# The Good Enchantment of Charles Dickens

Extracted from Scribner's magazine, v51 1912, pp. 656–665. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted.
THE GOOD ENCHANTMENT OF CHARLES DICKENS
By Henry van Dyke
I
THERE are four kinds of novels.
First, those that are easy to read and hard to remember: the well-told tales of no consequence, the cream-puffs of perishable fiction.
Second, those that are hard to read and hard to remember: the purpose-novels which are tedious sermons in disguise, and the love-tales in which there is no one with whom it is possible to fall in love.
Third, those that are hard to read and easy to remember: the books with a crust of perverse style or faulty construction through which the reader must break in order to get at the rich and vital meaning.
Fourth, those that are easy to read and easy to remember: the novels in which stories worth telling are well-told, and characters worth observing are vividly painted, and life is interpreted to the imagination in enduring forms of literary art. These are the best-sellers which do not go out of print—everybody's books.
In this fourth class healthy-minded people and unprejudiced critics put the novels of Charles Dickens. For millions of readers they have fulfilled what Dr. Johnson called the purpose of good books, to teach us to enjoy life or help us to endure it. They have awakened multitudinous laughter and drawn forth innumerable sympathetic tears. They have enlarged and enriched existence by revealing the hidden veins of humor and pathos beneath the surface of the every-day world, and by giving "the freedom of the city" to those poor prisoners who had thought of it only as the dwelling-place of so many hundred thousand inhabitants and no real persons.
What a city it was that Dickens opened to us! London, of course, in outward form and semblance,—the London of the early Victorian epoch, with its reeking Seven Dials close to its perfumed Picadilly, with its grimy river-front and its musty Inns of Court and its mildly rural suburbs, with its rollicking taverns and its deadly solemn residential squares and its gloomy debtors' prisons and its gaily unsanitary markets, with all its consecrated conventions and unsuspected hilarities,—vast, portentous, formal, merry, childish, inexplicable, a wilderness of human homes and haunts ever thrilling with sincerest passion, mirth, and pain,—London it was, as the eye saw it in those days, and as the curious traveller may still retrace some of its vanishing landmarks and fading features.
But it was more than London after Dickens touched it. It was an enchanted city, where the streets seemed to murmur of joy or fear, where the dark faces of the dens of crime scowled or leered at you, and the decrepit houses doddered in senility, and the new mansions stared you down with stolid pride. Everything spoke or made a sign to you. From red-curtained windows jollity beckoned. From prison-doors lean hands stretched toward you. Under bridges and among slimy piers the river gurgled and chuckled and muttered unholy secrets. Across trim front-yards little cottages smiled and almost nodded their good-will. There were no dead spots. No deaf and dumb regions. All was alive and significant. Even the real estate became personal. One felt that it needed but a word, a wave of the wand, to bring the buildings leaping, roistering, creeping, tottering, stalking from their places.
It was an enchanted city, and the folk who filled it and almost, but never quite, crowded it to suffocation, were so intensely and supernaturally human, so blackly bad, so brightly good, so touchingly pathetic, so supremely funny, that they also were creatures of enchantment and seemed to come from fairyland.
For what is fairyland, after all? It is not an invisible region, an impossible place. It is only the realm of the hitherto unobserved, the not yet realized, where the things we have seen but never noticed, and the persons we have met but never known, are suddenly "translated," like Bottom the Weaver, and sent forth upon strange adventures.
That is what happens to the Dickens people. Good or bad they surpass themselves when they get into his books. That rotund Brownie, Mr. Pickwick, with his amazing troupe; that gentle compound of Hop-o'-my-Thumb and a Babe in the Wood, Oliver Twist, surrounded by wicked uncles, and hungry ogres, and good fairies in bottle-green coats; that tender and lovely Red Riding-Hood, Little Nell; that impetuous Hans-in-Luck, Nicholas Nickleby; that intimate Cinderella, Little Dorrit; that simple-minded Aladdin, Pip; all these, and a thousand more like them, go rambling through Dickensopolis and behaving naturally in a most extraordinary manner.
