Part 5

Charles Dickens never made, nor indeed was tempted to make, that mistake. He carried with him the defects of his qualities, the marks of his early life, the penalties of his bewildering success. But, look you, _he carried them_—they did not crush him nor turn him from his true course. Forward he marched, cheering and beguiling the way for his comrades with mirthful stories and tales of pity, lightening many a burden and consoling many a dark and lonely hour, until he came at last to the goal of honour and the haven of happy rest. Those who knew him best saw him most clearly as Carlyle did: “The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens,—every inch of him an Honest Man.”

III

As an artist in fiction Dickens was great; but not because he had a correct theory of the technique of the novel, not because he always followed good rules and models in writing, nor because he was one

Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

On the contrary, his vision of life, though vivid, was almost always partial. He was capable of doing a great deal of bad work, which he himself liked. The plots of his novels, on which he toiled tremendously, are negligible; indeed it is often difficult to follow and impossible to remember them. The one of his books that is notably fine in structure and approximately faultless in technique—_A Tale of Two Cities_—is so unlike his other novels that it stands in a class by itself, as an example of what he could have done if he had chosen to follow that line. In a way it is his most perfect piece of work. But it is not his most characteristic piece of work, and therefore I think it has less value for us than some of his other books in which his peculiar, distinctive, unrivalled powers are more fully shown.

After all, art must not only interpret the world but also reveal the artist. The lasting interest of his vision, its distinction, its charm, depend, at least in some real degree, upon the personal touch. Being himself a part of the things that are seen, he must “paint the thing _as he sees it_” if he wishes to win the approval of “the God of things as they are.”

Now the artistic value of Dickens’s way of seeing things lay in its fitness to the purpose which he had in mind and heart,—a really great purpose, namely, to enhance the interest of life by good enchantment, to save people from the plague of dulness and the curse of indifference by showing them that the world is full of the stuff for hearty laughter and deep sympathy. This way of seeing things, with constant reference to their humourous and sentimental potency, was essential to the genius of Dickens. His method of making other people see it was strongly influenced, if not absolutely determined, by two facts which seemed to lie outside of his career as an author: first, his training as a reporter for the press; second, his favourite avocation as an amateur actor, stage-manager, and dramatic reader.

The style of Dickens at its best is that of an inspired reporter. It is rapid, graphic, pictorial, aiming always at a certain heightening of effect, making the shadows darker and the lights brighter for the purpose of intensifying sensation. He did not get it in the study but in the street. Take his description in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ of Todgers’s Boarding House with its complicated smells and its mottled shades of dinginess; or take his picture in _Little Dorrit_ of Marseilles burning in the August sunlight with its broad, white, universal stare. Here is the art of journalism,—the trick of intensification by omission,—carried to the limit. He aims distinctly at a certain effect, and he makes sure of getting it.

He takes long walks in the heart of London, attends police courts, goes behind the scenes of theatres, rides in omnibuses, visits prisons and workhouses. You think he is seeking realism. Quite wrong. He is seeking a sense of reality which shall make realism look cheap. He is not trying to put up canned goods which shall seem more or less like fresh vegetables. He is trying to extract the essential flavour of places and people so that you can taste it in a drop.

We find in his style an accumulation of details all bearing on a certain point; nothing that serves his purpose is overlooked; everything that is likely to distract the attention or obscure his aim is disregarded. The head-lines are in the text. When the brute, Bill Sykes, says to Nancy: “Get up,” you know what is coming. When Mrs. Todgers gives a party to Mr. Pecksniff you know what is coming. But the point is that when it comes, tragedy or comedy, it is as pure and unadulterated as the most brilliant of reporters could make it.

Naturally, Dickens puts more emphasis upon the contrast between his characters than upon the contrast within them. The internal inconsistencies and struggles, the slow processes of growth and change which are the delight of the psychological novelist do not especially interest him. He sees things black or white, not gray. The objects that attract him most, and on which he lavishes his art, do not belong to the average, but to the extraordinary. Dickens is not a commonplace merchant. He is a dealer in oddities and rarities, in fact the keeper of an “Old Curiosity Shop,” and he knows how to set forth his goods with incomparable skill.

