CHARLES DICKENS.
No novelist has dealt so directly with the home life of the world as Charles Dickens. He has painted few historic pictures; he has dealt mostly in interiors,—beautiful bits of home life, full of domestic feeling. Indeed, we may say that his background is always the home, and here he paints his portraits, often like those of Hogarth for strength and grotesque effect. Here, too, he limns the scenes of his comedy-tragedy, and depicts the changing fashions of the time. The color is sometimes a little crude, laid on occasionally with too coarse a brush; but the effect is always lifelike, and our interest in it is never known to flag.
Nowhere else in all the range of literature have we such tender description of home life and love, such intuitive knowledge of child life, such wonderful sympathy with every form of domestic wrong and suffering, such delicate appreciation of the shyest and most unobtrusive of social virtues; nowhere else such indignation at any neglect or desecration of the home, as in Mrs. Jellyby with her mission, in Mrs. Pardiggle with her charities, Mr. Pecksniff with his hypocrisy, and Mr. Dombey with his unfeeling selfishness. In short, Dickens is pre-eminently the prophet and the poet of the home.
Now, can it be possible that we must say of such a man as this, that in his own life he was the opposite of all that which he so feelingly describes,—that he desecrated the very home he so apostrophizes,—that he put all his warmth, geniality, and tenderness into his books and kept for his own fireside his sour humors and unhappy moods,—that he was "ill to live with," as Mrs. Carlyle puts it? We cannot believe it in so bald a form, but we are forced to admit that his married life seems to have been in every way unhappy and unfortunate. No one could state this more strongly than Dickens himself, in the letter he wrote at the time of the separation. He said:—
"Mrs. Dickens and I have lived unhappily for many years. Hardly any one who has known us intimately can fail to have known that we are in all respects of character and temperament wonderfully unsuited to each other. I suppose that no two people, not vicious in themselves, were ever joined together, who had greater difficulty in understanding one another, or who had less in common. An attached woman-servant (more friend to both of us than servant), who lived with us sixteen years and had the closest familiar experience of this unhappiness in London, in the country, in France, in Italy, wherever we have been, year after year, month after month, week after week, day after day, will bear testimony to this. Nothing has on many occasions stood between us and a separation but Mrs. Dickens's sister, Georgina Hogarth. From the age of fifteen, she has devoted herself to our home and our children. She has been their playmate, nurse, instructress, friend, protectress, adviser, companion. In the manly consideration towards Mrs. Dickens, which I owe to my wife, I will only remark of her that the peculiarity of her character has thrown all the children on some one else. I do not know, I cannot by any stretch of fancy imagine, what would have become of them but for this aunt, who has grown up with them, to whom they are devoted, and who has sacrificed the best part of her youth and life to them. She has remonstrated, reasoned, suffered, and toiled, and come again to prevent a separation between Mrs. Dickens and me. Mrs. Dickens has often expressed to her her sense of her affectionate care and devotion in the house,—never more strongly than within the last twelve months."
Again, in the public statement which he prepared for "Household Words," alluding to a multitude of damaging rumors which were quickly put in circulation, he says:—
"By some means, arising out of wickedness or out of folly or out of inconceivable wild chance, or out of all three, this trouble has been made the occasion of misrepresentations most grossly false, most monstrous, and most cruel,—involving not only me, but innocent persons dear to my heart, and innocent persons of whom I have no knowledge, if indeed they have any existence,—and so widely spread that I doubt if one reader in a thousand will peruse these lines by whom some touch of the breath of these slanderers will not have passed like an unwholesome air.
"Those who know me and my nature need no assurance under my hand that such calumnies are as irreconcilable with me as they are in their frantic incoherence with one another. But there is a great multitude who know me through my writings and who do not know me otherwise, and I cannot bear that one of them should be left in doubt or hazard of doubt through my poorly shrinking from taking the unusual means to which I now resort of circulating the truth. I most solemnly declare then—and this I do both in my own name and my wife's name—that all lately whispered rumors touching the trouble at which I have glanced are abominably false; and that whosoever repeats one of them, after this denial, will lie as wilfully and as foully as it is possible for any false witness to lie before heaven and earth."
