This point will bear dwelling upon. Dickens claimed, and claimed truly, that the relation between himself and the public was one of exceptional sympathy and affection. Perhaps an illustration 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, "God bless him!" God bless him!—that was the sort of feeling towards himself which Dickens had succeeded in producing in most English hearts. He had appealed from the first and so constantly to every kind and gentle emotion, had illustrated so often what is good and true in human character, had pleaded the cause of the weak and suffering with such assiduity, 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 ass, and allowed his mother to die of hunger." But Dickens' 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 assiduous 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 Dickens 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 Dickens, 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 Dickens 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 Dickens 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. Dickens' 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 passed 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] Dickens did not accept the whole Carlyle creed. He retained a sort of belief in the collective wisdom of the people, which Carlyle certainly did not share.
CHAPTER XII.
Dickens' career as a reader reading for money commenced on the 29th of April, 1858, while the trouble about his wife was at the thickest; and, after reading in London on sixteen nights, he made a reading tour in the provinces, and in Scotland and Ireland. In the following year he read likewise. But meanwhile, which is more important to us than his readings, he was writing another book. On the 30th of April, 1859, in the first number of All the Year Round,[26] was begun "The Tale of Two Cities," a simultaneous publication in monthly parts being also commenced.
"The Tale of Two Cities" is a tale of the great French Revolution of 1793, and the two cities in question are London and Paris,—London as it lay comparatively at peace in the days when George III. was king, and Paris running blood and writhing in the fierce fire of anarchy and mob rule. A powerful book, unquestionably. No doubt there is in its heat and glare a reflection from Carlyle's "French Revolution," a book for which Dickens had the greatest admiration. But that need not be regarded as a demerit. Dickens is no pale copyist, and adds fervour to what he borrows. His pictures of Paris in revolution are as fine as the London scenes in "Barnaby Rudge;" and the interweaving of the story with public events is even better managed in the later book than in the earlier story of the Gordon riots. And the story, what does it tell? It tells of a certain Dr. Manette, who, after long years of imprisonment in the Bastille, is restored to his daughter in London; and of a young French noble, who has assumed the name of Darnay, and left France in horror of the doings of his order, and who marries Dr. Manette's daughter; and of a young English barrister, able enough in his profession, but careless of personal success, and much addicted to port wine, and bearing a striking personal resemblance to the young French noble. These persons, and others, being drawn to Paris by various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a ci-devant noble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's history such a thorough piece of melodrama as the French Revolution.