From an engraving by C. H. Jeens, after the original sketch by Daniel Maclise, R.A.
CHARLES DICKENS READING “THE CHIMES” TO HIS FRIENDS AT 58, LINCOLN’S INN FIELDS, MONDAY, THE 2nd OF DECEMBER, 1844
Rischgitz Collection
exaggeration, and in that general sense Dora, in “David Copperfield,” may be called an exaggerated character; but she is an extremely real and an extremely agreeable character for all that. She is supposed to be very weak and ineffectual, but she has about a hundred times more personal character than all Dickens’s waxwork heroines put together, the unendurable Agnes by no means excluded. It almost passes comprehension how a man who could conceive such a character should so insult it, as Dickens does, in making Dora recommend her husband’s second marriage with Agnes. Dora, who stands for the profound and exquisite irrationality of simple affection, is made the author of a piece of priggish and dehumanised rationalism which is worthy of Miss Agnes herself. One could easily respect such a husband when he married again,
CHARLES DICKENS, HIS WIFE, AND HER SISTER
From an engraving by C. H. Jeens after the original sketch by Daniel Maclise, R.A., in 1843
Rischgitz Collection
but surely not such a wife when she desired it. The truth is, of course, that here again Dickens is following his evil genius which bade him make those he loved comfortable instead of happy. It may seem at first sight a paradox to say that the special fault of optimism is a lack of faith in God: but so it is. There are some whom we should not seek to make comfortable: their appeasement is in more awful hands. There are conflicts, the reconciliation of which lies beyond the powers not only of human effort but of human rational conception. One of them is the reconciliation between good and evil themselves in the scheme of nature; another is the reconciliation of Dora and Agnes. To say that we know they will be reconciled is faith; to say that we see that they will be reconciled is blasphemy.