Gilbert Keith Chesterton Part 3

After all, the main point of 'The Tale of Two Cities' is the exquisite pathos of it. Whether its att.i.tude to the French Revolution is absolutely accurate does not matter very much for the reader who is not a keen historical student.

With 'Hard Times' and 'A Tale of Two Cities' d.i.c.kens has struck a graver note. This is peculiarly emphasized in 'Great Expectations.' This story is 'characterized by a consistency and quietude of individuality which is rare in d.i.c.kens.' It is really a book with a moral--that life in the limelight is not always synonymous with getting the best out of it.

Really, the hero behaves in a sneakish manner. Probably d.i.c.kens doesn't like him, and the writer is still on the stern side.

In 1864, so Chesterton tells us, d.i.c.kens was in a merrier mood, and published 'Our Mutual Friend,' a book that has, as our critic says, 'a thoroughly human hero and a thoroughly human villain.' This work is 'a satire dealing with the whims and pleasures of the leisured cla.s.s.' But this is by no means a monopoly of the so-called idle rich: the hardworking middle and poorer cla.s.ses have whims and pleasures in a like manner, but have not so much opportunity in indulging in them.

As I have indicated, the story is not the princ.i.p.al part of the d.i.c.kens'

literature; it is the drawing of characters to which he pays so much attention. It will not be out of place at this time to see what our critic has to say with regard to this tendency of d.i.c.kens. It is an essential of d.i.c.kens, and is therefore of vast import to any critique on him.

The essence of d.i.c.kens, for Chesterton, is that he makes kings out of common men: those folks who are the ordinary people of this strange, fascinating world, those who have no special claim to a place in the stars, those who, when they die, do not have two lines in any but a local paper, those who are common but are never commonplace.

There is a vast difference between the common and the commonplace, as Chesterton points out. Death is common to all, yet it is never commonplace; it is in its very essence a grand and n.o.ble thing, because it is a proof of our common humanity; it gives the lie that the Pope is of more importance than the dustman; it makes the busy editor equal to the newsboy shouting the papers under his office windows.

The common man is he who does not receive any special distinction: universities do not compete to do him honour, his name is but mentioned in a small circle. These are those of whom d.i.c.kens wrote. 'It is,' says Chesterton, 'in private life that we find the great characters. They are too great to get into the public world.' They are people who are natural--natural in a sense that the holders of high office never can be. d.i.c.kens could only write of natural people, so he wrote of common men: 'You will find him adrift as an impecunious commercial traveller like Micawber; you will find him but one of a batch of silly clerks like Swiveller; you will find him as an unsuccessful actor like Crumples; you will find him as an unsuccessful doctor like Sawyer; you will always find the rich and reeking personality where d.i.c.kens found it among the poor.'

Not only were the characters d.i.c.kens chose common men, they were also 'great fools,' because Chesterton will have us believe that a man can be entirely great while he is entirely foolish. It is no doubt in the spiritual sense so admirably expressed in the Pauline Epistles, where 'foolish in the eyes of the world but wise before G.o.d' is a condition that is of merit.

'Mr. Toots is great because he is foolish.' He is great because he has a soul that glorifies his weak and foolish body, not that he is great because, _ipso facto_, he is foolish.

There is a great and permanent value in the writings of d.i.c.kens. I cannot do better than quote our critic: 'If we are to look for lessons, here at least are the last and deepest lessons of d.i.c.kens. It is in our own daily life that we are to look for the portents and the prodigies.

This is the truth, not merely of the fixed figures of our life, the wife, the husband, the fool that fills the day. Every day we neglect Tootses and Swivellers, Guppys and Joblings, Simmerys and Flashers. This is the real gospel of d.i.c.kens, the inexhaustible opportunities offered by the liberty and variety of man. It is when we pa.s.s our own private gate and open our own secret door that we step into the land of the giants.'

It will now be convenient to consider the question of the att.i.tude of our critic to the 'Mystery of Edwin Drood,' that tale that has produced one of those literary mysteries that are so dear to a number of folks of the kind who would be disappointed were the problem to be finally solved. 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' was cut short by the sudden death that fell upon d.i.c.kens on a warm June night some half century ago.

For Chesterton the book 'might have proved to be the most ambitious that d.i.c.kens ever planned.' It is non-d.i.c.kensian in the sense that its value depends entirely on a story. The workmans.h.i.+p is very fine. The book was purely and simply a detective story. 'Bleak House' was the nearest approach to its style, but the mystery there was easy to unravel. It was as though d.i.c.kens wished in 'Edwin Drood' to make one last 'splendid and staggering' appearance before the curtain rang down, not to be rung up again until the last Easter morning.

