Life of Charles Dickens Part 4

And in Paris too, with the help of streets and crowded ways, he wrote the great number of Dombey, the number in which little Paul dies. Three months did d.i.c.kens spend in the French capital, the incomparable city, and then was back in London, at the old life of hard work; but with even a stronger infusion than before of private theatricals--private theatricals on a grandiose scale, that were applauded by the Queen herself, and took him and his troupe starring about during the next three or four years, hither and thither, and here and there, in London and the provinces. "Splendid strolling"

Forster calls it; and a period of unmixed jollity and enjoyment it seems to have been. Of course d.i.c.kens was the life and soul of it all.

Mrs. Cowden Clarke, one of the few survivors, looking back to that happy time, says enthusiastically, "Charles d.i.c.kens, beaming in look, alert in manner, radiant with good humour, genial-voiced, gay, the very soul of enjoyment, fun, good taste, and good spirits, admirable in organizing details and suggesting novelty of entertainment, was of all beings the very man for a holiday season."[21] The proceeds of the performances were devoted to various objects, but chiefly to an impossible "Guild of Literature and Art," which, in the sanguine confidence of its projectors, and especially of d.i.c.kens, was to inaugurate a golden age for the author and the artist. But of all this, and of d.i.c.kens' speeches at the Leeds Mechanics' Inst.i.tute, and Glasgow Athenaeum, in the December of 1847, I don't know that I need say very much. The interest of a great writer's life is, after all, mainly in what he writes; and when I have said that "Dombey" proved to be a pecuniary success, the first six numbers realizing as much as 2,820, I think I may fairly pa.s.s on to d.i.c.kens' next book, the "Haunted Man."

This was his Christmas story for 1848; the last, and not the worst of his Christmas stories. Both conception and treatment are thoroughly characteristic. Mr. Redlaw, a chemist, brooding over an ancient wrong, comes to the conclusion that it would be better for himself, better for all, if, in each of us, every memory of the past could be cancelled. A ghostly visitant, born of his own resentment and gloom, gives him the boon he seeks, and enables him to go about the world freezing all recollection in those he meets. And lo the boon turns out to be a curse. His presence blights those on whom it falls. For with the memory of past wrongs, goes the memory of past benefits, of all the mutual kindlinesses of life, and each unit of humanity becomes self-centred and selfish. Two beings alone resist his influence--one, a creature too selfishly nurtured for any of mankind's better recollections; and the other a woman so good as to resist the spell, and even, finally, to exorcise it in Mr. Redlaw's own breast.

"David Copperfield" was published between May, 1849, and the autumn of 1850, and marks, I think, the culminating point in d.i.c.kens' career as a writer. So far there had been, not perhaps from book to book, but on the whole, decided progress, the gradual attainment of greater ease, and of the power of obtaining results of equal power by simpler means.

Beyond this there was, if not absolute declension, for he never wrote anything that could properly be called careless and unworthy of himself, yet at least no advance. Of the interest that attaches to the book from the fact that so many portions are autobiographical, I have already spoken; nor need I go over the ground again. But quite apart from such advent.i.tious attractions, the novel is an admirable one.

All the scenes of little David's childhood in the Norfolk home--the Blunderstone rookery, where there were no rooks--are among the most beautiful pictures of childhood in existence. In what sunshine of love does the lad bask with his mother and Peggotty, till Mrs. Copperfield contracts her disastrous second marriage with Mr. Murdstone! Then how the scene changes. There come harshness and cruelty; banishment to Mr.

Creakle's villainous school; the poor mother's death; the worse banishment to London, and descent into warehouse drudgery; the strange shabby-genteel, happy-go-lucky life with the Micawbers; the flight from intolerable ills in the forlorn hope that David's aunt will take pity on him. Here the scene changes again. Miss Betsy Trotwood, a fine old gnarled piece of womanhood, places the boy at school at Canterbury, where he makes acquaintance with Agnes, the woman whom he marries far, far on in the story; and with her father, Mr. Wickham, a somewhat port wine-loving lawyer; and with Uriah Heep, the fawning villain of the piece. How David is first articled to a proctor in Doctors' Commons, and then becomes a reporter, and then a successful author; and how he marries his first wife, the childish Dora, who dies; and how, meanwhile, Uriah is effecting the general ruin, and aspiring to the hand of Agnes, till his villanies are detected and his machinations defeated by Micawber--how all this comes about, would be a long story to tell. But, as is usual with d.i.c.kens, there are subsidiary rills of story running into the main stream, and by one of these I should like to linger a moment. The head-boy, and a kind of parlour-boarder, at Mr. Creakles' establishment, is one Steerforth, the spoilt only son of a widow. This Steerforth, David meets again when both are young men, and they go down together to Yarmouth, and there David is the means of making him known to a family of fisherfolk. He is rich, handsome, with an indescribable charm, according to his friends' testimony, and he induces the fisherman's niece, the pretty Em'ly, to desert her home, and the young boat-builder to whom she is engaged, and to fly to Italy. Now to this story, as d.i.c.kens tells it, French criticism objects that he dwells exclusively on the sin and sorrow, and sets aside that in which the French novelist would delight, viz., the mad force and irresistible sway of pa.s.sion. To which English criticism may, I think, reply, that the "pity of it," the wide-working desolation, are as essentially part of such an event as the pa.s.sion; and, therefore, even from an exclusively artistic point of view, just as fit subjects for the novelist.

