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Christmas Books
323
once
1
6
Tom Pinch may want a little disinfecting of sentimentalism
for some tastes. But the Pecksniffs, Mark Tapley, Mrs Gamp,
,
*Todgers's'-any number of minorities display the true Dickens,
ore, in excelsis. Whether the American scenes were, at
the time, over-coloured in fact is, now, merely a historical question.
That they justify themselves artistically few competent judges will
deny.
Between American Notes and its second crop in fiction, Dickens
had begun the remarkable series of Christmas books which,
probably, gave him almost as much popularity, in the strictest
sense of the word, as any other part of his work. Beginning in
1843 with A Christmas Carol, they continued annually through
The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life and
The Haunted Man for five years and only ceased when the
establishment of Household Words changed them to Christmas
stories of smaller bulk which, in that paper and in All the Year
Round, were scattered over the rest of his life and produced some
things perhaps of greater literary value than the 'books. ' The
division, though partly, if not wholly, accidental in origin, is a real
one; and the first batch only had better be noticed here, reserving
the stories' for subsequent criticism.
Dickens himself, in the brief later preface to the collected
Christmas Books, describes them as 'a whimsical kind of masque
intended to awaken loving and forbearing thoughts. ' In later
days, ignorant and hasty writers have, sometimes, credited him with
creating the popular notion of Christmas as a season of enlarged
heart, and, also, waistcoat. Scores and hundreds of passages from
all ages of our literature refute this folly; and the simple fact
that Washington Irving wrote Bracebridge Hall when Dickens
was at the blacking manufactory is enough to expose its gross
ignorance. But the idea of Christmas as a season of good feeding
and good feeling was congenial to all Dickens's best characteristics,
though it may have slightly encouraged some of his weaknesses.
The fanciful supernatural, too, for which influences (chiefly, though
not wholly, German) had already created a great taste, was
thoroughly in his line, and he had used it in some of the inset
stories of Pickwick and elsewhere not without effect. Of the five
actual books, only one The Battle of Life can be called a positive
failure ; it is, indeed, probably the worst thing that Dickens, after
he came to his own, ever did in fiction except George Silverman's
Explanation. Some have found his true quality in Britain, the
gloomy footman, and it may, at least, be conceded to them that it is
21-2


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324
Dickens
[CH.
difficult to find it anywhere else. The Chimes and The Cricket on
the Hearth have been great favourites, though, to some tastes, the
first is almost fatally injured by dull stock social satire-lacking all
real sting of individuality in Sir Joseph Bowley and alderman
Cute and others; while The Cricket, with some refreshing chirps in
Tilly Slowboy and elsewhere, does not, to some tastes, seem quite 'to
come off. ' The first 'book,' A Christmas Carol and the last, The
Haunted Man are, by far, the best and the Carol is delightful. We
must, of course, grant-as we must grant to Mrs Barbauld in the
case of The Ancient Mariner--that its story is 'improbable’; there
is scarcely another objection that can be sustained against it
except in the eyes of those to whom all sentiment and all fairy
tales are red rags. The Haunted Man is more unequal and some-
times commits the old fault of 'forcing the note. '
But the
Tetterbys are of the first water; they are, indeed, better than
the Cratchits, their parallels in the Carol; the good angel Milly is
managed with an unusual freedom from exaggeration or mawkish-
ness; and, in the serious parts, unequal as they are, there are
touches and flashes of a true romantic quality which Dickens
often attempted but less often attained.
The years which produced these by-works produced, also, not
a little else. Martin Chuzzlewit itself overran a considerable
.
portion of them, and a long visit (two visits, indeed) to Italy resulted
in the Pictures from that country originally published in The
Daily News, which Dickens nominally edited for a week or two
but quickly relinquished. He had, thus, no time during them for
more than one new attempt at fiction on the great scale. Dealings
with the Firm of Dombey and Son, the title of which posterity, in
general, bas wisely cut down to the last three words, if not even to
one, Dombey, is of importance in more than size. In the first
place, it marks a very important transition in the handling of scene
and personage, especially the latter. For reasons obvious enough,
partly from his biography and partly from the character of the work
itself, his drawing of actual society, except as concerns the middle,
lower and lowest classes, had been very vague. Mr Pickwick is ‘a
gentleman retired from business' and, as some of his less discreet
admirers almost petulantly insist, he possesses all the moral
qualities of gentlemanliness. Nor are his actions, nor is his general
behaviour, inconsistent with that status. But his 'atmosphere'is
certainly not quite that which we know not merely from other novels
but from letters, biographies, indisputable documents of all sorts,
to have been that, not merely of the upper ranks, but of the upper


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a
<
x]
Dombey and Son
325
middle and professional classes at the time. The superior per-
sonages of Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity
Shop and Martin Chuzzlewit (Barnaby Rudge, definitely dealing
with the past, here falls out) partake of the same vagueness when
they are not purely theatrical. But, in Dombey, Dickens has more
or less shaken off the theatrical, and, apparently, is endeavouring to
observe the actual manners and character of society. Dombey is,
at least, meant to be an actual city man of quite the highest class.
Dr Blimber and Major Bagstock, however obviously caricatured,
are meant to retain the general character of an officer who has
emerged from real barracks, a clergyman and schoolmaster who is
no shadowy angel like the good clergymen of Pickwick and The
Old Curiosity Shop, no fantastic tyrant like Squeers in the past
and, to some extent, Creakle in the future, but a rational, if some-
what pedantic, individual who has passed through a university and
taken orders himself and is preparing other persons for the same
or similar occupations. Even the Dombey servants, though, of
course, comically heightened, are nearer to the actual population
of London areas than ever before. It is true that Dickens has (to
avail oneself of the dictum of the dictionaries that dis- is used at
will to form words' and to coin one much wanted in English) 'dis-
damaged' himself most freely in this respect. Cousin Feenix,
though almost the first 'aristocrat' whom he represents as a
thoroughly good fellow, is, of course, all but burlesqued ; Mrs
Skewton is, at least, much exaggerated, and, as for Edith, she is
completely 'out of drawing,' as is, by common consent, her villain-
lover Carker, who once more belongs to the tribe of Monks, save
that, unfortunately, he is much less shadowy. Even in the characters
not yet mentioned, the element of exaggeration and caricature
comes in to some extent. Susan Nipper, though we should be very
sorry if she had not, has it; Toots has it to the utmost possible or
impossible extent; Captain Cuttle (and great would be the loss)
could not exist without it; even Miss Tox has it in no slight
degree. He has further relieved himself in the old directions by
doubling, in the sentimental way, with more detail, the part of
little Nell with that of little Paul and, in the melodramatic, by
the retribution of Carker. But, at the same time, Dombey remains
his first attempt at painting actual modern society—his first to
'disfantasy,' so far as he could, the atmosphere, and to be not
merely realist but real. General remarks as to his success will come
best later, but the point of departure should be marked.
About a year after the close of Dombey, and a few months after
8
>
6
6


