d.i.c.kens, it is very clear, had been unable to resist the temptation of at once drawing upon the vast addition to his literary capital as a humourist. That the satire of many of the American scenes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ is, as satire, not less true than telling, it needs but a small acquaintance with American journalism and oratory even at the present day to perceive; and the heartrending history of Eden, as a type of some of the settlements "vaunted in England as a mine of Golden Hope,"

at least had the warrant of something more than hearsay and a look in pa.s.sing. Nor, as has already been observed, would it have been in accordance either with human nature, or with the fitness of things, had d.i.c.kens allowed his welcome in America to become to him (as he termed it in the suppressed Preface to the _Notes_) "an iron muzzle disguised beneath a flower or two." But the frankness, to say the least, of the mirror into which he now invited his late hosts to gaze was not likely to produce grateful compliments to its presenter, nor was the effect softened by the despatch with which this _souvenir_ of the "guest of the nation"

was pressed upon its attention. No doubt it would have been easy to reflect that only the evil, not the good, sides of social life in America were held up to derision and contempt, and that an honourable American journalist had no more reason to resent the portraiture of Mr. Jefferson Brick than a virtuous English paterfamilias had to quarrel with that of Mr. Pecksniff. Unfortunately, offence is usually taken where offence is meant; and there can be little doubt as to the _animus_ with which d.i.c.kens had written. Only two months after landing at Boston d.i.c.kens had declared to Macready, that "however much he liked the ingredients of this great dish, he could not but say that the dish itself went against the grain with him, and that he didn't like it." It was not, and could not be, pleasant for Americans to find the "_New York Sewer_, in its twelfth thousand, with a whole column of New Yorkers to be shown up, and all their names printed," introduced as the first expression of "the bubbling pa.s.sions of their country;" or to be certified, apropos of a conversation among American "gentlemen" after dinner, that dollars, and dollars only, at the risk of honesty and honour, filled their souls. "No satirist,"

Martin Chuzzlewit is told by a candid and open-minded American, "could, I believe, breathe this air." But satire in such pa.s.sages as these borders too closely on angry invective; and neither the irresistible force nor the earnest pathos of the details which follow can clear away the suspicion that at the bottom lay a desire to depreciate. Nor was the general effect of the American episodes in _Martin Chuzzlewit_ materially modified by their conclusion, to which, with the best of intentions, the author could not bring himself to give a genuinely complimentary turn. The Americans did not like all this, and could not be expected to like it. The tone of the whole satire was too savage, and its tenor was too hopelessly one-sided, for it to pa.s.s unresented; while much in it was too near the truth to glance off harmless. It is well known that in time d.i.c.kens came himself to understand this. Before quitting America, in 1868, he declared his intention to publish in every future edition of his _American Notes_ and _Martin Chuzzlewit_ his testimony to the magnanimous cordiality of his second reception in the States, and to the amazing changes for the better which he had seen everywhere around him during his second sojourn in the country. But it is not likely that the postscript, all the more since it was added under circ.u.mstances so honourable to both sides, has undone, or will undo, the effect of the text. Very possibly the Americans may, in the eyes of the English people as well as in their own, cease to be chargeable with the faults and foibles satirised by d.i.c.kens; but the satire itself will live, and will continue to excite laughter and loathing, together with the other satire of the powerful book to which it belongs.

For in none of his books is that power, which at times filled their author himself with astonishment, more strikingly and abundantly revealed than in _The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit_. Never was his inventive force more flexible and more at his command; yet none of his books cost him more hard work. The very names of hero and novel were only the final fortunate choice out of a legion of notions; though "Pecksniff" as well as "Charity" and "Mercy" ("not unholy names, I hope," said Mr. Pecksniff to Mrs. Todgers) were first inspirations. The MS. text too is full of the outward signs of care. But the author had his reward in the general impression of finish which is conveyed by this book as compared with its predecessors; so that _Martin Chuzzlewit_ may be described as already one of the masterpieces of d.i.c.kens's maturity as a writer. Oddly enough, the one part of the book which moves rather heavily is the opening chapter, an effort in the mock-heroic, probably suggested by the author's eighteenth century readings.

A more original work, however, than _Martin Chuzzlewit_ was never composed, or one which more freshly displays the most characteristic qualities of its author's genius. Though the actual construction of the story is anything but faultless--for what could be more slender than the thread by which the American interlude is attached to the main action, or more wildly improbable than the hazardous stratagem of old Martin upon which that action turns?--yet it is so contrived as to fulfil the author's avowed intention of exhibiting under various forms the evil and the folly of selfishness. This vice is capable of both serious and comic treatment, and commended itself in each aspect to d.i.c.kens as being essentially antagonistic to his moral and artistic ideals of human life. A true comedy of humours thus unfolded itself with the progress of his book, and one for which the types had not been fetched from afar: "Your homes the scene; yourselves the actors here," had been the motto which he had at first intended to put upon his t.i.tle-page. Thus, while in "the old-established firm of Anthony Chuzzlewit and Son" selfishness is cultivated as a growth excellent in itself, and the son's sentiment, "Do other men, for they would do you," is applauded by his admiring father, in young Martin the vice rather resembles a weed strong and rank, yet not so strong but that it gives way at last before a manly endeavour to uproot it. The character of the hero, though very far from heroic, is worked out with that reliance upon the fellow-feeling of candid readers which in our great novelists of the eighteenth century has obtained sympathy for much less engaging personages. More especially is the young man's loss of self-respect in the season of his solitary wretchedness depicted with admirable feeling. It would not, I think, be fanciful to a.s.sert that in this story d.i.c.kens has with equal skill distinguished between two species of unselfishness. Mark Tapley's is the actively unselfish nature, and though his reiteration of his guiding motive is wearisome and occasionally absurd, yet the power of coming out jolly under unpropitious circ.u.mstances is a genuinely English ideal of manly virtue. Tom Pinch's character, on the other hand, is unselfish from innate sweetness; and never has the art of d.i.c.kens drawn a type which, while closely approaching the border-line of the grotesque, is yet so charmingly true to nature.

