Dickens Part 5

At the same time, there was noticeable in these readings a certain hardness which competent critics likewise discerned in d.i.c.kens's acting, and which could not, at least in the former case, be regarded as an ordinary characteristic of dilettanteism. The truth is that he isolated his parts too sharply--a frequent fault of English acting, and one more detrimental to the total effect of a reading than even to that of an acted play.

No sooner had the heaviest stress of the first series of readings ceased than d.i.c.kens was once more at work upon a new fiction. The more immediate purpose was to insure a prosperous launch to the journal which, in the spring of 1859, took the place of _Household Words_. A dispute, painful in its origin, but ending in an amicable issue, had resulted in the purchase of that journal by d.i.c.kens; but already a little earlier he had--as he was ent.i.tled to do--begun the new venture of _All the Year Round_, with which _Household Words_ was afterwards incorporated. The first number, published on April 30, contained the earliest instalment of _A Tale of Two Cities_, which was completed by November 20 following.

This story holds a unique place amongst the fictions of its author.

Perhaps the most striking difference between it and his other novels may seem to lie in the all but entire absence from it of any humour or attempt at humour; for neither the brutalities of that "honest tradesman," Jerry, nor the laconisms of Miss Pross, can well be called by that name. Not that his sources of humour were drying up, even though, about this time, he contributed to an American journal a short "romance of the real world,"

_Hunted Down_, from which the same relief is again conspicuously absent.

For the humour of d.i.c.kens was to a.s.sert itself with unmistakable force in his next longer fiction, and was even before that, in some of his occasional papers, to give delightful proofs of its continued vigour. In the case of the _Tale of Two Cities_, he had a new and distinct design in his mind which did not, indeed, exclude humour, but with which a liberal indulgence in it must have seriously interfered. "I set myself," he writes, "the little task of writing a picturesque story, rising in every chapter with characters true to nature, but whom the story itself should express more than they should express themselves by dialogue. I mean, in other words, that I fancied a story of incident might be written, in place of the b.e.s.t.i.a.lity that is written under that pretence, pounding the characters out in its own mortar, and beating their own interests out of them." He therefore renounced his more usual method in favour of one probably less congenial to him. Yet, in his own opinion at least, he succeeded so well in the undertaking, that when the story was near its end he could venture to express a hope that it was "the best story he had written." So much praise will hardly be given to this novel even by admirers of the French art of telling a story succinctly, or by those who can never resist a rather hysterical treatment of the French Revolution.

In my own opinion _A Tale of Two Cities_ is a skilfully though not perfectly constructed novel, which needed but little substantial alteration in order to be converted into a not less effective stage-play.

And with such a design d.i.c.kens actually sent the proof-sheets of the book to his friend Regnier, in the fearful hope that he might approve of the project of its dramatisation for a French theatre. Cleverly or clumsily adapted, the tale of the Revolution and its sanguinary vengeance was unlikely to commend itself to the Imperial censors.h.i.+p; but an English version was, I believe, afterwards very fairly successful on the boards of the Adelphi, where Madame Celeste was certainly in her right place as Madame Defarge, an excellent character for a melodrama, though rather wearisome as she lies in wait through half a novel.

The construction of this story is, as I have said, skilful but not perfect. d.i.c.kens himself successfully defended his use of accident in bringing about the death of Madame Defarge. The real objection to the conduct of this episode, however, lies in the inadequacy of the contrivance for leaving Miss Pross behind in Paris. Too much is also, I think, made to turn upon the three words "and their descendants"--non-essential in the original connexion--by which Dr.

Manette's written denunciation becomes fatal to those he loves. Still, the general edifice of the plot is solid; its interest is, notwithstanding the crowded background, concentrated with much skill upon a small group of personages; and Carton's self-sacrifice, admirably prepared from the very first, produces a legitimate tragic effect. At the same time the novelist's art vindicates its own claims. Not only does this story contain several narrative episodes of remarkable power--such as the flight from Paris at the close, and the touching little incident of the seamstress, told in d.i.c.kens's sweetest pathetic manner--but it is likewise enriched by some descriptive pictures of unusual excellence: for instance, the sketch of Dover in the good old smuggling times, and the mezzo-tint of the stormy evening in Soho. Doubtless the increased mannerism of the style is disturbing, and this not only in the high-strung French scenes. As to the historical element in this novel, d.i.c.kens modestly avowed his wish that he might by his story have been able "to add something to the popular and picturesque means of understanding that terrible time, though no one can hope to add anything to Mr. Carlyle's wonderful book." But if d.i.c.kens desired to depict the n.o.ble of the _ancien regime_, either according to Carlyle or according to intrinsic probability, he should not have offered, in his Marquis, a type historically questionable, and unnatural besides. The description of the Saint Antoine, before and during the bursting of the storm, has in it more of truthfulness, or of the semblance of truthfulness; and d.i.c.kens's perception of the physiognomy of the French workman is, I think, remarkably accurate. Altogether, the book is an extraordinary _tour de force_, which d.i.c.kens never repeated.

The opening of a new story by d.i.c.kens gave the necessary _impetus_ to his new journal at its earliest stage; nor was the ground thus gained ever lost. Mr. W. H. Wills stood by his chief's side as of old, taking, more especially in later years, no small share of responsibility upon him. The prospectus of _All the Year Round_ had not in vain promised an ident.i.ty of principle in its conduct with that of its predecessor; in energy and spirit it showed no falling off; and, though not in all respects, the personality of d.i.c.kens made itself felt as distinctly as ever. Besides the _Tale of Two Cities_ he contributed to it his story of _Great Expectations_. Amongst his contributors Mr. Wilkie Collins took away the breath of mult.i.tudes of readers; Mr. Charles Reade disported himself amongst the facts which gave stamina to his fiction; and Lord Lytton made a daring voyage into a mysterious country. Thither d.i.c.kens followed him, for once, in his _Four Stories_, not otherwise noteworthy, and written in a manner already difficult to discriminate from that of Mr. Wilkie Collins. For the rest, the advice with which d.i.c.kens aided Lord Lytton's progress in his _Strange Story_ was neither more ready nor more painstaking than that which he bestowed upon his younger contributors, to more than one of whom he generously gave the opportunity of publis.h.i.+ng in his journal a long work of fiction. Some of these younger writers were at this period amongst his most frequent guests and a.s.sociates; for nothing more naturally commended itself to him than the encouragement of the younger generation.