While "David Copperfield" was in progress, d.i.c.kens started on a new venture. He had often before projected a periodical, and twice, as we have seen,--once in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, and again as editor of _The Daily News_,--had attempted quasi-journalism or its reality. But now at last he had struck the right vein. He had discovered a means of utilizing his popularity, and imparting it to a paper, without being under the crushing necessity of writing the whole of that paper himself. The first number of _Household Words_ appeared on the 30th of March, 1850.

The "preliminary word" heralds the paper in thoroughly characteristic fashion, and is, not unnaturally, far more personal in tone than the first leading article of the first number of _The Daily News_, though that, too, be it said in pa.s.sing, bears traces, through all its officialism, of having come from the same pen.[22] In introducing _Household Words_ to his new readers, d.i.c.kens speaks feelingly, eloquently, of his own position as a writer, and the responsibilities attached to his popularity, and tells of his hope that a future of instruction, and amus.e.m.e.nt, and kindly playful fancy may be in store for the paper. Nor were his happy antic.i.p.ations belied. All that he had promised, he gave. _Household Words_ found an entrance into innumerable homes, and was everywhere recognized as a friend. Never did editor more strongly impress his own personality upon his staff.

The articles were sprightly, amusing, interesting, and instructive too--often very instructive, but always in an interesting way. That was one of the periodical's main features. The pill of knowledge was always presented gilt. Taking _Household Words_ and _All the Year Round_ together--and for this purpose they may properly be regarded as one and the same paper, because the change of name and proprietorship in 1859[23] brought no change in form or character,--taking them together, I say, they contain a vast quant.i.ty of very pleasant, if not very profound, reading. Even apart from the stories, one can do very much worse than while away an hour, now and again, in gleaning here and there among their pages. Among d.i.c.kens' own contributions may be mentioned "The Child's History of England," and "Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices"--being the record of an excursion made by him in 1857, with Mr. Wilkie Collins; and "The Uncommercial Traveller" papers.

While as to stories, "Hard Times" appeared in _Household Words_; and "The Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations," in _All the Year Round_. And to the Christmas numbers he gave some of his best and daintiest work. Nor were novels and tales by other competent hands wanting. Here it was that Mrs. Gaskell gave to the world those papers on "Cranford" that are so full of a dainty, delicate humour, and "My Lady Ludlow," and "North and South," and "A Dark Night's Work." Here, too, Mr. Wilkie Collins wove together his ingenious threads of plot and mystery in "The Moonstone," "The Woman in White," and "No Name."

And here also Lord Lytton published "A Strange Story," and Charles Reade his "Very Hard Cash."

The year 1851 opened sadly for d.i.c.kens. His wife, who had been confined of a daughter in the preceding August, was so seriously unwell that he had to take her to Malvern. His father, to whom, notwithstanding the latter's peculiarities and eccentricities, he was greatly attached, died on the 31st of March; and on the 14th of April his infant daughter died also. In connection with this latter death there occurred an incident of great pathos. d.i.c.kens had come up from Malvern on the 14th, to take the chair at the dinner on behalf of the Theatrical Fund, and looking in at Devonshire Terrace on his way, played with the children, as was his wont, and fondled the baby, and then went on to the London Tavern.[24] Shortly after he left the house, the child died, suddenly. The news was communicated to Forster, who was also at the dinner, and he decided that it would be better not to tell the poor father till the speech of the evening had been made.

So d.i.c.kens made his speech, and a brilliant one it was--it is brilliant even as one reads it now, in the coldness of print, without the glamour of the speaker's voice, and presence, and yet brilliant with an undertone of sadness, which the recent death of the speaker's father would fully explain. And Forster, who knew of the yet later blow impending on his friend, had to sit by and listen as that dear friend, all unconscious of the dread application of the words, spoke of "the actor" having "sometimes to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering, ay, even of death itself, to play his part;" and then went on to tell how "all of us, in our spheres, have as often to do violence to our feelings, and to hide our hearts in fighting this great battle of life, and in discharging our duties and responsibilities."

