The Sun.
London, England, 1864-12-07 00:00:00

Charles Dickens's New Serial Story.

Our Mutual _Friend. By Charles Dickens. No. 8.
Chapman and Hall.
Number Eight of " Our Mutual Friend" contains
within it much that shows Mr. Dickens still to be
in the plenitude of his power as Chief among the
Great Master Humorists of English Literature.
It is the author of Pickwick and Martin Chuzzlewit,
of the Old Curiosity Shop and Oliver Twist, of
David Copperfield and Great Expectations, who
here talks tons. It is the creator of Little Nell and
Paul Dombey, of Young Pip and Tiny Tim, who
has here written for us in this December
number of his new serial story, that exquisite
Ninth Chapter of the Second Book of " Our
Mutual Friend." In which " the orphan makes his
will." Therein, that is within the compass of that
one brief chapter, our author wields, yet once more,
by the right divine of genius, a complete mastery
over many of our nobler emotions. We read what
he has there written through a mist of tears. The
words in which his thoughts are articulated are of
the simplest. There is about them not one particle
of affectation. The tender sensibility of which they
are expressive comes to us as it were spontaneously,
and, in one sense, it might almost be said, quite
unpremeditatedly, It is the very opposite or anti-
thesis of what we, for our own part, hold in espe-
cial abhorrence, to wit, mere idle sentimentality.
The pathetic beauty of the incident described
in this ninth chapter is of the sweetest and
of the gentlest well imaginable, and yet, in every
syllable of it, it is also of the very manliest. It
is related of Fra Angelico—and hence, indeed, the
lovely reputation he has left in the History of Art
—that especial graces both of shape and of colour
seemed to fall upon his canvas whenever his pencil
undertook to pourtray the angelic forms and fea-
tures with which his fame, frith which his very
name, has come to be identified. In the same way
and with equal truth, it might be said that Mr
Dickens is at his best whenever his hand touches
lovingly upon that darling theme for him—the
delineation of those whom he himself has
somewhere exquisitely spoken of as—" angels of
little children." Of the depth of tenderness with
which his manly hand can portray them, these
latest records of the foreshortened life of the Orphan,
of " Our Johnny," as here given in this eighth in.,
stalment of " Oar Mutual Friend," of themselves
afford the very amplest amplest attestation. They
would of themselves make good all we have but
just now said about Mr Dickens's rare and incom-
municable gifts as a delineator of little chil-
dren, even if we had no remembrance whatever
of his own already thickly peopled little world
of little children, such, for example, as those
world-famous little children whose names we
have already enumerated. . . . Chapter Seven
is one in which " A Friendly Move is Originated"
between that disgracefully selfish old humbug,
(" with a wooden leg,") once upon a time Apple-stall
keeper, now custodian of Boffin's Bower, and that
melancholy articulator of his dear brcthers and
sisters departed, Mr Venus, other wise describable,
let us say, as the Skeleton-maker Crossed in Love.
This amiable pair, Mr Venus and Mr Wegg, lay
their heads together with a view to the discovering,
if possible, under the dust heaps, of something to
the disadvantage of the unsuspecting Golden Dust.
man, Noddy Boffin. One delightful gleam of
humour shines out, every now and then, through
the haze of this wretched little conspiracy—namely,
upon each occcasion when that ungrateful old rascal
Silas Wegg plumes himself upon his magnanimous
relinquishment (in the interests of his new em•
ployer) of " those great creatures (whose very
names were of his, that is, of Wegg's, own invention)
Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and
Uncle Parker !" Chapter Eight recounts how a
certain "Innocent Elepement:Occurs"—Miss Pella
Wilfer (previously armed, to that very end, we
may presume, with a fifty pound note, the gift of
dear old Nicodemus Boffin, Esquire, of the Bower
and the Grand Corner House)—Miss Bella, we say,
running off with " Pa" (It. W., otherwise Rumty),
after that same poor shabby Pa has been transformed
in his attire from head to foot, including patent
leather boots ! Runs off with him to a fashionable
hotel down the river at Greenwich—to the end
simply of giving poor shabby Pa (shabby now no
longer), at last, in his whole dull life, one
single day's treat. The which incident of
the Innocent Elopement is described thoughout
with infinite prettiness. • Afterwards it is that we
come to that ninth chapter, " In which the Orphan
makes his which Oar Johnny sickens,
droops, and dies. Before the number ends Mr.
Sloppy may bo said to have been formally installed
as poor dead J ohnny's successor, And well does Mr.
Sloppy—we cannot but think this, and say it—dee
serve this promotion. That " poor ungainly piece of
honesty"—Sloppy to wit—fairly winning his way to
our sympathies in despite of all his abundant little
extravagances of grotesqueness. Immense fun is
made of his persistent revelation in various parts
of his form of many " surprising, confounding,
and incomprehensible buttons." Even when he has
enjoyed "a complete realisation of that fairy vision
—meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding," we learn that
those unconcealable buttons of hie " became more
importunate of public notice than before, with the
exception of two or three about the region of the
waistband,
which
, modestly Withdrew into a creasy
retirement.
Nay, even when—after the demise of
poor little Johnny—we learn that the consideration
of Mrs Boffin has clothed Mr Sloppy in a suit of
black, on which the tailor had received personal
directions to expend the utmost cunning of his art,
withav
and iew(ifpossible) to the concealing of the
cohering sustaining buttons—how is the event
reported to us, namely as to the result of this wild
sartorial effort at improvement ? 'Why, by our being
informed that —" so much more powerful were
the frailties of Sloppy's form than the strongest
resources of tailoring science" that he stood
forth (in his new suit of black) " a perfect Argus
in the way of buttons—shining and winking and
gleaming and twinkling out of a hundred of those
eyes of bright metal at the dazzled spectators."
but-
tons and his fairy visions of " four of 'em," mean-
Yet, if Sloppy, with his ungainliness and his
ing meat, beer, vegetables, and pudding, wins our
laughter, as he does full freely, it is a laughter
that comes to us through our tears—tears for
the poor little baby orphan, Our Johnny. A
glimmering of his sad case we have—when,
after Sloppy's description of the strange ree
semblance discernible betwen the rumbling rattle
of the mangle and Our Johnny's breathing—the
narrator expends first of all with his description
into a stare and a vacant grin, but afterwards, being
silent, contracts into a half-repressed gush of
tears—" under pretence of bring heated, drawing
the under part of his sleeve across his eyes with a
singularly awkward, laborious, and roundabout
smear !" More painfully still do we come to realise
the condition of Our Johnny when, upon entering
the poor cottage at Brentford, with the rest of them,
we hear old Betty Higden, in answer to Mrs.
Boffin's inquiring " How's my boy answering,
" He's bad ! He's bad l'' Fainter groW our
hopes, darker and darker grow our fears,
for poor Johnny, when—after opening his
heavy eyes, and slowly breaking into a smile on
beholding that splendid phenomenon, the noble
charger from the toy.shop—nay after he has con-
trived (by means of its being placed on a chair within
his reach) to hold it by the mane and there contem-
plate it—we read--" Which he soon forgot to do!"
When at last, however, upon his removal to the
Children's Hospital, we overhear the kind doctor
whispering aside to Rokesmith—" This should have
been done days ego. Too late !"—we know the worst
—we realise then to the full the approach of the ine-
vitable parting. Nothing could very well be more
beautiful in its way than the description—so simple,
SO truthful, so touching—here pennee. by Mreackens
of the incidents occurring in (nay, of the mere general
aspect of) that gently tended dormitory in the Hos-
pital for Sick Ceildren. Passing through it with
him in the dead of the night, in company with
Rokesmith end the Doctor—while most of the little
patients are lying there asleep—we read, how, there
upon the little platforms raised above each tiny
couch—" Over most of the beds, the toys
were yet grouped as the children had
left them when they last hid themselves down,
and, in their innocent groiesquotess and town.