THE LENGTH OF DICKENS’S NOVELS
Edwin Drood, as we have it, runs in round numbers to about 100,000 words. When completed it would have been 200,000 words. This would have made it slightly longer than Great Expectations, which may be estimated at 160,000 words. A Tale of Two Cities runs to 143,000 words. Edwin Drood, while slightly longer than this, would have been very much shorter than the larger works of Dickens. David Copperfield has about 306,000 words; Bleak House, 308,000, and Our Mutual Friend, 297,000. All these are practically the same length. Barnaby Rudge has about 264,000 words.
‘BLEAK HOUSE’
I begin with Bleak House, which is one of the latest and most elaborate of Dickens’s stories. In the first half the characters arrive in crowds. I make out in the first chapter ten or eleven. The second chapter brings My Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Mr. Tulkinghorn, and others. The third brings Esther Summerson and John Jarndyce, besides half a dozen more. The fourth brings us the Jellybys, with Mr. Guppy, and others. Krook and Nemo are the fresh arrivals in chapter v.; Mr. Harold Skim-pole arrives in chapter vi., with the Coavinses. In chapter vii. I make out six arrivals at least. Chapter viii. gives us the Pardiggles, Mr. Gusher, the brickmaker, and family, and Jenny, his wife. In chapter ix. Mr. Lawrence Boythorn arrives alone; chapter x. gives us the Snagsbys, their predecessor, Peffer, the two prentices, and Guster, the servant. Miss Flite comes with chapter xi., and along with her appear the young surgeon, the beadle, Mrs. Perkins, Mrs. Anastasia Piper, and a few more. Chapter xii. brings Mlle. Hortense, maid to Lady Dedlock, Lord Boodle and his retinue, the Right Hon. William Buffy, M.P., and his retinue. In Chapter xiii. we have Mr. Bayham Badger, Mrs. Badger, and the former husbands of Mrs. Badger are recalled. Chapter xiv. brings Mr. Turveydrop and his son, also Allan Woodcourt, the young surgeon, and we have mentioned the ‘old lady with a censorious countenance,’ and the late Mrs. Turveydrop. In chapter xv. we have Mrs. Blinder and the Neckett family; chapter xvii., Mrs. Woodcourt, mother of Allan; chapter xix., Mr. and Mrs. Chadband; chapter xx., Young Smallweed and Jobling, alias Weevle; in chapter xxi., the Grandfather and Grandmother Smallweed, Judith Smallweed, Mr. George, trooper (Uncle George, chapter vii.), and Phil Squod of the Shooting Gallery. The great Mr. Bucket appears in chapter xxii. Captain Hawdon is in chapter xxvi. In chapter xxvii. we have the Bagnet family of five. In chapter xxviii. there comes Volumnia Dedlock; Miss Wisk in chapter xxx., and Liz in chapter xxxi.
We have now reached the end of the first half, and the arrivals after that are few and unimportant. In chapter xxxii. no new character is brought on the stage, though there is talk about the noted siren, who assists at the Harmonic Meetings, and is announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, though she has been married a year and a half. In chapter xxxiii. it is mentioned that the ‘Sols Arms,’ a well-conducted tavern, is licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr. J. G. Bogsby. After that we have no new character till chapter xxxvii., where we are introduced to Mr. W. Grubble, the landlord of that very clean little tavern, ‘The Dedlock Arms.’ Vholes is introduced by Skimpole as the man who gives him something and called it commission. Mr. Vholes has the privilege of supporting an aged father in the Vale of Taunton, and has a red eruption here and there upon his face. He has three daughters—Emma, Jane, and Caroline—and cannot afford to be selfish. In chapter xxxviii. we meet Mrs. Guppy, ‘an old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose, and rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all over.’ Then in chapter xl. there are the cousins of Sir Leicester Dedlock. In chapter xliii. Mrs. Skimpole and the Skimpole family are introduced, and in chapter liii. Mrs. Bucket. It will be observed that some of these can scarcely be called new characters, and that not one is of any real importance, that is, so far as Bleak House is concerned. Dickens in the middle of his story had practically put every actor upon the stage. The story was to be developed by the characters to whom the reader had been introduced. I have calculated that in the first half there are about one hundred and six characters of greater or less importance. In the second half there are, on the most generous computation, only sixteen, and not one of them plays a vital part in the development of the tale.
‘OUR MUTUAL FRIEND’
I take next Our Mutual Friend, and with this I must deal more briefly. Our Mutual Friend is remarkable for the profusion of characters in the first half. In the second chapter there are sixteen at least, including Mr. and Mrs. Veneering, Mr. and Mrs. Podsnap, Mortimer Lightfoot, Eugene Wrayburn, and John Harmon. The Wilfers come in chapter iv.; in chapter v. Silas Wegg and the Boffins, and almost every chapter adds to the company till we get to the middle. After that there is an abrupt cessation. There are not more than half a dozen new characters named in the second part, and all of them are wholly insignificant, the Deputy Lock, Gruff and Glum, the Greenwich pensioner, the Archbishop of Greenwich, a waiter, Mrs. Sprodgkin, the exacting member of the fold, and the contractor of 500,000 power. In Our Mutual Friend every character of any significance has been introduced when the first half ends. The few stragglers who come later have practically no effect on the story.
‘LITTLE DORRIT’
In Little Dorrit we have the old profuseness of characters; in the first half nearly one hundred, and in the second half there are practically no new characters at all. Mr. Tinkler, the valet to Mr. Dorrit, and Mr. Eustace, the classical tourist, can hardly be counted. In chapter xxi., ‘The History of a Self-Tormentor,’ we have Charlotte Dawes, the false friend, who vanishes instantly, and counts for nothing. Thus, I think, we may say, taking the three long books of Dickens’s later period, that in each it was his manner to introduce no new characters of the least import in the second half of his books. But it may be worth while to glance at his practice in the shorter tales, A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations.