Part 9

But as a whole the work has no such convincing power over me to-day as it had when I first read it. Some of the characters, indeed, like little Miss Mowcher, Barkis, and Mr. Creakle, seem more like puppets and less like real persons than they did. Many of them seem to carry about with them a sort of trade-mark, to certify to their genuineness,--Heep’s “humility,” for instance, Murdstone’s “firmness,” or Littimer’s “respectability”; or perhaps the test of identity is a formula, like “thinking of the old ’un” of Mrs. Gummidge, or “waiting for something to turn up” of Micawber. In many cases the picture is a caricature rather than a real portrait, and yet it has the advantage of the caricature, that it sets forth in bold relief the leading feature and fixes itself forever in the memory.

There is little to say about the story, for it is known to all. Practically three or four stories are woven into one. There is the story of David himself, a boy who, after a comfortable childhood with his young widowed mother and her old house servant Peggotty, falls under the tyranny of a stepfather and his sister, and is sent to be beaten and abused at Creakle’s school, and when his mother dies is put out to a miserable and hopeless existence at the dismal counting-house of Murdstone and Grinby. He runs away, and in absolute destitution betakes himself to the home of Betsey Trotwood, an aunt whom he has never seen, but with whom he finds a refuge. Then follows the description (one of the best chapters in the book) of his school days at Canterbury; his devotion to Miss Shepherd; his romantic adoration of Miss Larkins, who marries an elderly hopgrower; his disastrous fight with a butcher. He is then articled to Mr. Spenlow, of Doctor’s Commons, to become a proctor, and falls in love with Dora, Spenlow’s daughter, an affectionate, foolish little creature, whom he marries. He wins a reputation as an author, and after the death of his “child-wife,” and a period of travel, finally weds Agnes Wickfield, who has always loved him, and who, ever since his school days at Canterbury, has been the guardian spirit of his life.

Intertwined with this story is that of the family of Mr. Peggotty, the brother of David’s old nurse, who lives in the boat on the sand at Yarmouth, with his nephew Ham, and Em’ly, his adopted child, a beautiful creature, who is betrayed by David’s friend Steerforth, with whom she elopes on the eve of her marriage to Ham, and who afterwards abandons her. An affecting picture is given of the honest Mr. Peggotty seeking his poor child through the world; of her final return, and of the great storm and shipwreck, in which Steerforth goes down, and Ham loses his life in a vain attempt at rescue.

Another strand in the cord of this remarkable story is that of Micawber and his family, with whom Copperfield becomes a lodger during his gloomy days at Murdstone and Grinby’s,--a man who, after various misfortunes, including poverty, jail, and a wretched life in which he is made the tool of the hypocritical Uriah Heep, is finally sent to Australia on the same vessel with Mr. Peggotty and Emily, and begins a career of ultimate prosperity.

But the story is interesting not so much on account of the plot as of the people who are in it, and the human interest which runs through the whole.

In addition to the naturalness of Copperfield’s own feelings, there are other characters that are very true to life. That of his eccentric aunt, Betsey Trotwood, is perhaps a little overdrawn at first, in her interview with the doctor on the occasion of David’s birth, but afterwards her warmth of heart, frankness, and the strong good sense which underlie her rude behavior and eccentricities, the combination of strength and weakness in her nature, call to my own mind at every step one whom I have intimately known and greatly loved. There is something immensely refreshing, for instance, in her outbreak at the slimy Uriah Heep:

“‘If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir. Good God!’ said my aunt, with great indignation, ‘I’m not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!’”

Her noble conduct in concealing what she believed to be the defalcation of her old friend Mr. Wickfield is equally characteristic:

“‘And at last he took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt, ‘and wrote me a mad letter, charging himself with robbery and wrong unheard of; upon which I paid him a visit early one morning, called for a candle, burned the letter, and told him if he ever could right me and himself to do it, and if he could not, to keep his own counsel for his daughter’s sake.’”

The “umble,” pious, and vindictive scoundrel, Uriah Heep, has been a type of whining hypocrisy. The description of him as Copperfield first saw him is remarkable:

“A red-haired person, a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older; whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble, who had hardly any eyebrows and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red brown, so unsheltered and unshaded that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony, dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth buttoned up to the throat, and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention as he stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin and looking up at us in the chaise.”