His drawing of character is sharp rather than deep. He makes the figure stand out, always recognizable, but not always thoroughly understood. Many of his people are simply admirable incarnations of their particular trades or professions: Mould the undertaker, old Weller the coachman, Tulkinghorn the lawyer, Elijah Program the political demagogue, Blimber the school-master, Stiggins the religious ranter, Betsey Prig the day-nurse, Cap’n Cuttle the retired skipper. They are all as easy to identify as the wooden image in front of a tobacconist’s shop. Others are embodiments of a single passion or quality: Pecksniff of unctuous hypocrisy, Micawber of joyous improvidence, Mr. Toots of dumb sentimentalism, Little Dorrit of the motherly instinct in a girl, Joe Gargery of the motherly instinct in a man, Mark Tapley of resolute and strenuous optimism. If these persons do anything out of harmony with their head-lines, Dickens does not tell of it. He does not care for the incongruities, the modifications, the fine shadings which soften and complicate the philosophic and reflective view of life. He wants to write his “story” sharply, picturesquely, with “snap” and plenty of local colour; and he does it, in his happiest hours, with all the _verve_ and skill of a star reporter for the _Morning Journal_ of the Enchanted City.

In this graphic and emphatic quality the art of Dickens in fiction resembles the art of Hogarth in painting. But Dickens, like Hogarth, was much more than a reporter. He was a dramatist, and therefore he was also, by necessity, a moralist.

I do not mean that Dickens had a dramatic genius in the Greek sense that he habitually dealt with the eternal conflict between human passion and inscrutable destiny. I mean only this: that his lifelong love for the theatre often led him, consciously or unconsciously, to construct the _scenario_ of a story with a view to dramatic effect, and to work up the details of a crisis precisely as if he saw it in his mind’s eye on the stage.

Notice how the _dramatis personæ_ are clearly marked as comic, or tragic, or sentimental. The moment they come upon the scene you can tell whether they are meant to appeal to your risibilities or to your sensibilities. You are in no danger of laughing at the heroine, or weeping over the funny man. Dickens knows too much to leave his audience in perplexity. He even gives to some of his personages set phrases, like the musical _motifs_ of the various characters in the operas of Wagner, by which you may easily identify them. Mr. Micawber is forever “waiting for something to turn up.” Mr. Toots always reminds us that “it’s of no consequence.” Sairey Gamp never appears without her imaginary friend Mrs. Harris. Mrs. General has “prunes and prism” perpetually on her lips.

Observe, also, how carefully the scene is set, and how wonderfully the preparation is made for a dramatic climax in the story. If it is a comic climax, like the trial of Mr. Pickwick for breach of promise, nothing is forgotten, from the hysterics of the obese Mrs. Bardell to the feigned indignation of Sergeant Buzfuz over the incriminating phrase “chops and tomato sauce!”

If it is a tragic climax, like the death of Bill Sykes, a score of dark premonitions lead up to it, the dingiest slum of London is chosen for it, the grimy streets are filled with a furious crowd to witness it, and just as the murderer is about to escape, the ghostly eyes of his victim glare upon him, and he plunges from the roof, tangled in his rope, to be hanged by the hand of the Eternal Judge as surely as if he stood upon the gallows.

Or suppose the climax is not one of shame and terror, but of pure pity and tenderness, like the death of Little Nell. Then the quiet room is prepared for it, and the white bed is decked with winter berries and green leaves that the child loved because they loved the light; and gentle friends are there to read and talk to her, and she sleeps herself away in loving dreams, and the poor old grandfather, whom she has guided by the hand and comforted, kneels at her bedside, wondering why his dear Nell lies so still, and the very words which tell us of her peace and his grief, move rhythmically and plaintively, like soft music with a dying fall.