Things that have seldom or never happened, occur inevitably. The preposterous becomes the necessary, the wildly improbable is the one thing that must come to pass. Mr. Dombey is converted, Mr. Krook is removed by spontaneous combustion, Mr. Micawber performs amazing feats as an amateur detective, Sam Weller gets married, the immortally absurd epitaphs of Young John Chivery and Mrs. Sapsea are engraved upon monuments more lasting than brass.
The fact is, Dickens himself was bewitched by the spell of his own imagination. His people carried him away, did what they liked with him. He wrote of Little Nell: "You can't imagine how exhausted I am to-day with yesterday's labors. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I don't know what to do with myself.… I think the close of the story will be great." Again he says: "As to the way in which these characters have opened out [in Martin Chuzzlewit], that is to me one of the most surprising processes of the mind in this sort of invention. Given what one knows, what one does not know springs up; and I am as absolutely certain of its being true, as I am of the law of gravitation—if such a thing is possible, more so."
Precisely such a thing (as Dickens very well understood) is not only possible, but unavoidable. For what certainty have we of the law of gravitation? Only by hearsay, by the submissive reception of a process of reasoning conducted for us by Sir Isaac Newton and other vaguely conceived men of science. The fall of an apple is an intense reality (especially if it falls upon your head), but the law which regulates its speed is for you an intellectual abstraction as remote as the idea of a "combination in restraint of trade," or the definition of "art for art's sake." Whereas the irrepressible vivacity of Sam Weller, and the unctuous hypocrisy of Pecksniff, and the moist humility of Uriah Heep, and the sublime conviviality of Dick Swiveller, and the triumphant make-believe of the Marchioness are facts of experience. They have touched you, and you cannot doubt them. The question whether they are actual or imaginary is purely academic.
Another fairyland feature of Dickens's world is the way in which minor personages of the drama suddenly take the centre of the stage and hold the attention of the audience. It is always so in the region
"Of forests and enchantments drear
Where more is meant than meets the ear."
In "The Tempest," what are Prospero and Miranda, compared with Caliban and Ariel? In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," who thinks as much of Oberon and Titania, as of Puck, and Bottom the Weaver? Even in an historic drama like Henry IV, we feel that Falstaff is the most historical character.
Dickens's first lady and first gentleman are often less memorable than his active supernumeraries. A hobgoblin like Quilp, a good old nurse like Peggotty, a bad old nurse like Sairey Gamp, a volatile elf like Miss Mowcher, a shrewd elf and a blunder-headed elf like Susan Nipper and Mr. Toots, a good-natured disreputable sprite like Charley Bates, a malicious gnome like Noah Claypole, a wicked ogre like Wackford Squeers, a pair of fairy godmothers like the Cheeryble Brothers, a dandy ouphe like Mr. Mantalini, and a mischievous, wooden-legged kobold like Silas Wegg, take stronger hold upon us than the Harry Maylies and Rose Flemings, the John Harmons and Bella Wilfers, for whose ultimate matrimonial felicity the business of the plot is conducted. Even the more notable heroes often pale a little by comparison with their attendants. Who remembers Martin Chuzzlewit as clearly as his servant Mark Tapley? Is Pip, with his Great Expectations, half as delightful as his clumsy dry-nurse Joe Gargery? Has even the great Pickwick a charm to compare with the unique, immortal Sam Weller?
Do not imagine that Dickens was unconscious of this disarrangement of rôles, or that it was an evidence of failure on his part. He knew perfectly well what he was doing. Great authors always do. They cannot help it, and they do not care. Homer makes Agamemnon and Priam the kings of his tale, and Paris the first walking gentleman and Helen the leading lady. But Achilles and Ajax and Hector are the bully boys, and Ulysses is the wise joker, and Thersites the tragic clown. As for Helen,—
"The face that launched a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium"—
her reputed pulchritude means less to us than the splendid womanhood of Andromache, or the wit and worth of the adorable matron Penelope.
Now this unconventionality of art, which disregards ranks and titles, even those of its own making, and finds the beautiful and the absurd, the grotesque and the picturesque, the noble and the base, not according to the programme but according to the fact, is precisely the essence of good enchantment.
