Round the Veneering dinner-table are collected not indeed the best characters in d.i.c.kens, but certainly the best characters in _Our Mutual Friend_. Certainly one exception must be made. Fledgeby is unaccountably absent. There was really no reason why he should not have been present at a dinner-party given by the Veneerings and including the Lammles. His money was at least more genuine than theirs. If he had been present the party would really have included all that is important in _Our Mutual Friend_. For indeed, outside Mr. Fledgeby and the people at the dinner-party, there is something a little heavy and careless about the story. Mr. Silas Wegg is really funny; and he serves the purpose of a necessary villain in the plot. But his humour and his villainy seem to have no particular connection with each other; when he is not scheming he seems the last man likely to scheme. He is rather like one of d.i.c.kens"s agreeable Bohemians, a pleasant companion, a quoter of fine verses. His villainy seems an artificial thing attached to him, like his wooden leg. For while his villainy is supposed to be of a dull, mean, and bitter sort (quite unlike, for instance, the uproarious villainy of Quilp), his humour is of the sincere, flowing and lyric character, like that of d.i.c.k Swiveller or Mr. Micawber. He tells Mr. Boffin that he will drop into poetry in a friendly way. He does drop into it in a friendly way; in much too really a friendly way to make him convincing as a mere calculating knave. He and Mr. Venus are such natural and genuine companions that one does not see why if Venus repents Wegg should not repent too. In short, Wegg is a convenience for a plot and not a very good plot at that. But if he is one of the blots on the business, he is not the princ.i.p.al one. If the real degradation of Wegg is not very convincing, it is at least immeasurably more convincing than the pretended degradation of Boffin. The pa.s.sage in which Boffin appears as a sort of miser, and then afterwards explains that he only a.s.sumed the character for reasons of his own, has something about it highly jerky and unsatisfactory. The truth of the whole matter I think, almost certainly, is that d.i.c.kens did not originally mean Boffin"s lapse to be fict.i.tious. He originally meant Boffin really to be corrupted by wealth, slowly to degenerate and as slowly to repent. But the story went too quickly for this long, double, and difficult process; therefore d.i.c.kens at the last moment made a sudden recovery possible by representing that the whole business had been a trick. Consequently, this episode is not an error merely in the sense that we may find many errors in a great writer like d.i.c.kens; it is a mistake patched up with another mistake. It is a case of that ossification which occurs round the healing of an actual fracture; the story had broken down and been mended.
If d.i.c.kens had fulfilled what was probably his original design, and described the slow freezing of Boffin"s soul in prosperity, I do not say that he would have done the thing well. He was not good at describing change in anybody, especially not good at describing a change for the worse. The tendency of all his characters is upwards, like bubbles, never downwards, like stones. But at least it would probably have been more credible than the story as it stands; for the story as it stands is actually less credible than any conceivable kind of moral ruin for Boffin. Such a character as his--rough, simple and lumberingly unconscious--might be more easily conceived as really sinking in self-respect and honour than as keeping up, month after month, so strained and inhuman a theatrical performance. To a good man (of that particular type) it would be easier to be bad than to pretend to be bad.
It might have taken years to turn Noddy Boffin into a miser; but it would have taken centuries to turn him into an actor. This unreality in the later Boffin scenes makes the end of the story of John Harmon somewhat more unimpressive perhaps than it might otherwise have been.
Upon no hypothesis, however, can he be made one of the more impressive figures of d.i.c.kens. It is true that it is an unfair criticism to object, as some have done, that d.i.c.kens does not succeed in disguising the ident.i.ty of John Harmon with John Rokesmith. d.i.c.kens never intended to disguise it; the whole story would be mainly unintelligible and largely uninteresting if it had been successfully disguised. But though John Harmon or Rokesmith was never intended to be merely a man of mystery, it is not quite so easy to say what he was intended to be. Bella is a possible and pretty sketch. Mrs. Wilfer, her mother, is an entirely impossible and entirely delightful one. Miss Podsnap is not only excellent, she is to a healthy taste positively attractive; there is a real suggestion in her of the fact that humility is akin to truth, even when humility takes its more comic form of shyness. There is not in all literature a more human _cri de coeur_ than that with which Georgiana Podsnap receives the information that a young man has professed himself to be attracted by her--"Oh what a Fool he must be!"
Two other figures require praise, though they are in the more tragic manner which d.i.c.kens touched from time to time in his later period.
Bradley Headstone is really a successful villain; so successful that he fully captures our sympathies. Also there is something original in the very conception. It was a new notion to add to the villains of fiction, whose thoughts go quickly, this villain whose thoughts go slow but sure; and it was a new notion to combine a deadly criminality not with high life or the slums (the usual haunts for villains) but with the laborious respectability of the lower, middle cla.s.ses. The other good conception is the boy, Bradley Headstone"s pupil, with his dull, inexhaustible egoism, his pert, unconscious cruelty, and the strict decorum and incredible baseness of his views of life. It is singular that d.i.c.kens, who was not only a radical and a social reformer, but one who would have been particularly concerned to maintain the principle of modern popular education, should nevertheless have seen so clearly this potential evil in the mere educationalism of our time--the fact that merely educating the democracy may easily mean setting to work to despoil it of all the democratic virtues. It is better to be Lizzie Hexam and not know how to read and write than to be Charlie Hexam and not know how to appreciate Lizzie Hexam. It is not only necessary that the democracy should be taught; it is also necessary that the democracy should be taught democracy. Otherwise it will certainly fall a victim to that sn.o.bbishness and system of worldly standards which is the most natural and easy of all the forms of human corruption. This is one of the many dangers which d.i.c.kens saw before it existed. d.i.c.kens was really a prophet; far more of a prophet than Carlyle.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Charles d.i.c.kens, 1868 From a photograph by Gurney.]
EDWIN DROOD
_Pickwick_ was a work partly designed by others, but ultimately filled up by d.i.c.kens. _Edwin Drood_, the last book, was a book designed by d.i.c.kens, but ultimately filled up by others. The _Pickwick Papers_ showed how much d.i.c.kens could make out of other people"s suggestions; _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_ shows how very little other people can make out of d.i.c.kens"s suggestions.
d.i.c.kens was meant by Heaven to be the great melodramatist; so that even his literary end was melodramatic. Something more seems hinted at in the cutting short of _Edwin Drood_ by d.i.c.kens than the mere cutting short of a good novel by a great man. It seems rather like the last taunt of some elf, leaving the world, that it should be this story which is not ended, this story which is only a story. The only one of d.i.c.kens"s novels which he did not finish was the only one that really needed finishing. He never had but one thoroughly good plot to tell; and that he has only told in heaven. This is what separates the case in question from any parallel cases of novelists cut off in the act of creation. That great novelist, for instance, with whom d.i.c.kens is constantly compared, died also in the middle of _Denis Duval_. But any one can see in _Denis Duval_ the qualities of the later work of Thackeray; the increasing discursiveness, the increasing retrospective poetry, which had been in part the charm and in part the failure of _Philip_ and _The Virginians_.
But to d.i.c.kens it was permitted to die at a dramatic moment and to leave a dramatic mystery. Any Thackerayan could have completed the plot of _Denis Duval_; except indeed that a really sympathetic Thackerayan might have had some doubt as to whether there was any plot to complete. But d.i.c.kens, having had far too little plot in his stories previously, had far too much plot in the story he never told. d.i.c.kens dies in the act of telling, not his tenth novel, but his first news of murder. He drops down dead as he is in the act of denouncing the a.s.sa.s.sin. It is permitted to d.i.c.kens, in short, to come to a literary end as strange as his literary beginning. He began by completing the old romance of travel. He ended by inventing the new detective story.
It is as a detective story first and last that we have to consider _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. This does not mean, of course, that the details are not often admirable in their swift and penetrating humour; to say that of the book would be to say that d.i.c.kens did not write it. Nothing could be truer, for instance, than the manner in which the dazed and drunken dignity of Durdles ill.u.s.trates a certain bitterness at the bottom of the bewilderment of the poor. Nothing could be better than the way in which the haughty and allusive conversation between Miss Twinkleton and the landlady ill.u.s.trates the maddening preference of some females for skating upon thin social ice. There is an even better example than these of the original humorous insight of d.i.c.kens; and one not very often remarked, because of its brevity and its unimportance in the narrative. But d.i.c.kens never did anything better than the short account of Mr. Grewgious"s dinner being brought from the tavern by two waiters: "a stationary waiter," and "a flying waiter." The "flying waiter" brought the food and the "stationary waiter" quarrelled with him; the "flying waiter" brought gla.s.ses and the "stationary waiter"
looked through them. Finally, it will be remembered the "stationary waiter" left the room, casting a glance which indicated "let it be understood that all emoluments are mine, and that Nil is the reward of this slave." Still, d.i.c.kens wrote the book as a detective story; he wrote it as _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. And alone, perhaps, among detective-story writers, he never lived to destroy his mystery. Here alone then among the d.i.c.kens novels it is necessary to speak of the plot and of the plot alone. And when we speak of the plot it becomes immediately necessary to speak of the two or three standing explanations which celebrated critics have given of the plot.