Close the book. The curtain descends. The drama is finished. The master has had his way with us; he has made us laugh; he has made us cry. We have been at the play.

But was it not as real to us while it lasted as many of the scenes in which we actors daily take our parts? And did it not mellow our spirits with mirth, and soften our hearts with tears? And now that it is over are we not likely to be a little better, a little kinder, a little happier for what we have laughed at or wept over?

Ah, master of the good enchantment, you have given us hours of ease and joy, and we thank you for them. But there is a greater gift than that. You have made us more willing to go cheerfully and companionably along the strange, crowded, winding way of human life, because you have deepened our faith that there is something of the divine on earth, and something of the human in heaven.

THACKERAY AND REAL MEN

In that fragrant bunch of _Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children_ which has just brightened and sweetened our too sadly strenuous times there are some passages on novel-reading which are full of spirited good sense. He says that he can read _Pendennis_, and _The Newcomes_, and _Vanity Fair_ over and over again; he agrees with his boy in preferring Thackeray to Dickens, and then he gives the reason—or at least _a_ reason—for this preference:

“Of course one fundamental difference ... is that Thackeray was a gentleman and Dickens was not.”

The damnatory clause in this sentence seems to me too absolute, though Roosevelt softens it by adding, “but a man might do some mighty good work without being in any sense a gentleman.” That is certainly true, and beyond a doubt Dickens did it—a wonderful plenty of it. It is also true that in several perfectly good senses he was a brave and kind gentleman, despite his faults in manners and dress.

But it is the laudatory clause in Roosevelt’s judgment that interests me. Thackeray’s work is pervaded with his personality to an unusual degree. It is a saturated solution of the man. We can taste him in every page. And it is because we like the taste, because we find something strong and true, bracing and stimulant in it, that we love to read him. ’Tis like being with a gentleman in any enterprise or adventure; it gives us pleasure and does us unconscious good.

Well, then, what do we mean by “a gentleman?” Tennyson calls it

The grand old name of gentleman Defamed by every charlatan, And soil’d with all ignoble use.

In the big New Oxford Dictionary there is more than a pageful of definitions of the word, and almost every English essayist has tried a shot at it. One thing is sure, its old hereditary use as a title of rank or property is going out, or already gone. “John Jones, Gent.,” is a vanishing form of address. More and more the word is coming to connote something in character and conduct. Inheritance may enter into it, and the sense of honour has a great part in it, and its outward and visible sign is an unassuming fitness of behaviour in the various circumstances of life. But its indispensable essence is reality; its native speech, sincerity; and its controlling spirit, good-will.

Let us content ourselves with a description instead of a definition. A gentleman is a real man who deals honestly, bravely, frankly, and considerately with all sorts and conditions of other real men.

This is Thackeray’s very mark and quality. We can feel it all through his life and works. Everything real in the world he recognized and accepted, even though he might not always like it. But the unreal people and things—the pretenders, the hypocrites, the shams, and the frauds (whether pious or impious)—he detested and scoffed away. Reality was his quest and his passion. He followed it with unfailing interest, penetration, and good temper. He found it, at least in humankind, always mixed and complicated, never altogether good nor altogether bad, no hero without a fault, and no villain without a germ of virtue. Life is really made that way. The true realist is not the materialist, the five-sense naturalist, but the man who takes into account the human soul and God as ultimate realities.

Thackeray’s personal life had nothing that was remarkable and much that was admirable. It was simply the background of his genius. He was a child of the upper-middle class in England—if you know just what that means. He went to the Charterhouse School in London (which he afterward immortalized as Greyfriars in _The Newcomes_), and illustrated his passion for reality by getting his nose broken in a fight, which gave his face a permanent Socratic cast. At Cambridge University he seems to have written much and studied little, but that little to good purpose. He inherited a modest fortune, which he spent, not in riotous living, but in travel, art study in Paris, and in the most risky of all extravagances, the starting of new periodicals. When this failed and his money was gone, he lived in London as a hack-writer.