But though longer imaginative works played at least as conspicuous a part in the new journal as they had in the old, the conductor likewise continued to make manifest his intention that the lesser contributions should not be treated by readers or by writers as harmless necessary "padding." For this purpose it was requisite not only that the choice of subjects should be made with the utmost care, but also that the master's hand should itself be occasionally visible. d.i.c.kens's occasional contributions had been few and unimportant, till in a happy hour he began a series of papers, including many of the pleasantest, as well as of the mellowest, amongst the lighter productions of his pen. As usual, he had taken care to find for this series a name which of itself went far to make its fortune.

"I am both a town and a country traveller, and am always on the road.

Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connexion in the fancy goods way.

Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent Garden, London--now about the city streets, now about the country by-roads, seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others."

The whole collection of these _Uncommercial Traveller_ papers, together with the _Uncommercial Samples_ which succeeded them after d.i.c.kens's return from America, and which begin with a graphic account of his homeward voyage _Aboard s.h.i.+p_, where the voice of conscience spoke in the motion of the screw, amounts to thirty-seven articles, and spreads over a period of nine years. They are necessarily of varying merit, but amongst them are some which deserve a permanent place in our lighter literature.

Such are the description of the church-yards on a quiet evening in _The City of the Absent_, the grotesque picture of loneliness in _Chambers_--a favourite theme with d.i.c.kens--and the admirable papers on _Shy Neighbourhoods_ and on _Tramps_. Others have a biographical interest, though delightfully objective in treatment; yet others are mere fugitive pieces; but there are few without some of the most attractive qualities of d.i.c.kens's easiest style.

d.i.c.kens contributed other occasional papers to his journal, some of which may be forgotten without injury to his fame. Amongst these may be reckoned the rather dreary _George Silverman's Explanation_ (1868), in which there is nothing characteristic but a vivid picture of a set of ranters, led by a clique of scoundrels; on the other hand, there will always be admirers of the pretty _Holiday Romance_, published nearly simultaneously in America and England, a nosegay of tales told by children, the only fault of which is that, as with other children's nosegays, there is perhaps a little too much of it. I have no room for helping to rescue from partial oblivion an old friend, whose portrait has not, I think, found a home amongst his master's collected sketches. Pincher's counterfeit has gone astray, like _Pincher_ himself. Meanwhile, the special inst.i.tution of the Christmas number flourished in connexion with _All the Year Round_ down to the year 1867, as it had during the last five years of _Household Words_.

It consisted, with the exception of the very last number, of a series of short stories, in a framework of the editor's own devising. To the authors of the stories, of which he invariably himself wrote one or more, he left the utmost liberty, at times stipulating for nothing but that tone of cheerful philanthropy which he had domesticated in his journal. In the Christmas numbers, which gradually attained to such a popularity that of one of the last something like a quarter of a million copies were sold, d.i.c.kens himself shone most conspicuously in the introductory sections; and some of these are to be reckoned amongst his very best descriptive character-sketches. Already in _Household Words_ Christmas numbers the introductory sketch of the _Seven Poor Travellers_ from Watt's Charity at supper in the Rochester hostelry, and the excellent description of a winter journey and sojourn at the _Holly Tree Inn_, with an excursus on inns in general, had become widely popular. The _All the Year Round_ numbers, however, largely augmented this success. After _Tom Tiddler's Ground_, with the adventures of Miss Kitty Kimmeens, a pretty little morality in miniature, teaching the same lesson as the vagaries of Mr.

Mopes the hermit, came _Somebody's Luggage_, with its exhaustive disquisition on waiters; and then the memorable chirpings of _Mrs.

Lirriper_, in both _Lodgings_ and _Legacy_, admirable in the delicacy of their pathos, and including an inimitable picture of London lodging-house life. Then followed the _Prescriptions_ of _Dr. Marigold_, the eloquent and sarcastic but tender-hearted Cheap Jack; and _Mugby Junction_, which gave words to the cry of a whole nation of hungry and thirsty travellers.

In the tales and sketches contributed by him to the Christmas numbers, in addition to these introductions, he at times gave the rein to his love for the fanciful and the grotesque, which there was here no reason to keep under. On the whole, written, as in a sense these compositions were, to order, nothing is more astonis.h.i.+ng in them than his continued freshness, against which his mannerism is here of vanis.h.i.+ng importance; and, inasmuch as after issuing a last Christmas number of a different kind, d.i.c.kens abandoned the custom when it had reached the height of popular favour, and when manifold imitations had offered him the homage of their flattery, he may be said to have withdrawn from this campaign in his literary life with banners flying.

In the year 1859 d.i.c.kens's readings had been comparatively few; and they had ceased altogether in the following year, when the _Uncommercial Traveller_ began his wanderings. The winter from 1859 to 1860 was his last winter at Tavistock House; and, with the exception of his rooms in Wellington Street, he had now no settled residence but Gad's Hill Place.

He sought its pleasant retreat about the beginning of June, after the new experience of an attack of rheumatism had made him recognise "the necessity of country training all through the summer." Yet such was the recuperative power, or the indomitable self-confidence, of his nature, that after he had in these summer months contributed some of the most delightful _Uncommercial Traveller_ papers to his journal, we find him already in August "prowling about, meditating a new book."