The story, so far as it was written by d.i.c.kens, can be read here. It describes, as will be seen, the disappearance of the young architect Edwin Drood after a night of festivity which was supposed to celebrate his reconciliation with a temporary enemy, Neville Landless, and was held at the house of his uncle John Jasper. d.i.c.kens continued the tale long enough to explain or explode the first and most obvious of his riddles. Long before the existing part terminates it has become evident that Drood has been put away, not by his obvious opponent, Landless, but by his uncle who professes for him an almost painful affection. The fact that we all know this, however, ought not in fairness to blind us to the fact that, considered as the first fraud in a detective story, it has been, with great skill, at once suggested and concealed. Nothing, for instance, could be cleverer as a piece of artistic mystery than the fact that Jasper, the uncle, always kept his eyes fixed on Drood"s face with a dark and watchful tenderness; the thing is so told that at first we really take it as only indicating something morbid in the affection; it is only afterwards that the frightful fancy breaks upon us that it is not morbid affection but morbid antagonism. This first mystery (which is no longer a mystery) of Jasper"s guilt, is only worth remarking because it shows that d.i.c.kens meant and felt himself able to mask all his batteries with real artistic strategy and artistic caution. The manner of the unmasking of Jasper marks the manner and tone in which the whole tale was to be told. Here we have not got to do with d.i.c.kens simply giving himself away, as he gave himself away in _Pickwick_ or _The Christmas Carol_. Not that one complains of his giving himself away; there was no better gift.
What was the mystery of Edwin Drood from d.i.c.kens"s point of view we shall never know, except perhaps from d.i.c.kens in heaven, and then he will very likely have forgotten. But the mystery of Edwin Drood from our point of view, from that of his critics, and those who have with some courage (after his death) attempted to be his collaborators, is simply this. There is no doubt that Jasper either murdered Drood or supposed that he had murdered him. This certainty we have from the fact that it is the whole point of a scene between Jasper and Drood"s lawyer Grewgious in which Jasper is struck down with remorse when he realises that Drood has been killed (from his point of view) needlessly and without profit. The only question is whether Jasper"s remorse was as needless as his murder. In other words the only question is whether, while he certainly thought he had murdered Drood, he had really done it.
It need hardly be said that such a doubt would not have been raised for nothing; gentlemen like Jasper do not as a rule waste good remorse except upon successful crime. The origin of the doubt about the real death of Drood is this. Towards the latter end of the existing chapters there appears very abruptly, and with a quite ostentatious air of mystery, a character called Datchery. He appears for the purpose of spying upon Jasper and getting up some case against him; at any rate, if he has not this purpose in the story he has no other earthly purpose in it. He is an old gentleman of juvenile energy, with a habit of carrying his hat in his hand even in the open air; which some have interpreted as meaning that he feels the unaccustomed weight of a wig. Now there are one or two people in the story who this person might possibly be.
Notably there is one person in the story who seems as if he were meant to be something, but who hitherto has certainly been nothing; I mean Bazzard, Mr. Grewgious"s clerk, a sulky fellow interested in theatricals, of whom an unnecessary fuss is made. There is also Mr.
Grewgious himself, and there is also another suggestion, so much more startling that I shall have to deal with it later.
For the moment, however, the point is this: That ingenious writer, Mr.