'Yes,' says Chesterton, 'there were many other d.i.c.kenses, 'an industrious d.i.c.kens, a public spirited d.i.c.kens, but the last one (that is Edwin Drood) was the great one. The wild epitaph of Mrs. Sapsea, "Canst thou do likewise?" should be the serious epitaph of d.i.c.kens.'

It is more than fifty years since d.i.c.kens died. What is the future of d.i.c.kens likely to be? At least, Chesterton has no doubt of the permanent influence of d.i.c.kens; he is as sure of immortality as is Shakespeare.

The kings of the earth die, yet their works remain; the princes pa.s.s on but are not entirely forgotten; writers write and in their turn sleep; but there is that to which in every age we inscribe the word Immortal.

It is enough to say that d.i.c.kens is immortal because he is d.i.c.kens.

There is a further reason, that he proved what all the world had been saying, that common humanity is a holy thing. To quote Chesterton: 'He did for the world what the world could not do for itself.' d.i.c.kens'

creation was poetry--it dealt with the elementals; it is therefore permanent.

In final words he says, 'We shall not be further troubled with the little artists who found d.i.c.kens too sane for their sorrows and too clear for their delights. But we have a long way to travel before we get back to what d.i.c.kens meant; and the pa.s.sage is a long, rambling English road, a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick travelled.'

'But the road leads to eternity, because the inn is at the end of the road, and at that inn is a goodly company of common men who are immortal because d.i.c.kens made them. Here we shall meet d.i.c.kens and all his characters, and when we shall drink again it shall be from great flagons in the tavern at the end of the world.'

What, then, is the essential part of Chesterton's study of Charles d.i.c.kens? It is certainly not a biography; it is for all practical purposes a keen study of what d.i.c.kens was, what he wrote, why he wrote as he did, why he has a place in literature no one else has.

There are faults in the book--it would be a poor book if it had none. At times I think Chesterton allows his genius to overcome his critical judgment. Particularly is this so in his strange misconstruction of the character of Scrooge. But this merely demonstrates yet once more that d.i.c.kens, like Christ, is unique, because no one has ever completely understood him.

The book is a tribute by a great writer to a greater writer, by a great man to a great man, by a complex personality to a complex personality; above all it is a tribute by a lover of the things of the 'doorstep' to a writer who has made the doorstep and the street the road to heaven, because the beings who pa.s.s along have been made immortal.

When the critics of d.i.c.kens meet at the inn there will be none more worthy of a place close to the Master Writer than Chesterton.

_Chapter Three_

THACKERAY

There are no doubt thousands of people who would be annoyed to be thought the reverse of well read who nevertheless know Thackeray only as a name. They know that he was a really great English novelist--they may even know that he lived as a contemporary of d.i.c.kens--but they do not know a line of any of his works.

In lesser manner d.i.c.kens is unknown to very many people of the present day who could tell you intelligently of every modern book that is produced. The reason is, I think, one that is not so generally thought of as might be expected.

It is often said that Thackeray and d.i.c.kens are out of date, that they have had their day, that this era of tube trains and other abominations cannot fall into the background of lumbering stage coaches.

This is, I think, a profound and grave error. It is an error because it presupposes that human interest changes with the advent of different means of transport: that Squeers is no longer of interest because he would now travel to Yorks.h.i.+re by the Great Northern Railway and would have lunch in a luncheon car instead of inside a four-horse stage coach.

The fundamental reason that modern people do not read these great authors is that they are not encouraged to do so. The very best way to instil a love of Thackeray into the modern world is to make the modern world read just so much of him that its voracious appet.i.te is sharpened to wish for more.

In an altogether admirable series of the masters of literature Thackeray finds a place, and treatment of him is left to Chesterton, who writes a fine introductory 'Biography' and then takes picked pa.s.sages from his writings. This is, I think, the most useful means possible of popularizing an author. It requires a good deal of pluck in these days to sit down and steadily pursue a way through a long book of Thackeray unless it has been proved, by the perusal of a selected pa.s.sage, that riches in the book warrant the act of courage in beginning the work.