Grotesque characters proper are numerous enough in this book, but all the others pale before the immortal presence of Mrs. Gamp. She had been traced to an original in real life, but her literary right to stand on her own legs has been most properly vindicated against any supposition of likeness to the different type, the subject of Leigh Hunt's _Monthly Nurse_--a paper, by-the-way, distinguished by shrewdness as well as feeling.

Imagination has never taken bolder flights than those requisite for the development of Mrs. Gamp's mental processes:

"'And which of all them smoking monsters is the Ankworks boat, I wonder? Goodness me!' cried Mrs. Gamp.

"'What boat did you want?' asked Ruth.

"'The Ankworks package,' Mrs. Gamp replied. 'I will not deceive you, my sweet. Why should I?'

"'That is the Antwerp packet in the middle,' said Ruth.

"'And I wish it was in Jonadge's belly, I do!' cried Mrs. Gamp, appearing to confound the prophet with the whale in this miraculous aspiration."

A hardly inferior exertion of creative power was needed in order to fix in distinct forms the peculiarities of her diction, nay, to sustain the unique rhythm of her speech:

"'I says to Mrs. Harris,' Mrs. Gamp continued, 'only t' other day, the last Monday fortnight as ever dawned upon this Piljian's Projiss of a mortal wale; I says to Mrs. Harris, when she says to me, "Years and our trials, Mrs. Gamp, sets marks upon us all"--"Say not the words, Mrs. Harris, if you and me is to be continual friends, for sech is not the case."'"

Yet the reality of Mrs. Gamp has been acknowledged to be such that she has been the death of her sisterhood in a great part (to say the least) of our hospital wards and sick-rooms; and as for her oddities of tongue, they are, with the exception of her boldest figures, but the glorified type of all the utterances heard to this day from charwomen, laundresses, and single gentlemen's house-keepers. Compared with her, even her friend and patron, Mr. Mould, and her admirer, Mr. Bailey, and in other parts of the book the low company at Todgers's and the fine company at Mr. Tigg Montague's sink into insignificance. The aged Chuffey is a grotesque study of a very different kind, of which the pathos never loses itself in exaggeration. As for Pecksniff, he is as far out of the range of grotesque as, except when moralising over the banisters at Todgers's, he is out of that of genial characters. He is the richest comic type, while at the same time one of the truest, among the innumerable reproductions in English imaginative literature of our favourite national vice--hypocrisy.

His friendliness is the very quintessence of falsehood: "Mr. Pinch," he cries to poor Tom over the currant-wine and captain's biscuits, "if you spare the bottle, we shall quarrel!" His understanding with his daughters is the very perfection of guile, for they confide in him, even when ignorant of his intentions, because of their certainty "that in all he does he has his purpose straight and full before him." And he is a man who understands the times as well as the land in which he lives; for, as M.

Taine has admirably pointed out, where Tartuffe would have been full of religious phrases, Pecksniff presents himself as a humanitarian philosopher. Comic art has never more successfully fulfilled its highest task after its truest fashion than in this picture of the rise and fall of a creature who never ceases to be laughable, and yet never ceases to be loathsome. Nothing is wanting in this wonderful book to attest the exuberance of its author's genius. The kindly poetic spirit of the Christmas books breathes in sweet Ruth Pinch; and the tragic power of the closing chapters of _Oliver Twist_ is recalled by the picture of Jonas before and after his deed of blood. I say nothing of merely descriptive pa.s.sages, though in none of his previous stories had d.i.c.kens so completely mastered the secret of describing scenery and weather in their relation to his action or his characters.

_Martin Chuzzlewit_ ran its course of twenty monthly numbers; but already a week or two before the appearance of the first of these, d.i.c.kens had bestowed upon the public, young and old, the earliest of his delightful _Christmas Books_. Among all his productions perhaps none connected him so closely, and as it were personally, with his readers. Nor could it well have been otherwise; since nowhere was he so directly intent upon promoting kindliness of feeling among men--more especially good-will, founded upon respect, towards the poor. Cheerfulness was, from his point of view, twin-sister to charity; and sulkiness, like selfishness, belonged, as an appropriate ort, to the dust-heap of "Tom Tiddler's Ground." What more fit than that he should mingle such sentiments as these with the holly and the mistletoe of the only English holiday in which remains a vestige of religious and poetic feeling? Beyond all doubt there is much that is tedious in the _cultus_ of Father Christmas, and there was yet more in the days when the lower cla.s.ses in England had not yet come to look upon a sufficiency of periodical holidays as part of their democratic inheritance. But that d.i.c.kens should const.i.tute himself its chief minister and interpreter was nothing but fit. Already one of the _Sketches_ had commended a Christmas-dinner at which a seat is not denied even to "poor Aunt Margaret;" and Mr. Pickwick had never been more himself than in the Christmas game of Blind-man's-buff at Dingley Dell, in which "the poor relations caught the people who they thought would like it," and, when the game flagged, "got caught themselves." But he now sought to reach the heart of the subject; and the freshness of his fancy enabled him delightfully to vary his ill.u.s.trations of a text of which it can do no man harm to be reminded in as well as out of season.

d.i.c.kens's Christmas books were published in the Christmas seasons of 1843-1846, and of 1848. If the palm is to be granted to any one among them above its fellows, few readers would hesitate, I think, to declare themselves in favour of _The Cricket on the Hearth_, as tender and delicate a domestic idyl as any literature can boast. But the informing spirit proper of these productions, the desire to stir up a feeling of benevolence, more especially towards the poor and lowly, nowhere shows itself more conspicuously than in the earliest, _A Christmas Carol in Prose_, and nowhere more combatively than in the second in date, the "Goblin Story" of _The Chimes_. Of the former its author declared that he "wept and laughed and wept again" over it, "and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner in the composition; and thinking thereof he walked about the black streets of London, fifteen and twenty miles many a night, when all the sober folks had gone to bed." Simple in its romantic design like one of Andersen's little tales, the _Christmas Carol_ has never lost its hold upon a public in whom it has called forth Christmas thoughts which do not all centre on "holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch;" and the Cratchit household, with Tiny Tim, who did not die, are living realities even to those who have not seen Mr.