On the whole, perhaps Heep’s character is rather a grotesque than a reality. Everywhere he inspires us with unutterable aversion. He worms himself into the secrets of Wickfield, his employer, takes advantage of his weakness for drink, and finally gets possession of much of his property. Afterwards, in the prison scene, he is equally true to his snaky nature, and becomes an edifying and pious pattern of the products of prison reform.

The quiet, respectful, and respectable Littimer, Steerforth’s serving-man, who seemed to be always saying to the awestruck David, “You are young, sir; you are very young,”--and who afterwards became his master’s tool in the disgraceful intrigue with Em’ly, will find many a counterpart in actual life. There are some of us who in our youth have felt similar awe in the presence of such a domestic.

Perhaps the most charming chapters in the book are those which describe the courting, the marriage, and the disastrous housekeeping of David and his child-wife, Dora, in which the little dog Jip plays such a conspicuous part. They are a pair of precious young noodles; yet the love-making, in spite of its absurdity, is so absolutely natural, and the foolish Dora so utterly affectionate, up to the pathetic scene of her death, that the incidents awaken a very strong sympathy.

Mr. Micawber, of course, is an exaggeration; but how many men have we known who possessed some of his essential traits,--his stilted diction, his sudden alternations of supreme joy and utter despair, his mania for letter-writing, his visionary hopes and schemes in the midst of his distresses? How perfect in its way is the final newspaper account of the public dinner in Australia given in his honor!

Mr. Peggotty’s search through the world for Little Em’ly seems to me now greatly overstrained, though I did not think so when I first read it. There is a very true touch in the description of the old Mrs. Gummidge, who had always been querulous and complaining until great sorrow fell upon the household, when she became at once helpful, considerate, and cheerful in comforting the distress of others. We have all seen examples of this kind of transformation.

Dickens has done mankind a service by portraying the dignity of simple things and the delicacy and nobility of character that often lie beneath a rough exterior, among those whom Lincoln used to call “the plain people,” of whom Lincoln was himself perhaps the most illustrious type. What could be nobler and in its essential character more gentlemanly than the behavior of Mr. Peggotty and Ham after the betrayal of Little Em’ly; what more delicate than Peggotty’s appreciation of Em’ly’s feeling toward him?

“‘She would go to the world’s furdest end if she could once see me again, and she would fly to the world’s furdest end to keep from seeing me. For tho’ she ain’t no call to doubt my love--and doen’t--and doen’t--but there’s shame steps in and keeps betwixt us.’”

Dickens’s style is often intensely vivid--for instance, in his description of a London fog in “Bleak House”; of the burning Marseilles sun in “Little Dorrit”; of the storm and shipwreck in “David Copperfield”;--all fine instances of word-painting. Yet the crudities are many and glaring, there is very little finish, and sometimes the diction is commonplace.

But there are occasional passages of extraordinary beauty, due possibly not so much to the style as the sentiment and the things described. Witness the following, where David describes his feelings when he had taken refuge with his aunt in her cottage at Dover, after his escape from Murdstone and Grinby’s:

“The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my prayers, and my candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my fortunes in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven along that shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest with which the sight of the white-curtained bed--and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets--inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.”

“David Copperfield” may not be the supreme work of fiction which some of us once fancied it, but it touches the heart very closely. It dignifies humble life and common things, makes us better friends with the world, and awakens those human traits which work for kindness and goodwill toward all mankind.

THE SCARLET LETTER NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Most persons of culture, if asked who was the foremost American writer of fiction would undoubtedly answer, “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” Among his works “The Scarlet Letter” is, I think, the most generally read and widely known. This high estimate of Hawthorne is in most respects well deserved. His works have a fine literary and poetic quality. The style is faultless; the dramatic situations are admirably conceived; and the structure of the plot, while simple, is extremely artistic. Hawthorne generally deals with the darker phases of human life, with scenes of wickedness and crime. His description of the emotions awakened by criminal acts is extremely powerful. And yet it seems to me, in reading his pages, that Hawthorne had little knowledge of what were the actual motives and feelings of the guilty, and that his account of the development of passions and character came rather from reflection and abstract reasoning than from acute observation.