Proctor, started the highly plausible theory that this Datchery was Drood himself, who had not really been killed. He adduced a most complex and complete scheme covering nearly all the details; but the strongest argument he had was rather one of general artistic effect. This argument has been quite perfectly summed up by Mr. Andrew Lang in one sentence: "If Edwin Drood is dead, there is not much mystery about him." This is quite true; d.i.c.kens, when writing in so deliberate, nay, dark and conspiratorial a manner, would surely have kept the death of Drood and the guilt of Jasper hidden a little longer if the only real mystery had been the guilt of Jasper and the death of Drood. It certainly seems artistically more likely that there was a further mystery of Edwin Drood; not the mystery that he was murdered, but the mystery that he was not murdered. It is true indeed that Mr. c.u.mming Walters has a theory of Datchery (to which I have already darkly alluded) a theory which is wild enough to be the centre not only of any novel but of any harlequinade.
But the point is that even Mr. c.u.mming Walters"s theory, though it makes the mystery more extraordinary, does not make it any more of a mystery of Edwin Drood. It should not have been called _The Mystery of Drood_, but _The Mystery of Datchery_. This is the strongest case for Proctor; if the story tells of Drood coming back as Datchery, the story does at any rate fulfil the t.i.tle upon its t.i.tle-page.
The princ.i.p.al objection to Proctor"s theory is that there seems no adequate reason why Jasper should not have murdered his nephew if he wanted to. And there seems even less reason why Drood, if unsuccessfully murdered, should not have raised the alarm. Happy young architects, when nearly strangled by elderly organists, do not generally stroll away and come back some time afterwards in a wig and with a false name.
Superficially it would seem almost as odd to find the murderer investigating the origin of the murder, as to find the corpse investigating it. To this problem two of the ablest literary critics of our time, Mr. Andrew Lang and Mr. William Archer (both of them persuaded generally of the Proctor theory) have especially addressed themselves.
Both have come to the same substantial conclusion; and I suspect that they are right. They hold that Jasper (whose mania for opium is much insisted on in the tale) had some sort of fit, or trance, or other physical seizure as he was committing the crime so that he left it unfinished; and they also hold that he had drugged Drood, so that Drood, when he recovered from the attack, was doubtful about who had been his a.s.sailant. This might really explain, if a little fancifully, his coming back to the town in the character of a detective. He might think it due to his uncle (whom he last remembered in a kind of murderous vision) to make an independent investigation as to whether he was really guilty or not. He might say, as Hamlet said of a vision equally terrifying, "I"ll have grounds more relative than this." In fairness it must be said that there is something vaguely shaky about this theory; chiefly, I think, in this respect; that there is a sort of farcical cheerfulness about Datchery which does not seem altogether appropriate to a lad who ought to be in an agony of doubt as to whether his best friend was or was not his a.s.sa.s.sin. Still there are many such incongruities in d.i.c.kens; and the explanation of Mr. Archer and Mr. Lang is an explanation. I do not believe that any explanation as good can be given to account for the tale being called _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, if the tale practically starts with his corpse.
If Drood is really dead one cannot help feeling the story ought to end where it does end, not by accident but by design. The murder is explained. Jasper is ready to be hanged, and every one else in a decent novel ought to be ready to be married. If there was to be much more of anything, it must have been of anticlimax. Nevertheless there are degrees of anticlimax. Some of the more obvious explanations of Datchery are quite reasonable, but they are distinctly tame. For instance, Datchery may be Bazzard; but it is not very exciting if he is; for we know nothing about Bazzard and care less. Again, he might be Grewgious; but there is something pointless about one grotesque character dressing up as another grotesque character actually less amusing than himself.
Now, Mr. c.u.mming Walters has at least had the distinction of inventing a theory which makes the story at least an interesting story, even if it is not exactly the story that is promised on the cover of the book. The obvious enemy of Drood, on whom suspicion first falls, the swarthy and sulky Landless, has a sister even swarthier and, except for her queenly dignity, even sulkier than he. This barbaric princess is evidently meant to be (in a sombre way) in love with Crisparkle, the clergyman and muscular Christian who represents the breezy element in the emotions of the tale. Mr. c.u.mming Walters seriously maintains that it is this barbaric princess who puts on a wig and dresses up as Mr. Datchery. He urges his case with much ingenuity of detail. Helena Landless certainly had a motive; to save her brother, who was accused falsely, by accusing Jasper justly. She certainly had some of the faculties; it is elaborately stated in the earlier part of her story that she was accustomed as a child to dress up in male costume and run into the wildest adventures. There may be something in Mr. c.u.mming Walters"s argument that the very flippancy of Datchery is the self-conscious flippancy of a strong woman in such an odd situation; certainly there is the same flippancy in Portia and in Rosalind. Nevertheless, I think, there is one final objection to the theory; and that is simply this, that it is comic. It is generally wrong to represent a great master of the grotesque as being grotesque exactly where he does not intend to be.
And I am persuaded that if d.i.c.kens had really meant Helena to turn into Datchery, he would have made her from the first in some way more light, eccentric, and laughable; he would have made her at least as light and laughable as Rosa. As it is, there is something strangely stiff and incredible about the idea of a lady so dark and dignified dressing up as a swaggering old gentleman in a blue coat and grey trousers. We might almost as easily imagine Edith Dombey dressing up as Major Bagstock. We might almost as easily imagine Rebecca in _Ivanhoe_ dressing up as Isaac of York.
Of course such a question can never really be settled precisely, because it is the question not merely of a mystery but of a puzzle. For here the detective novel differs from every other kind of novel. The ordinary novelist desires to keep his readers to the point; the detective novelist actually desires to keep his readers off the point. In the first case, every touch must help to tell the reader what he means; in the second case, most of the touches must conceal or even contradict what he means. You are supposed to see and appreciate the smallest gestures of a good actor; but you do not see all the gestures of a conjuror, if he is a good conjuror. Hence, into the critical estimate of such works as this, there is introduced a problem, an extra perplexity, which does not exist in other cases. I mean the problem of the things commonly called blinds. Some of the points which we pick out as suggestive may have been put in as deceptive. Thus the whole conflict between a critic with one theory, like Mr. Lang, and a critic with another theory, like Mr. c.u.mming Walters, becomes eternal and a trifle farcical. Mr. Walters says that all Mr. Lang"s clues were blinds; Mr.
Lang says that all Mr. Walters"s clues were blinds. Mr. Walters can say that some pa.s.sages seemed to show that Helena was Datchery; Mr. Lang can reply that those pa.s.sages were only meant to deceive simple people like Mr. Walters into supposing that she was Datchery. Similarly Mr. Lang can say that the return of Drood is foreshadowed; and Mr. Walters can reply that it was foreshadowed because it was never meant to come off. There seems no end to this insane process; anything that d.i.c.kens wrote may or may not mean the opposite of what it says. Upon this principle I should be very ready for one to declare that all the suggested Datcherys were really blinds; merely because they can naturally be suggested. I would undertake to maintain that Mr. Datchery is really Miss Twinkleton, who has a mercenary interest in keeping Rosa Budd at her school. This suggestion does not seem to me to be really much more humorous than Mr.
c.u.mming Walters"s theory. Yet either may certainly be true. d.i.c.kens is dead, and a number of splendid scenes and startling adventures have died with him. Even if we get the right solution we shall not know that it is right. The tale might have been, and yet it has not been.
And I think there is no thought so much calculated to make one doubt death itself, to feel that sublime doubt which has created all religion--the doubt that found death incredible. Edwin Drood may or may not have really died; but surely d.i.c.kens did not really die. Surely our real detective liveth and shall appear in the latter days of the earth.
For a finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more essential and more strange.
MASTER HUMPHREY"S CLOCK
It is quite indispensable to include a criticism of _Master Humphrey"s Clock_ in any survey of d.i.c.kens, although it is not one of the books of which his admirers would chiefly boast; although perhaps it is almost the only one of which he would not have boasted himself. As a triumph of d.i.c.kens, at least, it is not of great importance. But as a sample of d.i.c.kens it happens to be of quite remarkable importance. The very fact that it is for the most part somewhat more level and even monotonous than most of his creations, makes us realise, as it were, against what level and monotony those creations commonly stand out. This book is the background of his mind. It is the basis and minimum of him which was always there. Alone, of all written things, this shows how he felt when he was not writing. d.i.c.kens might have written it in his sleep. That is to say, it is written by a sluggish d.i.c.kens, a half automatic d.i.c.kens, a dreaming and drifting d.i.c.kens; but still by the enduring d.i.c.kens.
But this truth can only be made evident by beginning nearer to the root of the matter. _Nicholas Nickleby_ had just completed, or, to speak more strictly, confirmed, the popularity of the young author; wonderful as _Pickwick_ was it might have been a nine days" wonder; _Oliver Twist_ had been powerful but painful; it was _Nicholas Nickleby_ that proved the man to be a great productive force of which one could ask more, of which one could ask all things. His publishers, Chapman and Hall, seem to have taken at about this point that step which sooner or later most publishers do take with regard to a half successful man who is becoming wholly successful. Instead of asking him for something, they asked him for anything. They made him, so to speak, the editor of his own works.
And indeed it is literally as the editor of his own works that he next appears; for the next thing to which he proposes to put his name is not a novel, but for all practical purposes a magazine. Yet although it is a magazine, it is a magazine entirely written by himself; the publishers, in point of fact, wanted to create a kind of d.i.c.kens Miscellany, in a much more literal sense than that in which we speak of a Bentley Miscellany. d.i.c.kens was in no way disposed to dislike such a job; for the more miscellaneous he was the more he enjoyed himself. And indeed this early experiment of his bears a great deal of resemblance to those later experiences in which he was the editor of two popular periodicals.
The editor of _Master Humphrey"s Clock_ was a kind of type or precursor of the editor of _Household Words_ and _All the Year Round_. There was the same sense of absolute ease in an atmosphere of infinite gossip.
There was the same great advantage gained by a man of genius who wrote best sc.r.a.ppily and by episodes. The omnipotence of the editor helped the eccentricities of the author. He could excuse himself for all his own shortcomings. He could begin a novel, get tired of it, and turn it into a short story. He could begin a short story, get fond of it, and turn it into a novel. Thus in the days of _Household Words_ he could begin a big scheme of stories, such as _Somebody"s Luggage_, or _Seven Poor Travellers_, and after writing a tale or two toss the rest to his colleagues. Thus, on the other hand, in the time of _Master Humphrey"s Clock_, he could begin one small adventure of Master Humphrey and find himself unable to stop it. It is quite clear I think (though only from moral evidence, which some call reading between the lines) that he originally meant to tell many separate tales of Master Humphrey"s wanderings in London, only one of which, and that a short one, was to have been concerned with a little girl going home. Fortunately for us that little girl had a grandfather, and that grandfather had a curiosity shop and also a nephew, and that nephew had an entirely irrelevant friend whom men and angels called Richard Swiveller. Once having come into the society of Swiveller it is not unnatural that d.i.c.kens stayed there for a whole book. The essential point for us here, however, is that _Master Humphrey"s Clock_ was stopped by the size and energy of the thing that had come of it. It died in childbirth.
There is, however, another circ.u.mstance which, even in ordinary public opinion, makes this miscellany important, besides the great novel that came out of it. I mean that the ordinary reader can remember one great thing about _Master Humphrey"s Clock_, besides the fact that it was the frame-work of _The Old Curiosity Shop_. He remembers that Mr. Pickwick and the Wellers rise again from the dead. d.i.c.kens makes Samuel Pickwick become a member of Master Humphrey"s Clock Society; and he inst.i.tutes a parallel society in the kitchen under the name of Mr. Weller"s Watch.
Before we consider the question of whether d.i.c.kens was wise when he did this, it is worth remarking how really odd it is that this is the only place where he did it. d.i.c.kens, one would have thought, was the one man who might naturally have introduced old characters into new stories.
d.i.c.kens, as a matter of fact, was almost the one man who never did it.
It would have seemed natural in him for a double reason; first, that his characters were very valuable to him, and second that they were not very valuable to his particular stories. They were dear to him, and they are dear to us; but they really might as well have turned up (within reason) in one environment as well as in another. We, I am sure, should be delighted to meet Mr. Mantalini in the story of _Dombey and Son_. And he certainly would not be much missed from the plot of Nicholas Nickleby.
"I am an affectionate father," said d.i.c.kens, "to all the children of my fancy; but like many other parents I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child; and his name is David Copperfield." Yet although his heart must often have yearned backwards to the children of his fancy whose tale was already told, yet he never touched one of them again even with the point of his pen. The characters in _David Copperfield_, as in all the others, were dead for him after he had done the book; if he loved them as children, it was as dead and sanctified children. It is a curious test of the strength and even reticence that underlay the seeming exuberance of d.i.c.kens, that he never did yield at all to exactly that indiscretion or act of sentimentalism which would seem most natural to his emotions and his art. Or rather he never did yield to it except here in this one case; the case of _Master Humphrey"s Clock_.