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326
[CH.
Dickens
the issue of The Haunted Man, the time having been also partly
occupied by the composition of his favourite and (as some think)
greatest book, David Copperfield, Dickens also undertook the
new and very important adventure of editing Household Words,
a weekly periodical which very soon justified its title and which,
with its sequel All the Year Round, he carried on for more than
twenty years till his death.
The two (though he by no means discontinued the method of
monthly issues for the bigger novels which would have overloaded
a weekly paper) contained, thenceforward, a great deal of his own
work; they caused a, perhaps, rather beneficent change of the
Christmas books into shorter Christmas stories and they un-
doubtedly enriched popular literature with a great deal of good
work besides his own. Dickens was a decidedly despotic, and
a rather egotistic, editor; and work of the very highest merit, off his
own special lines, would have had little chance with him. But he
succeeded in attracting and training a remarkable number of
competent writers who could, more or less, fall in with those lines.
The short story and the short miscellaneous essay which had already
made lodgments in the monthly magazines found open house in
these weekly ones ; and, though a great many of the contributions
have been more permanently and accessibly enshrined in collected
Works of himself, of Wilkie Collins, of Collins's less known but,
perhaps, even more gifted brother Charles, of Mrs Gaskell and of
others, there must remain a considerable résiduum on which it is
rather surprising that the active reprinters of today have not laid
hands. It is certain that there are few luckier 'finds' on a wet
day in a country house, or, still more, a country inn, than a volume
of Household Words or All the Year Round.
The opus majus, however, above glanced at, was given to the
world in the old monthly form by itself, though its first part did
not appear till a month or two after the first number of Household
Words. Of his own interest in David Copperfield, the author has
made no secret_hardly any of the autobiographical reasons of
that interest. But, to all 'men of feeling,' in something more than
the sense of Sterne and Mackenzie, the main appeal of the book
must lie in a fact which Dickens could not be expected to indicate
—which, probably, he did not consciously recognise. Copperfield
is not only partly what Dickens was, but, to a much larger extent,
what Dickens could not be and would have liked to be. The early
sufferings and the early successes were there ; but the interval
between them had no counterpart in fact. The liberal education
a


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x]
David Copperfield
327
at the Wickfield's and Mr Strong's which succeeds the Murdstone
and Grinby purgatory, the position at Doctors' Commons and the
society which it opened, the other 'liberal education' of the succes-
sive loves, calf' and real, for Miss Shepherd, Miss Larkins, almost
Rosa Dartle, Dora and Agnes, very different from the shadowy and
unfelt amorosities of the earlier books; the true boy's worship of
Steerforth-whatever reserves may be made as to Steerforth himself
-and the rest, had been denied to him or very partially given
hitherto : now they flourished. From this 'lived' or 'would-have-
been-lived' character of the book comes its unique freedom from
what has been unkindly but intelligibly called the pantomime
character of much of the author's work. Even Mr Dick, much more
Miss Betsey, is free from this, and it only appears (if there) in mere
side-sketches like that of 'Hamlet's Aunt,' of no importance to the
story. Nobody, save those unfortunate persons before referred to
who are untouched by the comic spirit altogether, can say 'Let us
have no more of this foolery' to any part of David Copperfield;
though the comic spirit is sufficiently present, from Mr Chillip's
first appearance at the Rookery to his last in the coffee room. On
the other side, the position is, perhaps, a little more assailable.
Although there was, perhaps, no reason for making Dora quite so
silly in life, it must be an excessive, and, probably, rather an
affected, cynicism which finds her death mawkish. But it may be
allowed that the triangle of Dr Strong, his wife and her admirer is
handled rather unintelligibly, and that Uriah Heep, though not to be
spared, has a little too much of the old type villain about him. Few
people now consider Rosa Dartle an entire success, and the whole
Steerforth and little Em’ly business is open to the other old
charge of melodrama. But Mr Micawber (though the success may
have been obtained a little in the teeth of the fifth command-
ment) is an unsurpassed triumph; most of the pure comedy is first
rate; the chapter 'I Fall into Captivity' has, in anything like its
own kind, no superior in fiction; and, almost throughout, the reality
of interest felt by the author exalts all his powers and keeps down
all his foibles. There is, in short, hardly any possibility of denying
that David Copperfield is Dickens's most varied and, at the same
time, most serious and best sustained effort-one to be accepted
with all faults' on its side and with all gratitude on the
reader's.
As Dickens had never before attained to such an equable combi-
nation of the various elements of his power and skill, so he never
attained to it again; though some would make a partial exception
a
6
>


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328
[ch.
Dickens
for Great Expectations. Nothing that he did later, except (and
this is not invariably allowed) his last and unfinished work, failed
to contain something of his best; nothing, perhaps (except that
and Hard Times), was without something of his very best. But
the total results were much more unequal; and they began to
show, in a degree far greater than had appeared in the earlier
work (though there had been something of it there), the 'obsession'
of social and, to some extent, of political purpose. For a year or
fifteen months, after the close of David Copperfield in 1850,
Dickens gave the public nothing except Household Words. But,
in the spring of 1852, he began Bleak House, which occupied the rest
of that, and most of the next, year. It illustrates most strikingly,
and, perhaps, more valuably than any of its sucessors, the remarks
just made. Most of the comic, and some of the serious, parts are
'true Dickens' to the very nth; and it is, perhaps, one of the most
interesting of all, except in the character of its quasi-heroine
and part narrator, Esther Summerson, who is one of the most
irritating of Dickens's unconscious angels. But the overdone
onslaught on chancery and the slighter, but still constantly
attempted, satire on parliament, the aristocracy and so forth, be-
come, at times, almost insufferable, and the author's determination
to take things seriously provokes a corresponding and retaliatory
disposition to take seriously in him things that one hardly notices
in the earlier books. Of the too famous Skimpole matter one need
not say much. Macaulay, in one of the very latest entries of his
diary, has expressed the judgment of most people who have
impartially examined the matter. Nobody dreams of imputing to
Leigh Hunt the worst rascalities of his eidolon, such as the selling
of Jo. But Dickens himself afterwards admitted that he took
'the light externals of character' from this veteran of letters-
then still living and his friend-and everybody knew that some
such not very light characteristics—reckless running into debt
and complete neglect of obligation—were common to the fictitious
and to the actual personages. The fault of taste, to call it no worse,
was very grave; but, as no one but a foolish partisan would maintain
that good taste was Dickens's strong point, there need be no more
said
Other things of a different kind should be noticed because,
as has been said, they become stronger and stronger features-
not for the better—in Dickens's general work henceforward. Not to
1 The taste of the Boythorn-Landor pendant in portraiture may not have been
perfect; but, at any rate, there was nothing offensive in it.
a