Toole--an actor after d.i.c.kens's own heart--as the father of the family, shivering in his half-yard of comforter.

In _The Chimes_, composed in self-absorbed solitude at Genoa, he imagined that "he had written a tremendous book, and knocked the _Carol_ out of the field." Though the little work failed to make "the great uproar" he had confidently antic.i.p.ated, its purpose was certainly unmistakable; but the effect of hard exaggerations such as Mr. Filer and Alderman Cute, and of a burlesque absurdity like Sir Joseph Bowley, was too dreary to be counteracted by the more pleasing pa.s.sages of the tale. In his novel _Hard Times_ d.i.c.kens afterwards reproduced some of the ideas, and repeated some of the artistic mistakes, to be found in _The Chimes_, though the design of the later work was necessarily of a more mixed kind. The Christmas book has the tone of a _doctrinaire_ protest against _doctrinaires_, and, as Forster has pointed out, is manifestly written under the influence of Carlyle. But its main doctrine was one which d.i.c.kens lost no opportunity of proclaiming, and which here breaks forth in the form of an indignant appeal by Richard Fern, the outlaw in spite of himself: "Gentlefolks, be not hard upon the poor!" No feeling was more deeply rooted in d.i.c.kens's heart than this; nor could he forbear expressing it by invective and satire as well as by humorous and pathetic pictures of his clients, among whom Trotty Veck too takes a representative place.

_The Cricket on the Hearth_, as a true work of art, is not troubled about its moral, easily though half-a-dozen plain morals might be drawn from it; a purer and more lightsome creation of the fancy has never been woven out of homespun materials. Of the same imaginative type, though not executed with a fineness so surpa.s.sing, is _The Battle of Life_, the treatment of a fancy in which d.i.c.kens appears to have taken great pleasure. Indeed, he declared that he was "thoroughly wretched at having to use the idea for so short a story." As it stands, it is a pretty idyl of resignation, very poetical in tone as well as in conception, though here and there, notwithstanding the complaint just quoted, rather lengthy. It has been conjectured, with much probability, that the success which had attended dramatic versions of d.i.c.kens's previous Christmas books caused "those admirable comedians, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley," to be in his mind "when he drew the charming characters of Britain and Clemency Newcome." At all events the pair serve as good old bits of English pottery to relieve the delicate Sevres sentiment of Grace and Marion. In the last of d.i.c.kens's Christmas books, _The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain_, he returns once more to a machinery resembling those of the earliest. But the fancy on which the action turns is here more forced, and the truth which it ill.u.s.trates is after all only a half-truth, unless taken as part of the greater truth, that the moral conditions of man's life are more easily marred than mended. Once more the strength of the book lies in its humorous side. The picture of the good Milly's humble proteges, the Tetterby family, is to remind us that happiness consists precisely in that which the poor and the rich may alike obtain, but which it is so difficult for the poor, amidst their shifts and shabbiness, to keep fresh and green. Even without the evil influence of an enchanted chemist, it is hard enough for the Mrs.

Tetterbys of real life always to be ministering angels to their families; for the hand of every little Tetterby not occasionally to be against the other little Tetterbys, and even for a devoted Johnny's temper never to rise against Moloch. All the more is that to be cherished in the poor which makes them love one another.

More than one of these Christmas books, both the humour and the sentiment of which are so peculiarly English, was written on foreign soil. d.i.c.kens's general conceptions of life, not less than his literary individuality, had been formed before he became a traveller and sojourner in foreign lands.

In Italy, as elsewhere, a man will, in a sense, find only what he takes there. At all events the changed life brought with it for d.i.c.kens, though not at once, a refreshment and a brief repose which invigorated him for some of the truest efforts of his genius. His resolution to spend some time on the Continent had not been taken rashly, although it was at least hastened by business disappointments. He seems at this time, as was virtually inevitable, to have seen a good deal of society in London, and more especially to have become a welcome guest of Lady Blessington and Count d'Orsay at Gore House. Moreover, his services were beginning to be occasionally claimed as a public speaker; and altogether he must have found more of his time than he wished slipping through his hands. Lastly, he very naturally desired to see what was to be seen, and to enjoy what was to be enjoyed, by one gifted with a sleepless observation and animated by a genuine love of nature and art. The letters, public and private, which he wrote from Italy, are not among the most interesting productions of his pen; even his humour seems now and then ill at ease in them, and his descriptive power narrow in its range. His eyes were occasionally veiled, as are those of most travellers in quest of "first impressions."

Thus I cannot but think his picture of Naples inadequate, and that of its population unjust. Again, although he may have told the truth in a.s.serting that the Eternal City, at first sight, "looked like--I am half afraid to write the word--like LONDON," and although his general description of Rome has been p.r.o.nounced correct by competent judgment, yet it is impossible to ignore in it the undertone of Bow Bells. On the other hand, not even in his newspaper letters can he be said to fall into affectation; his impressions are never given pretentiously, and are accordingly seldom altogether worthless; while his criticisms of works of art, when offered, are candid and shrewd, besides being invariably his own.

Thus, there was never anything truer in its way than the account which he gave to Maclise of his first impressions a few days after his arrival at Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, where he found himself settled with his family in July, 1844. He re-christened his abode, the Villa Bagnerello ("it sounds romantic, but Signor Banderello is a butcher hard by"), "the Pink Jail." Here, with abundance of s.p.a.ce and time, and with a view from his writing-table of "the sea, the mountains, the washed-out villas, the vineyards, the blistering hot fort, with a sentry on the drawbridge standing in a bit of shadow no broader than his own musket, and the sky,"

he began his _villeggiatura_, and resolving not to know, or to be known where it could be helped, looked round him at his leisure. This looking round very naturally took up some time; for the circuit of d.i.c.kens's daily observation was unusually wide. Soon he was seeking winter-quarters in Genoa it self, and by October was established in the Palazzo Peschiere, situate on a height within the walls of the city, and overlooking the whole of it, with the harbour and the sea beyond. "There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them), a lovelier residence." Even here, however, among fountains and frescoes, it was some time before he could set steadily to work at his Christmas story. At last the bells of Genoa chimed a t.i.tle for it into his restless ears; and, though longing with a nostalgy that was specially strong upon him at periods of mental excitement for his nightly walks in the London streets, he settled down to his task. I have already described the spirit in which he executed it. No sooner was the writing done than the other half of his double artist-nature was seized with another craving. The rage which possesses authors to read their writings aloud to sympathizing ears, if such can be found, is a well-worn theme of satire; but in d.i.c.kens the actor was almost as strong as the author, and he could not withstand the desire to interpret in person what he had written, and to watch its effect with his own eyes and ears. In the first days of November, therefore, he set off from Genoa, and made his way home by Bologna, Venice, Milan, and the Simplon Pa.s.s. Of this journey his _Pictures from Italy_ contains the record, including a chapter about Venice, pitched in an unusually poetic key. But not all the memories of all the Doges could have stayed the execution of his set purpose. On the 30th of November he reached London, and on the 2d of December he was reading the _Chimes_, from the proofs, to the group of friends immortalised in Maclise's inimitable sketch. Three days afterwards the reading was repeated to a slightly different audience; and, indeed, it would seem, from an enthusiastic postscript to a letter addressed to his wife, that he had read at least part of the book to Macready on the night before that of the first conclave. The distance was no doubt wide between the intimacy of these friendly readings and the stormy seas of public audiences; but, however unconsciously, the first step had been taken. It may be worth noticing, in connexion with this, that the scheme of a private dramatic performance, which was to occupy much of d.i.c.kens's "leisure" in the year following, was proposed for the first time on the occasion of the first reading of the _Chimes_. Before Christmas he was back again in his "Italian bowers." If the strain of his effort in writing the _Chimes_ had been severe, the holiday which followed was long. In the later winter and early spring of 1845 he and the ladies of his family saw Rome and Naples, and in June their Italian life came to an end, and they were in London before the close of the month. Projects of work remained in abeyance until the absorbing fancy of a private play had been realised with an earnestness such as only d.i.c.kens could carry into his amus.e.m.e.nts, and into this particular amus.e.m.e.nt above all others. The play was _Every Man in his Humour_; the theatre, the little house in Dean Street, of whose chequered fortunes no theatrical history has succeeded in exhausting the memories; and the manager was, of course, "Bobadil," as d.i.c.kens now took to signing himself. His joking remark to Macready, that he "thought of changing his present mode of life, and was open to an engagement," was after all not so very wide of the mark. According to the inevitable rule in such things, he and his friends--among whom Mark Lemon, Douglas Jerrold, and Forster were conspicuous--were "induced" to repeat their performance at a larger house for a public charity, and later in the year they played _The Elder Brother_ for Miss f.a.n.n.y Kelly's benefit. Leigh Hunt, whose opinion, however, could hardly fail to be influenced by the circ.u.mstances under which Ben Jonson's comedy was afterwards performed by the amateurs, and who was no longer the youthful Draco of the _News_, afterwards spoke very highly of d.i.c.kens's Bobadil. It had "a spirit in it of intellectual apprehension beyond anything the existing stage has shown." His acting in the farce which followed Leigh Hunt thought "throughout admirable; quite rich and filled up."

Christmas, 1845, had pa.s.sed, and _The Cricket on the Hearth_ had graced the festival, when an altogether new chapter in d.i.c.kens's life seemed about to open for him. The experience through which he now pa.s.sed was one on which his biographer, for reasons easy to guess, has touched very slightly, while his _Letters_ throw no additional light on it at all. Most people, I imagine, would decline to p.r.o.nounce upon the qualifications requisite in an editor of a great political journal. Yet, literary power of a kind which acts upon the mult.i.tude rapidly and powerfully, habits of order so confirmed as to have almost become second nature, and an interest in the affairs of the nation fed by an ardent enthusiasm for its welfare--these would seem to go some way towards making up the list. Of all these qualifications d.i.c.kens at various times gave proof, and they sufficed in later years to make him the successful conductor of a weekly journal which aimed at the enlightenment hardly less than at the entertainment of no inconsiderable portion of the British public. But, in the first place, political journalism proper is a craft of which very few men have been known to become masters by intuition, and d.i.c.kens had as yet had no real experience of it. His zealous efforts as a reporter can hardly be taken into account here. He had for a short time edited a miscellany of amus.e.m.e.nt, and had failed to carry beyond a beginning the not very carefully considered scheme of another. Recently, he had resumed the old notion of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ in a different shape; but nothing had come of his projected cheap weekly paper for the present, while its t.i.tle, "_The Cricket_," was reserved for a different use. Since his reporting days he had, however, now and then appeared among the lighter combatants of political literature. In 1841 he had thrown a few squibs in the _Examiner_ at Sir Robert Peel and the Tories; and from about the same date he had, besides occasionally contributing to the literary and theatrical columns of the same weekly journal, now and then discussed in it subjects of educational or other general interest.[6] Finally, it is stated by Forster that in 1844, when the greatest political struggle of the last generation was approaching its climax, d.i.c.kens contributed some articles to the _Morning Chronicle_ which attracted attention and led to negotiations with the editor that arrived at no positive result. If these contributions treated any political questions whatever, they were, with the exception of the few _Examiner_ papers, and of the letters to the _Daily News_ to be mentioned in this chapter, the only articles of this kind which, to my knowledge, he ever wrote.