The book begins dramatically rather than historically--that is to say, in the very middle of the impressive story which it relates. Hester Prynne, the heroine, had married old Roger Chillingworth, a union unnatural and without affection, which was followed on her part, during her husband’s long and unexplained absence, by a guilty passion for Arthur Dimmesdale, the eloquent clergyman of a Puritan New England town. All the incidents connected with the growth and development of this passion, and with the birth of the child which followed it, are omitted from the narrative, which opens with a scene at the door of the prison, from which Hester comes forth to suffer the punishment prescribed for her crime,--to stand for a certain time in the scaffold by the pillory, and to wear for the rest of her life the scarlet letter A upon her breast. We have nothing to tell us how the temptation began, nor how it grew, nor the terrible anxieties which must have preceded the discovery of her wrongdoing. Possibly these things are the more impressive because left wholly to the imagination.

But among the multitude that gaze upon the unfortunate woman in the hours of her public exposure is a face that she knows only too well. Old Roger Chillingworth, who has been so long absent, and supposed even to be dead, appears and recognizes her. He visits her afterwards in prison, and exacts from her an oath that his identity shall remain unknown. The terrible punishment of the scarlet letter to a sensitive mind is powerfully portrayed; her shame at every new face that gazes upon it, and the consciousness of another sense, giving her a sympathetic knowledge of hidden sin in other hearts, a strange companionship in crime, upon which Hawthorne lays much stress in many of his works. Even little Pearl, her child, gives her no comfort, for the child’s character is wayward, elusive, elf-like. She is a strange creature, whose conversation brings to her mother constant reminders of her guilt. Hester, with great constancy, refuses to disclose the name of the child’s father, and Dimmesdale, the honored pastor of the community, is tortured by a remorse which constantly grows upon him. Old Chillingworth suspects him, becomes his physician, lives with him under the same roof, discovers a scarlet letter concealed upon his breast, and enjoys for years the exquisite revenge of digging into the hidden places of a sensitive human soul and gloating over the agonies thus unconsciously revealed to a bitter enemy. An account is given of Dimmesdale’s self-imposed penances, and of the concealed scourge for his own chastisement. One night he resolves to go forth and stand on the same scaffold where Hester has undergone her punishment. The bitterness of his emotions is finely drawn; the wild shriek which barely fails to rouse the citizens of the town; the passing of Hester on her way from her ministrations at a death-bed; the standing together of the three, father, mother, and child, upon the scaffold; the letter A which appears in the sky; Pearl’s keen questions; and the face of old Chillingworth, who has come forth to look on them.

Hester at last resolves to disclose to Dimmesdale the identity of his evil companion. Her character has grown stronger through openly bearing the burden of her guilt, while the poor clergyman’s soul has become shattered through his constant hypocrisy. She meets him in the forest, and in a scene of great natural tenderness and beauty tells him that Chillingworth is her husband. He reproaches her bitterly for her long concealment, then forgives her. She urges him to flee, as his only hope.

“‘Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or,--as is more thy nature,--be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life!--that have made thee feeble to will and to do!--that will leave thee powerless even to repent; Up, and away!’

“‘O Hester!’ cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, ‘thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!’

“It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach.

“He repeated the word.

“‘Alone, Hester!’

“‘Thou shalt not go alone!’ answered she, in a deep whisper.

“Then, all was spoken!”

In connection with their proposed departure to Europe, the minister inquired of Hester the time at which the vessel would depart, and learned that it would probably be on the fourth day thereafter. “That is most fortunate!” the clergyman then said to himself. The reason why he considered it fortunate revealed a very subtle phase of human nature.

“It was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon; and as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. ‘At least, they shall say of me,’ thought this exemplary man, ‘that I leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed.’”

And of this strange feeling the author remarks:

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true one.”

Having resolved upon flight, however, and in the joy of his anticipated release from a dreadful life, a curious change comes over Mr. Dimmesdale, a revolution in his sphere of thought and feeling.

“At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse.”

When he met one of his old deacons, it was only by the most careful self-control that he could refrain from certain blasphemous suggestions respecting the communion supper. When he met a pious and exemplary old dame, the eldest of his flock, whom he had often refreshed with warm, fragrant Gospel truths, he could now recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. He was tempted to make certain evil suggestions to one of the young women of his flock, and to teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children. He had come back from the forest another man.

But when the hour of departure approaches, and amid the preparations for the great Election Sermon, Hester hears that Roger Chillingworth has learned of their intended flight and taken passage by the same ship!

The final climax is reached when Dimmesdale, after preaching his great sermon, which arouses the people to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, comes forth from the church, and recognizes Hester and Pearl. At his earnest entreaty she supports him to the scaffold, where he stands at her side, and, against the protestations of old Chillingworth, confesses his guilt, shows the scarlet letter upon his own breast, and expires. Chillingworth does not long survive him. Hester goes with Pearl across the sea, but after some years returns alone, again resumes the scarlet letter, and takes up her old life in her little cottage near the town.

The moral of the book, from the poor minister’s miserable experience, is put into this sentence: “Be true, be true, be true; show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred.” Hester’s strength in bearing her sorrow is contrasted powerfully with the growing weakness and degeneracy of Dimmesdale, and with the transformation of Chillingworth into a devil, through constant gratification of his revenge. The strange conduct of Pearl, who, with her child’s instinct, resents the conduct of the minister who will recognize her mother and herself only in secret, adds to the effect; yet it can not be said that Pearl is in the least a natural child. She seems almost as mature when she first asks her mother who it was that sent her into the world, and denies that she has a Heavenly Father, as she does in the last pages of the book. The appearance of Mistress Hibbins, the old witch, who was afterwards executed, throws a gleam of the supernatural across the pages.

It is a weird story, the product of a luxuriant though somewhat morbid imagination; but the novelist, on the other hand, lacks that acute perception, that knowledge of trifling circumstances, such as would have appeared in the pages of Balzac or Tolstoi--those suggestive details which unconsciously set forth men’s motives, feelings, and character better than any philosophical reflections.

HENRY ESMOND WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The equestrian painting by Velasquez of Prince Balthasar Charles, the original of which is in the Madrid Museum, is now well known throughout the world by means of photographs and other reproductions. It represents a very small boy on a very huge horse, which is in the act of rearing. The anatomy of the animal is impossible, and it is safe to say no boy as small as the Prince ever assumed under like circumstances the attitude attributed to him; and yet, in spite of its defects, this picture is a very remarkable and a very beautiful painting. We know in an instant that it is the work of a master. Indeed it is only the work of a master which could contain such blemishes and still be great. Similar flaws sometimes deface the greatest works of literature--for instance, the putting out of Gloucester’s eyes in “Lear,” or the Walpurgis Night’s Dream in the first part of “Faust.” And so it is with “Henry Esmond.” It is marred by one or two dreadful deformities; and yet, in spite of them, it is perhaps the most charming novel ever written.

The book opens with one of the most exquisite scenes in all literature, where young Esmond, a lad twelve years of age, who is supposed to be the illegitimate son of Thomas, Viscount Castlewood, and who has led a rather hard life as a page of the old viscountess, and been left alone in the great house after his father’s death, is now found in the yellow gallery by Lady Castlewood, the young and beautiful wife of the new viscount, when she comes with her husband to take possession of the property. The scene is thus described:

“She stretched out her hand--indeed, when was it that that hand did not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief and ill-fortune? ‘And this is our kinsman,’ she said; ‘and what is your name, kinsman?’

“‘My name is Henry Esmond,’ said the lad, looking up at her in a sort of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a _Dea certe_, and appeared the most charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair was shining in the gold of the sun; her complexion was of a dazzling bloom; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness which made Harry Esmond’s heart beat with surprise.

“‘His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady,’ said Mrs. Worksop, the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly toward the late lord’s picture; as it now is, in the family, noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword and his order on his cloak, which he had from the Emperor during the war on the Danube against the Turk.