## p. 329 (#345) ############################################

x]
Hard Times
329
mention many minor improbabilities, the reason for Mr Tulking-
horn's persecution of lady Dedlock, on which the whole plot turns, is
never made apparent or plausible. The divulging of the secret could
do neither himself nor anybody else any earthly good; he certainly
was not looking forward to be bought off; and the actual revelation
would have been most likely to damage very seriously his character
as a sort of living Chubb's safe for such matters, not to mention that
silence gave him continuance of power over his victim'. One might
add to this the quite illegal hunting of Jo by the police (which
would have got them into considerable trouble if it had ever come
before a magistrate) and the entire presentation of some characters,
especially Mr Vholes. For the 'spontaneous combustion' business,
Dickens had (as Marryat had had before him) the excuse of some
quasi-scientific authority; and there is so much that is good in
the book that one is loth to speak anything but good of it. But
it certainly does show a 'black drop'-or two black drops—of
quarrelling excessively with the world and of over-emphasising
scenes and characters.
These drops continued to spread and to ink the water for some
time, if not for ever, afterwards. The year 1854 was a rather dis-
astrous one in Dickens's annals. It saw the production in book form
of two works, both of which had previously passed through House-
hold Words. Of the deplorable Child's History of England,
it is not necessary to say more than that it is, perhaps, the capital
instance of a man of genius, not tempted by the wellknown ‘want
of pence,' or by anything except his own wilfulness, going far out of
his way to write something for which he was in everything but the
possession of narrative faculty) absolutely disqualified. But Hard
Times, the other fruit of that year, cannot be passed over quite so
lightly. The book has had its admirers; and for at least one
thing that it gives us—the Sleary group-some readers, at, any
rate, would put up with even worse company. There is certainly
genuine pathos—whether overdone or not is, perhaps, a matter of
taste--in the Stephen and Rachel part, while (a thing which has
sometimes escaped even laudatory critics) Louisa, though she is
made the cause or occasion of some of the least good parts of the
book, is more of a real live girl of the nineteenth century than
1 If anyone urges lady Dedlock's disregard of his wishes with regard to
Rosa as a provocation, it can only be said that this is utterly inadequate.
Mr Tulkinghorn may have been as fond of power as he was of port wine; but he
ought to have been as good & judge of the one as the other, and to have known that
he would lose more than he gained by making disobedience to an arbitrary caprice an
unpardonable sin.


## p. 330 (#346) ############################################

330
[ch.
Dickens
a
Dickens ever achieved, except in the more shadowy sketch of
Estella in Great Expectations. But these good things, comic or
,
pathetic or analytic, are buried in such a mass of exaggeration
and false drawing that one struggles with the book as with a bad
dream. There are, unfortunately, many such young whelps as Tom
Gradgrind, and many such cads and curmudgeons as Josiah
Bounderby; but Dickens has made Tom nothing but a whelp and
Bounderby nothing but a curmudgeon and a cad. Now, that is not
the way in which the actual Creator makes people; or, if He very
occasionally does so, these exceptions are not to be used in art by
His imitators in fiction. The elder Gradgrind, on the whole, and
,
especially towards the end, has more verisimilitude; but he him-
self, for a long time, his school and the society of Coketown
generally, with Mrs Sparsit and her visions about Louisa in
particular, have got hopelessly into the world of ugly and pre-
posterous fantasy-a world where, to adapt the classical myth,
Phobetor reigns, his sway untempered by Icelus—upon which
Dickens was too often tempted to draw. The book seems to
have been rather popular with foreign critics, partly because
it has a certain unity of plot and action, and, perhaps, also, partly
because it gives a picture of England unfavourable, indeed, but
rather consistent with the continental view of us. But it is difficult,
from the standpoint of comparative and impartial criticism, not to
put it lowest among Dickens's finished novels.
His work as editor—which, like all his work, he took the
reverse of lightly-and, perhaps, some of the inevitable revenge
which nature exacts for the putting forth of such power as he
had shown for nearly twenty years, rather slackened Dickens's
production after this; and it was not till the close of 1855 that he
began to send Little Dorrit on its usual year and a half, or rather
more, of serial appearance. This novel has been even more variously
judged than Hard Times ; indeed, judgment of it has been known
to vary remarkably, not merely as between different individuals,
but as formed by the same individual at different times. Probably
the general result, at first reading, has been unfavourable. Not
merely the tiresome 'crusade' element, which had made its
appearance in the books immediately preceding, but the tendency
to dwell, and thump, upon particular notes not always very
melodious or satisfying, which, more or less, had been apparent
throughout, are unluckily prominent here. And the newer
feature—that is to say, the attempt at a rather elaborate plot
which adds little or nothing to the real interest of the story-
6


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x]
Little Dorrit
331
appears likewise.
Carker's teeth, in Dombey, are excusable
and almost negligible beside the trivial, tedious and exasper-
ating business of Pancks, with his puffings and snortings, and
the outward and visible signs of hypocrisy in his employer
Casby. That employer's daughter Floral is so exceedingly
amusing that one does not care to enquire too closely into
her verisimilitude; and “Mr F. 's aunt' is one of those pure
extravaganzas of the author who justify themselves offhand.
But the Circumlocution office is merely a nuisance of a worse
kind in literature than even its prototype in life; the soured
blood and shabby state of the Gowans as human fringes of
aristocracy might have been hit off admirably in a few touches,
but are spoilt by many. The absence of that calming and restraining
influence which has been noted in Copperfield is felt in every part
of the book except the pure extravaganzas just referred to. The
Marshalsea scenes, which, again, are autobiographic (for Dickens
the elder had been immured there), escape partially because there
is much of this fantastic element with a great deal of real 'busi-
ness. But the Dorrits themselves, especially when the father is
released; that unpoetical and dismal ‘House of Usher' where
the Clennam family and firm abide (of all deplorable heroes
Arthur Clennam is, perhaps, the most deplorable); the con-
trasted Merdle household with its stale social satire (Bar' and
'Physician’escape best); the old toy-theatre villains Rigaud and
Flintwinch (Affery saves herself with Mr F. 's aunt, and one would
like to have heard a conversation between them); even the
Meagles family and the puppet Tattycoram and the villainess'
Miss Wade—all these come under the same curse of fundamental
unreality which derives hardly any benefit from the fantastic
energy expended by the author. And yet it is one of the most
remarkable testimonies to Dickens's really magical power that,
when the faults have become familiar and, thus, cease to tease
much, Little Dorrit remains almost as re-readable as any but the
very best of its companions.
These faults, however, could not escape notice, and they
i Unfavourable critics of Dickens from other than purely literary points of view
have, sometimes, declared that Flora is Dora grown old, and that both had a live
original. It is sufficient to say that the evidence produced for this is quite insufficient;
and that, if it were true, Dickens would have made an artistic blunder almost greater
than the ethical one, and extremely improbable. Flora may have been attractive
enough as a girl, and if Dora had lived she might have lost much of her attraction.
But, had she lived, she never could have become Flora; and Flora never, at any time of
life or fortune, could have been Dora.