His young wife was taken from him by that saddest of all bereavements—the loss of her mind. It became necessary to place her in a private sanitarium, where she outlived her husband by thirty years. To her, and to the two little daughters whom she left him, Thackeray was faithful and devoted. He never complained, never flinched into an easy way of escape from his burden. He bent his back to it, and, in spite of natural indolence, he worked hard and was cheerful.

He made a host of friends and kept them, as Stevenson puts it, “without capitulation.” Of course, this grim condition implies some frictions and some dislikes, and from these Thackeray was not exempt. The satire which was his first mode in writing was too direct and pungent to be relished by those who had any streak of self-humbug in their make-up. But, so far as I know, he had only one serious literary quarrel—that unhappy dispute with Mr. Edmund Yates, in which Dickens, with the best intentions in the world, became, unfortunately, somewhat involved. Thackeray might perhaps have been more generous and forgiving—he could have afforded that luxury. But he could not have been more honest and frank, more real, than he was. Being very angry, and for a just cause, he said so in plain words. Presently the tempest passed away. When Thackeray died in 1863, Dickens wrote:

“No one can be surer than I of the greatness and goodness of his heart.”

The first period of his life as a man of letters was given almost entirely to satirical and fragmentary writing, under various _noms de guerre_. Hence, he remained for a long time in comparative poverty and obscurity, from which he stepped into fame and prosperity with the publication of his first large novel, _Vanity Fair_, in 1847-48. It was like turning the corner of Grub Street and coming into Glory Avenue.

Henceforth the way was open, though not easy. The succession of his big, welcome novels was slow, steady, unbroken. Each one brought him thousands of new readers, and the old ones were _semper fideles_, even when they professed a preference for the earlier over the later volumes. His lecture tours in Great Britain and the United States were eminently successful—more so, I think, than those of Charles Dickens. They may have brought in less money, but more of what old William Caxton, the prince of printers, called “good fame and renommee.” The last of his completed books, and one of his most delightful, was _Roundabout Papers_—a volume of essays that has no superior in English for a light, firm, friendly touch upon the realities of life. His last story begun was _Denis Duval_, and on this he was working when he laid down his pen on Christmas Eve, 1863, and fell asleep for the last time.

It was Edmund Yates who wrote of him then:

“Thackeray was dead; and the purest English prose writer of the nineteenth century and the novelist with a greater knowledge of the human heart, as it really is, than any other—with the exception perhaps of Shakespeare and Balzac—was suddenly struck down in the midst of us.”

_The human heart as it really is_—there’s the point! That is what Thackeray sought to know, to understand, to reveal, and—no! not to explain, nor to judge and sentence—for that, as he well knew, was far beyond him or any of us—but his desire was to _show_ the real heart of man, in its various complexities and perplexities, working its way through the divers realities and unrealities in which we are all entangled.

The acute French critic, Edmond Scherer, distinguished and divided between George Eliot as “a novelist of character,” and Thackeray as “a novelist of manners.” The epithet will pass only if we take the word in the sense of William of Wykeham’s motto, “Manners makyth man.”

For, as surely as there is something in the outward demeanour which unveils and discloses the person within, even so surely is there something in behaviour, the habitual mode of speech and conduct, which moulds the man using it. A false behaviour weaves a texture of lies into the warp of his nature. A true behaviour weakens the hold of his own self-delusions, and so helps him to know what he really is—which is good for him and for others.

It was in this sense that Thackeray was interested in manners, and depicted them in his books. Go with him to a ball, and you arrive at the hour of unmasking; to a club, and you are aware of the thoughts under the conversation; to a play, and you pass behind the footlights and the paint; to a death-bed, and—well, do you remember the death of Helen in _Pendennis_? and of the Colonel in _The Newcomes_? Foolish critics speak of these last two passages as “scenes.” Scenes! By Heaven! no, they are realities. We can feel those pure souls passing.

Let us follow this clew of the passion for reality through the three phases of Thackeray’s work.

I

At first he is the indefatigable satirist, rejoicing in the assault. Youth is almost always inclined that way—far more swift and sweeping in judgment, more severe in condemnation, than maturity or age. Thackeray writes much that is merely amusing, full of high spirits and pure fun, in his first period. But his main business is to expose false pretensions, false methods, false principles in literature and life; to show up the fakers, to ridicule the humbugs, to convict the crooks of every rank and degree.

Here, for example, is a popular fashion of books with criminals and burglars for heroes and heroines, portrayed in the glamour of romance. Very well, our satirist, assuming the name of “Ikey Solomons, Esq.,” will take a real criminal, a murderess, and show us the manner of life she leads with her associates. So we have _Catherine_. Here is another fashion of weaving a fiction about a _chevalier d’industrie_, a bold, adventurous, conscienceless fellow who pursues his own pleasure with a swagger, and makes a brave show hide a mean and selfish heart. Very well, a fellow of this kidney shall tell his own story and show himself in his habit as he lives, and as he dies in prison. So we have _The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq._ Here are innumerable fashions of folly and falsehood current not only in high society, but also in the region of respectable mediocrity, and in the “world below-stairs.” Very well, our satirist, under the name of “Jeames Yellowplush,” or “M. Angelo Titmarsh,” or “Fitz-Boodle,” will show them up for us. So we have various bundles of short stories, and skits, and sketches of travel, some of them bubbling over with fun, some of them, like _Dennis Haggarty’s Wife_, touched with quiet pathos.

The culmination of this satiric period is _The Book of Snobs_, which appeared serially in the London _Punch_, 1845-46. In order to understand the quality and meaning of Thackeray’s satire—an element which stayed with him all through his writing, though it was later subdued to its proper place—we must take the necessary pains to know just what he meant by a “snob.”

A snob is an unreal person who tries to pass himself off for a real person; a pretender who meanly admires and imitates mean things; an ape of gentility. He is a specific variety of the great genus “Sham.” Carlyle, the other notable English satirist of the nineteenth century, attacked the whole genus with heavy artillery. Thackeray, with his light cavalry of ridicule, assailed the species.

All snobs are shams, but not all shams are snobs. The specific qualities of the snob are developed only in countries where there are social classes and distinctions, but no insuperable barriers between them. Thus in native India with its immutable caste, or in Central Africa with its general barbarism, I fancy it must be difficult to discover snobbism. (Yet I have seen traces of it even among dogs and cats.) But in a country like England or the United States of America, where society is arranged in different stories, with staircases between, snobbism is frequent and flourishing.

_The snob is the man who tries to sneak up-stairs. He is the surreptitious climber, the person who is ashamed to pass for what he is._

Has he been at an expensive college? He goes home and snubs his old friends with allusions to the distinguished society he has been keeping. Is he entertaining fashionable strangers? He gives them elaborate and costly fare at the most aurivorous hotel, but at home his wife and daughters may starve. He talks about books that he has never read, and pretends to like music that sends him to sleep. At his worst, he says his prayers on the street-corners and reviles his neighbour for sins which he himself cherishes in secret.

That is the snob: the particular species of sham whom Thackeray pursues and satirizes through all his disguises and metamorphoses. He does it unsparingly, yet never—or at least hardly ever—savagely. There is always a strain of good humour in it, and often a touch of fellow-feeling for the man himself, camouflaged under his affectations. It may not be worth while—this kind of work. All satire is perishable. It has no more of the immortal in it than the unreality which it aims to destroy. But some shams die hard. And while they live and propagate, the arrows which hit them fairly are not out of date.

Stevenson makes a curious misjudgment of this part of Thackeray’s work, when he says in his essay on “Some Gentlemen in Fiction”: