The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-17 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY.

WINDSOR CASTLE, Nov. 16.
The Queen, accompanied by Princess Beatrice,
went out this morning.
The Crown Princess of Prussia (Princess Royal),
and Princess Louise also went out.

CHARLES DICKENS'S READINGS.

-0

Sikes and Natcy—from "Oliver Twist,"
Ou Saturday evening last, at about half-past
eight o'c!ock, there were assembled together in
front of the great platform in St. James's
Piccadilly, as " fit audience but few," somewhere
about fifty of the picked critics, artists, and literary
men of London. They had been bidden, there, 11
a easel of invitation stamped with a fee-simile of
the well-known signature of Charles Dickens,
countersigned by Chappell and Co., and headed
with a witty significance of words, " Private Trial
of the Murder in Oliver Twist." The occasion
was simply this—the tentative or experimental
reading by Mr. Dickens in the presence of those
probably the best qualified that could be found
anywhere to pronounce a dispassionate opinion es
to the suitability of a public presentation by the
great Novelist of one of the most powerfully tragic
incidents ever depicted by him in the whole range
of his voluminous contributions to imaginative lite-
rature. The passages selected to this end from his
celebrated story of " Oliver Twist" were those re-
lating more particularly to the murder of Nancy 14
Bill Sikes : and in the reading (if it must still be
called reading) of these wonderful passages, it must
be said at once that Mr. Charles Dickens has im-
measurably surpassed anything he has ever achieved
before now in this way as the impersonator of his
own marvellous creations. In speaking thus of
his performance on Saturday evening we use
in no respect whatever the language of
exaggeration. It was as splendid a Piece
of tragic acting as any one of that select
audience has had the privilege of witnessing within
the interval of the present generation. Four of the
principal characters of the novel were introduced,
or it should rather be said were severally produced
before us as by an actual embodiment of each.
Occasionally during one of the earlier scenes the
gentle voice of Rose Mayley, it is true, was audible,
while a few earnest words were spoken there else
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 thole
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 his-
tronic powers of their creator, enable 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 seem
not only to be before us in the flesh, but sometinlee
one might almost have said, simultaneously. Eachle
turn as pourtrayed by Mr. Dickens—we don't mean
here simply as pourtrayed by him in the book, but
now by himself, in person—is a masterpiece. LOO
ing at the great author, as he himself embodies hie
creation—Fagin, the Jew, is completely, audibly'
i
visibly, a transformation. His very stature s
changed. Instantaneously—whenever he speaks'
there starts before us—high shouldered, with COe:
tracted chest, with bird-like claws, eagerly antici-
pating by their every movement the passionstt
words struggling for utterance at his lips--the
most villainous old tutor of young thieves, receivet,
of stolen goods, and very devil incarnate, his
tures distorted with rage, his penthouse eyebrolV:
(those wonderful eyebrows !) working like the
antennae of some deadly reptile, his whale
aspect half vulpine, half vulture-like in its hungry
wickedness. Instantaneously, again, whenever 116
speaks, Morris Bolter is there before us just es
visibly and audibly, though all the while, of course'
we are perfectly conscious that we are listening t°
him through the protean vuice, and looking at hies
through the mobile features of the Novelist--see;
ing, however, no longer the Novelist, but th 3
chuckleheaded, long-limbed, clownish, 5055k1
varlet, who is the spy ou Nancy, the tool of Fagin'
and the unconscious evil genius of Sikes, houndil 0
the latter on, as he does, unwittingly, to his Jest
dreadful deed of homicide. As for Mr. Dickens
embodiment of Sikes, the burly ruffian with theO
of iron and voice of stentor, it is only necessarslto
hear that infuriated voice and to watch the sPr;
ling blows dealt by 'his imaginary bludgeon
blo
the perpetration of the crime, to realise tb"6
force, the power, the passion informing, le to
author's mind, at once the original conception of t 0
character, and now, so many years afterwards, 01/
quite as astonishing representation. It is in 0
portrayal of poor Nancy, however, that the gelli
of the author-actor finds the opportunity bei,o,
all others for its most signal manifestation. )110
thing can be more exquisitely pathetic than t
whole of this most affecting delineation. The cgs
ratter is revealed to us with perfect consistel3• s
throughout—from the scene of suppressed emetl.
tail,
us the steps of London-bridge, when she WI. s
us with the eltrich, eyrie horror of her forebodieg• :
to her last gasping, shrieking apostrophies to " °/1
dear Bill," when she is sinking, blinded by ble
under the murderous blows dealt upon her I;
turned face by her brutal paramour. And tBca
horror of the assassin afterwards How shall ?
speak of that the most aptly, the most befittingllos
It is as grand a reprehension of all murderers
ever hand has penned or tongue has utter
e 6
is like the articulation of an avenging
not against Sikes only, but against to
t
who have ever outraged, or dreamt of outraging, to
sanctity of human life. It is this which sublineeo
an incident otherwise of the ghastliest horror let s,
homily of burning eloquence—the impressive TO
mory of which those who have once read it,
still more now those who have once witnessed 1"646
it is revealed to them by the lips, the eyes, the
aspect of Charles Dickens, will not easily find o $
terated. The moral drawn from it—and there t4,s
grand moral interpenetrating or impregnating
000
whole—becomes vividly appreciable, even se
th° t
t
might say to Sikes himself, from the first monaeu 00,
the ruffian realises that his crime has been si)
frO
lutely accomplished. It speaks trumpet-tongue‘:s,
the very instant when he first recoils from—' 1t
ocl!
Nancy no more, but now mere flesh and bllO,
" But—such flesh, and so much blood I" .ely
Dickens, on Saturday, when he uttered that
sfl3
ijt
illation of abhorrence—recoiling, as it were/ at/
he did so, from the ghastly spectacle at his fe" 11 01
repeated the word " such" before blood as yeoos
before flesh. We have not looked into the eel'
since then to verify the accuracy of our oven rote
lection as to the actual wording of the Pea bast
but we feel absolutely certain, nevertheless/ os
we are right in our remembrance of it. ,ifee
original wording, precisely as we bar" eosclt
it above, even he cannot improve upon • iso
therefore, minute though the exceptiol/0091
are now taking may appear in itself, We 41,10
he will revert to those very words as they prig i 0
fall from his pen. Another suggestion but' betel
one of rather larger import—we would, regsil
earnestly commend to his consideration
to this wonderfully powerful reading of S!
Nancy from " Oliver Twist." And it is thisbio St
prior to his bringing it before the P, asle,
Large, ho should so far extend it as te
one or two at least among the more sqj
incidents related in " The Ffight• ,peudji
plementary instalment such as ash; cieer,'„
to the Reading would tend all the rnOraratiyo
to elucidate the moral latent in the nsr_oighen,,
a moral that, otherwise, might be cereilt
against by the more captious or the less de._'ie
voiotro
as simply there perdu. Whatever ese,z3ocy oa
thought of it, Mr. Dickens's " Sikes and 'Low,
• a triumph of art, both histrionic and drana
_riottoio
• a triumph, too, of a very memorable deos'f Id
It is incomparably the most powerftil,,"ops :
; more striking delineations or impersoenublic
whenever it may be brought before the Ptti
t for certain excite as much astonishment
ration.