Good enchantment goes about discovering the ass in the lion's skin and the wolf in sheep's clothing, the princess in the goose-girl and the wise man under the fool's cap, the pretender in the purple and the rightful heir in rags, the devil in the belfry and the Redeemer among the publicans and sinners. It is the spirit of revelation, the spirit of divine sympathy and laughter, the spirit of admiration, hope, and love—or better still, it is simply the spirit of life.
When I call this the essence of good enchantment I do not mean that it is unreal. I mean only that it is unrealistic, unsystematic, which is just the opposite of unreal. It is not in bondage to the beggarly elements of form and ceremony. It is not captive to names and appearances, though it revels in their delightful absurdity. It knows that an idol is nothing, and finds all the more fun in its pompous pretence of being something. It can afford to be merry because it is in earnest; it is happy because it has not forgotten how to weep; it is content because it is still unsatisfied; it is humble in the sense of unfathomed faults and exalted in the consciousness of inexhaustible power; it calls nothing common or unclean, and it values life for its mystery, its surprisingness, and its divine reversals of human prejudice,—just like Beauty and the Beast and the story of the Ugly Duckling.
This, I say, is the essence of good enchantment; and it is also the essence of true religion. For God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the mighty, and base things of the world and things which are despised, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things which are.
This is also the essence of real democracy, which is not a theory of government but a state of mind.
No one has ever expressed it better than Charles Dickens did in a speech which he made at Hartford, Connecticut, seventy years ago. "I have faith," said he, "and I wish to diffuse faith in the existence—yes, of beautiful things, even in those conditions of society which are so degenerate, so degraded and forlorn, that at first sight it would seem as though it could only be described by a strange and terrible reversal of the words of Scripture—God said let there be light, and there was none. I take it that we are born, and that we hold our sympathies, hopes, and energies in trust for the Many and not the Few. That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and contempt, before our own view and that of others, all meanness, falsehood, cruelty, and oppression of every grade and kind. Above all, that nothing is high because it is in a high place; and that nothing is low because it is in a low place. This is the lesson taught us in the great book of Nature. This is the lesson which may be read alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground."
This was the creed of Dickens; and like every man's creed, conscious or unconscious, confessed or concealed, it made him what he was.
It has been said that he had no deep philosophy, no calmly reasoned and clearly stated theory of the universe. Perhaps that is true. Yet I believe he hardly missed it. He was too much interested in living to be anxious about a complete theory of life. Perhaps it would have helped him when trouble came, when domestic infelicity broke up his home, if he could have climbed into some philosopher's ivory tower. Perhaps not. I have observed that even the most learned and philosophic mortals, under these afflictions, sometimes fail to appreciate the consolations of philosophy to any noticeable extent. From their ivory towers they cry aloud, being in pain, even as other men.
But it was certainly not true (even though his biographer wrote it, and it has been quoted a thousand times), that just because Dickens cried aloud, "there was for him no 'city of the mind' against outward ills, for inner consolation and shelter." He was not cast out and left comfortless. Faith, hope, and charity—these three abode with him. His human sympathy, his indomitable imagination, his immense and varied interest in the strange adventures of men and women, his unfaltering intuition of the truer light of God that burns
"In this vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whatever else,"—
these were the celestial powers and bright serviceable angels that built and guarded for him a true "city of refuge," secure, inviolate, ever open to the fugitive in the day of his calamity. Thither he could flee to find safety. There he could ungird his heart and indulge
"Love and the thoughts that breathe for humankind";
there he could laugh and sing and weep with the children, the dream-children, which God had given him; there he could enter into his work-shop and shut the door and lose himself in joyous labor which should make the world richer by the gift of good books. And so he did, even until the end came and the pen fell from his fingers, he sitting safe in his city of refuge, learning and unfolding "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."
O, enchanted city, great asylum in the mind of man, where ideals are embodied, and visions take form and substance to parley with us! Imagination rears thy towers and Fancy populates thy streets, yet art thou a city that hath foundations; a dwelling eternal though unseen. Ever building, changing, never falling, thy walls are open-gated day and night. And the fountain of youth is in thy gardens, the treasure of the humble in thy store-houses. Hope is thy door-keeper, and Faith thy warden, and Love thy Lord. In thee the lost may take shelter and find himself by forgetting himself. In thee rest and refreshment are waiting for the weary, and new courage for the despondent, and new strength for the faint. From thy magic casements we have looked upon unknown horizons, and we return from thy gates to our task, our toil, our pilgrimage, with better and braver hearts, knowing more surely that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear, and that the imperishable jewels of the universe are in the souls of men. O, city of good enchantment, for my brethren and companions' sakes I will now say: Peace be within thee!
