certain class of people seem to
think, most mistakenly, that because he so often wrote about vulgar
people, uneducated people, people in the lower ranks of society,
therefore his writing was vulgar, nay more, he himself vulgar too.
Such an opinion can only be based on a strange confusion between
subject and treatment. There is scarcely any subject not tainted by
impurity, that cannot be treated with entire refinement. Washington
Irving wrote to Dickens, most justly, of "that exquisite tact that
enabled him to carry his reader through the veriest dens of vice and
villainy without a breath to shock the ear or a stain to sully the
robe of the most shrinking delicacy;" and added: "It is a rare gift to
be able to paint low life without being low, and to be comic without
the least taint of vulgarity." This is well said; and if we look for
the main secret of the inherent refinement of Dickens' books, we shall
find it, I think, in this: that he never intentionally paltered with
right and wrong. He would make allowance for evil, would take pleasure
in showing that there were streaks of lingering good in its blackness,
would treat it kindly, gently, humanly. But it always stood for evil,
and nothing else. He made no attempt by cunning jugglery to change its
seeming. He had no sneaking affection for it. And therefore, I say
again, his attachment to Eugene Wrayburn has always struck me with
surprise. As regards Dickens' own refinement, I cannot perhaps do
better than quote the words of Sir Arthur Helps, an excellent judge.
"He was very refined in his conversation--at least, what I call
refined--for he was one of those persons in whose society one is
comfortable from the certainty that they will never say anything which
can shock other people, or hurt their feelings, be they ever so
fastidious or sensitive."
FOOTNOTES:
[26] His foolish quarrel with Bradbury and Evans had necessitated the
abandonment of _Household Words_.
[27] See his pamphlet, "The Artist and the Author." The matter is
fully discussed in his life by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold.
[28] Buss's illustrations were executed under great disadvantages, and
are bad. Those of Seymour are excellent.
[29] I am always sorry, however, that Cruikshank did not illustrate
the Christmas stories.
[30] See _Cornhill Magazine_ for February, 1864.