The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-03

SEATTLE, SUNDAY. APRIL 3.


The recent publication of small volume
of Letters of Charles Dickens to Wilkie
Collins" will do something to fortify the
popular impression created by his great
novels that Dickens was a thoroughly
humane. generous and lovable man.
The popular impression of Dickens as a
man of supreme humane quality, derived
from his novels, needs confirmation badly,
for there was much in his private person
atty so offensive that keen critics have
been disposed to rate him as man of the
first order of humorous genius; as a man
of comparatively inferior melodramatic
quality in other respects. Dickens was a
born actor; his amateur performances
were OF extraordinary merit; his public
readings proved his possession of this
talent for the stage. and there is much of
Dickens work. when he leaves humor for
pathos, that makes a critical reader sus-
pect that the books Of Dickens were deal
more humane and elevating than the man
Dickens.
The man Dickens was certainly very
selfish creature or he could never have
separated from the wife of his youth and
poverty, whom he had made the mother
of seven children. The only fault found
was incompatibility the brilliant man
had outgrown the pretty little wife of his
youth; she bored him, and he separated
from her. and plumed himself
on his generosity in allowing her
enough to live on comfortably and
to see her children. Bonaparte's divorce
from Josephine in order to get wife that
could found for him dynasty does not
seem so meanly selfish as this parting of
Dickens with his wife, on the ground that
"Mrs. Dickens was an excellent woman
but she bored him inexpressibly."
Dickens habits were so incorporate DUR
ing his last visit to America that he be-
haved with gross vulgarity, sucking his
brandy flask under the public eve in the
drawing-room car, and hurting pamphlet
at the head Of the newsboy who dropped it
in his lap. His letters written to his
friend Foster during his last visit to
America are melancholy reading. There
is nothing in them but vulgar Boosting
over the money he was making every
night. There are no reflections upon the
growth of a great country during the quar-
ter century that had elapsed between 1871,
when he first visited America, and his
second visit in 1867. There is nothing in
his Foster letters but the money, money,
money" talk of man to whom the United
States was nothing but land to use while
in 1t; to accuse and abuse when he got
home
He came to America first in 1S41, less
than four years after the publication of
aPickwick Papers" had established his
right to the first place in the roll of great
English humorists, the greatest since
Shakespeare drew his inimitable. unap-
proachable Falstati, When he visited us
in 1sil he was but % years old, the author
of 'Pickwick Papers" "0liuer Twist. 4"
Nicholas Nickleby," "Old Curiosity
Shop" and Barnaby Rudge" He was
young, famous and handsome, and his
welcome by the American people was so
enthusiastic, sincere and kindly that if he
had been an English gentleman at heart,
like Thackeray. instead of being man of
great genius with low. vulgar streak of
snobbery in him, he would easily have for
given our effusiveness and treated the
young nation that threw itself at his feet
with more kindly and generous criticism
than he gave us on his return in his
american Notes" and his novel of MAR
tin Chuzzlewit."
Dickens told many disagrceable truths
about our crude civilization of 1s4i, but
America had right to expect of him a
more generous and liberal estimate than
such a curious cross between poet and an
Oxford pedant, as was Matthew Arnold.
"Be 10 her faults little blind,
BE TO her virtues very kind"
was not Dickens mood when he wrote of
his first visit to America. He was seldom
Just and never generous TO people who
gave him both hands and their whole
heart in their hands. He was a gifted
young Englishman of low-bred and yul-
gar bohemian tastes and manners; n man
oil genius, trained as a newspaper reporter,
he treated all his generous hosts in Amer
lea from the standpoint of sensational
reporter, seeking TO make a book that
would find a ready sale in the English
market; so he pleased his English public
by writing Of America in the spirit OF
satire and csricature, unrelieved by the
kindliness and charity of friendly inter.
est in our people.
The twenty years of Dickens work. be.
tween 1si7 aud 1867, when he made his
second visit TO America, included Dom.
hey and Son." David Copperfeld. f"
"Bleak House," Hard Times, Little
Dorrit, /" Tale of Two Cities" Great Ex-
pectations" and "our Mutual Friend. ~
When he arrived in 1867 the American
people had forgiven, or rather forgotten
his singing, ungenerous, youthful criti-
cism. the flame and heat of four years OF
civil war had purged our people of spread
eNgleism;" we were more Serious, a
less vain and boastful and yet prouder
people than We were in ls4i. We were less
vain because we had found out the differ.
enee between wariike words and warlike
deeds and sacrifices; we were prouder
people because we felt that in casting our
the devil Of slavery and saving the Union
We had done something to be proud Of 70,