II
Of the outward appearance, or, as Sartor Resartus would have called it, the Time-Vesture and Flesh-Garment of that flaming light-particle which was cast hither from Heaven in the person of Charles Dickens, and of his ways and manners while he hasted jubilantly and stormfully across the astonished Earth, something must be said here.
Charles Dickens was born at Portsea, in 1812, an offspring of what the accurate English call the "lower middle class." Inheriting something from a father who was decidedly Micawberish, and a mother who resembled Mrs. Nickleby, Charles was not likely to be a hum-drum child. But the remarkable thing about him was the intense, aspiring, and gaily sensible spirit with which he entered into the business of developing whatever gifts he had received from his vague and amiable parents.
The fat streak of comfort in his childish years, when his proud father used to stand the tiny lad on a table to sing comic songs for an applauding audience of relatives, could not spoil him. The lean streak of misery when the improvident family sprawled in poverty, with its head in a debtors' prison, while the bright, delicate, hungry boy roamed the streets, or drudged in a dirty blacking-factory, could not starve him. The two dry years of school at Wellington House Academy could not fossilize him. The years from fifteen to nineteen, when he was earning his bread as office-boy, lawyer's clerk, short-hand reporter, could not commercialize him. Through it all he burned his way painfully and joyously.
He was not to be detailed as a perpetual comic songster in upholstered parlors; nor as a prosperous frock-coated citizen with fatty degeneration of the mind; nor as a newspaper politician, a power beneath the footstool. None of these alluring prospects delayed him. He passed them by, observing everything as he went, now hurrying, now sauntering, for all the world like a boy who has been sent somewhere. Where it was, he found out in his twenty-fifth year, when the extraordinary results of his self-education bloomed in the "Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist."
Never was a good thing coming out of Nazareth more promptly welcomed. The simple-minded critics of that day had not yet discovered the damning nature of popularity, and they hailed the new genius in spite of the fact that hundreds of thousands of people were reading his books. His success was exhilarating, overwhelming, and at times intoxicating.
"It was roses, roses all the way."—
Some of them had thorns, which hurt his thin skin horribly, but they never made him despair or doubt the goodness of the universe. Being vexed, he let it off in anger instead of distilling it into pessimism to poison himself. Life was too everlastingly interesting for him to be long unhappy. A draught of his own triumph would restore him, a slice of his own work would reinvigorate him, and he would go on with his industrious dreaming.
No one enjoyed the reading of his books more than he the making of them, though he sometimes suffered keenly in the process. That was a proof of his faith that happiness does not consist in the absence of suffering, but in the presence of joy. Dulness, insincerity, stupid humbug—voilà l'ennemi! So he lived and wrote with a high hand and an outstretched arm. He made men see what he saw, and hate what he hated, and love what he loved. This was his great reward,—more than money, fame, or hosts of friends,—that he saw the children of his brain enter into the common life of the world.
But he was not exempt from the ordinary laws of nature. The conditions of his youth left their marks for good and evil on his maturity. The petting of his babyhood gave him the habit of showing off. We often see him as a grown man, standing on the table and reciting his little piece, or singing his little song, to please an admiring audience. He delighted in playing to the galleries.
His early experience of poverty made him at once tremendously sympathetic and invincibly optimistic—both of which virtues belong to the poor more than to the rich. Dickens understood this and never forgot it. The chief moralities of his poor people are mutual helpfulness and unquenchable hopefulness. From them, also, he caught the tone of material comfort which characterizes his visions of the reward of virtue. Having known cold and hunger, he simply could not resist the desire to make his favorite characters—if they stayed on earth till the end of the book—warm and "comfy," and to give them plenty to eat and drink. This may not have been artistic, but it was intensely human.