In this same year, 1851, d.i.c.kens left the house in Devonshire Terrace, now grown too small for his enlarging household, and, after a long sojourn at Broadstairs, moved into Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square. Here "Bleak House" was begun at the end of November, the first number being published in the ensuing March. It is a fine work of art unquestionably, a very fine work of art--the canvas all crowded with living figures, and yet the main lines of the composition well-ordered and harmonious. Two threads of interest run through the story, one following the career of Lady Dedlock, and the other tracing the influence of a great Chancery suit on the victims immeshed in its toils. From the first these two threads are distinct, and yet happily interwoven. Let us take Lady Dedlock's thread first. She is the wife of Sir Leicester Dedlock, whose "family is as old as the hills, and a great deal more respectable," and she is still very beautiful, though no longer in the bloom of youth, and she is cold and haughty of manner, as a woman of highest fashion sometimes may be. But in her past there is an ugly hidden secret; and a girl of sweetest disposition walks her kindly course through the story, who might call Lady Dedlock "mother." This secret, or perhaps rather the fact that there is a secret at all, she reveals in a moment of surprise to the family lawyer; and she lays herself still further open to his suspicions by going, disguised in her maid's clothes, to the poor graveyard where her former lover lies buried. The lawyer worms the whole story out, and, just as he is going to reveal it, is murdered by the French maid aforesaid. But the murder comes too late to save my lady, nay, adds to her difficulties. She flies, in antic.i.p.ation of the disclosure of her secret, and is found dead at the graveyard gate. To such end has the sin of her youth led her. So once again has d.i.c.kens dwelt, not on the pa.s.sionate side of wrongful love, but on its sorrow.

Now take the other thread--the Chancery suit--"Jarndyce _versus_ Jarndyce," a suit held in awful reverence by the profession as a "monument of Chancery practice"--a suit seemingly interminable, till, after long, long years of wrangling and litigation, the fortuitous discovery of a will settles it all, with the result that the whole estate has been swallowed up in the costs. And how about the litigants? How about poor Richard Carstone and his wife, whom we see, in the opening of the story, in all the heyday and happiness of their youth, strolling down to the court--they are its wards,--and wondering sadly over the "headache and heartache" of it all, and then saying, gleefully, "at all events Chancery will work none of its bad influence on _us_"? "None of its bad influence on _us_!" poor lad, whose life is wasted and character impaired in following the mirage of the suit, and who is killed by the mockery of its end. Thus do the two intertwined stories run; but apart from these, though all in place and keeping, and helping on the general development, there is a whole profusion of noticeable characters. In enumerating them, however baldly, one scarcely knows where to begin. The lawyer group--clerks and all--is excellent. d.i.c.kens' early experiences stood him in good stead here.

Excellent too are those studies in the ways of impecuniosity and practical shiftlessness, Harold Skimpole, the airy, irresponsible, light-hearted epicurean, with his pretty tastes and dilettante accomplishments, and Mrs. Jellyby, the philanthropist, whose eyes "see nothing nearer" than Borrioboola-Gha, on the banks of the far Niger, and never dwell to any purpose on the utter discomfort of the home of her husband and children. Characters of this kind no one ever delineated better than d.i.c.kens. That Leigh Hunt, the poet and essayist, who had sat for the portrait of Skimpole, was not altogether flattered by the likeness, is comprehensible enough; and in truth it is unfair, both to painter and model, that we should take such portraits too seriously. Landor, who sat for the thunderous and kindly Boythorn, had more reason to be satisfied. Besides these one may mention Joe, the outcast; and Mr. Turveydrop, the beau of the school of the Regency--how horrified he would have been at the juxtaposition--and George, the keeper of the rifle gallery, a fine soldierly figure; and Mr. Bucket, the detective--though d.i.c.kens had a tendency to idealize the abilities of the police force. As to Sir Leicester Dedlock, I think he is, on the whole, "mine author's" best study of the aristocracy, a direction in which d.i.c.kens' forte did not lie, for Sir Leicester _is_ a gentleman, and receives the terrible blow that falls upon him in a spirit at once chivalrous and human.

What between "Bleak House," _Household Words_, and "The Child's History of England," d.i.c.kens, in the spring of 1853, was overworked and ill. Brighton failed to restore him; and he took his family over to Boulogne in June, occupying there a house belonging to a certain M.

de Beaucourt. Town, dwelling, and landlord, all suited him exactly.