It is refres.h.i.+ng to think of d.i.c.kens in this pleasant interval of country life, before he had rushed once more into the excitement of his labours as a public reader. We may picture him to ourselves, accompanied by his dogs, striding along the country roads and lanes, exploring the haunts of the country tramps, "a piece of Kentish road," for instance, "bordered on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of gra.s.s. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean like a man's life. To gain the mile-stone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, bluebells, and wild roses would soon render illegible but for peering travellers pus.h.i.+ng them aside with their sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may." At the foot of that hill, I fancy, lay Dullborough town half asleep in the summer afternoon; and the river in the distance was that which bounded the horizon of a little boy's vision "whose father's family name was Pirrip, and whose Christian name was Philip, but whose infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip."

The story of Pip's adventures, the novel of _Great Expectations_, was thought over in these Kentish perambulations between Thames and Medway along the road which runs, apparently with the intention of running out to sea, from Higham towards the marshes; in the lonely church-yard of Cooling village by the thirteen little stone-lozenges, of which Pip counted only five, now nearly buried in their turn by the rank gra.s.s; and in quiet saunters through the familiar streets of Rochester, past the "queer"

Townhall; and through the "Vines" past the fine old Restoration House, called in the book (by the name of an altogether different edifice) Satis House. And the climax of the narrative was elaborated on a unique steamboat excursion from London to the mouth of the Thames, broken by a night at the "s.h.i.+p and Lobster," an old riverside inn called "The s.h.i.+p" in the story. No wonder that d.i.c.kens's descriptive genius should become refreshed by these studies of his subject, and that thus _Great Expectations_ should have indisputably become one of the most picturesque of his books. But it is something very much more at the same time. The _Tale of Two Cities_ had as a story strongly seized upon the attention of the reader. But in the earlier chapters of _Great Expectations_ every one felt that d.i.c.kens was himself again. Since the Yarmouth scenes in _David Copperfield_ he had written nothing in which description married itself to sentiment so humorously and so tenderly. Uncouth, and slow, and straightforward, and gentle of heart, like Mr. Peggotty, Joe Gargery is as new a conception as he is a genuinely true one; nor is it easy to know under what aspect to relish him most--whether disconsolate in his Sunday clothes, "like some extraordinary bird, standing, as he did, speechless, with his tuft of feathers ruffled, and his mouth open as if he wanted a worm," or at home by his own fireside, winking at his little comrade, and, when caught in the act by his wife, "drawing the back of his hand across his nose with his usual conciliatory air on such occasions." Nor since _David Copperfield_ had d.i.c.kens again shown such an insight as he showed here into the world of a child's mind. "To be quite sure," he wrote to Forster, "I had fallen into no unconscious repet.i.tions, I read _David Copperfield_ again the other day, and was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe." His fears were unnecessary; for with all its charm the history of Pip lacks the personal element which insures our sympathy to the earlier story and to its hero. In delicacy of feeling, however, as well as in humour of description, nothing in d.i.c.kens surpa.s.ses the earlier chapters of _Great Expectations_; and equally excellent is the narrative of Pip's disloyalty of heart toward his early friends, down to his departure from the forge, a picture of pitiable selfishness almost Rousseau-like in its fidelity to poor human nature; down to his comic humiliation, when in the pride of his new position and his new clothes, before "that unlimited miscreant, Trabb's boy." The later and especially the concluding portions of this novel contain much that is equal in power to its opening; but it must be allowed that, before many chapters have ended, a false tone finds its way into the story. The whole history of Miss Havisham, and the crew of relations round the unfortunate creature, is strained and unnatural, and Estella's hardness is as repulsive as that of Edith Dombey herself. Mr. Jaggers and his house-keeper, and even Mr.

Wemmick, have an element of artificiality in them, whilst about the Pocket family there is little, if anything at all, that is real. The story, however, seems to recover itself as the main thread in its deftly-woven texture is brought forward again: when on a dark, gusty night, ominous of coming trouble, the catastrophe of Pip's expectations announces itself in the return from abroad of his unknown benefactor, the convict whom he had as a child fed on the marshes. The remainder of the narrative is successful in conveying to the reader the sense of sickening anxiety which fills the hero; the interest is skilfully sustained by the introduction of a very strong situation--Pip's narrow escape out of the clutches of "Old Orlick" in the lime-kiln on the marshes; and the climax is reached in the admirably-executed narrative of the convict's attempt, with the aid of Pip, to escape by the river. The actual winding-up of _Great Expectations_ is not altogether satisfactory; but on the whole the book must be ranked among the very best of d.i.c.kens's later novels, as combining, with the closer construction and intenser narrative force common to several of these, not a little of the delightfully genial humour of his earlier works.

Already, before _Great Expectations_ was completely published, d.i.c.kens had given a few readings at the St. James's Hall, and by the end of October in the same year, 1861, he was once more engaged in a full course of country readings. They occupied him till the following January, only ten days being left for his Christmas number, and a brief holiday for Christmas itself; so close was the adjustment of time and work by this favourite of fortune. The death of his faithful Arthur Smith befell most untowardly before the country readings were begun, but their success was unbroken, from Scotland to South Devon. The long-contemplated extract from _Copperfield_ had at last been added to the list--a self-sacrifice _coram publico_, hallowed by success--and another from _Nicholas Nickleby_, which "went in the wildest manner." He was, however, nearly worn out with fatigue before these winter readings were over, and was glad to s.n.a.t.c.h a moment of repose before a short spring course in town began. Scarcely was this finished, when he was coquetting in his mind with an offer from Australia, and had already proposed to himself to throw in, as a piece of work by the way, a series of papers to be called _The Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down_. Meanwhile, a few readings for a charitable purpose in Paris, and a short summer course at St. James's Hall, completed this second series in the year 1863.