The same personal quality may be noted in his ardor as a reformer. No writer of fiction has ever done more to better the world than Charles Dickens. But he did not do it by setting forth programmes of legislation and theories of government. As a matter of fact, he professed an amusing "contempt for the House of Commons," having been a Parliamentary reporter; and of Sir w:Robert Peel, who emancipated the Catholics, enfranchised the Jews, and repealed the Corn Laws, he thought so little that he caricatured him as Mr. Pecksniff.
Dickens felt the evils of the social order at the precise point where the shoe pinched; he did not go back to the place where the leather was tanned or the last designed. It was some practical abuse in poor-houses or police-courts or prisons; it was some hidden shame in the conduct of schools, or the renting of tenements; it was some monumental absurdity in the Circumlocution Office, some pompous and cruel delay in the course of justice, that made him hot with indignation. These were the things that he assailed with Rabelaisian laughter, or over which he wept with a deeper and more sincere pity than that of "Tristram Shandy." His idea was that if he could get people to see that a thing was both ridiculous and cruel, they would want to stop it. What would come after that, he did not clearly know, nor had he any particularly valuable suggestions to make, except the general proposition that men should do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.
He took no stock in the doleful predictions of the politicians that England was in an awful state merely because Lord Coodle was going out of office, and Sir Thomas Doodle would not come in, and each of these was the only man to save the country. The trouble seemed to him deeper and more real. It was a certain fat-witted selfishness, a certain callous, complacent blindness in the people who were likely to read his books. He conceived that his duty as a novelist was done when he had shown up the absurd and hateful things and made people laugh at their ugliness, weep over their inhumanity, and long to sweep them away.
In this attitude I think, Dickens was not only natural, and true to his bringing-up, but also wise as a great artist in literature. For I have observed that brilliant writers, while often profitable as satirists to expose abuses, are seldom judicious as legislators to plan reforms.
Before we leave this subject of the effects of Dickens's early life and sudden popularity, we must consider his alleged lack of refinement. Some say that he was vulgar, others that he was ungrateful and inconsiderate of the feelings of his friends and relations, others that he had little or no taste. I should rather say, in the words of the old epigram, that he had a great deal of taste, and that some of it was very bad.
Take the matter of his caricaturing real people in his books. No one could object to his use of the grotesque insolence of a well-known London magistrate as the foundation of his portrait of Mr. Fang in "Oliver Twist." That was public property. But the amiable eccentricities of his own father and mother, the airy, irresponsible ways of his good friend Leigh Hunt, were private property. Yet even here Dickens could not reasonably be blamed for observing them, for being amused by them, or for letting them enrich his general sense of the immense, incalculable, and fantastic humor of the world. Taste, which is simply another name for the gusto of life, has a comic side; and a man who is keenly sensitive to everything cannot be expected to be blind to the funny things that happen among his family and friends. But when Dickens used these private delights for the public amusement, and in such a form that the partial portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, Mrs. Nickleby, and Harold Skimpole were easily identified, all that we can say is that his taste was still there, but it had gone bad. What could you expect? Where, in his early years, was he likely to have learned the old-fashioned habit of reserve in regard to private affairs, which you may call either a mark of good manners, or a sign of silly pride, according to your own education?
Or take his behavior during his first visit to America in 1842 and immediately after his return to England. His reception was enough to turn anybody's head. "There never was a king or emperor," wrote Dickens to a friend, "so cheered and followed by crowds, and entertained at splendid balls and dinners, and waited upon by public bodies of all kinds." This was at the beginning. At the end he was criticized by all, condemned by many, and abused by some of the newspapers. Why? Chiefly because he used the dinners given in his honor as occasions to convict the Americans of their gross national sin of literary piracy, and because when he got home he wrote a book of "American Notes," containing some very severe strictures upon the country which had just entertained him so magnificently.
Mr. Chesterton defends Dickens for his attack upon the practice of book-stealing which grew out of the absence of an International Copyright Law. He says that it was only the new, raw sensibility of the Americans that was hurt by these speeches. "Dickens was not in the least desirous of being thought too 'high-souled' to want his wages.… He asked for his money in a valiant and ringing voice, like a man asking for his honour." And this, Mr. Chesterton leaves us to infer, is what any bold Englishman, as distinguished from a timidly refined American, would do.