Boulogne he declared to be admirable for its picturesqueness in buildings and life, and equal in some respects to Naples itself. The dwelling, "a doll's house of many rooms," embowered in roses, and with a terraced garden, was a place after his own heart. While as to the landlord--he was "wonderful." d.i.c.kens never tires of extolling his virtues, his generosity, his kindness, his anxiety to please, his pride in "the property." All the pleasant delicate quaint traits in the man's character are irradiated as if with French sunshine in his tenant's description. It is a dainty little picture and painted with the kindliest of brushes. Poor Beaucourt, he was "inconsolable" when he and d.i.c.kens finally parted three years afterwards--for twice again did the latter occupy a house, but not this same house, on "the property." Many were the tears that he shed, and even the garden, the loved garden, went forlorn and unweeded. But that was in 1856. The parting was not so final and terrible in the October of 1853, when d.i.c.kens, having finished "Bleak House," started with Mr. Wilkie Collins, and Augustus Egg, the artist, for a holiday tour in Switzerland and Italy.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] "History of English Literature," vol. v.

[21] "Recollections of Writers," by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke.

[22] As, for instance, in such expressions as this: "The stamp on newspapers is not like the stamp on universal medicine bottles, which licenses anything, however false and monstrous."

[23] The last number of _Household Words_ appeared on the 28th of May, 1859, and the first of _All the Year Round_ on the 30th of April, 1859.

[24] There are one or two slight discrepancies between Forster's narrative and that of Miss d.i.c.kens and Miss Hogarth. The latter are clearly more likely to be right on such a matter.

CHAPTER X.

On his return to England, just after the Christmas of 1853, d.i.c.kens gave his first public readings. He had, as we have seen, read "The Chimes" some nine years before, to a select few among his literary friends; and at Lausanne he had similarly read portions of "Dombey and Son." But the three readings given at Birmingham, on the 27th, 29th, and 30th December, 1853, were, in every sense, public entertainments, and, except that the proceeds were devoted entirely to the local Inst.i.tute, differed in no way from the famous readings by which he afterwards realized what may almost be called a fortune. The idea of coming before the world in this new character had long been in his mind. As early as 1846, after the private reading at Lausanne, he had written to Forster: "I was thinking the other day that in these days of lecturings and readings, a great deal of money might possibly be made (if it were not _infra dig._) by one's having readings of one's own books. I think it would take immensely. What do you say?" Forster said then, and said consistently throughout, that he held the thing to _be_ "_infra dig._," and unworthy of d.i.c.kens' position; and in this I think one may venture to a.s.sert that Forster was wrong. There can surely be no reason why a popular writer, who happens also to be an excellent elocutionist, should not afford general pleasure by giving sound to his prose, and a voice to his imaginary characters. Nor is it opposed to the fitness of things that he should be paid for his skill.

If, however, one goes further in d.i.c.kens' case, and asks whether the readings did not involve too great an expenditure of time, energy, and, as we shall see, ultimately of life, and whether he would not, in the highest sense, have been better employed over his books,--why then the question becomes more difficult of solution. But, after all, each man must answer such questions for himself. d.i.c.kens may have felt, as the years began to tell, that he required the excitement of the readings for mental stimulus, and that he would not even have written as much as he did without them. Be that as it may, the success at Birmingham, where a sum of from 400 to 500 was realized, the requests that poured in upon him to read at other places, the invariably renewed success whenever he did so, the clear evidence that a large sum was to be realized if he determined to come forward on his own account, all must have contributed to scatter Forster's objections to the winds. On the 29th of April, 1858, at St. Martin's Hall, in London, he started his career as a paid public reader, and he continued to read, with shorter or longer periods of intermission, till his death. But into the story of his professional tours it is not my intention just now to enter. I shall only stay to say a few words about the character and quality of his readings.

That they were a success can readily be accounted for. The mere desire to see and hear d.i.c.kens, the great d.i.c.kens, the novelist who was more than popular, who was the object of real personal affection on the part of the English-speaking race,--this would have drawn a crowd at any time. But d.i.c.kens was not the man to rely upon such sources of attraction, any more than an actress who is really an actress will consent to rely exclusively on her good looks. "Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well," such as we have seen was one of the governing principles of his life; and he read very well. Of nervousness there was no trace in his composition. To some one who asked him whether he ever felt any shyness as a speaker, he answered, "Not in the least; the first time I took the chair (at a public dinner) I felt as much confidence as if I had done the thing a hundred times." This of course helped him much as a reader, and gave him full command over all his gifts. But the gifts were also a.s.siduously cultivated. He laboured, one might almost say, agonized, to make himself a master of the art. Mr. Dolby, who acted as his "manager,"

during the tours undertaken from 1866 to 1870, tells us that before producing "Dr. Marigold," he not only gave a kind of semi-public rehearsal, but had rehea.r.s.ed it to himself considerably over two hundred times. Writing to Forster d.i.c.kens says: "You have no idea how I have worked at them [the readings].... I have tested all the serious pa.s.sion in them by everything I know, made the humorous points much more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; ... I learnt 'Dombey' like the rest, and did it to myself often twice a day, with exactly the same pains as at night, over, and over, and over again."