Whatever pa.s.sing thoughts overwork by day or sleeplessness at night may have occasionally brought with them, d.i.c.kens himself would have been strangely surprised, as no doubt would have been the great body of a public to which he was by this time about the best known man in England, had he been warned that weakness and weariness were not to be avoided even by a nature endowed with faculties so splendid and with an energy so conquering as his. He seemed to stand erect in the strength of his matured powers, equal as of old to any task which he set himself, and exulting, though with less buoyancy of spirit than of old, in the wreaths which continued to strew his path. Yet already the ranks of his contemporaries were growing thinner, while close to himself death was taking away members of the generation before, and of that after, his own. Amongst them was his mother--of whom his biography and his works have little to say or to suggest--and his second son. Happy events, too, had in the due course of things contracted the family circle at Gad's Hill. Of his intimates, he lost, in 1863, Augustus Egg; and in 1864 John Leech, to whose genius he had himself formerly rendered eloquent homage.

A still older a.s.sociate, the great painter Stanfield, survived till 1867.

"No one of your father's friends," d.i.c.kens then wrote to Stanfield's son, "can ever have loved him more dearly than I always did, or can have better known the worth of his n.o.ble character." Yet another friend, who, however, so far as I can gather, had not at any time belonged to d.i.c.kens's most familiar circle, had died on Christmas Eve, 1863--Thackeray, whom it had for some time become customary to compare or contrast with him as his natural rival. Yet in point of fact, save for the tenderness which, as with all humourists of the highest order, was an important element in their writings, and save for the influences of time and country to which they were both subject, there are hardly two other amongst our great humourists who have less in common. Their unlikeness shows itself, among other things, in the use made by Thackeray of suggestions which it is difficult to believe he did not in the first instance owe to d.i.c.kens. Who would venture to call Captain Costigan a plagiarism from Mr. Snevellici, or to affect that Wenham and Wagg were copied from Pyke and Pluck, or that Major Pendennis--whose pardon one feels inclined to beg for the juxtaposition--was founded upon Major Bagstock, or the Old Campaigner in the _Newcomes_ on the Old Soldier in _Copperfield_? But that suggestions were in these and perhaps in a few other instances derived from d.i.c.kens by Thackeray for some of his most masterly characters, it would, I think, be idle to deny. In any case, the style of these two great writers differed as profoundly as their way of looking at men and things. Yet neither of them lacked a thorough appreciation of the other's genius; and it is pleasant to remember that, after paying in _Pendennis_ a tribute to the purity of d.i.c.kens's books, Thackeray in a public lecture referred to his supposed rival in a way which elicited from the latter the warmest of acknowledgments. It cannot be said that the memorial words which, after Thackeray's death, d.i.c.kens was prevailed upon to contribute to the _Cornhill Magazine_ did more than justice to the great writer whom England had just lost; but it is well that the kindly and unstinting tribute of admiration should remain on record, to contradict any supposition that a disagreement which had some years previously disturbed the harmony of their intercourse, and of which the world had, according to its wont, made the most, had really estranged two generous minds from one another. The effort which on this occasion d.i.c.kens made is in itself a proof of his kindly feeling towards Thackeray. Of Talfourd and Landor and Stanfield he could write readily after their deaths, but he frankly told Mr. Wilkie Collins that, "had he felt he could," he would most gladly have excused himself from writing the "couple of pages" about Thackeray.

d.i.c.kens, it should be remembered, was at no time a man of many friends.

The mere dalliance of friends.h.i.+p was foreign to one who worked so indefatigably in his hours of recreation as well as of labour; and fellows.h.i.+p in work of one kind or another seems to have been, in later years at all events, the surest support to his intimacy. Yet he was most easily drawn, not only to those who could help him, but to those whom he could help in congenial pursuits and undertakings. Such was, no doubt, the origin of his friends.h.i.+p in these later years with an accomplished French actor on the English boards, whom, in a rather barren period of our theatrical history, d.i.c.kens may have been justified in describing as "far beyond any one on our stage," and who certainly was an "admirable artist."

In 1864 Mr. Fechter had taken the Lyceum, the management of which he was to identify with a more elegant kind of melodrama than that long domesticated lower down the Strand; and d.i.c.kens was delighted to bestow on him counsel frankly sought and frankly given. As an author, too, he directly a.s.sociated himself with the art of his friend.[11] For I may mention here by antic.i.p.ation that the last of the _All the Year Round_ Christmas numbers, the continuous story of _No Thoroughfare_, was written by d.i.c.kens and Mr. Wilkie Collins in 1867, with a direct eye to its subsequent adaptation to the stage, for which it actually was fitted by Mr. Wilkie Collins in the following year. The place of its production, the Adelphi, suited the broad effects and the rather conventional comic humour of the story and piece. From America, d.i.c.kens watched the preparation of the piece with unflagging interest; and his innate and irrepressible genius for stage-management reveals itself in the following pa.s.sage from a letter written by him to an American friend soon after his return to England: "_No Thoroughfare_ is very shortly coming out in Paris, where it is now in active rehearsal. It is still playing here, but without Fechter, who has been very ill. He and Wilkie raised so many pieces of stage-effect here, that, unless I am quite satisfied with the report, I shall go over and try my stage-managerial hand at the Vaudeville Theatre. I particularly want the drugging and attempted robbery in the bedroom-scene at the Swiss Inn to be done to the sound of a water-fall rising and falling with the wind. Although in the very opening of that scene they speak of the water-fall, and listen to it, n.o.body thought of its mysterious music. I could make it, with a good stage-carpenter, in an hour."

_Great Expectations_ had been finished in 1860, and already in the latter part of 1861, the year which comprised the main portion of his second series of readings, he had been thinking of a new story. He had even found a t.i.tle--the unlucky t.i.tle which he afterwards adopted--but in 1862 the tempting Australian invitation had been a serious obstacle in his way. "I can force myself to go aboard a s.h.i.+p, and I can force myself to do at that reading-desk what I have done a hundred times; but whether, with all this unsettled, fluctuating distress in my mind, I could force an original book out of it is another question." Nor was it the "unsettled, fluctuating distress" which made it a serious effort for him to attempt another longer fiction. d.i.c.kens shared with most writers the experience that both the inventive power and the elasticity of memory decline with advancing years.

Already since the time when he was thinking of writing _Little Dorrit_ it had become his habit to enter in a book kept for the purpose memoranda for possible future use, hints for subjects of stories,[12] scenes, situations, and characters; thoughts and fancies of all kinds; t.i.tles for possible books. Of these _Somebody's Luggage_, _Our Mutual Friend_, and _No Thoroughfare_--the last an old fancy revived--came to honourable use; as did many names, both Christian and surnames, and combinations of both.

Thus, Bradley Headstone's _praenomen_ was derived directly from the lists of the Education Department, and the Lammles and the Stiltstalkings, with Mr. Merdle and the Dorrits, existed as names before the characters were fitted to them. All this, though no doubt in part attributable to the playful readiness of an observation never to be caught asleep, points in the direction of a desire to be securely provided with an armoury of which, in earlier days, he would have taken slight thought.

Gradually--indeed, so far as I know, more gradually than in the case of any other of his stories--he had built up the tale for which he had determined on the t.i.tle of _Our Mutual Friend_, and slowly, and without his old self-confidence, he had, in the latter part of 1863, set to work upon it. "I want to prepare it for the spring, but I am determined not to begin to publish with less than four numbers done. I see my opening perfectly, with the one main line on which the story is to turn, and if I don't strike while the iron (meaning myself) is hot, I shall drift off again, and have to go through all this uneasiness once more." For, unfortunately, he had resolved on returning to the old twenty-number measure for his new story. Begun with an effort, _Our Mutual Friend_--the publication of which extended from May, 1864, to November, 1865--was completed under difficulties, and difficulties of a kind hitherto unknown to d.i.c.kens. In February, 1865, as an immediate consequence, perhaps, of exposure at a time when depression of spirits rendered him less able than usual to bear it, he had a severe attack of illness, of which Forster says that it "put a broad mark between his past life and what remained to him of the future." From this time forward he felt a lameness in his left foot, which continued to trouble him at intervals during the remainder of his life, and which finally communicated itself to the left hand. A comparison of times, however, convinced Forster that the real origin of this ailment was to be sought in general causes.

In 1865, as the year wore on, and the pressure of the novel still continued, he felt that he was "working himself into a damaged state," and was near to that which has greater terrors for natures like his than for more placid temperaments--breaking down. So, in May, he went first to the sea-side and then to France. On his return (it was the 9th of June, the date of his death five years afterwards) he was in the railway train which met with a fearful accident at Staplehurst, in Kent. His carriage was the only pa.s.senger-carriage in the train which, when the bridge gave way, was not thrown over into the stream. He was able to escape out of the window, to make his way in again for his brandy-flask and the MS. of a number of _Our Mutual Friend_ which he had left behind him, to clamber down the brickwork of the bridge for water, to do what he could towards rescuing his unfortunate fellow-travellers, and to aid the wounded and the dying.

"I have," he wrote, in describing the scene, "a--I don't know what to call it: const.i.tutional, I suppose--presence of mind, and was not in the least fluttered at the time.... But in writing these scanty words of recollection I feel the shake, and am obliged to stop." Nineteen months afterwards, when on a hurried reading tour in the North, he complains to Miss Hogarth of the effect of the railway shaking which since the Staplehurst accident "tells more and more." It is clear how serious a shock the accident had caused. He never, Miss Hogarth thinks, quite recovered it. Yet it might have acted less disastrously upon a system not already nervously weakened. As evidence of the decline of d.i.c.kens's nervous power, I hardly know whether it is safe to refer to the gradual change in his handwriting, which in his last years is a melancholy study.

All these circ.u.mstances should be taken into account in judging of d.i.c.kens's last completed novel. The author would not have been himself had he, when once fairly engaged upon his work, failed to feel something of his old self-confidence. Nor was this feeling, which he frankly confessed to Mr. Wilkie Collins, altogether unwarranted. _Our Mutual Friend_[13] is, like the rest of d.i.c.kens's later writings, carefully and skilfully put together as a story. No exception is to be taken to it on the ground that the ident.i.ty on which much of the plot hinges is long foreseen by the reader; for this, as d.i.c.kens told his critics in his postscript, had been part of his design, and was, in fact, considering the general nature of the story, almost indispensable. The defect rather lies in the absence of that element of uncertainty which is needed in order to sustain the interest. The story is, no doubt, ingeniously enough constructed, but admiration of an ingenious construction is insufficient to occupy the mind of a reader through an inevitable disentanglement. Moreover, some of the machinery, though cleverly contrived, cannot be said to work easily. Thus, the _ruse_ of the excellent Boffin in playing the part of a skinflint might pa.s.s as a momentary device, but its inherent improbability, together with the likelihood of its leading to an untoward result, makes its protraction undeniably tedious. It is not, however, in my opinion at least, in the matter of construction that _Our Mutual Friend_ presents a painful contrast with earlier works produced, like it, "on a large canvas." The conduct of the story as a whole is fully vigorous enough to enchain the attention; and in portions of it the hand of the master displays its unique power. He is at his best in the whole of the water-side scenes, both where "The Six Jolly Fellows.h.i.+p Porters"

(identified by zealous discoverers with a tavern called "The Two Brewers") lies like an oasis in the midst of a desert of ill-favoured tidal deposits, and where Rogue Riderhood has his lair at the lock higher up the river. A marvellous union of observation and imagination was needed for the picturing of a world in which this amphibious monster has his being; and never did d.i.c.kens's inexhaustible knowledge of the physiognomy of the Thames and its banks stand him in better stead than in these powerful episodes. It is unfortunate, though in accordance with the common fate of heroes and heroines, that Lizzie Hexham should, from the outset, have to discard the colouring of her surroundings, and to talk the conventional dialect as well as express the conventional sentiments of the heroic world. Only at the height of the action she ceases to be commonplace, and becomes ent.i.tled to be remembered amongst the true heroines of fiction. A more unusual figure, of the half-pathetic, half-grotesque kind for which d.i.c.kens had a peculiar liking, is Lizzie's friend, the doll's dressmaker, into whom he has certainly infused an element of genuine sentiment; her protector, Riah, on the contrary, is a mere stage-saint, though by this character d.i.c.kens appears to have actually hoped to redeem the aspersions he was supposed to have cast upon the Jews, as if Riah could have redeemed f.a.gin, any more than Sheva redeemed Shylock.

But in this book whole episodes and parts of the plot through which the mystery of John Harmon winds its length along are ill-adapted for giving pleasure to any reader. The whole Boffin, Wegg, and Venus business--if the term may pa.s.s--is extremely wearisome; the character of Mr. Venus, in particular, seems altogether unconnected or unarticulated with the general plot, on which, indeed, it is but an accidental excrescence. In the Wilfer family there are the outlines of some figures of genuine humour, but the outlines only; nor is Bella raised into the sphere of the charming out of that of the pert and skittish. A more ambitious attempt, and a more noteworthy failure, was the endeavour to give to the main plot of this novel such a satiric foil as the Circ.u.mlocution Office had furnished to the chief action of _Little Dorrit_, in a caricature of society at large, its surface varnish and its internal rottenness. The Barnacles, and those who deemed it their duty to rally round the Barnacles, had, we saw, felt themselves hard hit; but what sphere or section of society could feel itself specially caricatured in the Veneerings, or in their a.s.sociates--the odious Lady Tippins, the impossibly brutal Podsnap, Fascination Fledgeby, and the Lammles, a couple which suggests nothing but antimony and the Chamber of Horrors? Caricature such as this, representing no society that has ever in any part of the world pretended to be "good," corresponds to the wild rhetoric of the superfluous Betty Higden episode against the "gospel according to Podsnappery;" but it is, in truth, satire from which both wit and humour have gone out. An angry, often almost spasmodic, mannerism has to supply their place. Amongst the personages moving in "society" are two which, as playing serious parts in the progress of the plot, the author is necessarily obliged to seek to endow with the flesh and blood of real human beings. Yet it is precisely in these--the friends Eugene and Mortimer--that, in the earlier part of the novel at all events, the constraint of the author's style seems least relieved; the dialogues between these two Templars have an unnaturalness about them as intolerable as euphuism or the effeminacies of the Augustan age. It is true that, when the story reaches its tragic height, the character of Eugene is borne along with it, and his affectations are forgotten. But in previous parts of the book, where he poses as a wit, and is evidently meant for a gentleman, he fails to make good his claims to either character. Even the skilfully contrived contrast between the rivals Eugene Wrayburn and the school-master, Bradley Headstone--through whom and through whose pupil, d.i.c.kens, by-the-way, dealt another blow against a system of mental training founded upon facts alone--fails to bring out the conception of Eugene which the author manifestly had in his mind. Lastly, the old way of reconciling dissonances--a marriage which "society" calls a _mesalliance_--has rarely furnished a lamer ending than here; and, had the unwritten laws of English popular fiction permitted, a tragic close would have better accorded with the sombre hue of the most powerful portions of this curiously unequal romance.

The effort--for such it was--of _Our Mutual Friend_ had not been over for more than a few months, when d.i.c.kens accepted a proposal for thirty nights' readings from the Messrs. Chappell; and by April, 1866, he was again hard at work, flying across the country into Lancas.h.i.+re and Scotland, and back to his temporary London residence in Southwick Place, Hyde Park. In any man more capable than d.i.c.kens of controlling the restlessness which consumed him the acceptance of this offer would have been incomprehensible; for his heart had been declared out of order by his physician, and the patient had shown himself in some degree awake to the significance of this opinion. But the readings were begun and accomplished notwithstanding, though not without warnings, on which he insisted on putting his own interpretation. Sleeplessness aggravated fatigue, and stimulants were already necessary to enable him to do the work of his readings without discomfort. Meanwhile, some weeks before they were finished, he had been induced to enter into negotiations about a further engagement to begin at the end of the year. Time was to be left for the Christmas number, which this year could hardly find its scene anywhere else than at a railway junction; and the readings were not to extend over forty nights, which seem ultimately to have been increased to fifty. This second series, which included a campaign in Ireland, brilliantly successful despite snow and rain, and Fenians, was over in May. Then came the climax, for America now claimed her share of the great author for her public halls and chapels and lecture-theatres; and the question of the summer and autumn was whether or not to follow the sound of the distant dollar. It was closely debated between d.i.c.kens and his friend Forster and Wills, and he describes himself as "tempest-tossed" with doubts; but his mind had inclined in one direction from the first, and the matter was virtually decided when it resolved to send a confidential agent to make enquiries on the spot. Little imported another and grave attack in his foot; the trusty Mr. Dolby's report was irresistible. Eighty readings within half a year was the estimated number, with profits amounting to over fifteen thousand pounds. The gains actually made were nearly five thousand pounds in excess of this calculation.