For, from first to last, whether in the days when Oliver Twist suffered under the maladministration of the Poor-law, or in those when Arthur Clennam failed to make an impression upon the Circ.u.mlocution Office, politics were with d.i.c.kens a sentiment rather than a study or a pursuit.

With his habits of application and method, it might have taken but a very short time for him to train himself as a politician; but this short time never actually occurred. There is, however, no reason to suppose that when, in 1841, a feeler was put out by some more or less influential persons at Reading, with regard to his willingness to be nominated for the representation of that borough, he had any reason for declining the proposal besides that which he stated in his replies. He could not afford the requisite expense; and he was determined not to forfeit his independence through accepting Government--by which I hope he means Whig party--aid for meeting the cost of the contest. Still, in 1845, though slack of faith in the "people who govern us," he had not yet become the irreclaimable political sceptic of later days; and without being in any way bound to the Whigs, he had that general confidence in Lord John Russell which was all they could expect from their irregular followers. As yet, however, he had shown no sign of any special apt.i.tude or inclination for political work, though if he addressed himself to questions affecting the health and happiness of the humbler cla.s.ses, he was certain to bring to them the enthusiasm of a genuine sympathy. And a question of this kind was uppermost in Englishmen's minds in this year 1845, when at last the time was drawing near for the complete abolition of the tax upon the staple article of the poor man's daily food.

The establishment of a new London morning paper, on the scale to which those already in existence had attained, was a serious matter in itself; but it seems to have been undertaken in no spirit of diffidence by the projectors and first proprietors of the _Daily News_. With the early history of the experiment I cannot here concern myself; it is, however, an open secret that the rate of expenditure of the new journal was at first on a most liberal, not to say lavish, scale, and that the losses of the proprietors were for many years very large indeed. Established on those principles of Radicalism which, on the whole, it has in both good and evil times consistently maintained, the _Daily News_ was to rise superior to the opportunism, if not to the advertis.e.m.e.nts, of the _Times_, and to outstrip the cautious steps of the Whig _Morning Chronicle_. Special attention was to be given to those industrial enterprises with which the world teemed in that speculative age, and no doubt also to those social questions affecting the welfare and elevation of the ma.s.ses and the relations between employers and employed, which were attracting more and more of the public attention. But in the first instance the actual political situation would oblige the new journal to direct the greater part of its energies to one particular question, which had, in truth, already been threshed out by the organs of public opinion, and as to which the time for action had at last arrived. No Liberal journal projected in 1845, and started early in 1846, could fail to concentrate its activity for a time upon the question of the Corn-laws, to which the session of 1846 was to give the death-blow.

It is curious enough, on opening the first number of the _Daily News_, dated January 21, 1846, to find one's self transplanted into the midst of one of the most memorable episodes of our more recent political history.

The very advertis.e.m.e.nts of subscriptions to the Anti-Corn-law League, with the good old Manchester names figuring conspicuously among them, have a historic interest; and the report of a disputation on free-trade at Norwich, in which all the hits are made by Mr. Cobden, another report of a great London meeting on the same subject, and some verses concerning the people's want of its bread, probably written by Mr. Charles Mackay, occupy an entire page of the paper. Railway news and accounts of railway meetings fill about the same s.p.a.ce; while the foreign news is extremely meagre.

There remain the leading articles, four in number--of which three are on the burning question of the day--and the first of a series of _Travelling Letters Written on the Road, by Charles d.i.c.kens_ (the Avignon chapter in the _Pictures from Italy_.)[7] The hand of the editor is traceable only in this _feuilleton_ and in the opening article of the new paper. On internal evidence I conclude that this article, which has little to distinguish it from similar manifestoes, unless it be a moderation of tone that would not have suited Captain Shandon, was not written by d.i.c.kens alone or una.s.sisted. But his hand is traceable in the concluding paragraphs, which contain the following wordy but spirited a.s.sertion of a cause that d.i.c.kens lost no opportunity of advocating:

"We seek, so far as in us lies, to elevate the character of the Public Press in England. We believe it would attain a much higher position, and that those who wield its powers would be infinitely more respected as a cla.s.s, and an important one, if it were purged of a disposition to sordid attacks _upon itself_, which only prevails in England and America. We discern nothing in the editorial plural that justifies a gentleman, or body of gentlemen, in discarding a gentleman's forbearance and responsibility, and venting ungenerous spleen against a rival, by a perversion of a great power--a power, however, which is only great so long as it is good and honest. The stamp on newspapers is not like the stamp on universal medicine-bottles, which licenses anything, however false and monstrous; and we are sure this misuse of it, in any notorious case, not only offends and repels right-minded men in that particular instance, but naturally, though unjustly, involves the whole Press, as a pursuit or profession, in the feeling so awakened, and places the character of all who are a.s.sociated with it at a great disadvantage.

"Entering on this adventure of a new daily journal in a spirit of honourable compet.i.tion and hope of public usefulness, we seek, in our new station, at once to preserve our own self-respect, and to be respected, for ourselves and for it, by our readers. Therefore, we beg them to receive, in this our first number, the a.s.surance that no recognition or interchange of trade abuse, by us, shall be the destruction of either sentiment; and that we intend proceeding on our way, and theirs, without stooping to any such flowers by the roadside."

