The Portland daily press., 1879-12-25
Dickens's Letters.
A Caustic Review by "H. H."
Literary World.1

Charles Dickens's wife, it will be read with
| even closer attention than it would otherwise
have received. Remembering the surprise
and grief with which all of us who had loved
and admired Charles Dickens's writings heard
the incredible news that he had forsaken the
wife who had borne to him ten children, we
turn eagerly to this last and most intimate rec
ord of his life to see if we may read between
the lines and gather any suggestion of the
reasons for such step, any unconscious revela-
tions of its beginnings and its progress. 1t
would be an interesting thing to know how
many persons have taken up this volume with
that distinct aim, and have first looked through
it from beginning to end, skipping all letters
except those written to his wife and that
'!sister-in- law whom he did not hesitate to
call publicly his dearest and best friend"
The letters to the wife are soon read They
are few-only seventeen in all; while of letters
to the Dearest .Georgina," the sister, there
are nearly one hundred His earliest letters
to his wife are fond, free, and loving; the lin
compatibility of which we were told a quarter
of century later did not exist then, appar-
emily. "Kate," whatever her faults, was the
one to whom he wrote of his plans, and to
whom he felt "most affectionately." 1t is
slight thing, but it is no doubt significant
one that there comes day when a letter be-
gins "My dear Catherine" and not Dearest
Kate" The letters grow fewer and farther
between, colder in tone, and more and more
| barren of any evidence of pleasure in the writ
ing BY this time Mrs. Dickens is the mother
of nine children; often ill, and no doubt sadly
altered. Few women bear nine children In
nineteen years without paying heavy penalty
for it in loss of elasticity of temper and fresh
ness of face. But it is surely cruel thing
when to these losses is added the loss of that
love for whose sake the others were gladly con-
fronted and borne.
Year by wear the letters to "Georgina' grow
longer warmer and more intimate, She is
evidently his audience" so far as vain and
selfish man can be satisfied with tine audi
ence" of one human being. The letters at
some periods follow each other with noticeable
frequency; every other day, every two days;
sometimes they are begun in the morning ana
finished at bedtime 1t is marvel-except
that blinded people are always so blindly blind
that there should have been concerned in
the arranging and publishing of these letters
nobody who had instinct and insight enough to
perceive the effect that must inevitably be pro-
duced by them: nobody who had SO little In
stinct and insight as to suppose that the mere
fact of the letters not being love letters In the
ordinary acceptance of word and phrase would
make any odds in their revelation OF the in
timacy OF the relation between Dickens and
his siSter-in-law.
Neither was there any good and sufficient
reason for publishing many of them on ac-
count of their being specially CHARACTERISTIC or
historical They are in quality, exactly like
all the rest; only differing in degree; little
more diffuse, undisgused and unabashed in
their egotism-that is all. They have one
theme from first to last, and it is the same
theme which, with very few exceptions, nils
all the other letters, i. e., Charles Dickens,
what he is doing, and what the world thinks OF
it, says of it, does about it, In this regard,
these letters are truly pitiful. Letters which
might have been from their staHdpoints oil
date and place, and from Dickens's familiarity
with men of note and things OF interest, simply
invaluable and delightful, are saddenlnS 10
read and are almost without interest except as
a means of understanding Dickens's character.
Contrast them with almost any letters known,
written by public men OF any age, ana they
stand out bald and poor in their selfish ltera-
tions of the struggles and triumphs OF one
man. He has the usual off-hand jollity and
| semblance of good-fellowship which so often
| accompany inordinate selfshness, and go SO
| far to cover up its unSuspected shame. People
can live very close to this sort of good-natured,
affectionate- phrased, vivacious hilarious, roll
| licking insatiate vanity, and never find it out.