A farewell banquet, under the presidency of Lord Lytton, gave the favourite author G.o.dspeed on his journey to the larger half of his public; on the 9th of November he sailed from Liverpool, and on the 19th landed at Boston. The voyage, on which, with his old buoyancy, he had contrived to make himself master of the modest revels of the saloon, seems to have done him good, or at least to have made him, as usual, impatient to be at his task. Barely arrived, he is found reporting himself "so well, that I am constantly chafing at not having begun to-night, instead of this night week." By December, however, he was at his reading-desk, first at Boston, where he met with the warmest of welcomes, and then at New York, where there was a run upon the tickets, which he described with his usual excited delight. The enthusiasm of his reception by the American public must have been heightened by the thought that it was now or never for them to see him face to face, and, by-gones being by-gones, to testify to him their admiration. But there may have been some foundation for his discovery that some signs of agitation on his part were expected in return, and "that it would have been taken as a suitable compliment if I would stagger on the platform, and instantly drop, overpowered by the spectacle before me." It was but a sad Christmas which he spent with his faithful Dolby at their New York inn, tired, and with a "genuine American catarrh upon him," of which he never freed himself during his stay in the country. Hardly had he left the doctor's hands than he was about again, reading in Boston and New York and their more immediate neighbourhood--that is, within six or seven hours by railway--till February; and then, in order to stimulate his public, beginning a series of appearances at more distant places before returning to his starting-points. His whole tour included, besides a number of New England towns, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Was.h.i.+ngton, and in the north Cleveland and Buffalo. Canada and the West were struck out of the programme, the latter chiefly because exciting political matters were beginning to absorb public attention.

During these journeyings d.i.c.kens gave himself up altogether to the business of his readings, only occasionally allowing himself to accept the hospitality proffered him on every side. Thus only could he breast the difficulties of his enterprise; for, as I have said, his health was never good during the whole of his visit, and his exertions were severe, though eased by the self-devotion of his attendants, of which, as of his constant kindness, both serious and sportive, towards them it is touching to read.

Already in January he describes himself as not seldom "so dead beat" at the close of a reading "that they lay me down on a sofa, after I have been washed and dressed, and I lie there, extremely faint, for a quarter of an hour," and as suffering from intolerable sleeplessness at night. His appet.i.te was equally disordered, and he lived mainly on stimulants. Why had he condemned himself to such a life?

When at last he could declare the stress of his work over he described himself as "nearly used up. Climate, distance, catarrh, travelling, and hard work have begun--I may say so, now they are nearly all over--to tell heavily upon me. Sleeplessness besets me; and if I had engaged to go on into May, I think I must have broken down." Indeed, but for his wonderful energy and the feeling of exultation which is derived from a heavy task nearly accomplished, he would have had to follow the advice of "Longfellow and all the Cambridge men," and give in nearly at the last. But he persevered through the farewell readings, both at Boston and at New York, though on the night before the last reading in America he told Dolby that if he "had to read but twice more, instead of once, he couldn't do it."

This last reading of all was given at New York on April 20, two days after a farewell banquet at Delmonico's. It was when speaking on this occasion that, very naturally moved by the unalloyed welcome which had greeted him in whatever part of the States he had visited, he made the declaration already mentioned, promising to perpetuate his grateful sense of his recent American experiences. This apology, which was no apology, at least remains one amongst many proofs of the fact that with d.i.c.kens kindness never fell on a thankless soil.

The merry month of May was still young in the Kentish fields and lanes when the master of Gad's Hill Place was home again at last. "I had not been at sea three days on the pa.s.sage home," he wrote to his friend Mrs.

Watson, "when I became myself again." It was, however, too much when "a 'deputation'--two in number, of whom only one could get into my cabin, while the other looked in at my window--came to ask me to read to the pa.s.sengers that evening in the saloon. I respectfully replied that sooner than do it I would a.s.sault the captain and be put in irons." Alas! he was already fast bound, by an engagement concluded soon after he had arrived in Boston, to a final series of readings at home. "Farewell" is a difficult word to say for any one who has grown accustomed to the stimulating excitement of a public stage, and it is not wonderful that d.i.c.kens should have wished to see the faces of his familiar friends--the English public--once more. But the engagement to which he had set his hand was for a farewell of a hundred readings, at the recompense of eight thousand pounds, in addition to expenses and percentage. It is true that he had done this before he had fully realized the effect of his American exertions; but even so there was a terrible unwisdom in the promise. These last readings--and he alone is, in common fairness, to be held responsible for the fact--cut short a life from which much n.o.ble fruit might still have been expected for our literature, and which in any case might have been prolonged as a blessing beyond all that gold can buy to those who loved him.

Meanwhile he had allowed himself a short respite before resuming his labours in October. It was not more, his friends thought, than he needed, for much of his old buoyancy seemed to them to be wanting in him, except when hospitality or the intercourse of friends.h.i.+p called it forth. What a charm there still was in his genial humour his letters would suffice to show. It does one good to read his description to his kind American friends Mr. and Mrs. Fields of his tranquillity at Gad's Hill: "Divers birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. The place is lovely, and in perfect order. I have put five mirrors in the Swiss chalet where I write, and they reflect and refract in all kinds of ways the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up amongst the branches of the trees, and the birds and the b.u.t.terflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most delicious."

Part of this rare leisure he generously devoted to the preparation for the press of a volume of literary remains from the pen of an old friend. The _Religious Opinions of Chauncey Hare Townshend_ should not be altogether overlooked by those interested in d.i.c.kens, to whom the loose undogmatic theology of his friend commended itself as readily as the sincere religious feeling underlying it. I cannot say what answer d.i.c.kens would have returned to an enquiry as to his creed, but the nature of his religious opinions is obvious enough. Born in the Church of England, he had so strong an aversion from what seemed to him dogmatism of any kind, that he for a time--in 1843--connected himself with a Unitarian congregation; and to Unitarian views his own probably continued during his life most nearly to approach. He described himself as "morally wide asunder from Rome," but the religious conceptions of her community cannot have been a matter of anxious enquiry with him, while he was too liberal-minded to be, unless occasionally, aggressive in his Protestantism. For the rest, his mind, though imaginative, was without mystical tendencies, while for the transitory superst.i.tions of the day it was impossible but that he should entertain the contempt which they deserved. "Although," he writes--

"I regard with a hushed and solemn fear the mysteries between which, and this state of existence, is interposed the barrier of the great trial and change that fall on all the things that live; and, although I have not the audacity to pretend that I know anything of them, I cannot reconcile the mere banging of doors, ringing of bells, creaking of boards, and such like insignificances, with the majestic beauty and pervading a.n.a.logy of all the Divine rules that I am permitted to understand."