The results justified the care and effort bestowed. There are, speaking generally, two schools of readers: those who dramatize what they read, and those who read simply, audibly, with every attention to emphasis and point, but with no effort to do more than slightly indicate differences of personage or character. To the latter school Thackeray belonged. He read so as to be perfectly heard, and perfectly understood, and so that the innate beauty of his literary style might have full effect. d.i.c.kens read quite differently. He read not as a writer to whom style is everything, but as an actor throwing himself into the world he wished to bring before his hearers. He was so careless indeed of pure literature, in this particular matter, that he altered his books for the readings, eliminating much of the narrative, and emphasizing the dialogue. He was pre-eminently the dramatic reader. Carlyle, who had been dragged to "Hanover Rooms," to "the complete upsetting," as he says, "of my evening habitudes, and spiritual composure," was yet constrained to declare: "d.i.c.kens does it capitally, such as _it_ is; acts better than any Macready in the world; a whole tragic, comic, heroic, _theatre_ visible, performing under one _hat_, and keeping us laughing--in a sorry way, some of us thought--the whole night. He is a good creature, too, and makes fifty or sixty pounds by each of these readings." "A whole theatre"--that is just the right expression minted for us by the great coiner of phrases. d.i.c.kens, by mere play of voice, for the gestures were comparatively sober, placed before you, on his imaginary stage, the men and women he had created. There Dr. Marigold pattered his cheap-jack phrases; and Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig, with throats rendered husky by much gin, had their memorable quarrel; and Sergeant Buzfuz bamboozled that stupid jury; and Boots at the Swan told his pretty tale of child-elopement; and f.a.gin, in his hoa.r.s.e Jew whisper, urged Bill Sikes to his last foul deed of murder. Ay me, in the great hush of the past there are tones of the reader's voice that still linger in my ears! I seem to hear once more the agonized quick utterance of poor Nancy, as she pleads for life, and the dread stillness after the ruffian's cruel blows have fallen on her upturned face. Again comes back to me the break in Bob Cratchit's voice, as he speaks of the death of Tiny Tim. As of old I listen to poor little Chops, the dwarf, declaring, very piteously, that his "fashionable friends" don't use him well, and put him on the mantel-piece when he refuses to "have in more champagne-wine," and lock him in the sideboard when he "won't give up his property." And I _see_--yes, I declare I _see_, as I saw when d.i.c.kens was reading, such was the illusion of voice and gesture--that dying flame of Scrooge's fire, which leaped up when Marley's ghost came in, and then fell again. Nor can I forbear to mention, among these reminiscences, that there is also a pa.s.sage in one of Thackeray's lectures that is still in my ears as on the evening when I heard it. It is a pa.s.sage in which he spoke of the love that children had for the works of his more popular rival, and told how his own children would come to him and ask, "Why don't you write books like Mr. d.i.c.kens?"

CHAPTER XI.

Chancery had occupied a prominent place in "Bleak House."

Philosophical radicalism occupied the same kind of position in "Hard Times," which was commenced in the number of _Household Words_ for the 1st of April, 1854. The book, when afterwards published in a complete form, bore a dedication to Carlyle; and very fittingly so, for much of its philosophy is his. d.i.c.kens, like Kingsley, and like Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Froude, and so many other men of genius and ability, had come under the influence of the old Chelsea sage.[25] And what are the ideas which "Hard Times" is thus intended to popularize? These: that men are not merely intellectual calculating machines, with reason and self-interest for motive power, but creatures possessing also affections, feelings, fancy--a whole world of emotions that lie outside the ken of the older school of political economists.

Therefore, to imagine that they can live and flourish on facts alone is a fallacy and pernicious; as is also the notion that any human relations can be permanently established on a basis of pure supply and demand. If we add to this an unlimited contempt for Parliament, as a place where the national dustmen are continually stirring the national dust to no purpose at all, why then we are pretty well advanced in the philosophy of Carlyle. And how does d.i.c.kens ill.u.s.trate these points? We are at c.o.ketown, a place, as its name implies, of smoke and manufacture. Here lives and flourishes Thomas Gradgrind, "a man of realities; a man of facts and calculations;" not essentially a bad man, but bound in an iron system as in a vice. He brings up his children on knowledge, and enlightened self-interest exclusively; and the boy becomes a cub and a mean thief, and the girl marries, quite without love, a certain bl.u.s.tering Mr. Bounderby, and is as nearly as possible led astray by the first person who approaches her with the language of gallantry and sentiment. Mr. Bounderby, her husband, is, one may add, a man who, in mere lying bounce, makes out his humble origin to be more humble than it is. On the other side of the picture are Mr. Sleary and his circus troupe; and Cissy Jupe, the daughter of the clown; and the almost saintly figures of Stephen Blackpool, and Rachel, a working man and a working woman. With these people facts are as naught, and self-interest as dust in the balance. Mr. Sleary has a heart which no brandy-and-water can harden, and he enables Mr.

