Victorian Literature: Sixty Years of Books and Bookmen

by Clement King Shorter

Any comparison of the novels of the Victorian Era, with the novels of the Georgian Period, must be very much to the disadvantage of the former. The great epoch of English fiction began with Goldsmith and Richardson, and ended with Sir Walter Scott. It was an epoch which gave us "The Vicar of Wakefield," "Clarissa," "Tom Jones," "Pride and Prejudice," "Humphrey Clinker," and "Tristram Shandy." That fiction had a naturalness and spontaneity to which the novels of the Victorian Era can lay no claim. The novels of the period with which we are concerned aspire to regenerate mankind. Dickens, indeed, started off with but little literary equipment save sundry eighteenth century novels. He had read Smollett, and Fielding, and Sterne, diligently. But the influence of these humourists—so marked in "Pickwick"—became qualified in his succeeding books by the strenuous spirit of the times.

It is alike interesting in itself and convenient for my purpose that the most popular novelist of the Victorian era should have published his first great book in 1837. Dickens awoke then to abundant fame, and his popularity has never waned for an instant during the sixty succeeding years. To-day he may be more or less decried by "literary" people, but his audience has multiplied twofold. He has added to it the countless thousands whom the School Board has given to the reading world.

Charles Dickens1812-1870 was born at Landport, Portsea, his father being an improvident clerk in the Navy Pay Office at Portsmouth. Dickens senior has been immortalized for us by the not too pleasing portrait of "Micawber." After infinite struggle and penury, Dickens became a reporter for the Morning Chronicle. Under the signature of "Boz" he wrote "Sketches" for the Monthly Magazine in 1834. "Pickwick" appeared from April 1836 to November 1837, and alike in parts and in book form took the world by storm. It was succeeded by "Oliver Twist" (1838), "Nicholas Nickleby" (1839), "The Old Curiosity Shop" (1840), and "Barnaby Rudge" (1841). From this time forth Dickens was the most popular writer that our literature has seen. Within twelve years after his death some four millions of his books were sold in England, and there is no reason to believe that this popularity has in any way abated, although George Eliot foretold that much of Dickens's humour would be meaningless to the next generation, that is to say, to the generation which is now with us. It is the fashion to call Dickens the novelist of the half-educated, to charge him with lack of reflectiveness, with incapacity for serious reasoning. His humour has been described as insincere, his pathos as exaggerated. Much of this indictment may with equal justice be made against Richardson and even against Jane Austen, who surely anticipated Dickens by the creation of the Rev. William Collins.

If Dickens had been a learned University Professor he would not have possessed the equipment most needful for the artist who was to portray to us in an imperishable manner the London which is now fast disappearing. The people who censure Dickens are those for whom he has served a purpose and is of no further use. They are a mere drop in the ocean of readers. It is not easy to-day to gauge his precise position. The exhaustion of many of his copyrights has given up his work to a host of rival publishers. There are probably thousands of men and women now, as there were in the fifties and sixties, who have been stimulated by him, and who have found in his writings the aid to a cheery optimism which has made life more tolerable amid adverse conditions. Mrs Richmond Ritchie, Thackeray's daughter, tells us how keenly Dickens's capacity for stirring the heart was felt even in the home of the rival novelist. Thackeray's youngest daughter, then a child, looked up from the book she was reading to ask the question, "Papa, why do you not write books like 'Nicholas Nickleby'"? Thackeray himself shared the general enthusiasm. "David Copperfield!" he writes to a correspondent, "By Jingo! It is beautiful! It is charming! Bravo Dickens! It has some of his very brightest touches—those inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man of him. And the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of good.... It has put me on my mettle and made me feel that I must do something; that I have fame and name and family to support."

If Dickens is still beloved by the multitude, the name of William Makepeace Thackeray1811-1863 has entirely eclipsed his in the minds of a certain literary section of the community. Thackeray stands to them for culture, Dickens for illiteracy. Thackeray had indeed a more polished intellect; he had also a more restrained style. Thackeray was born at Calcutta. His father, who was an Indian civil servant, died when the boy was only five years old. He was educated at Charterhouse School and Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1831 he went to Weimar. He studied long at Paris with a view to becoming an artist, and when "Pickwick" wanted an illustrator to continue the work of Seymour who had committed suicide, Thackeray applied to Dickens, but Hablot Browne was chosen, and Thackeray was disappointed—happily for the world, which lost an indifferent artist to gain a great author. Thackeray in 1837—the year which saw the publication of "Pickwick" as a volume—joined the staff of Fraser's Magazine. In that journal appeared in succession "The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond," "The Yellowplush Papers," and "The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon." In 1847 "Vanity Fair" was begun in numbers, and not till then did its author secure real renown. "Pendennis" was published in 1850, and "Esmond" in 1852. "The Newcomes" (1854) is in some measure a sequel to "Pendennis," as "The Virginians" (1858) is in some measure a sequel to "Esmond." These are the five works by Thackeray which everyone must read. In 1857 Thackeray unsuccessfully contested Oxford. In 1859 he undertook the editorship of the new Cornhill Magazine which flourished in his hands. These were the halcyon days of magazine editors. On Macaulay's death in 1859, Thackeray talked of purchasing the historian's vacant house. A friend remarked upon his prosperity. "To make money one must edit a magazine," was the answer. He did not buy Macaulay's house, but built himself one at Palace Green, and here he died the day before Christmas-day 1863. His daughter, Anne Thackeray, who became Mrs Richmond Ritchie, has written "Old Kensington" and other stories of singular charm.

The twenty-six volumes of Thackeray's works make a veritable nursery of style for the modern literary aspirant. But it is, as has been said, upon his five great novels that his future fame must rest. They are as permanent a picture of life among the well-to-do classes as those Dickens has given us of life among the poor.

Charlotte Brontë1816-1855, who gave to Thackeray the enthusiastic hero-worship of her early years, called him a Titan, and dedicated "Jane Eyre" to him, had little enough in common with the author of "Vanity Fair." The daughter of a poor parson of Irish birth, she was born at Thornton in Yorkshire. She and two sisters grew up in the cramped atmosphere of a vicarage at Haworth, in the centre of the moorlands. They wrote stories and poems from childhood, and dreamed of literary fame. Meanwhile it was necessary to add to the scanty stipend of their father; two of them went back as governesses to the school in which they had been educated; and all of them a little later attempted the uncongenial life of private governesses. The desire to have a school of their own led Charlotte and her sister Emily to Brussels, where they studied French and German. Returning to the Haworth parsonage, the three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, with money left them by an aunt, published a volume of verse—"Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell." Then each sister produced from her drawer the manuscript of a novel, and Charlotte's "Professor," Emily's "Wuthering Heights," and Anne's "Agnes Grey" were sent round to the publishers and returned more than once to the parsonage. Finally the "Professor" was read by Smith & Elder, who asked for a longer story by the writer. "Jane Eyre" (1847) was the result, and that story became one of the most successful novels of the day. It was followed by "Shirley" (1849) and "Villette" (1853). In 1854 Charlotte Brontë became Mrs Arthur Bell Nicholls, and the wife of her father's curate. In the following year she died. "The Professor" was published two years after her death.

Emily Brontë1818-1848 accomplished less than her elder sister, but her name will live as long. She secured the admiration of Sydney Dobell, of Matthew Arnold, and of Mr Swinburne, and her best verse is perhaps the greatest ever written by a woman. "Last Lines" and "The Old Stoic" will rank with the finest poetry in our literature. Her one novel, "Wuthering Heights," has been most happily criticised by Mr Swinburne: "As was the author's life so is her book in all things; troubled and taintless, with little of rest in it and nothing of reproach. It may be true that not many will ever take it to their hearts; it is certain that those who do like it will like nothing very much better in the whole world of poetry or prose."

Emily Brontë's sole contributions to literature were the poems written in conjunction with her two sisters under the name of Ellis Bell, some further poems published by her sister Charlotte after her death, and the single novel "Wuthering Heights."