This denial, coming from a man of truth and honor like Charles Dickens, must, once for all, dispose of that convenient way of accounting for the sad estrangement.
The reasons for the unhappy state of things were of a much more complicated nature than this. Only the most intimate of his friends ever knew them in full, and of course they were debarred from making them public. But Professor Ward of Cambridge University, who has written a very kind and appreciative Life of Dickens, and one which gives a far more pleasing idea of his character than the bulky and egotistical Life by Forster, gives a clue to the whole trouble in the following statement. He says:—
"If he ever loved his wife with that affection before which so-called incompatibilities of habits, temper, or disposition fade into nothingness, there is no indication of it in any of the numerous letters addressed to her. Neither has it ever been pretended that he strove in the direction of that resignation which love and duty made possible to David Copperfield, or even that he remained in every way master of himself, as many men have known how to remain, the story of whose wedded life and its disappointments has never been written in history or figured in fiction."
And this troublous condition of things was very much intensified by Dickens having fallen violently in love with Mary Hogarth, Mrs. Dickens's youngest sister. This beautiful girl died at their house at the early age of seventeen. No sorrow seems ever to have touched the heart and possessed the imagination of Charles Dickens like that for the loss of this dearly loved girl. "I can solemnly say," he wrote to her mother a few months after her death, "that waking or sleeping I have never lost the recollection of our hard sorrow, and I never shall." "If," he writes in his diary at the beginning of a new year, "she was with me now,—the same winning, happy, amiable companion, sympathizing with all my thoughts and feelings more than any one I ever knew did or will,—I think I should have nothing to wish but a continuance of such happiness." Throughout life her memory haunted him with great vividness. After her death he wrote: "I dreamed of her every night for many weeks, and always with a kind of quiet happiness, which became so pleasant to me that I never lay down without a hope of the vision returning." The year before he died he wrote to a friend: "She is so much in my thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful, that the recollection of her is an essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as the beating of my heart is." In a word, she was the one great imaginative passion of his life. He is said to have pictured her in Little Nell, and he writes after finishing that book, "Dear Mary died yesterday when I think of it."
Have we not in this the key to all the sorrows of his domestic life? Could he have married the woman he loved in this manner, he would doubtless have been one of the tenderest and most devoted of husbands, and a family life as beautiful as any of the ideal ones he has depicted would have resulted. It is probable that he did not know Mary Hogarth until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died instantly of heart-disease, without even a premonitory warning.
All accounts agree in calling Mrs. Dickens a very pretty, amiable, and well-bred woman; and even if she was as infinitely incapable as represented, that alone would seem to be insufficient cause for so serious a trouble. Miss Georgina Hogarth, whom all describe as a very lovely and superior person, possessed the executive ability Mrs. Dickens lacked, it would seem; for all visitors both to Tavistock House and Gad's Hill describe with enthusiasm the perfect order which prevailed in the large establishments, attributing this in part at least to Dickens's own intense love of method and passion for neatness. But no man without the aid of feminine head and hands would have succeeded in attaining to this perfect housekeeping, especially where the family consisted of nine children, as in this case.
Hans Christian Andersen thus describes a visit to Gad's Hill:—
"It was a fine new house, with red walls and four bow-windows, and a jutting entrance supported by pillars; in the gable a large window. A dense hedge of cherry-laurel surrounded the house, in front of which extended a neat lawn, and on the opposite side rose two mighty cedars of Lebanon, whose crooked branches spread their green far over another large lawn surrounded by ivy and wild vines, the hedge being so dense and dark that no sunbeam could penetrate it.
"As soon as I stepped into the house, Dickens came to meet me kindly and cordially. He was now in the prime of life, still so youthful, so active, so eloquent, so rich in the most pleasant humor, through which his sterling kind-heartedness always beamed forth. As he stood before me in the first hour, so he was and remained during all the weeks I passed in his company,—merry, good-natured, and full of charming sympathy. Dickens at home seems to be perpetually jolly, and enters into the interests of games with all the ardor of a boy. My bedroom was the perfection of a sleeping-apartment; the view across the Kentish hills, with a distant peep of the Thames, charming. In every room I found a table covered with writing-materials, headed notepaper, envelopes, cut quill-pens, wax, matches, sealing-wax, and all scrupulously neat and orderly. There are magnificent specimens of Newfoundland dogs on the grounds, such animals as Landseer would love to paint. One of these, named Bumble, seems to be a favorite with Dickens."