Precisely. But if the bold Englishman had been gently-bred would he have accepted an invitation to dinner in order that he might publicly say to his host, in a valiant ringing voice, "You owe me a thousand pounds"? Such procedure at the dinner-table is contrary not only to good manners but also to good digestion. This is what Mr. Chesterton's bold British constitution apparently prevents him from seeing. What Dickens said about international copyright was right. But he was wretchedly wrong in his choice of the time and place for saying it. The natural irritation which his bad taste produced was one of the causes which delayed for fifty years the success of the efforts of American authors to secure international copyright.
The same criticism applies to the "American Notes." Read them again and you will see that they are not bad notes. With much that he says about Yankee boastfulness and superficiality, and the evils of slavery, and the dangers of yellow journalism, every sane American will agree to-day. But the occasion which Dickens took for making these remarks was not happily chosen. It was as if a man who had just been entertained at your house should write to thank you for the pleasure of the visit, and improve the opportunity to point out the shocking defects of your domestic service and the exceedingly bad tone which pervaded your establishment. Such a "bread-and-butter letter" might be full of good morals, but their effect would be diminished by its bad manners. Of this Dickens was probably quite unconscious. He acted spontaneously, irrepressibly, vivaciously, in accordance with his own taste; and it surprised and irritated him immensely that people were offended by it.
It was precisely so in regard to his personal appearance. When the time suddenly arrived that he could indulge his taste in dress without fear of financial consequences, he did so hilariously and to the fullest extent. Here is a description of him as he appeared to an American girl at an evening party in Cincinnati seventy years ago. "He is young and handsome, has a mellow beautiful eye, fine brow and abundant hair.… His manner is easy and negligent, but not elegant. His dress was foppish.… He had a dark coat with lighter pantaloons; a black waistcoat embroidered with colored flowers; and about his neck, covering his white shirt-front, was a black neck-cloth also embroidered with colors, on which were two large diamond pins connected by a chain; a gold watch-chain and a large red rose in his buttonhole completed his toilet. "
The young lady does not seem to have been delighted with his costume. But Dickens did not dress to please her, he dressed to please himself. His taste was so exuberant that it naturally effervesced in this kind of raiment. There was certainly nothing immoral about it. He had paid for it and he had a right to wear it, for to him it seemed beautiful. He would have been amazed to know that any young lady did not like it; and her opinion would probably have had little effect upon him, for he wrote of the occasion on which this candid girl met him, as follows: "In the evening we went to a party at Judge Walker's and were introduced to at least one hundred and fifty first-rate bores, separately and singly."
But what does it all amount to, this lack of discretion in manners, this want of reserve in speech, this oriental luxuriance in attire? It simply goes to show that Dickens himself was a Dickens character.
He was vivid, florid, inexhaustible, and untamed. There was material in the little man for a hundred of his own immortal caricatures. The self-portrait that he has drawn in "David Copperfield" is too smooth, like a retouched photograph. That is why David is less interesting than half-a-dozen other people in the book. If Dickens could have seen his own humorous aspects in the magic mirror of his fancy, it would have been among the richest of his observations, and if he could have let his enchantment loose upon the subject, not even the figures of Dick Swiveller and Harold Skimpole would have been more memorable than the burlesque of Boz by the hand of C. D.
But the humorous, the extravagant, the wildly picturesque,—would these have given a true and complete portrait of the man? Does it make any great difference what kind of clothes he wore, or how many blunders of taste and tact he made, even tragic blunders like his inability to refrain from telling the world all about his domestic unhappiness,—does all this count for much when we look back upon the wonders which bis imagination wrought in fiction and upon the generous fruits which his heart brought forth in life?
No, it is easy to endure small weaknesses when you can feel beneath them the presence of great and vital power. Faults are forgiven readily in one who has the genius of loving much. Better many blunders than the supreme mistake of a life that is
"Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null."