And it must be remembered that nearly everybody else did yield to it.
Especially did those writers who are commonly counted d.i.c.kens"s superiors in art and exact.i.tude and closeness to connected reality.
Thackeray wallowed in it; Anthony Trollope lived on it. Those modern artists who pride themselves most on the separation and unity of a work of art have indulged in it often; thus, for instance, Stevenson gave a glimpse of Alan Breck in _The Master of Ballantrae_, and meant to give a glimpse of the Master of Ballantrae in another unwritten tale called _The Rising Sun_. The habit of revising old characters is so strong in Thackeray that _Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, _The Newcomes_, and _Philip_ are in one sense all one novel. Certainly the reader sometimes forgets which one of them he is reading. Afterwards he cannot remember whether the best description of Lord Steyne"s red whiskers or Mr. Wagg"s rude jokes occurred in _Vanity Fair_, or _Pendennis_; he cannot remember whether his favourite dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Pendennis occurred in _The Newcomes_, or in _Philip_. Whenever two Thackeray characters in two Thackeray novels could by any possibility have been contemporary, Thackeray delights to connect them. He makes Major Pendennis nod to Dr.
Firmin, and Colonel Newcome ask Major Dobbin to dinner. Whenever two characters could not possibly have been contemporary he goes out of his way to make one the remote ancestor of the other. Thus he created the great house of Warrington solely to connect a "blue-bearded" Bohemian journalist with the blood of Henry Esmond. It is quite impossible to conceive d.i.c.kens keeping up this elaborate connection between all his characters and all his books, especially across the ages. It would give us a kind of shock if we learnt from d.i.c.kens that Major Bagstock was the nephew of Mr. Chester. Still less can we imagine d.i.c.kens carrying on an almost systematic family chronicle as was in some sense done by Trollope. There must be some reason for such a paradox; for in itself it is a very curious one. The writers who wrote carefully were always putting, as it were, after-words and appendices to their already finished portraits; the man who did splendid and flamboyant but faulty portraits never attempted to touch them up. Or rather (we may say again) he attempted it once, and then he failed.
The reason lay, I think, in the very genius of d.i.c.kens"s creation. The child he bore of his soul quitted him when his term was pa.s.sed like a veritable child born of the body. It was independent of him, as a child is of its parents. It had become dead to him even in becoming alive.
When Thackeray studied Pendennis or Lord Steyne he was studying something outside himself, and therefore something that might come nearer and nearer. But when d.i.c.kens brought forth Sam Weller or Pickwick he was creating something that had once been inside himself and therefore when once created could only go further and further away. It may seem a strange thing to say of such laughable characters and of so lively an author, yet I say it quite seriously; I think it possible that there arose between d.i.c.kens and his characters that strange and almost supernatural shyness that arises often between parents and children; because they are too close to each other to be open with each other. Too much hot and high emotion had gone to the creation of one of his great figures for it to be possible for him without embarra.s.sment ever to speak with it again. This is the thing which some fools call fickleness; but which is not the death of feeling, but rather its dreadful perpetuation; this shyness is the final seal of strong sentiment; this coldness is an eternal constancy.
This one case where d.i.c.kens broke through his rule was not such a success as to tempt him in any case to try the thing again.
There is weakness in the strict sense of the word in this particular reappearance of Samuel Pickwick and Samuel Weller. In the original _Pickwick Papers_ d.i.c.kens had with quite remarkable delicacy and vividness contrived to suggest a certain fundamental st.u.r.diness and spirit in that corpulent and complacent old gentleman. Mr. Pickwick was a mild man, a respectable man, a placid man; but he was very decidedly a man. He could denounce his enemies and fight for his nightcap. He was fat; but he had a backbone. In _Master Humphrey"s Clock_ the backbone seems somehow to be broken; his good nature seems limp instead of alert.