Mr. Mackenzie writes:—
"Eminently social and domestic, he exercised a liberal hospitality, and though he lived well as his means allowed, avoided excesses. It is said of him that he never lost a friend, never made an enemy."
From all sources comes the same report of his geniality, of his devotion to his children and their devotion to him, of his constant generosity and good-humor. Byron's old servant said that Lady Byron was the only woman he ever saw who could not manage his master. Was this also true of Mrs. Dickens? Was she the only one who found him "ill to live with"? It may be; and yet one can easily imagine him to have been a man of moods, and that in some of these moods it would be best to give him a wide berth. The very excess of his animal spirits may have been wearying to one who could not share them; and that he was egotistical to a degree, and vain, and fond of flattery, goes without saying. A lady in the "English-woman's Magazine" tells this story of his wild and reckless fun, and it is matched by many others. They were down on the seashore in the moonlight, and had been dancing there.
"We then strolled farther down to watch the fading light. The tide came rippling in. The night grew darker,—starless, moonless. Dickens seemed suddenly to be possessed with the spirit of mischief; he threw his arm around me, and ran me down the inclined plane to the end of the jetty till we reached the toll-post. He put his other arm around this, and exclaimed in theatrical tones that he intended to hold me there till the sad sea waves should submerge us. 'Think of the sensation we shall create.' Here I implored him to let me go, and struggled hard to release myself. 'Let your mind dwell upon the column in the "Times" wherein will be vividly described the pathetic fate of the lovely E. P., drowned by Dickens in a fit of dementia. Don't struggle, poor little bird; you are helpless.' By this time the last gleam of light had faded out, and the water close to us looked uncomfortably black. The tide was coming up rapidly, and surged over my feet. I gave a loud shriek, and tried to bring him back to common-sense by reminding him that my dress—my best dress, my only silk dress—would be ruined. Even this climax did not soften him; he still went on with his serio-comic nonsense, shaking with laughter all the time, and panting with his struggles to hold me. 'Mrs. Dickens,' I shrieked, 'help me! Make Mr. Dickens let me go—the waves are up to my knees.' 'Charles,' cried Mrs. Dickens, 'how can you be so silly? You will both be carried off by the tide!' And it was not until my dress had been completely ruined that I succeeded in wresting myself from him. Upon two other occasions he seized me and ran with me under the cataract, and held me there until I was thoroughly baptized and my bonnets a wreck of lace and feathers."
The same writer says,—and she is one who writes from familiar personal acquaintance,—"To describe Dickens as always amiable, always just, and always in the right, would be simply false and untrue to Nature;" and she relates several anecdotes going to prove that he was sometimes capricious, not always responsive to appeals for help, and other things of that sort; all of which may be true and not be very damaging. This writer tells still another story of his reckless fun-making, as follows:—
"We were about to make an excursion to Pegwell Bay, and lunch there. Presently Dickens came in in high glee, flourishing about a yard of ballads, which he had bought from a beggar in the street. 'Look here,' he cried exultingly, 'all for a penny. One song alone is worth a Jew's eye,—quite new and original, the subject being the interesting announcement by our gracious Queen.' He commenced to give us a specimen, but after hearing one verse there arose a cry of universal execration. He pretended to be vexed at our 'shutting him up.' said there was nothing wrong in it, he had written a great deal worse himself; and when we were going to enter the carriages he said: 'Now, look here! I give due notice to all and sundry, that I mean to sing that song, and a good many others, during the ride; so those ladies who think them vulgar can go in the other carriages. I am not going to invest my hard-earned penny for nothing.' I was quite certain that Charles Dickens was the last man in the world to shock the modesty of any female, and too much of a gentleman to do anything that was annoying to us, but I thought it as well to go in the other carriage; and so he had no ladies with him but his wife and Mrs. S——. I was not sorry, however, to be where I was, as I heard for the next half-hour portions of those songs wafted on the breeze; and the bursts of laughter from ladies and gentlemen and the mischievous twinkle in Dickens's eye proved that he was in such a madcap mood that it was as well there were none but married people with him,—the subject being of a 'Gampish' nature. But he was not always full of spirits or even-tempered,—indeed, I was sometimes puzzled by the variability of his moods."