Charles Dickens never made, nor indeed was tempted to make, that mistake. He carried with him the defects of his qualities, the marks of his early life, the penalties of his bewildering success. But, look you, he carried them—they did not crush him nor turn him from his true course. Forward he marched, cheering and beguiling the way for his comrades with mirthful stories and tales of pity, lightening many a burden and consoling many a dark and lonely hour, until he came at last to the goal of honor and the haven of happy rest. Those who knew him best saw him most clearly as Carlyle did: "The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens,—every inch of him an Honest Man."
III
As an artist in fiction Dickens was great; but not because he had a correct theory of the technique of the novel, nor because he always followed good rules and models in writing, nor because he was one
"Who saw life steadily and saw it whole."
On the contrary, his vision of life, though vivid, was almost always partial. He was capable of doing a great deal of bad work, which he himself liked. The plots of his novels, on which he toiled tremendously, are negligible; indeed it is often difficult to follow and impossible to remember them. The one of his books that is notably fine in structure and approximately faultless in technique—"A Tale of Two Cities"—is so unlike his other novels that it stands in a class by itself, as an example of what he could have done if he had chosen to follow that line. In a way it is his most perfect piece of work. But it is not his most characteristic piece of work, and therefore I think it has less value for us than some of his other books in which his peculiar, distinctive, unrivalled powers are more fully shown.
After all, art must not only interpret the world but also reveal the artist. The lasting interest of his vision, its distinction, its charm, depend, at least in some real degree, upon the personal touch. Being himself a part of the things that are seen, he must "paint the thing as he sees it" if he wishes to win the approval of "the god of things as they are."
Now the artistic value of Dickens's way of seeing things lay in its fitness to the purpose which he had in mind and heart,—a really great purpose, namely, to enhance the interest of life by good enchantment, to save people from the plague of dulness and the curse of indifference by showing them that the world is full of the stuff for hearty laughter and deep sympathy. This way of seeing things, with constant reference to their humorous and sentimental potency, was essential to the genius of Dickens. His method of making other people see it was strongly influenced, if not absolutely determined, by two facts which seemed to lie outside of his career as an author: first, his training as a reporter for the press; second, his favorite avocation as an amateur actor, stage-manager, and dramatic reader.
The style of Dickens at its best is that of an inspired reporter. It is rapid, graphic, pictorial, aiming always at a certain heightening of effect, making the shadows darker and the lights brighter for the purpose of intensifying sensation. He did not get it in the study but in the street. Take his description in "Martin Chuzzlewit" of Todgers's Boarding House with its complicated smells and its mottled shades of dinginess; or take his picture in "Little Dorrit" of Marseilles burning in the August sunlight with its broad, white, universal stare. Here is the art of journalism,—the trick of intensification by omission,—carried to the limit. He aims distinctly at a certain effect, and he makes sure of getting it.
He takes long walks in the heart of London, attends police courts, goes behind the scenes of theatres, rides in omnibuses, visits prisons and work-houses. You think he is seeking realism. Quite wrong. He is seeking a sense of reality which shall make realism look like thirty cents. He is not trying to put up canned goods which shall seem more or less like fresh vegetables. He is trying to extract the essential flavor of places and people so that you can taste it in a drop.
We find in his style an accumulation of details all bearing on a certain point; nothing that serves his purpose is overlooked; everything that is likely to distract the attention or obscure his aim is disregarded. The head-lines are in the text. When the brute, Bill Sykes, says to Nancy: "Get up," you know what is coming. When Mrs. Todgers gives a party to Mr. Pecksniff you know what is coming. But the point is that when it comes, tragedy or comedy, it is as pure and unadulterated as the most brilliant of reporters could make it.
Naturally, Dickens puts more emphasis upon the contrast between his characters than upon the contrast within them. The internal inconsistencies and struggles, the slow processes of growth and change which are the delight of the psychological novelist do not especially interest him. He sees things black or white, not gray. The objects that attract him most, and on which he lavishes his art, do not belong to the average, but to the extraordinary. Dickens is not a commonplace merchant. He is a dealer in oddities and rarities, in fact the keeper of an "Old Curiosity Shop," and he knows how to set forth his goods with incomparable skill.