His piety was undemonstrative and sincere, as his books alone would suffice to prove; and he seems to have sought to impress upon his children those religious truths with the acceptance and practice of which he remained himself content. He loved the New Testament, and had, after some fas.h.i.+on of his own, paraphrased the Gospel narrative for the use of his children; but he thought that "half the misery and hypocrisy of the Christian world arises from a stubborn determination to refuse the New Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force the Old Testament into alliance with it--whereof comes all manner of camel-swallowing and of gnat-straining." Of Puritanism in its modern forms he was an uncompromising, and no doubt a conscientious, opponent; and though, with perfect sincerity, he repelled the charge that his attacks upon cant were attacks upon religion, yet their _animus_ is such as to make the misinterpretation intelligible. His Dissenting ministers are of the _Bartholomew Fair_ species; and though, in his later books, a good clergyman here and there makes his modest appearance, the balance can hardly be said to be satisfactorily redressed.

The performance of this pious office was not the only kind act he did after his return from America. Of course, however, his own family was nearest to his heart. No kinder or more judicious words were ever addressed by a father to his children than those which, about this time, he wrote to one of his sons, then beginning a successful career at Cambridge, and to another--the youngest--who was setting forth for Australia, to join an elder brother already established in that country.

"Poor Plorn," he afterward wrote, "is gone to Australia. It was a hard parting at the last. He seemed to me to become once more my youngest and favourite child as the day drew near, and I did not think I could have been so shaken."

In October his "farewell" readings began. He had never had his heart more in the work than now. Curiously enough, not less than two proposals had reached him during this autumn--one from Birmingham and the other from Edinburgh--that he should allow himself to be put forward as a candidate for Parliament; but he declined to entertain either, though in at least one of the two cases the prospects of success would not have been small.

His views of political and parliamentary life had not changed since he had written to Bulwer Lytton in 1865: "Would there not seem to be something horribly rotten in the system of political life, when one stands amazed how any man, not forced into it by his position, as you are, can bear to live it?" Indeed, they had hardly changed since the days when he had come into personal contact with them as a reporter. In public and in private he had never ceased to ridicule our English system of party, and to express his contempt for the Legislature and all its works. He had, however, continued to take a lively interest in public affairs, and his letters contain not a few shrewd remarks on both home and foreign questions. Like most liberal minds of his age, he felt a warm sympathy for the cause of Italy; and the English statesman whom he appears to have most warmly admired was Lord Russell, in whose good intentions neither friends nor adversaries were wont to lose faith. Meanwhile his Radicalism gradually became of the most thoroughly independent type, though it interfered neither with his approval of the proceedings in Jamaica as an example of strong government, nor with his scorn of "the meeting of jawbones and a.s.ses" held against Governor Eyre at Manchester. The political questions, however, which really moved him deeply were those social problems to which his sympathy for the poor had always directed his attention--the Poor-law, temperance, Sunday observance, punishment and prisons, labour and strikes.

On all these heads sentiment guided his judgment, but he spared no pains to convince himself that he was in the right; and he was always generous, as when, notwithstanding his interest in _Household Words_, he declared himself unable to advocate the repeal of the paper duty for a moment, "as against the soap duty, or any other pressing on the ma.s.s of the poor."

Thus he found no difficulty in adhering to the course he had marked out for himself. The subject which now occupied him before all others was a scheme for a new reading, with which it was his wish to vary and to intensify the success of the series on which he was engaged. This was no other than a selection of scenes from _Oliver Twist_, culminating in the scene of the murder of Nancy by Sikes, which, before producing it in public, he resolved to "try" upon a select private audience. The trial was a brilliant success. "The public," exclaimed a famous actress who was present, "have been looking out for a sensation these last fifty years or so, and, by Heaven, they have got it!" Accordingly, from January, 1869, it formed one of the most frequent of his readings, and the effort which it involved counted for much in the collapse which was to follow. Never were the limits between reading and acting more thoroughly effaced by d.i.c.kens, and never was the production of an extraordinary effect more equally shared by author and actor. But few who witnessed this extraordinary performance can have guessed the elaborate preparation bestowed upon it, which is evident from the following notes (by Mr. C. Kent) on the book used in it by the reader:

"What is as striking as anything in all this reading, however--that is, in the reading copy of it now lying before us as we write--is the ma.s.s of hints as to the by-play in the stage directions for himself, so to speak, scattered up and down the margin. 'f.a.gin raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air,' is there on page 101 in print. Beside it, on the margin in MS., is the word '_Action_.'

Not a word of it was said. It was simply _done_. Again, immediately below that, on the same page--Sikes _loquitur_: 'Oh! you haven't, haven't you?' pa.s.sing a pistol into a more convenient pocket ('_Action_' again in MS. on the margin.) Not a word was said about the pistol.... So again, afterwards, as a rousing self-direction, one sees notified in MS. on page 107 the grim stage direction, '_Murder coming!_'"

The "Murder" was frequently read by d.i.c.kens not less than four times a week during the early months of 1869, in which year, after beginning in Ireland, he had been continually travelling to and fro between various parts of Great Britain and town. Already in February the old trouble in his foot had made itself felt, but, as usual, it had long been disregarded. On the 10th of April he had been entertained at Liverpool, in St. George's Hall, at a banquet presided over by Lord Dufferin, and in a genial speech had tossed back the ball to Lord Houghton, who had pleasantly bantered him for his unconsciousness of the merits of the House of Lords. Ten days afterwards he was to read at Preston, but, feeling uneasy about himself, had reported his symptoms to his doctor in London.