Gradgrind to send off the wretched cub to America, refusing any guerdon but a gla.s.s of his favourite beverage. The circus troupe are kindly, simple, loving folk. Cissy Jupe proves the angel of the Gradgrind household. Stephen is the victim of unjust persecution on the part of his own cla.s.s, is suspected, by young Gradgrind's machinations, of the theft committed by that young scoundrel, falls into a disused pit as he is coming to vindicate his character, and only lives long enough to forgive his wrongs, and clasp in death the hand of Rachel--a hand which in life could not be his, as he had a wife alive who was a drunkard and worse. A marked contrast, is it not?

On one side all darkness, and on the other all light. The demons of fact and self-interest opposed to the angels of fancy and unselfishness. A contrast too violent unquestionably. Exaggeration is the fault of the novel. One may at once allow, for instance, that Rachel and Stephen, though human nature in its infinite capacity may include such characters, are scarcely a typical working woman and working man. But then neither, heaven be praised, are Coupeau the sot, and Gervaise the drab, in M. Zola's "Drink"--and, for my part, I think Rachel and Stephen the better company.

"Sullen socialism"--such is Macaulay's view of the political philosophy of "Hard Times." "Entirely right in main drift and purpose"--such is the verdict of Mr. Ruskin. Who shall decide between the two? or, if a decision be necessary, then I would venture to say, yes, entirely right in feeling. d.i.c.kens is right in sympathy for those who toil and suffer, right in desire to make their lives more human and beautiful, right in belief that the same human heart beats below all cla.s.s distinctions. But, beyond this, a novelist only, not a philosopher, not fitted to grapple effectively with complex social and political problems, and to solve them to right conclusions. There are some things unfortunately which even the best and kindest instincts cannot accomplish.

The last chapter of "Hard Times" appeared in the number of _Household Words_ for the 12th of August, 1854, and the first number of "Little Dorrit" came out at Christmas, 1855. Between those dates a great war had waxed and waned. The heart of England had been terribly moved by the story of the sufferings and privations which the army had had to undergo amid the snows of a Russian winter. From the trenches before Sebastopol the newspaper correspondents had sent terrible accounts of death and disease, and of ills which, as there seemed room for suspicion, might have been prevented by better management. Through long disuse the army had rusted in its scabbard, and everything seemed to go wrong but the courage of officers and men. A great demand arose for reform in the whole administration of the country. A movement, now much forgotten, though not fruitless at the time, was started for the purpose of making the civil service more efficient, and putting John Bull's house in order. "Administrative Reform," such was the cry of the moment, and d.i.c.kens uttered it with the full strength of his lungs. He attended a great meeting held at Drury Lane Theatre on the 27th of June, in furtherance of the cause, and made what he declared to be his first political speech. He spoke on the subject again at the dinner of the Theatrical Fund. He urged on his friends in the press to the attack. He was in the forefront of the battle. And when his next novel, "Little Dorrit," appeared, there was the Civil Service, like a sort of gibbeted Punch, executing the strangest antics.

But the "Circ.u.mlocution Office," where the clerks sit lazily devising all day long "how _not_ to do" the business of the country, and devote their energies alternately to marmalade and general insolence,--the "Circ.u.mlocution Office" occupies after all only a secondary position in the book. The main interest of it circles round the place that had at one time been almost a home to d.i.c.kens. Again he drew upon his earlier experiences. We are once more introduced into a debtors'

prison. Little Dorrit is the child of the Marshalsea, born and bred within its walls, the sole living thing about the place on which its taint does not fall. Her worthless brother, her sister, her father--who is not only her father, but the "father of the Marshalsea"--the prison blight is on all three. Her father especially is a piece of admirable character-drawing. d.i.c.kens has often been accused of only catching the surface peculiarities of his personages, their outward tricks, and obvious habits of speech and of mind. Such a study as Mr. Dorrit would alone be sufficient to rebut the charge. No novelist specially famed for dissecting character to its innermost recesses could exhibit a finer piece of mental a.n.a.lysis. We follow the poor weak creature's deterioration from the time when the helpless muddle in his affairs brings him into durance. We note how his sneaking pride seems to feed even on the garbage of his degradation.

We see how little inward change there is in the man himself when there comes a transformation scene in his fortunes, and he leaves the Marshalsea wealthy and prosperous. It is all thoroughly worked out, perfect, a piece of really great art. No wonder that Mr. Clennam pities the child of such a father; indeed, considering what a really admirable woman she is, one only wonders that his pity does not sooner turn to love.