Its very surface is its shield; its shalloWness Is
| its safety: it's arrogance its success. Must we
90 farther, and say that some of the most strik-
| ing instances of this which the world
| has seen have been found in the ranks OF men
| who were in enc realm or another ar
| lists and creators of beautiful art? Who
| could find it easy to believe that the man who
made us all cry year after year with his lnlml-
| table pathos, his seemingly unlimited compre-
| hension of and sympathy with all human sor-
| rows that can make human hearts ache TO tne
| breaking, could have broken in its faithful
| old age the heart of the woman who had borne
| him ten children? We did not believe it; and
| therefore, when the news came, we felt loyalty
| withheld from taking it at its import. we
| gave to Charles Dickens the man the benefit
| of the doubt made mighty in our minds by the
work of Charles Dickens the artist The me-
| moir written by his friend and admirer, MIR.
| Forster, shook this our loyalty; but 1t was re-
| = H. II. cofl laffn 70 ANN
| its downfall. Henceforth the man and the ar
| tst are two in our regard; and while BEFORE 1t
| was the man who gained what he did not de-
serve by reason of the artist, now, 1T Will De,
by subtle retribution, the artist that VIII lose
! in the loss of the man, for, ultimately 1t must
| react we snail admit the beauty OF the phrase,
| the tenderness of the story, the pathos OF the
1 scene; but we shall have no longer an undlyld-
| ed miEd with which to think about IT, Inc
| ugly shadow of the memory OF the moral pow
| erty which underlay the intellectual wealth; Oh
| the pteous caricature which deeds were to
| words, and acts to professed sentiments in the
| life, will dog our old love like headsman'
| and we shall not save it alive long.
| Some of Mr.. Dickens friends in America
| will hardly enjoy, it would seem, his cavalier
| references to them. They were Of use to him,
| and enjoying that, he enjoyed them: and IN
| the glamour of his delightful bonhomme no
| doubt he carried them along with him swim
| minely, apparently on high tide OF friend
| ship; and yet the best thing he has to say about
| them in his most private speech to his most IN
| innate confidante is that they are never In
| the way and never out of it" and, with most
| amusing and unconscious patronlzingness, that
| thev have had "a plum pudding brought Ill
| blazing" which could mot be surpassed In any
| house in England" Why should it, forsooth?
| Plum puddings brought IN bla1lng are very
common in America.
| Nothing is more striking in the lives OF lnor-
\ dinately selfish people than the certainty that
| they will be surrounded to the last Dy adorers;
L ,bya thap,
| their own showing, and at their own valuation
| This never fails. More often these adorers are
| outside of mans own household; yet 1t oc-
| casonally happens as III this instance that
| even there, the sham passes Tor the reanty-
| the semblance for the true thing.
| There is something almost touching In the
| naivete with which the sister-in-law and eldest
| daughter of Mr.. Dickens say in their preface
| that they have published some OF the more
| private letters to show that he did not consider
| any matters of his household too trivial to
| claim his care and attention" This sentence
| strikes and reveals the key on which these TWO
! women's alteration of Mr.. Dickens was pltchedi
| and one great reason, no doubt, why he llked
| living with them better than he liked living
| with his wife, who, ii is more than probable,
| would not have considered it a marvellous vir-
| tue in the father of ten children to be in the
| habit of sharing the marked, continuous and
| minute attention ''to household matters which
| the needs of such household make necessary.
| 1t is a sad and thanklesS business to have to
| feel like this about a man whom one has Tor
so many years delighted to honor" but it is
| feeling which one cannot escape, and whose
| expression it is hard to eyade. 1t is his own
7 doing, too. The portrait which has given us
| this revulsion is, as the two women say IN their
| preface only too truly,
| A portrait Of himself by himself
| As such, it ought to be read by every man
| and woman who has laughed and cried over
| mis- stories. And if, in reading it, we are in
| danger of doing less than justice to the man
| who drew it, we shall at least have the COM
| pensaton of knowing that it has enabled us to
| do late Justice in our thoughts to the woman
| who, when her husband desired to live with
| her no longer, went away, silent, with her ell
| dest son--oaly one child out of her ten-and
| lived and died, silent!
| The Fraud-A Legal Aspect of 1t.
1t is agreed that, if the law of 1877 allowing
| the returns to be amended is constitutional,
| the vote of Portland should have been counted.
The Governor and Council ought to have
asked the opinion of the Supreme Court upon
| that question, as the Constitution itself pro-