Anecdotes like the following, told by Blanchard Jerrold, abound in all writers who wrote of Dickens from personal knowledge:—
"A very dear friend of mine, and of many others to whom literature is a staff, had died. To say that his family had claims upon Dickens is to say that they were promptly acknowledged and satisfied, with the grace and heartiness which double the gift, sweeten the bread, and warm the wine. I asked a connection of our dead friend whether he had seen the poor wife and children. 'Seen them?' he answered. 'I was there to-day. They are removed into a charming cottage. They have everything about them; and just think of this: when I burst into the room, in my eager survey of the new home, I saw a man in his shirt-sleeves up some steps, hammering away lustily. He turned. It was Charles Dickens, and he was hanging the pictures for the widow. . . . Dickens was the soul of truth and manliness as well as kindness, so that such a service as this came as naturally to him as help from his purse.'"
Jerrold continues:—
"There was that boy-element in him which has been so often remarked of men of genius. 'Why, we played a game of knock 'em down only a week ago,' a friend remarked to me last June, with beaming eyes, 'and he showed all the old astonishing energy and delight in taking aim at Aunt Sally.' My own earliest recollections of Dickens are of his gayest moods, when the boy in him was exuberant, and leap-frog and rounders were not sports too young for the player who had written 'Pickwick' twenty years before. The sweet and holy lessons which he presented to humanity out of the humble places in the world could not have been evolved out of a nature less true and sympathetic than his. It wanted such a man as Dickens was in his life to be such a writer as he was for the world."
One more anecdote. J. C. Young tells us that one day Mrs. Henry Siddons, a neighbor and intimate of Lord Jeffrey, who often entered his library unannounced, opened the door very gently to see if he were there, and saw enough at a glance to convince her that the visit was ill-timed. The hard critic of the "Edinburgh Review" was sitting in his chair with his head on the table in deep grief. As Mrs. Siddons was retiring, in the hope that her entrance had been unnoticed, Jeffrey raised his head and kindly beckoned her back. Perceiving that his cheek was flushed and his eyes suffused with tears, she begged permission to withdraw. When he found that she was intending to leave him, he rose from his chair, took her by both hands, and led her to a seat.
"Don't go, my dear friend; I shall be right again in another minute."
"I had no idea you had had any bad news, or cause for grief, or I would not have come. Is any one dead?"
"Yes, indeed. I'm a great goose to have given way so; but I could not help it. You'll be sorry to hear that little Nelly, Boz's little Nelly, is dead."
Dear, sweet, loving little Nell! We doubt if any other creation of poet or novelist in any language has received the tribute of as many tears as thou. From high, from low, on land, on sea, wherever thy story has been read, there has been paid the spontaneous tribute of tears. Whether or not many of the fantastic creations of the great master's hand will live in the far future we cannot tell, but of thy immortality there is no more question than there is of that of Hamlet or of Lear. Bret Harte tells us of a camp among the stern Sierras, where a group of wanderers gathered about the fire, and one of them arose, and "from his pack's scant treasure" drew forth the magic book; and soon all their own wants and labors were forgotten, and
"The whole camp with Nell on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way."
And from many different sources come stories of her influence upon the hearts and minds of all classes and conditions of men.
Of Dickens's personal appearance and of the leading traits of his character much has been written, and by some of the keenest observers of his time. He is said to have been a very small and sickly boy, subject to attacks of violent spasm. Although so fond of games and sports when a man, as a boy he evinced little interest in them, probably on account of his ill health. We should naturally think of him as the autocrat of the playground, and the champion in all games of strength and skill; but such was not the fact. He was extremely fond of reading, at a very early age, and of acting little plays, and showing pictures in a magic lantern; he even sang at this time, and was as fond of fun as in later life. When quite young he and his companions mounted a small theatre, and got together scenery to illustrate "The Miller and his Men," and one or two other plays.
Mr. Forster describes him thus:—
"The features were very good. He had a capital forehead, a firm nose, with full, wide nostril, eyes wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humor and cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth, strongly marked with sensibility. The head was altogether well-formed and symmetrical, and the air and carriage of it extremely spirited. The hair, so scant and grizzled in later days, was then of a rich brown and the most luxuriant abundance, and the bearded face of the last two decades had hardly a vestige of hair or whisker, but there was that in the face, as I first recollect it, which no time could change, and which remained implanted on it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and practical power, the eager, restless, energetic look on each several feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books, and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and motion flashed from every part of it."
Another keen observer writes:—
"The French painter's remark that 'he was more like one of the old Dutch admirals we see in picture galleries than a man of letters,' conveyed an admirably true idea to his friends. He had, indeed, much of the quiet, resolute manner of command of a captain of a ship. He trod along briskly as he walked; as he listened, his searching eye rested on you, and the nerves in his face quivered, much like those in the delicately formed nostrils of a finely bred dog. There was a curl or two in his hair at each side, which was characteristic; and the jaunty way he wore his little morning hat, rather on one side, added to the effect. But when there was anything droll suggested, a delightful sparkle of lurking humor began to kindle and spread to his mouth, so that, even before he uttered anything, you felt that something irresistibly droll was at hand."
Mr. Mackenzie tells us:—
"Dickens's personal taste in dress was always 'loud.' He loved gay vests, glittering jewelry, showy satin stocks, and everything rather prononcé; yet no man had a keener or more unsparing critical eye for these vulgarities in others. He once gave to a friend a vest of gorgeous shawl pattern. Soon after, at a party, he quizzed his friend most unmercifully for his stunning vest, although he had on him at that very moment its twin brother or sister, whichever sex vests belong to."
There was an almost morbid restlessness in the man, out of which arose his habit of excessive walking. When he was writing one of his great books he could not be away from London streets, and he used to walk about in them at night for hours at a time, until his body was completely exhausted; in this way only could he get sleep. When not composing he loved long country walks, and probably injured his health much in later life by the great length of these tramps across country. His restlessness showed itself also in many other ways. The element of repose was not in him. "My last special feat," he writes once when unable to sleep, "was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast."
The story is told, too, of a night spent in private theatricals, following a very laborious day for Dickens, and of his being so much fresher than any of his companions that towards morning he jumped leap-frog over the backs of the whole weary company, and was not willing to go to bed even then. His animal spirits were really inexhaustible, and this was the great unfailing charm of his companionship. He never drooped or lagged, but was always alert, keen, and ready for any emergency. Out-of-door games he entered into with great hilarity, and was usually the youngest man in the party. There was a positive sparkle and atmosphere of holiday sunshine about him, and to no man was the word "genial" ever more appropriately applied.
He carried an atmosphere of good cheer with him in person as he did in his books, and was fond of the sentiment of joviality; wrote, indeed, a great deal about feasting, but was really abstemious himself, though he liked to brew punch and have little midnight suppers with his friends. Yet at these same suppers he ate and drank almost nothing, though he furnished the hilarity for the whole party.
His powers of microscopic observation have seldom been equalled. As Arthur Helps said of him, he seemed to see and observe nine facts while his companion was seeing the tenth. His books are full of the results of this accurate observation. Comparatively little in them is invention; the major part of everything is description of something he has seen and noted. When he was engaged in reporting, among eighty or ninety reporters, he occupied the very highest rank, not merely for accuracy in observing, but for marvellous quickness in transcribing. His wonderful ability as an actor is known to all. Probably he would have been the greatest comedian of his day if he had not been one of its greatest writers. His love for the theatre was an absorbing passion. He was quite as good a manager as actor, and could bring order out of the chaos of rehearsals for private theatricals, as no other man has ever been known to do. Carlyle, who was one of the keenest observers of men our time has produced, said: "Dickens's essential faculty, I often say, is that of a first-rate play-actor." Macready also gave it as his opinion that Dickens was the only amateur with any pretensions to talent that he had ever seen.
Among the weaknesses of his character were his love of display, which amounted to ostentation sometimes; his fear of being slighted; his vanity, which was prodigious, and a certain hardness, which at times amounted to aggressiveness and almost to fierceness. The displays of this latter quality were very rare; but they left an ineffaceable impression upon all witnesses.
The only political questions which deeply moved him were those social problems to which his sympathy for the poor had always directed his attention,—the Poor Law, temperance, Sunday observance, punishment and prisons, labor and strikes. But that he much influenced the legislation of his country by his writings, no man can doubt. In religion he was a Liberal. Born in the Church of England, we are told by Professor Ward that he had so strong an aversion for what seemed dogmatism of any kind, that for a time—in 1843—he connected himself with a Unitarian congregation, and to Unitarian views his own probably continued during his life most nearly to approach.
In his will he says:—
"I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament, in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or there."
Although a man of deep emotional nature, his religion was, after all, mostly a religion of good deeds. Helpfulness, kindliness,—these were to him the supreme things. One who knew him well wrote after his death:—
"I frankly confess that having met innumerable men and had dealings with innumerable men, I never met one with an approach to his genuine, unaffected, unchanging kindness, or one that ever found so sunshiny a pleasure in doing one a kindness. I cannot call to mind that any request I ever made to him was ungranted, or left without an attempt to grant it."
Upon this point all who ever knew the man are well agreed. It will suffice. To him who loved so much, if need be much will be forgiven.
As we close this paper, how softly pass before us the long procession of the men and women he has created,—for they all seem thus to us,—not characters, but people, many of them personal acquaintances of our own. There are actual tears in our eyes as the little company of children pass in review, led by David Copperfield, and followed by Oliver Twist, with Paul Dombey in his wake, and little Nell timidly pressing near; while trooping after, sad, tearful, or grotesque, come Florence Dombey, poor Joe, Pip and Smike, Sloppy and Peepy, Little Dorrit and Tiny Tim, and many more of those with whose sorrows we have sympathized, and over each and all of whom we have wept hot tears in the days that are no more. Dream-children, he calls them; but the great world acknowledges them as real beings, and sorrows and rejoices with them, even more, it is to be feared, than it does sometimes with the children of flesh and blood, homeless and forsaken as many of them are. But for the sake of Tiny Tim many an old Scrooge has softened his hard heart somewhat; and in memory of poor Joe many a hardened city man has been a little less imperious to the beggar-boy about "moving on." Even poor Smike has served the purpose of ameliorating a trifle the hard lot of such unfortunates as he, who are tyrannized over in public institutions; and, altogether, Dickens's dream-children can be said to have been useful in their day and generation.
How the other old friends come following on! We have our own peculiar greeting for each. We cannot help holding our sides as Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller go by, followed by Captain Cuttle with his hook, the finest gentleman of them all; by the Major and Mrs. Bagnet, by whom discipline is maintained in the group; by Micawber, with his large outlines and flowing periods; and by Mrs. Micawber and her relations, senseless imbeciles or unmitigated scoundrels all, as her husband testifies; by Mrs. Gamp, by Barkis, and even the young man by the name of Guppy. A smile spreads over the face of the whole reading world at the bare mention of their names. How the smiles deepen into tears as we think over the other friends to whom he has introduced us,—mutual friends of us all; of whom we talk when we congregate together, with just as much of real feeling and interest as we do of other friends of flesh and blood, laugh over their foibles and follies, pity their sorrows, blame their acts, and all with no other feeling than that of utter reality.
Will little Nell's friend, the old schoolmaster, ever cease to draw tears from our eyes? Shall we ever weary of gentle Tom Pinch? Shall we not always touch our hats to Joe Gargery? Shall we ever cease loving Mr. Jarndyce, even when the wind is in the east? And will Agnes and Esther ever pall upon our taste? Not, we verily believe, until the sources of feeling are dried up in us forever, and we have grown indifferent to all of earth. What an array of them there are, too! The bare catalogue of their names would fill a volume, and it would not be bad reading to the genuine Dickens lover,—recalling, as each name would, so much of vivid portrayal, and starting so many associations in the mind. But there is no need to repeat the names; the big, dull old world long ago learned them by heart. Nor will they soon be relegated to the shades. While the tide of English speech flows on, they will linger, component parts of the language itself.