In this chapter it will be convenient to pay special attention to the introduction that is so ably contributed by Chesterton. It will only be possible to refer to the pa.s.sages he has selected from Thackeray, and the reader must judge of the merit of the choosing. It is one of the hardest things possible to choose representative pa.s.sages from a great writer. Shall he choose those that display the literary qualities of the writer, shall he choose those which depict his powers of drama, shall he select those which bring out the humour of the writer, shall he pick at random and let the pa.s.sage stand or fall on its own merits? These are questions that must be faced in a work of the nature of Chesterton's Thackeray. What the method has been will, I hope, be clear at the end of this chapter.

It was Thackeray's expressed wish that there should be no biography written of him, a position that might indicate extreme modesty, colossal conceit, or distinct cowardice. Whatever the reason, it has not been entirely obeyed, and rightly. A man of the power of Thackeray cannot live without the world being in some way better; it is only good that those who never knew him in the flesh should at least know him in a book. It is not enough that, as Chesterton points out, he 'was of all novelists the most autobiographical,' which is not to say that he wrote unending personal confessions with a very large I, but rather that his books were drawn from the experiences of his life, a field that is productive of the richest literary worth.

Thackeray was born, we are told, in the year 1811, so that he was a year old when the world received two babies who were like ten thousand other babies, except that they happened to be Browning and d.i.c.kens. It was the time when the world trembled, because that mighty soldier Napoleon stood with arms folded, waiting to strike, it knew not where. It was the time when military genius reached its height, a height that could be only brought low by one thing, and that was an English General with a long nose and a c.o.c.ked hat.

Although Thackeray was born in Calcutta, he was as English as he could possibly be. But he did not forget his Eastern beginning. 'A certain vague cosmological quality was always mixed with his experience, and it was his favourite boast that he had seen men and cities like Ulysses.'

Which is to say that he had not only seen the world, he had felt it; if he had not seen a one-eyed giant, he had at least seen a two-eyed Hindu.

His early life followed the ordinary life of a thousand other boys born of Anglo-Indian parents; that was, he went to school, where 'a girl broke his heart and a boy broke his nose,' and he discovered that the nose took longer to mend.

At Cambridge, Chesterton tells us, Thackeray found that it was a quite easy thing to sit down and play cards and lose 1,500 in an evening, a fact that very probably was more useful to him than twenty degrees.

Trinity College was the Thackeray College: it has had no more famous son. It was said that Thackeray could order a dinner in every language in Europe, which is to say he could have dined in comfort in any restaurant in Soho.

From Cambridge, we learn, he made his way to the Bar, and at the same time wrote articles in the hope that some editor might keep them from the waste-paper basket. Chesterton tells us an interesting legend that about this time Thackeray offered to ill.u.s.trate the books of d.i.c.kens.

The offer was declined, which he thinks was 'a good thing for d.i.c.kens'

books and a good thing for Thackeray's.' Whether Thackeray ever really did meet d.i.c.kens does not matter much; it is at least picturesque; 'it affects the imagination as much as the meeting with Napoleon.'

There has always been what is for Chesterton a silly discussion--a controversy as to whether Thackeray was a cynic. This was because he happened to write first about villains, then about heroes; villains are always more interesting than heroes, and not infrequently are much better mannered. A cynic is a person who doesn't take the trouble to find the motives for things, or he takes it for granted that the motives are never disinterested ones. To say that Thackeray was a cynic because he drew a large number of villains is as untrue as to say Swift was a cynic because he wrote satire. Thackeray wrote about villains because he wished to also write about heroes; Swift was satirical because he had the intelligence to see that his contemporaries were fools when they might have been wise. The cynics are the people of to-day who write books which attribute low motives to every one, which turn love into l.u.s.t, which care not what is written so long as it can be made certain that there is nothing in the world which has not a hidden meaning.

The first appearance of Thackeray in literature was in 'Fraser's Magazine,' under the pseudo name of Michael Angelo t.i.tmarsh. It is on these unimportant papers that Chesterton thinks was based the attack on Thackeray for being a cynic.

In pa.s.sing, it is not necessary to say more than that Thackeray's marriage ended in a horrible manner: Mrs. Thackeray was sent to an asylum. 'I would do it over again,' said Thackeray; which was a 'fine thing to say.' It was really carrying out 'for better or worse,' which often enough really means for better only.

It will now be well at once to plunge into the very heart of Thackeray, that heart which beat beneath the huge, gaunt frame. The two books which have made his name famous, and what Chesterton thinks of them, must be now gone into.