I am unable to say how many days it was after the appearance of this first number that d.i.c.kens, or the proprietors of the journal, or, as seems most likely, both sides simultaneously, began to consider the expediency of ending the connexion between them. He was "revolving plans for quitting the paper" on January 30, and resigned his editorship on February 9 following. In the interval, with the exception of two or three more of the _Travelling Letters_, very few signs of his hand appear in the journal.

The number of January 24, however, contains an editorial contribution, in the shape of "a new song, but an old story," concerning _The British Lion_, his accomplishment of eating Corn-law Leagues, his princ.i.p.al keeper, _Wan Humbug_, and so forth. This it would be cruel to unearth. A more important indication of a line of writing that his example may have helped to domesticate in the _Daily News_ appears in the number of February 4, which contains a long letter, with his signature, urging the claims of Ragged Schools, and giving a graphic account of his visit to one in Saffron Hill. After he had placed his resignation in the hands of the proprietors, and was merely holding on at his post till the time of his actual withdrawal, he was naturally not anxious to increase the number of his contributions. The _Hymn of the Wiltshire Labourers_--which appeared on February 14--is, of course, an echo of the popular cry of the day; but the subtler pathos of d.i.c.kens never found its way into his verse. The most important, and so far as I know, the last, of his contributions to the _Daily News_, consisted of a series of three letters (March 9, 13, and 16) on capital punishment. It was a question which much occupied him at various times of his life, and on which it cannot be shown that he really changed his opinions. The letters in the _Daily News_, based in part on the arguments of one of the ablest men of his day, the "unlucky" Mr.

Wakefield, are an interesting contribution to the subject; and the first of them, with its Hogarthian sketch of the temptation and fall of Thomas Hocker, Sunday-school teacher and murderer, would be worth reprinting as an example of d.i.c.kens's masterly use of the argument _ex concreto_.

The few traditions which linger in the _Daily News_ office concerning d.i.c.kens as editor of the paper, agree with the conjecture that his labours on its behalf were limited, or very nearly so, to the few pieces enumerated above. Of course there must have been some inevitable business; but of this much may have been taken off his hands by his sub-editor, Mr.

W. H. Wills, who afterwards became his _alter ego_ at the office of his own weekly journal and his intimate personal friend. In the days of the first infancy of the _Daily News_, Mr. Britton, the present publisher of that journal, was attached to the editor as his personal office attendant; and he remembers very vividly what little there can have been to remember about d.i.c.kens's performance of his functions. His habit, following a famous precedent, was to make up for coming late--usually about half-past ten P.M.--by going away early--usually not long after midnight. There were frequently sounds of merriment, if not of modest revelry, audible from the little room at the office in Lombard Street, where the editor sat in conclave with Douglas Jerrold and one or two other intimates. Mr. Britton is not sure that the work did not sometimes begin _after the editor had left_; but at all events he cannot recollect that d.i.c.kens ever wrote anything at the office--that he ever, for instance, wrote about a debate that had taken place in Parliament on the same night. And he sums up his reminiscences by declaring his conviction that d.i.c.kens was "not a newspaper man, at least not when in 'the chair.'" And so d.i.c.kens seems on this occasion to have concluded; for when, not long after quitting the paper, he republished with additions the _Travelling Letters_ which during his conduct of it had been its princ.i.p.al ornaments, he spoke of "a brief mistake he had made, not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between himself and his readers, and departing for a moment from his old pursuits." He had been virtually out of "the chair" almost as soon as he had taken it. His successor, but only for a few months, was his friend Forster.

Never has captive released made a more eager or a better use of his recovered freedom. Before the summer had fairly set in d.i.c.kens had let his house, and was travelling with his family up the Rhine towards Switzerland. This was, I think, d.i.c.kens's only pa.s.sage through Germany, which in language and literature remained a _terra incognita_ to him, while in various ways so well known to his friendly rivals, Lord Lytton and Thackeray. He was on the track of poor Thomas Hood's old journeyings, whose facetious recollections of Rhineland he had some years before reviewed in a spirit of admiration rather for the author than for the book, funny as it is. His point of destination was Lausanne, where he had resolved to establish his household for the summer, and where by the middle of June they were most agreeably settled in a little villa or cottage which did not belie its name of Rosemont, and from which they looked upon the lake and the mighty Alpine chain beyond. If Rome had reminded d.i.c.kens of London, the green woods near Lausanne recalled to him his Kentish glades; but he had the fullest sense and the truest enjoyment of the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, and lost no opportunity of becoming acquainted with them. Thus his letters contain an admirable description (not untinged with satire) of a trip to the Great St. Bernard and its convent, many years afterwards reproduced in one of the few enjoyable chapters of the Second Part of _Little Dorrit_. More interesting, however, because more characteristic, is the freshness and candour with which in Switzerland, where by most English visitors the native inhabitants are "taken for granted," he set himself to observe, and, so far as he could, to appreciate, the people among whom he was a temporary resident. His solutions of some of the political difficulties, which were mostly connected with religious differences, at that time rife in Switzerland, are palpably one-sided. But the generosity of spirit which reveals itself in his kindly recognition of the fine qualities of the people around him is akin to what was best and n.o.blest in d.i.c.kens.