His drawing of character is sharp rather than deep. He makes the figure stand out, always recognizable, but not always really understood. Many of his people are simply admirable incarnations of their particular trades or professions: Mould the undertaker, old Weller the coachman, Tulkinghorn the lawyer, Elijah Pogram the political demagogue, Blimber the school-master, Stiggins the religious ranter, Betsey Prig the day-nurse, Cap'n Cuttle the retired skipper. They are all as easy to identify as the wooden image in front of a tobacconist's shop. Others are embodiments of a single passion or quality: Pecksniff of unctuous hypocrisy, Micawber of joyous improvidence, Mr. Toots of dumb sentimentalism, Little Dorrit of the motherly instinct in a girl, Joe Gargery of the motherly instinct in a man, Mark Tapley of resolute and strenuous optimism. If these persons do anything out of harmony with their head-lines, Dickens does not tell of it. He does not care for the incongruities, the modifications, the fine shadings which soften and confuse the philosophic and reflective view of life. He wants to write his "story" sharply, picturesquely, with "snap" and plenty of local color; and he does it, in his happiest hours, with all the verve and skill of a star reporter for the Morning Journal of the Enchanted City.
In this graphic and emphatic quality the art of Dickens in fiction resembles the art of Hogarth in painting. But Dickens, like Hogarth, was much more than a reporter. He was a dramatist, and therefore he was also, by necessity, a moralist.
I do not mean that Dickens had a dramatic genius in the Greek sense that he habitually dealt with the eternal conflict between human passion and inscrutable destiny. I mean only this: that his life-long love for the theatre often led him, consciously or unconsciously, to construct the scenario of a story with a view to dramatic effect, and to work up the details of a crisis precisely as if he saw it in his mind's eye on the stage.
Notice how the dramatis personæ are clearly marked as comic, or tragic, or sentimental. The moment they come upon the scene you can tell whether they are meant to appeal to your risibilities or to your sensibilities. You are in no danger of laughing at the heroine, or sympathizing with the funny man, as you are tempted to do in some modern plays. Dickens knows too much to leave his audience in perplexity. He even gives to some of his personages set phrases, like the musical motifs of the various characters in the operas of Wagner, by which you may easily identify them. Mr. Micawber is forever "waiting for something to turn up." Mr. Toots always reminds us that "it's of no consequence." Sairey Gamp never appears without her imaginary friend Mrs. Harris. Mrs. General has "prunes and prism" perpetually on her lips.
Observe, also, how carefully the scene is set, and how wonderfully the preparation is made for a dramatic climax in the story. If it is a comic climax, like the trial of Mr. Pickwick for breach of promise, nothing is forgotten, from the hysterics of the obese Mrs. Bardell to the feigned indignation of Sergeant Buzfuz over the incriminating phrase "chops and tomato sauce!"
If it is a tragic climax, like the death of Bill Sykes, a score of dark premonitions lead up to it, the dingiest slum of London is chosen for it, the rank streets are filled with a furious crowd to witness it, and just as the murderer is about to escape, the ghostly eyes of his victim glare upon his crazed brain, and he plunges, tangled in his rope, to be hanged by the hand of the Eternal Judge as surely as if he stood upon the gallows.
Or suppose the climax is not one of shame and terror, but of pure pity and tenderness, like the death of Little Nell. Then the quiet room is prepared for it, and the white bed is decked with winter berries and green leaves that the child loved because they loved the light, and gentle friends are there to read and talk to her, and she sleeps herself away in loving dreams, and the poor old grandfather, whom she has guided by the hand and comforted, kneels at her bedside, wondering why his dear Nell lies so still, and the very words which tell us of her peace and his grief, move rhythmically and plaintively, like soft music with a dying fall.
Close the book. The curtain descends. The drama is finished. The master has had his way with us; he has made us laugh; he has made us cry. We have been at the play.
But was it not as real to us while it lasted as many of the scenes in which we daily actors take our parts? And did it not mellow our spirits with mirth, and soften our hearts with tears? And now that it is over are we not likely to be a little better, a little kinder, a little happier for what we have laughed at or wept over?
Ah, master of the good enchantment, you have given us hours of ease and joy, and we thank you for them. But there is a greater gift than that. You have made us more willing to go cheerfully and comradely along the strange, crowded, winding way of human life, because you have deepened our faith that there is something of the divine on earth, and something of the human in heaven.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 91 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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