"Little Dorrit" ran its course from December, 1855, to June, 1857, and within that s.p.a.ce of time there occurred two or three incidents in d.i.c.kens' career which should not pa.s.s unnoticed. At the first of these dates he was in Paris, where he remained till the middle of May, 1856, greatly feted by the French world of letters and art; dining hither and thither; now enjoying an Arabian Nights sort of banquet given by Emile de Girardin, the popular journalist; now meeting George Sand, the great novelist, whom he describes as "just the sort of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to be the queen's monthly nurse--chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed;" then studying French art, and contrasting it with English art, somewhat to the disadvantage of the latter; anon superintending the translation of his works into French, and working hard at "Little Dorrit;" and all the while frequenting the Paris theatres with great a.s.siduity and admiration.

Meanwhile, too, on the 14th of March, 1856, a Friday, his lucky day as he considered it, he had written a cheque for the purchase of Gad's Hill Place, at which he had so often looked when a little lad, living penuriously at Chatham--the house which it had been the object of his childish ambition to win for his own.

So had merit proved to be not without its visible prize, literally a prize for good conduct. He took possession of the house in the following February, and turned workmen into it, and finished "Little Dorrit" there. At first the purchase was intended mainly as an investment, and he only purposed to spend some portion of his time at Gad's Hill, letting it at other periods, and so recouping himself for the interest on the 1,790 which it had cost, and for the further sums which he expended on improvements. But as time went on it became his hobby, the love of his advancing years. He beautified here and beautified there, built a new drawing-room, added bedrooms, constructed a tunnel under the road, erected in the "wilderness" on the other side of the road a Swiss chalet, which had been presented to him by Fechter, the French-English actor, and in short indulged in all the thousand and one vagaries of a proprietor who is enamoured of his property. The matter seems to have been one of the family jokes; and when, on the Sunday before his death, he showed the conservatory to his younger daughter, and said, "Well, Katey, now you see _positively_ the last improvement at Gad's Hill," there was a general laugh. But this is far on in the story; and very long before the building of the conservatory, long indeed before the main other changes had been made, the idea of an investment had been abandoned. In 1860 he sold Tavistock House, in London, and made Gad's Hill Place his final home.

Even here, however, I am antic.i.p.ating; for before getting to 1860 there is in d.i.c.kens' history a page which one would willingly turn over, if that were possible, in silence and sadness. But it is not possible. No account of his life would be complete, and what is of more importance, true, if it made no mention of his relations with his wife.

For some time before 1858 d.i.c.kens had been in an over-excited, nervous, morbid state. During earlier manhood his animal spirits and fresh energy had been superb. Now, as the years advanced, and especially at this particular time, the energy was the same; but it was accompanied by something of feverishness and disease. He could not be quiet. In the autumn of 1857 he wrote to Forster, "I have now no relief but in action. I am become incapable of rest. I am quite confident I should rust, break, and die if I spared myself. Much better to die doing." And again, a little later, "If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should just explode and perish." It was the foreshadowing of such utterances as these, and the constant wanderings to and fro for readings and theatricals and what not, that led Harriet Martineau, who had known and greatly liked d.i.c.kens, to say after perusing the second volume of his life, "I am much struck by his hysterical restlessness. It must have been terribly wearing to his wife." On the other hand, there can be no manner of doubt that his wife wore _him_. "Why is it," he had said to Forster in one of the letters from which I have just quoted, "that, as with poor David (Copperfield), a sense comes always crushing on me now, when I fall into low spirits, as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion I have never made?" And again: "I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big one." Then come even sadder confidences: "Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no help for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I make her so too, and much more so.

She is exactly what you know in the way of being amiable and complying; but we are strangely ill-a.s.sorted for the bond there is between us.... Her temperament will not go with mine." And at last, in March, 1858, two months before the end: "It is not with me a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour, or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer. It is all despairingly over." So, after living together for twenty years, these two went their several ways in May, 1858. d.i.c.kens allowed to his wife an income of 600 a year, and the eldest son went to live with her. The other children and their aunt, Miss Hogarth, remained with d.i.c.kens himself.

Scandal has not only a poisonous, but a busy tongue, and when a well-known public man and his wife agree to live apart, the beldame seldom neglects to give her special version of the affair. So it happened here. Some miserable rumour was whispered about to the detriment of d.i.c.kens' morals. He was at the time, as we have seen, in an utterly morbid, excited state, sore doubtless with himself, and altogether out of mental condition, and the lie stung him almost to madness. He published an article branding it as it deserved in the number of _Household Words_ for the 12th of June, 1858.