He had, at the same time, been peculiarly fortunate in finding at Lausanne a circle of pleasant acquaintances, to whom he dedicated the Christmas book which he wrote among the roses and the foliage of his lake-side cottage. Of course _The Battle of Life_ was read aloud by its author to so kindly an audience. The day of parting, however, soon came; on the 16th of November _paterfamilias_ had his "several tons of luggage, other tons of servants, and other tons of children," in travelling order, and soon had safely stowed them away at Paris "in the most preposterous house in the world. The like of it cannot, and so far as my knowledge goes, does not, exist in any other part of the globe. The bedrooms are like opera-boxes; the dining-rooms, staircases, and pa.s.sages quite inexplicable. The dining-room"--which in another letter he describes as "mere midsummer madness"--"is a sort of cavern, painted (ceiling and all) to represent a grove, with unaccountable bits of looking-gla.s.s sticking in among the branches of the trees. There is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room, but it is approached through a series of small chambers, like the joints in a telescope, which are hung with inscrutable drapery." Here, with the exception of two brief visits to England, paid before his final departure, he spent three months, familiarising himself for the first time of his life with the second of his "Two Cities."

d.i.c.kens came to know the French language well enough to use it with ease, if not with elegance; and he lost no opportunity, it need hardly be said, of resorting to the best of schools for the purpose. Macready, previously addressed from "Altorf," had made him acquainted with Regnier, of the Theatre Francais, who in his turn had introduced him to the greenroom of the house of Moliere. Other theatres were diligently visited by him and Forster, when the latter arrived on a visit; and celebrities were polite and hospitable to their distinguished English _confrere_. With these, however, d.i.c.kens was not cosmopolitan enough to consort except in pa.s.sing; the love of literary society _because_ it is literary society was at no time one of his predilections or foibles. The streets of Paris were to him more than its _salons_, more even than its theatres. They are so to a larger number of Englishmen than that which cares to confess it, but d.i.c.kens would have been the last to disown the impeachment. They were the proper sphere for his powers of humorous observation, as he afterwards showed in more than one descriptive paper as true to life as any of his London _Sketches_. And, moreover, he _needed_ the streets for the work which he had in hand. _Dombey and Son_ had been begun at Rosemont, and the first of its twenty monthly numbers had been published in October, 1846.

No reader of the book is likely to forget how, after writing the chapter which relates the death of little Paul, d.i.c.kens during the greater part of the night wandered restlessly with a heavy heart about the Paris streets.

Sooner, however, than he had intended, his residence abroad had to come to a close; and early in 1847 he and his family were again in London.

_Dombey and Son_ has, perhaps, been more criticised than any other amongst the stories of its author; and yet it certainly is not the one which has been least admired, or least loved. d.i.c.kens himself, in the brief preface which he afterwards prefixed to the story, a.s.sumed a half-defiant air which sits ill upon the most successful author, but which occasionally he was tempted to a.s.sume. Before condescending to defend the character of Mr.

Dombey as in accordance with both probability and experience, he "made so bold as to believe that the faculty (or the habit) of correctly observing the characters of men is a rare one." Yet, though the drawing of this character is only one of the points which have been objected against the story, not only did the book at the time of publication far surpa.s.s its predecessor in popularity, but it has, I believe, always preserved to itself a special congregation of enthusiastic admirers. Manifestly, this novel is one of its author's most ambitious endeavours. In it, more distinctly even than in _Chuzzlewit_, he has chosen for his theme one of the chief vices of human nature, and has striven to show what pride cannot achieve, what it cannot conquer, what it cannot withstand. This central idea gives to the story, throughout a most varied succession of scenes, a unity of action to be found in few of d.i.c.kens's earlier works.

On the other hand, _Dombey and Son_ shares with these earlier productions, and with its successor, _David Copperfield_, the freshness of invention and spontaneous flow of both humour and pathos which at times are wanting in the more powerfully conceived and more carefully constructed romances of d.i.c.kens's later years. If there be any force at all in the common remark that the most interesting part of the book ends together with the life of little Paul, the censure falls upon the whole design of the author. Little Paul, in something besides the ordinary meaning of the words, was born to die; and though, like the writer, most readers may have dreaded the hour which was to put an end to that frail life, yet in this case there could be no question--such as was possible in the story of Little Nell--of any other issue. Indeed, deep as is the pathos of the closing scene, its beauty is even surpa.s.sed by those which precede it. In death itself there is release for a child as for a man, and for those sitting by the pillow of the patient; but it is the gradual approach of death which seems hardest of all for the watchers to bear; it is the sinking of hope which seems even sadder than its extinction. What old fashion could that be, Paul wondered with a palpitating heart, that was so visibly expressed in him, so plainly seen by so many people? Every heart is softened and every eye dimmed as the innocent child pa.s.ses on his way to his grave. The hand of G.o.d's angel is on him; he is no longer altogether of this world. The imagination which could picture and present this mysterious haze of feeling, through which the narrative moves, half like a reality, half like a dream, is that of a true poet, and of a great one.

What even the loss of his son could not effect in Mr. Dombey is to be accomplished in the progress of the story by a yet stronger agency than sorrow. His pride is to be humbled to the dust, where he is to be sought and raised up by the love of his despised and ill-used daughter. Upon the relations between this pair, accordingly, it was necessary for the author to expend the greatest care, and upon the treatment of those relations the criticism to which the character of Mr. Dombey has been so largely subjected must substantially turn. The unfavourable judgments pa.s.sed upon it have, in my opinion, not been altogether unjust. The problem obviously was to show how the father's cold indifference towards the daughter gradually becomes jealousy, as he finds that upon her is concentrated, first, the love of his innocent little son, and then that of his haughty second wife; and how hereupon this jealousy deepens into hate. But, unless we are to suppose that Mr. Dombey hated his daughter from the first, the disfavour shown by him on her account to young Walter Gay remains without adequate explanation. His dislike of Florence is not manifestly founded upon his jealousy of what Mrs. Chick calls her brother's "infatuation" for her; and the main motives at work in the unhappy man are either not very skilfully kept asunder, or not very intelligibly intermixed. Nor are the later stages of the relations between father and daughter altogether satisfactorily conceived. The momentary yielding of Mr. Dombey, after his "coming home" with his new wife, is natural and touching; but his threat to visit his daughter with the consequences of her step-mother's conduct is sheer brutality. The pa.s.sage in which Mr. Dombey's ultimatum to Mrs.

Dombey is conveyed by him in her presence through a third person is so artificial as to fall not very far short of absurdity. The closing scene which leads to the flight of Florence is undeniably powerful; but it is the development of the relations between the pair in which the art of the author is in my judgment occasionally at fault.

As to the general effect of the latter part of the story--or rather of its main plot--which again has been condemned as melodramatic and unnatural, a distinction should be drawn between its incidents and its characters.

Neither Edith Dombey nor Mr. Carker is a character of real life. The pride of the former comes very near to bad breeding, and her lapses into sentiment seem artificial lapses. How differently Thackeray would have managed the "high words" between her and her frivolous mother! how differently, for that matter, he _has_ managed a not altogether dissimilar scene in the _Newcomes_ between Ethel Newcome and old Lady Kew! As for Mr.

Carker, with his white teeth and glistening gums, who calls his unhappy brother "Spaniel," and contemplates a life of sensual ease in Sicily, he has the semi-reality of the stage. Possibly the French stage had helped to suggest the _scene de la piece_ between the fugitives at Dijon--an effective situation, but one which many a novelist might have worked out not less skilfully than d.i.c.kens. His own master-hand, however, re-a.s.serts itself in the wondrously powerful narrative of Carker's flight and death.

Here again he excites terror--as in the same book he had evoked pity--by foreshadowing, without prematurely revealing, the end. We know what the morning is to bring which rises in awful tranquillity over the victim of his own sins; and, as in Turner's wild but powerful picture, the engine made by the hand of man for peaceful purposes seems a living agent of wrath.[8]

No other of d.i.c.kens's books is more abundantly stocked than this with genuinely comic characters; but nearly all of them, in accordance with the pathetic tone which is struck at the outset, and which never dies out till the story has run its course, are in a more subdued strain of humour. Lord Jeffrey was, I think, warranted in his astonishment that d.i.c.kens should devote so much pains to characters like Mrs. Chick and Miss Tox. Probably the habit remained with him from his earliest times of authorship, when he had not always distinguished very accurately between the humorous and the _bizarre_. But Polly and the Toodles household, Mrs. Pipchin and her "select infantine boarding-house," and the whole of Doctor Blimber's establishment, from the Doctor himself down to Mr. Toots, and up again, in the scale of intellect, to Mr. Feeder, B.A., are among the most admirable of all the great humourist's creations. Against this ample provision for her poor little brother's nursing and training Florence has to set but her one Susan Nipper; but she is a host in herself, an absolutely original character among the thousands of _soubrettes_ that are known to comedy and fiction, and one of the best tonic mixtures ever composed out of much humour and not a few grains of pathos. Her tartness has a cooling flavour of its own; but it is the Mrs. Pipchinses only upon whom she acts, as their type acted upon her, "like early gooseberries." Of course she has a favourite figure of speech belonging to herself, which rhetoricians would probably cla.s.s among the figures "working by surplusage:"

"'Your Toxes and your Chickses may draw out my two front double teeth, Mrs. Richards, but that's no reason why I need offer 'em the whole set.'"

d.i.c.kens was to fall very largely into this habit of "labelling" his characters, as it has been called, by particular tricks or terms of speech; and there is a certain excess in this direction already in _Dombey and Son_, where not only Miss Nipper and Captain Cuttle and Mr. Toots, but Major Bagstock too and Cousin Feenix, are thus furnished forth. But the invention is still so fresh and the play of humour so varied, that this mannerism cannot be said as yet seriously to disturb them. A romantic charm of a peculiar kind clings to honest Captain Cuttle and the quaint home over which he mounts guard during the absence of its owner. The nautical colouring and concomitant fun apart--for only Smollett could have drawn Jack Bunsby's fellow, though the character in his hands would have been differently accentuated--d.i.c.kens has never approached more nearly to the manner of Sir Walter Scott than in this singularly attractive part of his book. Elsewhere the story pa.s.ses into that sphere of society in describing which d.i.c.kens was, as a novelist, rarely very successful. But though Edith is cold and unreal, there is, it cannot be denied, human nature in the pigments and figments of her hideous old mother; and, to outward appearance at all events, the counterparts of her apoplectic admirer, Major Bagstock, still pace those pavements and promenades which it suits them to frequent. Cousin Feenix is likewise very far from impossible, and is besides extremely delightful--and a good fellow too at bottom, so that the sting of the satire is here taken away. On the other hand, the meeting between the _sacs et parchemins_ at Mr. Dombey's house is quite out of focus.

The book has other heights and depths, and pleasant and unpleasant parts and pa.s.sages. But enough has been said to recall the exuberant creative force, and the marvellous strength of pathos and humour which _Dombey and Son_ proves that d.i.c.kens, now near the very height of his powers as a writer of fiction, possessed. In one of his public readings many years afterwards, when he was reciting the adventures of Little Dombey, he narrates that "a very good fellow," whom he noticed in the stalls, could not refrain from wiping the tears out of his eyes as often as he thought that Toots was coming on. And just as Toots had become a reality to this good fellow, so Toots and Toots's little friend, and divers other personages in this story, have become realities to half the world that reads the English tongue, and to many besides. What higher praise could be given to this wonderful book? Of all the works of its author none has more powerfully and more permanently taken hold of the imagination of its readers. Though he conjured up only pictures familiar to us from the aspect of our own streets and our own homes, he too wielded a wizard's wand.

After the success of _Dombey_ it might have seemed that nothing further was wanting to crown the prosperity of d.i.c.kens's literary career. While the publication of this story was in progress he had concluded arrangements for the issue of his collected writings, in a cheap edition, which began in the year 1847, and which he dedicated "to the English people, in whose approval, if the books be true in spirit, they will live, and out of whose memory, if they be false, they will very soon die."

He who could thus proudly appeal to posterity was already, beyond all dispute, the people's chosen favourite among its men of letters. That position he was not to lose so long as he lived; but even at this time the height had not been reached to which (in the almost unanimous judgment of those who love his writings) he was in his next work to attain.