He gushes out of his good heart; instead of taking a good heart for granted as a part of any decent gentleman"s furniture as did the older and stronger Pickwick. The truth is, I think, that Mr. Pickwick in complete repose loses some part of the whole point of his existence. The quality which makes the _Pickwick Papers_ one of the greatest of human fairy tales is a quality which all the great fairy tales possess, and which marks them out from most modern writing. A modern novelist generally endeavours to make his story interesting, by making his hero odd. The most typical modern books are those in which the central figure is himself or herself an exception, a cripple, a courtesan, a lunatic, a swindler, or a person of the most perverse temperament. Such stories, for instance, are _Sir Richard Calmady_, _Dodo_, _Quisante_, _La Bete Humaine_, even the _Egoist_. But in a fairy tale the boy sees all the wonders of fairyland because he is an ordinary boy. In the same way Mr.
Samuel Pickwick sees an extraordinary England because he is an ordinary old gentleman. He does not see things through the rosy spectacles of the modern optimist or the green-smoked spectacles of the pessimist; he sees it through the crystal gla.s.ses of his own innocence. One must see the world clearly even in order to see its wildest poetry. One must see it sanely even in order to see that it is insane.
Mr. Pickwick, then, relieved against a background of heavy kindliness and quiet club life does not seem to be quite the same heroic figure as Mr. Pickwick relieved against a background of the fighting police constables at Ipswich or the roaring mobs of Eatanswill. Of the degeneration of the Wellers, though it has been commonly a.s.sumed by critics, I am not so sure. Some of the things said in the humorous a.s.sembly round Mr. Weller"s Watch are really human and laughable and altogether in the old manner. Especially, I think, the vague and awful allusiveness of old Mr. Weller when he reminds his little grandson of his delinquencies under the trope or figure of their being those of another little boy, is really in the style both of the irony and the domesticity of the poorer cla.s.ses. Sam also says one or two things really worthy of himself. We feel almost as if Sam were a living man, and could not appear for an instant without being amusing.
The other elements in the make-up of _Master Humphrey"s Clock_ come under the same paradox which I have applied to the whole work. Though not very important in literature they are somehow quite important in criticism. They show us better than anything else the whole unconscious trend of d.i.c.kens, the stuff of which his very dreams were made. If he had made up tales to amuse himself when half-awake (as I have no doubt he did) they would be just such tales as these. They would have been ghostly legends of the nooks and holes of London, echoes of old love and laughter from the taverns or the Inns of Court. In a sense also one may say that these tales are the great might-have-beens of d.i.c.kens. They are chiefly designs which he fills up here slightly and unsatisfactorily, but which he might have filled up with his own brightest and most incredible colours. Nothing, for instance, could have been nearer to the heart of d.i.c.kens than his great Gargantuan conception of Gog and Magog telling London legends to each other all through the night. Those two giants might have stood on either side of some new great city of his invention, swarming with fanciful figures and noisy with new events.
But as it is, the two giants stand alone in a wilderness, guarding either side of a gate that leads nowhere.
REPRINTED PIECES
Those abuses which are supposed to belong specially to religion belong to all human inst.i.tutions. They are not the sins of supernaturalism, but the sins of nature. In this respect it is interesting to observe that all the evils which our Rationalist or Protestant tradition a.s.sociates with the idolatrous veneration of sacred figures arises in the merely human atmosphere of literature and history. Every extravagance of hagiology can be found in hero-worship. Every folly alleged in the worship of saints can be found in the worship of poets. There are those who are honourably and intensely opposed to the atmosphere of religious symbolism or religious archaeology. There are people who have a vague idea that the worship of saints is worse than the imitation of sinners.
There are some, like a lady I once knew, who think that hagiology is the scientific study of hags. But these slightly prejudiced persons generally have idolatries and superst.i.tions of their own, particularly idolatries and superst.i.tions in connection with celebrated people. Mr.
Stead preserves a pistol belonging to Oliver Cromwell in the office of the _Review of Reviews_; and I am sure he worships it in his rare moments of solitude and leisure. A man, who could not be induced to believe in G.o.d by all the arguments of all the philosophers, professed himself ready to believe if he could see it stated on a postcard in the handwriting of Mr. Gladstone. Persons not otherwise noted for their religious exercise have been known to procure and preserve portions of the hair of Paderewski. Nay, by this time blasphemy itself is a sacred tradition, and almost as much respect would be paid to the alleged relics of an atheist as to the alleged relics of a G.o.d. If any one has a fork that belonged to Voltaire, he could probably exchange it in the open market for a knife that belonged to St. Theresa.