So far his course of action was justifiable. Granted that it was judicious to notice the rumour at all, and to make his private affairs the matter of public comment, then there was nothing in the terms of the article to which objection could be taken. It contained no reflection of any kind on Mrs. d.i.c.kens. It was merely an honest man's indignant protest against an anonymous libel which implicated others as well as himself. Whether the publication, however, was judicious is a different matter. Forster thinks not. He holds that d.i.c.kens had altogether exaggerated the public importance of the rumour, and the extent of its circulation. And this, according to my own recollection, is entirely true. I was a lad at the time, but a great lover of d.i.c.kens' works, as most lads then were, and I well remember the feeling of surprise and regret which that article created among us of the general public. At the same time, it is only fair to d.i.c.kens to recollect that the lying story was, at least, so far fraught with danger to his reputation, that Mrs. d.i.c.kens would seem for a time to have believed it; and further, that d.i.c.kens occupied a very peculiar position towards the public, and a position that might well in his own estimation, and even in ours, give singular importance to the general belief in his personal character.

This point will bear dwelling upon. d.i.c.kens claimed, and claimed truly, that the relation between himself and the public was one of exceptional sympathy and affection. Perhaps an ill.u.s.tration will best show what that kind of relationship was. Thackeray tells of two ladies with whom he had, at different times, discussed "The Christmas Carol,"

and how each had concluded by saying of the author, "G.o.d bless him!"

G.o.d bless him!--that was the sort of feeling towards himself which d.i.c.kens had succeeded in producing in most English hearts. He had appealed from the first and so constantly to every kind and gentle emotion, had ill.u.s.trated so often what is good and true in human character, had pleaded the cause of the weak and suffering with such a.s.siduity, had been so scathingly indignant at all wrong; and he had moreover shown such a manly and chivalrous purity in all his utterance with regard to women, that his readers felt for him a kind of personal tenderness, quite distinct from their mere admiration for his genius as a writer. Nor was that feeling based on his books alone. So far as one could learn at the time, no great dissimilarity existed between the author and the man. We all remember Byron's corrosive remark on the sentimentalist Sterne, that he "whined over a dead a.s.s, and allowed his mother to die of hunger." But d.i.c.kens' feelings were by no means confined to his pen. He was known to be a good father and a good friend, and of perfect truth and honesty. The kindly tolerance for the frailties of a father or brother which he admired in Little Dorrit, he was ready to extend to his own father and his own brother. He was most a.s.siduous in the prosecution of his craft as a writer, and yet had time and leisure of heart at command for all kinds of good and charitable work. His private character had so far stood above all floating cloud of suspicion.

That d.i.c.kens felt an honourable pride in the general affection he inspired, can readily be understood. He also felt, even more honourably, its great responsibility. He knew that his books and he himself were a power for good, and he foresaw how greatly his influence would suffer if a suspicion of hypocrisy--the vice at which he had always girded--were to taint his reputation. Here, for instance, in "Little Dorrit," the work written in the thick of his home troubles, he had written of Clennam as "a man who had, deep-rooted in his nature, a belief in all the gentle and good things his life had been without," and had shown how this belief had "saved Clennam still from the whimpering weakness and cruel selfishness of holding that because such a happiness or such a virtue had not come into his little path, or worked well for him, therefore it was not in the great scheme, but was reducible, when found in appearance, to the basest elements." A touching utterance if it expressed the real feeling of a writer sorely disappointed and in great trouble; but an utterance moving rather to contempt if it came from a writer who had transferred his affections from his wife to some other woman. I do not wonder, therefore, that d.i.c.kens, excited and exasperated, spoke out, though I think it would have been better if he had kept silence.

But he did other things that were not justifiable. He quarrelled with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, his publishers, because they did not use their influence to get _Punch_, a periodical in which d.i.c.kens had no interest, to publish the personal statement that had appeared in _Household Words_; and worse, much worse, he wrote a letter, which ought never to have been written, detailing the grounds on which he and his wife had separated. This letter, dated the 28th of May, 1858, was addressed to his secretary, Arthur Smith, and was to be shown to any one interested. Arthur Smith showed it to the London correspondent of _The New York Tribune_, who naturally caused it to be published in that paper. Then d.i.c.kens was horrified. He was a man of far too high and chivalrous feeling not to know that the letter contained statements with regard to his wife's failings which ought never to have been made public. He knew as well as any one, that a literary man ought not to take the world into his confidence on such a subject.

Ever afterwards he referred to the letter as his "violated letter."

But, in truth, the wrong went deeper than the publication. The letter should never have been written, certainly never sent to Arthur Smith for general perusal. d.i.c.kens' only excuse is the fact that he was clearly not himself at the time, and that he never fell into a like error again. It is, however, sad to notice how entirely his wife seems to have pa.s.sed out of his affection. The reference to her in his will is almost unkind; and when death was on him she seems not to have been summoned to his bedside.