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332
[CH.
Dickens
suggested (unless Bleak House and Hard Times had done it
before them) to Anthony Trollope a rather smart scenario-parody
of Dickens's manner in The Warden. But the completion of
the book brought many other matters to give Dickens's mind
new turns. He had already bought, but had not yet settled
in, his famous country house, Gadshill place; in the spring
of 1858, he was separated from his wife-a fact which requires
no comment here; the separation was the indirect cause of
his giving up Household Words and starting All the Year
Round; and he thought of, and began, the 'readings' of his own
work which brought him in large sums of money ; created for him
a new kind of popular reputation ; enabled him to display his
singular histrionic faculty ; but, also, beyond all doubt (combined,
as they were, with unbroken, though not quite such abundant,
production of original work), put a strain upon his nervous
system which had a great deal to do with his comparatively early
death.
In the new paper, he used his energies in a more strictly
literary, and a much more permanently delectable, fashion,
starting off with an elaborate historical romance, A Tale of
Two Cities, and contributing to it, from time to time, exercises
in his own earliest kind but of much greater power, variety,
originality and artistic value. He put them forth as reports
entitled The Uncommercial Traveller, under which form they
were separately published, in successively enlarged collections,
during the remainder of his life. Sometimes, but not too often,
he made them the vehicle of his social-reform purpose ; some-
times, they were sketches of scenes and manners in the style
of the earlier "eye-witness' papers of Household Words, to
which Charles Collins had been a main contributor; some-
times, more or less fantastic pieces; but, almost always, good.
A Tale of Two Cities belongs to quite a different type, in
almost all respects, from that of any of his previous novels,
save that, like Barnaby Rudge, it has a historical subject.
It would seem as if he had intended to leave out the comic
element altogether; and, though, for him, this was nearly an
impossibility, there is certainly very little, except in the grim-
grotesque of the body-snatcher Jerry Cruncher and his family;
the grotesque, if not grim, ways of the faithful Miss Pross; and
a very few other touches. Taking for canvas The French Revo-
lution of his friend Carlyle (for whom he had a strong admiration),
he embroidered upon it a rather strictly constructed, but not very


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x]
A Tale of Two Cities
333
richly furnished, story of action and character, bringing in a victim
a
of the ancien régime, a wicked example of it (unfortunately, as
much a caricature as is Sir John Chester, in Dickens's most nearly
allied book), a younger aristocrat, who would fain atone for his
family's crimes and who loves the victim's daughter, who nearly
falls a prey to the vengeance of the people,' but who is saved by
'
the self-sacrifice of his rival, a ne'er-do-weel barrister. In contrast
to all this, we have some leaders of the people' themselves,
especially a much overdone wine-shop keeper and his wife—a still
more exaggerated tricoteuse of the guillotine. The book has been
said to be more of a drama than of a novel, and it has been
actually dramatised more than once-recently, it would seem, with
considerable success. Even as a novel, it has been highly praised
by some good judges. To people not acquainted with Carlyle's
own book, and even to some who are, the vigour of its sketches of
the oppression and the terror might, no doubt, carry it off suffi-
ciently; and the character of Sydney Carton is altogether of
a higher type than any other that Dickens ever attempted. But
the rival for whom Carton sacrifices himself is entirely unin-
teresting ; Lucie Manette, the heroine, has little more attraction
than any pretty and good girl, so labelled, might have ; and even
her father's sufferings and madness are doubtfully treated; while
the mannerisms of expression are stronger than ever, and the
glaring high lights and pitchy shadows weary more than they
move.
There are, however, those who admire A Tale of Two Cities
sincerely, and who think but little of the novel which followed
it through the paper and in publication ; while there are others
who take up the Tale more seldom than any other of Dickens's
books, and who consider Great Expectations one of his very
masterpieces, putting it with the wild freshness of morning'in
Pickwick and the noonday completeness of David Copperfield as
an 'evening voluntary' of the most delightful kind. It is not
faultless. The mannerism and the exaggeration of all the later
.
books sometimes break through, and the grime of the heroine's
parentage is not only unnecessary but ill-managed. That obses-
sion of feeble satire as to rank and respect to rank, which was
one of Dickens's numerous forms of his own 'king Charles's head'
disease, comes in, and melodrama is not far off. But he had never
done anything, not even in Copperfield itself, so real as 'Pip,'
with his fears, his hopes, his human weaknesses and meannesses,
his love, his bearing up against misfortune. Never did he combine
6


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334
[CH.
Dickens
analysis and synthesis so thoroughly as here. He has given
Estella little space and some unattractive points, so that some do
not like her; but others see in her at least the possibility of a
heroine more thoroughly real and far more fascinating than any
in Dickens. Joe Gargery has conciliated almost everybody, and
his alarming wife, Pip's terrible sister, does not require her
punishment in order to conciliate some. The Havisham part may
seem extravagant, but is not so to all; and Trabb's boy and Mr
Jaggers and Wemmick and yet other persons and things garnish a
delightful feast.
He never did anything so good again; and, though he had
nearly ten years to live, he did not, in the way of actual literature,
do very much at all. The fatal 'readings' were filling his pocket
and draining his powers; editing took much of his time; he
travelled a good deal, and even he began to find that ‘his chariot
wheels drave heavily'? In 1865, he had a serious illness, with
threatenings of something like paralysis, which was certainly not
staved off by the great railway accident of that year on the South
Eastern railway, in which, though he sustained no visible injury,
he was severely shaken. But, in these years, with all his other
employments, he managed, besides two or three smaller things-
the powerful if slightly melodramatic Hunted Down, the almost
worthless George Silverman's Explanation, the charming Holiday
Romance, as well as not a few notable Christmas stories—to finish
one long novel, Our Mutual Friend, and to plan and begin
another, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This latter appeared as
a fragment between his return from that quest of suicide, as it
may be called his second journey to America, in 1868, to read
himself into twenty thousand pounds and almost into his grave-
and his actual death in 1870, the interval being occupied by
further readings at home which brought eight thousand pounds
more, and the death warrant. He had added to his early selec-
tions the murder scene in Oliver Twist, which he read with an
intensity described by those who heard it as almost frightful, and
not such as would have been particularly wholesome for a young
man in full strength. He was a man of nearly sixty, broken down
by five and thirty years of varied work, much of it of a kind most
trying to the brain, and actually threatened, for the last five, with
1 One instance of his exceedingly nervous temperament, confessed by himself, may
have found sympathy in others who had not his qualification of genius or of energy.
If he had an appointment, say at mid-day, he could not work with any comfort in the
earlier morning.


## p. 335 (#351) ############################################

6
x]
Christmas Stories
335
cerebral and cardiac disease. It is only wonderful that the two
burning ends of the candle took so long to meet.
Of Edwin Drood itself, little need be said here. It has, through
one of the numerous oddities of the human mind, received a great
amount of attention, repeatedly and recently renewed, simply
because it is unfinished; but, of intrinsic attraction, it has, for
some critics, little or nothing except its renewed pictures of the
beloved city of Rochester, first drawn and latest sketched of all
Dickens's “places. ' But the Christmas stories of the two weekly
papers and his last considerable and complete novel, Our
Mutual Friend, require longer notice. Like, but even more than,
The Uncommercial Traveller articles (which he continued during
most of this time), the 'stories' contain some of Dickens's most
enjoyable things. He had begun the substitution of collections
only partly written by himself for single, and singly written,
'books,' twenty years earlier, in Household Words, and his con-
tributions there included the pathetic story of 'Richard Double-
dick'in The Seven Poor Travellers; some vigorous stuff in The
Wreck of the Golden Mary and The Island of Silver-store l'; and,
above all, the unsurpassable legend of child-loves told by the ‘Boots
at the Holly-Tree Inn. ' But, in the All the Year Round set-nine in
number—the general level of Dickens's own stuff was even higher,
except, perhaps, in the last, No Thoroughfare, which he wrote
in conjunction with Wilkie Collins, but where the disciple's
hand is more evident than the master's. The framework of The
Haunted House (as, indeed, of most of the sets) is his, and admir-
able, while 'The Ghost in Master B. 's room' is one of the best of
his numerous half humorous, half sad reminiscences of his own
youth. In A Message from the Sea, we have, for the first time,
actual collaboration in these 'stories' with Wilkie Collins, and
would rather have Dickens alone. Tom Tiddler's Ground im-
proves, and, with Somebody's Luggage, we reach, in Dickens's own
part, something like his quintessence in the case of Christopher the
waiter. It persists in the twin appearances of Mrs Lirriper, and
is partly upheld in Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions, but whether
or not it is in full force at Mugby Junction is a point on which
men may differ, though, in the child Polly, he is, as usual, at his best.
On the whole, too, his part in this batch of Christmas numbers
(they contain much excellent work of others) is practically never
bad and sometimes first rate.
To reverse this sentence almost directly and say that Our
1 In The Perils of Certain English Prisoners.
>


## p. 336 (#352) ############################################

336
Dickens
[ch.
a
Mutual Friend is sometimes nearly bad and never quite first rate
would be excessive; but it is only a very harsh and sweeping state-
ment containing something not far from the truth. The illness and
the accident above mentioned, no doubt, conditioned the book to
some extent unfairly for the worse; but its main faults are scarcely
chargeable upon them. It has been justly and acutely remarked
that, though Wilkie Collins was, undoubtedly, Dickens's pupil, the
pupil had a good deal of reflex influence on the master, not always
for good! The plot of Our Mutual Friend is distinctly of Wilkie
Collins's type, but it is not managed with the cat-like intricacy
and dexterity, or with the dramatically striking situations, which
were Collins's strong points. In what may be called the central
plot within a plot - the miser-and-tyrant metamorphosis of
Mr Boffin-the thing is in itself so improbable, and is so clumsily
and tediously treated, as to suggest throwing the book aside. The
whole Veneering society, barring a few of the 'inimitable' touches
to be noticed presently, is preposterous, disagreeable and dull. It
was, indeed, interesting, not long ago, to find a critic of the younger
generation candidly admitting that, to him, Eugene Wrayburn had
been, if he was not still, a striking, if not an ideal, figure. But, as
the strangest mistakes are constantly made about the relations of
life and literature, especially as to 'mid-Victorian' matters, it may
be well to put on solemn record here that, among well-bred young
men of 1865, Mr Wrayburn, in, at least, some of his part, would
have run great risk of being regarded as what had been earlier
called a 'tiger,' and what, somewhat later, was said, like the tiger,
to 'bound. ' The good Jew Riah, and the spirited but slightly
irrational Betty Higden, have failed to move even some who are
very friendly to Dickens's sentiment. Still, the book is saved from
sharing the position of Hard Times by its abundance of the true
Dickensian grotesque, a little strained, perhaps, now and then, but
always refreshing. The dolls' dressmaker is, perhaps, a distant
relation and inheritrix of Miss Mowcher, but she is raised to a
far higher power; in fact, one almost wishes that Dickens had not
chosen to make her happy with a good scavenger. Her bad child-
father is, in literature, if not in life, excused by his acts and sayings.
Some have been hard on Silas Wegg; the present writer, admitting
that he ends appropriately in the slop cart, does not think him
out of place earlier. Rogue Riderhood would be ill to spare; and
1 The present writer intends no injustice to Collins's powers, which were great.
But, unluckily, nearly all his faults and some, even, of his merits, tended to aggravate
Dickens's own failings.


## p. 337 (#353) ############################################

x]
Summary
337
80, at the other extremity of class and character, would be Twemlow,
the single soul saved out of the Veneering group, except Boots
and Buffer as supers. These and some others flit agreeably enough
in the regions of fantastic memory to make one willing not to
dwell on the darker side further than to observe that, though
some of the right-grotesquerie saves the other members of the
Wilfer family, Bella, for a long time, is merely an underbred and
unattractive minx, while, after her reformation, she joins the
great bevy of what, in the sacred language of the Bona Dea, it
is whispered, are called 'Lady Janes '-mechanical lay-figures,
adaptable to various costumes, in this case that of the foolishly
affectionate bride and young mother. As for her husband, except
in his account to himself of the attempt to drug or drown him,
which is rather well done, it is impossible to feel the slightest
interest in the question whether he was drowned as well as
drugged, or not.
It is, therefore, not improbable, to speak in the manner of the
gelid critic,' that, even had Dickens been less reckless of his
failing health, and had that health given him a fuller span of
life, no further masterpieces would have been added to his tale;
and, so, the story of his work need not be affected by that sense of
possible injustice to future achievements which, occasionally, besets
such things. The system of survey which has been actually
adopted may seem to some too pedestrian—too much of a mere
inventory. But it has been adopted quite deliberately and with
an easy choice of other plans of a more generalising and high-
flying character. And it may be possible to justify the choice in the
few remarks of a more general kind which will close the chapter.
The survey of Dickens, then, is, perhaps, best conducted in the
way of a catalogue, yet of a catalogue raisonné, precisely because his
inspiration itself is, after all, mainly an inspiration of detail. Those
who feel his special charm most keenly and most constantly do not,
as a rule, find it in actually close-woven stories like A Tale of Tuo
Cities and Hard Times, or in books with an ostensibly elaborate
plot, like most of the later ones. The term “phantasmagoria'
which, though it does not, perhaps, please some of the more
fanatical Dickensites, is often attached by critical admirers as
a label, but a label of honour, to his work—almost expressly
excludes definite scenes, acts, plays or even trilogies or cyclical
sequences of the more sharply separated and elaborately planned
kind. “The Shapes arise,' to borrow an excellent phrase from
Whitman; the scenery rises with them; they play their part; and
22
E. L. XIII.
CH. X.


## p. 338 (#354) ############################################

338
[CH.
Dickens
6
they pass. Shapes and scenes alike are of extraordinary number
and variety; they very seldom, as has been said above, merely
repeat each other, though there are some natural family likenesses
among them; they are grave or gay, tragic, comic or grotesque.
Sometimes, especially at the first, they are of somewhat too
familiar or 'stock' character; sometimes, especially at the last,
their rising, action and passing seem to be accompanied by more
effort, somewhere, than is compatible with the keeping of the
vision. But, on the whole, the spring never dries up; the
Great stream of people hurrying to and fro
never ceases or breaks. Astonishingly devoid of what may be
called subject-tautology as the books are, various as are ever
their themes, there is a relationship of continuity between them
which hardly exists anywhere else. There must be more than
one person living who has read Dickens through night after night
and week after week as if the wbole were one book—a thing
(experto crede) almost impossible to do with some novelists and
a terrible task with all but two or three. The reason why it is
possible easily in his case is that you do pot read merely for the
story-of which, sometimes, there is as little as the knife-grinder
had to tell, or for the characters, who rarely excite any passionate
interest—but for the Dickens quality of fantastic humour, which
may come at any time and is seldom absent long.
But, if this seem an exaggeration, something closely connected
with it and referred to briefly already is not : and that is the
unique re-readableness of Dickens. In this, he surpasses, for those
who can taste him at all, even Scott; and he surpasses, also, others
whom, in some cases, the same readers would put on a level with
him or above him in total literary rank. It may, possibly, be the
case that the very superiority of total effect, and the deeper draught
of character found in these latter, require the lapse of some time
in order to get the table of the mind ready for fresh impressions;
while Dickens's crowd of flitting figures and dissolving views
always finds a fresh appetite. If you like them at all you will like
them always.
How far this bears on the still vexed question of their `reality'
will, probably, be decided by foregone opinion. “How is it possible
that things not fully real should exercise such power? ' some may
ask, and others may answer, that it is precisely the fantastic
element—the contrast of real and unreal—which keeps the charm
effective. David Copperfield, in its characters, is, undoubtedly, the
nearest throughout to persons whom we have met and feel it quite
a
1


## p. 339 (#355) ############################################

x]
Summary
339
likely that we might meet. Pip, who, to some extent, is David's
younger brother, perhaps comes next. It would be hard to find
them many companions.
There are other points in Dickens of which some treatment
may be expected, but on which it does not seem necessary to say
much. Some peculiarities of his earlier style—especially his most
unlucky fondness for blank verse imbedded in the more impassioned
passages of his prose—have been more than enough rebuked. His
irony was seldom happy; first, because he had not the command
of himself which irony requires, and, secondly, because, in strict wit,
which irony requires still more, he was by no means so strong as
he was in humour. His irony, moreover, was almost wholly exerted
in the political-social passages where he was never at his best. His
politics and his sociology themselves are hot ashes at which there
is no need to burn discreet feet or fingers. Certainly he, perhaps
more than anyone else, started that curious topsy-turvyfied snob-
bishness—that'cult of the lower classes'-which has become a more
and more fashionable religion up to the present moment.
The more excellent way is to concentrate attention on those
purely literary qualities which have given to English literature
one of its greatest and most unique figures and contributions of
work. He has constantly been compared to Balzac, and the com-
parison has some solid foundations. But it must be a strange
taste which would take in exchange even the great Frenchman
for our English Dickens. Of the faults-ethical and aesthetic of
the national character he has plenty : prejudice, party spirit,
aptness to speak without sufficient information, lack of criticism,
insubordination to even reasonable rules in art and literature,
exaggeration, extravagance, doubtful taste. The French them-
selves, since their romantic transformation, have, at least, pretended
to like Dickens; but a criticism on him by Voltaire would be very
precious. On the other hand, he has many, if not quite all, of the
virtues on which we most pride, or, at least, used to pride, ourselves
-courage, independence, individuality, imaginative freshness and
activity, which does not disdain to approach the diviner kinds of
nonsense, humour, in some, if not all, of its quintessences, kindli-
ness, the sense of comfort and cheerfulness and home. And all
these good and bad things he put together for our literary use
with an unstinting fertility of device, a daemonic energy, an actual
power of artistic creation in certain kinds, to which there is,
perhaps, no parallel in our literature and certainly none in any
other.
22-2


## p. 340 (#356) ############################################

CHAPTER XI
THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL NOVEL
DISRAELI, CHARLES KINGSLEY, MRS GASKELL, 'GEORGE ELIOT'
Of the four eminent novelists whose names are placed at the
head of this chapter, the first three are representative rather of
a period than of any school, properly so called, of English prose
fiction; while the fourth, whose works, in a sense, complete the
cycle of imaginative literature here brought under review, stands,
in purpose and in method, as, to some extent, she does in point of
time, away from the rest. Yet, the novels of all of them, as well
as those of many authors of lesser note who were their contem-
poraries, had certain notable features in common which were more
or less new to English fiction, and which warrant a consideration,
side by side, of writers between whom, singly and severally, there
was a great and unmistakable diversity of genius.
With Disraeli and Kingsley, as, in a measure, with Bulwer
Lytton in certain of his works, and with one or two other writers
before them, the English historical novel, which had reached the
height of its glories in Scott, and, through him, had come to be
imitated in almost every other modern literature, changed into the
political (though both Disraeli and Kingsley, the one in passing
and the other with conspicuous success, also essayed the older
kind of fiction). At the same time, they, and the two women
writers whose names are here associated with theirs, were led to
give attention to a number of social questions of pressing political
significance. Simultaneously and, in part, as a natural result of
the expansion of the choice of themes, the new kind of novel, even
more distinctly than the historical novel before it, supplemented
and enlarged the range of subject on which earlier English fiction,
culminating in Richardson, had concentrated its efforts. The
treatment, in artistic form, of the experiences of individual men


## p. 341 (#357) ############################################

CH. XI] The Reaction against Romanticism
.
341
and women, and of the reaction of these experiences upon their
thoughts and feelings, had intimately connected English fiction
with the philosophy of Rousseau, and with its unparalleled influence
upon his generation. Now, the novelist went on to deal with the
life and doings, and the intellectual and moral condition, of whole
classes of men and women; till, at last, in the stories of George Eliot
above all, it became difficult to decide whether the interest of the
reader was more widely and effectively challenged by the leading
figures in front of the scene or by those which made up the
surroundings, constituted the atmosphere, or—to use a word for
which we have no satisfactory English equivalent-formed the
milieu of the action?
From the point of view of literary history, these changes, to
which the application of the comparative method would find it
easy to suggest analogies, connect themselves with the inevitable
reaction against the tendencies of the romantic school, which, for
some time, had been approaching superannuation. The rights of
individual fancy, taste, opinion and belief to go each its own way
and pursue each its own subjective course of development had
prevailed, with readers of novels, so far as to allow their heroes
and heroines the prerogative of an interest enhanced by the very
fact of their isolation. The effects of this and other cognate
characteristics of the romanticism which had long held the field
had begun to show themselves in imaginative literature at large
by an increased monotony, by occasional self-satire, by the weaken-
ing of poetic forms and by the predominance of lyric over dramatic
or epic treatment of literary themes.
Against all this, a reaction, in any case, must have arisen in
every branch of English literature, and, most of all, in that which,
more than any other, had come to supply the intellectual and
imaginative sentiment of the largest body of readers. But there
were forces at work in the life of the nation which were certain to
cooperate with this reaction, and to impart to it a force beyond
that of a literary movement pure and simple, which spends its
strength till superseded in its turn.
The literature of English fiction in the period with which these
chapters are chiefly concerned, and the beginning of which may be
dated from that of the fourth decade of the century, was, in the
first place, more and more intent upon dealing with things as they
actually were. This realism corresponded to the political and social
i See, as to what he calls the Milieuroman, Dibelius, W. , Englische Romankunst
(Berlin, 1910), vol. 11, p. 338.


## p. 342 (#358) ############################################

342
[CH.
The Political and Social Novel
changes which had given the nation, as a whole, wider and readier
opportunities of observing the different parts of its own organism
and, thus, of better understanding and appreciating the various
aspects and interests of its own life. In the course of the period
beginning with the death of George IV (1830), and the passing
of the Reform bill (1832), and, even more distinctly, from the
accession of queen Victoria (1837) onwards, society, whatever its
habits or desires, was no longer able to fence itself round, within
limits mainly determined by personal descent and connection with
landed property. There was a great movement upwards, as there
had been in the Tudor days; and, while the metropolis, with its
predominant commercial interest, was becoming, far more than it
had hitherto been, the real capital of the country, other large towns,
more especially in the manufacturing districts of the north, were
growing into what only one or two of them had been before, real
centres of popular life. Much to their own benefit, though, not
necessarily, in the same degree, to that of other classes, the court,
nobility and wealthier gentry were living under a new light of
publicity-a publicity increased by the twofold growth of locomo-
tive facilities and of the public press—and institutions which, for
many a generation, had been mainly appropriated to the use of the
privileged classes, the universities in especial, were more freely
opening their doors. The great professions, including that of the
church, were, at the same time, being popularised; and, though
the Reform bill had not brought to the popular chamber
a representative body of pure radicals of the type of Felix
Holt, it was becoming an assembly through whose proceedings
and their motive causes a good deal of daylight was allowed to
shine.
All this, unmistakably, facilitated the process by which the
English novel of the generation which entered into its prime in 1830,
or thereabouts, devoted itself very largely to a critical examination
of the various classes comprising the nation-however ingeniously
this criticism might be interwoven with the narrative of the
fictitious experiences of imaginary personages. As a matter of
course, it often turned into satire ; but its primary purpose was to
exhibit, or, at all events, to seem to exhibit, an actually existing
state of things, in lieu of the old romantic pictures either of the
present or of the (still more easily misrepresented) past.
In the second place, the condition of affairs in this country
during the years 1830 to 1850 (in which fell the greater part of
the new productivity of the English political and social novel) was


## p. 343 (#359) ############################################

XI]
Harriet Martineau
343
6
one of constant ferment, of great fears as well as of high hopes, of
terrible sufferings and of ardent efforts for better things. The
prophet of this period was Carlyle, who proclaimed the message of
an idealism no longer satisfied with the old aims and methods
of a political philosophy which, in fiction, too, had not been left
unrepresented. Here, it was taught with premeditated emphasis,
by a writer so successful in her work that the sage was himself
fain to declare her 'the only instance he knew of clear activity
being compatible with happiness. ' But Harriet Martineau, though,
besides her justly celebrated Illustrations of Political Economy
(1832—4) and Illustrations of Taxation (1834)—-confessed hybrids
of directly didactic purpose in innocently narrative form-she
published two novels of ordinary length and an effective series
of short tales for the young, collected under the title The
Playfellow (1841)', cannot properly be classed among English
novelists, and will be more fitly spoken of among historical and
political writers, in whose ranks an honourable place is her
due. Indeed, in that brief Autobiographical Memoir where
Harriet Martineau tells, with a frankness so frank as to have no
humour in it, the story of her own life up to the time when she
believed it to be drawing to its close, she states that
none of her novels or tales have, or ever had, in the eyes of good judges, or
her own, any character of permanence. The artistic aim and qualifications
were absent-she had no power of dramatic construction; nor the poetic
inspiration on the one hand, nor critical cultivation on the other, without
which no work of the imagination can be worthy to live 2.
Such candour disarms; and her further admission that, in some of
her political economy tales, perhaps her best achievement in
fiction, the plot which she was elsewhere unable to create was
furnished by the doctrine which she desired to enforce, may readily
be accepted as part of the disclaimer.
1 Of her two novels, Deerbrook (1839) and The Hour and the Man (1841), the
former offered her an opportunity of expressing an opinion on most subjects under
the sun; but the conversations contain much that is felicitous as well as true, and
the insight into character, chiefly from an educational point of view, is remarkable.
The Hour and the Man, which calls itself a historical romance,' consists of a judicious
selection of historical facts, skilfully adapted to the conception of the characters intro-
duced, and especially of that of the hero, Toussaint Louverture. The popularity of
The Playfellow tales—especially of the first of them, The Settlers at Home, still endures;
though Feats on the Fiord is not quite so good as its name, and The Peasant and the
Prince ("Louis XVII'), largely based on Mme de Campan's memoirs, is, in more
ways than one, too doctrinaire for maturer readers. The Crofton Boys successfully
insists on homeliness as an element in the life of both school and family.
2 Autobiographical Memoir in Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, with Memorials
by M. W. Chapman (3rd edn, 1877), vol. II, pp. 482 sqq.


## p. 344 (#360) ############################################

344
The Political and Social Novel [CH.
In the field of fiction, with which alone we are at present con-
cerned, no agency on behalf of the new idealism, and of the resolve
to set right by speedy action what was out of joint in the social
condition of the people, could approach in effectiveness that of
Dickens, who was able to touch chords of popular sentiment with
a masterhand that had no equal. Both these writers, and, with
them, a group of young men, partly clergy, partly barristers and
university scholars, who took pride in ranging themselves under
the moral and intellectual leadership of Frederick Denison Maurice,
pressed upon the nation the necessity of continuous effort on behalf
of the suffering and struggling working classes, as entitled to
a share in the blessings of human life as well as in the privileges
of citizenship, and thus became the leaders of a movement which
has been given the name of 'interventionism? ' Their endeavours
were most memorable while they were most needed, and while the
material sufferings of the working classes embittered their sense
of their political grievances. About 1846, a time of greater pros-
perity began to set in ; and, in 1848, chartism came to what seemed
a rather abrupt end; but the mid-Victorian age, and the tranquil
enjoyment during its course by the middle class of an assured
predominance in English political and social life, can hardly be
said to have begun much before 1851, the year of the festival of
peace—the first great international exhibition.
This period, then—from about 1830 to about 1850—is that to
which the great body of the literary work of the first three eminent
novelists discussed in this chapter belongs. With Dickens, as has
been already pointed out, their relations are more or less close,
while Thackeray holds aloof from ‘novels with a purpose,' be that
purpose conservative or socialista. For the eager productivity of
these writers and of those who shared in their endeavours, it would
not be easy to account, had they not been under the influence of
the spirit of the times in which they lived and had their being.
Instead of contenting itself with the new inheritance of political
rights into which it had entered, their age was ready to recognise
that a social regeneration must follow, and prepare the ground
for further political progress. The new reformers must be men
and women arguing not from theories but from facts, writers
whose sympathy with the people proceeded from a study of its
See, more especially, the important work of L. Cazamian, Le Roman. Social en
Angleterre (1830–1850) (Paris, 1904), in which he discusses the idealist and inter-
ventionist reaction against the individualism of the utilitarians and of the Manchester
school, as the adherents of earlier political economy are persistently called.
. See A Plan for a Prize Novel (cited by Cazamian).
9


## p. 345 (#361) ############################################

2
XI]
Benjamin Disraeli
345
actual condition, and who refused to remain deaf to the unanswer-
able grievances, and blind to the unendurable lives, of town and
country. Before relief came, in the latter part of this period,
it had seemed as if a revolution more like the first than the
second French revolution must break out in England, and as if
'the two nations’ at home would be ranged in warfare, the one
against the other. Such, deep and serious, was the nature of the
problems faced by the 'young England' of Disraeli, by the disciples
of Maurice, from whose earnest ranks Charles Kingsley stood
forth in bright literary panoply, and by tender-hearted women
whose hearts went out, like Mrs Gaskell's, to their neighbours in
the great industrial towns, while to George Eliot's critical but
sympathetic intelligence these questions were familiar traditions.
The genius of none of these writers, was absorbed by their social
or political interests; and of each of them this chapter will speak
as distinguished by what was individually the writer's own. But
the influence of their times was upon them all-times in which,
amidst great political storm and stress, the spirit of England stood
high and her soul renewed itself in the struggle onward.
A quite unique place in the history of English fiction will be
universally allowed to be held by Benjamin Disraeli, once called
the younger—in recognition of his learned father, who is still
remembered as one of the lesser lights of critical antiquarianism-
and afterwards the wonder of the world under his title the earl of
Beaconsfield. W. F. Monypenny, in a Life of very high merit which
he has not lived to complete with his own hand', justly observes
that ‘novels may not be read for biography, but biography may be
used to elucidate novels,' and it is only from this point of view
that, in the following rapid survey of Disraeli's principal writings,
reference will be made to the events of his life, the most striking
of which form part, for better or for worse, of our national history.
Nothing that Disraeli ever did, said or wrote was done, said or
written without self-consciousness ; everything worked together
in the scheme of his life, between the private and public aspects
of which it is often difficult to draw a line, and which stands freely
self-revealed in his books as it does in the extraordinary story of
his career. He became a writer when very young; his earliest
book, though not the first production of his pen”, appeared in
1 Monypenny, William Flavelle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield,
vols. I and 11, 1804_46; 1910–12. Continued by Buckle, G. E. , vol. III, to 1855. In
this volume, the analysis of Tancred is by Monypenny.
See bibliography.


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346
[ch.
The Political and Social Novel
>
1826, when he was in his twenty-first or twenty-second year, and
was afterwards reckoned by himself among ‘books written by boys. '
The earliest literary training which he received was that which,
like Vivian Grey, he sought for himself in his father's library,
hence, the wide, though superficial, knowledge of books which he
had not time to supplement in later life, his resolute adherence to
the literary heroes of his youth (Byron and Bolingbroke above all)
and, also, the ineradicable imperfection of his spelling of French,
the only language except his own with which he attained to any
degree of familiarity. Oxford and Cambridge remained unknown
to him, and he made bold, at times, to treat them in his books with
a touch of more or less friendly scorn.
During much of the earlier part of his life, he was burdened by
debt; and the pressure of such a burden is nowhere more forcibly
depicted than in a passage of Henrietta Temple, though, at times,
his buoyant nature may have led him, like Fadredeen in Tancred,
to believe in indebtedness as a stimulant of genius. Partly because
of these difficulties, against which he gallantly struggled, he was
not a great traveller, though, like Contarini Fleming, he made the
grand tour; and among his most notable literary achievements are
the pictures in the same novel, and in Tancred, which, like those
in Eothen, appreciatively reproduce the humours as well as the
splendours of the near east.
Disraeli's literary masterpieces have an irrefutable claim to be
included in a chapter on the political and social novel of his age ;
but it would be an error to suppose politics to have been, from the
first, the main element of his fiction any more than it was the chief
interest of his early personal career. Vivian Grey (1826), written
from an experience developed by a vivid imagination out of
conversations to which the youthful author had listened at John
Murray's dinners, contains no serious political thought, for the
New Union' has no purpose beyond that of faction; and, when
Disraeli wrote Contarini Fleming (1832), his dream, as Monypenny
points out, was to acquire fame through literature, just as the hero
of this romance purposed to 'devote himself to the amelioration
of his kind' by authorship. There can be no doubt that, as, indeed,
the author himself indicates, the conception of his novel owed
something to Wilhelm Meister ; but, except in the imitation of
the character of Philine, only in a very general way. Disraeli's
6
1 As to Byron, see, especially, Venetia, and Sidonia's expatiation, in Coningsby, on
the text Genius when young is divine. ' Bolingbroke was, of course, Disraeli's political
ideal as well as one of his literary exemplars.


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XI]
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347
next novel, The Young Duke (1830), although containing some
pungent political criticisms, deals almost exclusively with the
world of fashion ; and, if it professes to supply the reader with
something very different from the ordinary type of fashionable
novel as defined in the course of the story', certainly keeps what-
ever may be its special purpose well in reserve. Alroy (1833) and
The Rise of Iskander (1835) are historical, or quasi-historical,
romances of a more or less conventional type. Henrietta Temple,
which rightly calls itself 'a Love Story,' and Venetia (both 1837),
with its topsy-turveydom of literary portraiture and reminiscences,
have nothing to do with political or social problems; nor was it
before Coningsby, or The New Generation (1844) and Sybil, or The
Two Nations (1845) that the author deliberately sought to concen-
trate the attention of his readers on the treatment of such matters.
He declares that, in the frenzied period of the Reform bill, thirteen
or fourteen years before the publication of these cognate if not
twin novels, he took occasion 'to intimate and then to develope to
the first assembly of his countrymen that he ever had the honour to
address the convictions which he expounds in these works? ' Two
or three years after that historic date-in 1835–he had, in the
Vindication of the English Constitution which he addressed to
the sympathetic ear of lord Lyndhurst, enunciated, with extra-
ordinary gusto, his views on the three estates of the realm, on
the difference between governing for a people and governing for
à party, on the enormities of the whigs and on the enduring
significance for the national welfare of the church and the
house of lords. This animated essay was followed by Letters of
Runnymede, which, after appearing in The Times, were published
in 1836 with a brief congenial diatribe The Spirit of Whiggism,
but which their author never acknowledged. Modelled, in form,
upon the letters of Junius, they outdid their predecessors in
scurrilous violence, but lacked that calm assumption of self-evident
superiority which gave to the earlier diatribes so much of their
authoritative tone. They were dedicated, as a whole, to Peel, whom
the time had not yet come for attacking, but were individually, for
the most part, addressed to the whig leaders, for whom no method
of abuse seemed out of place?
1. Take a pair of pistols and a pack of cards, a cookery book and a set of new
quadrilles, mix them up with half an intrigue and a whole marriage, and divide them
into three equal portions. '
2 See L'envoi to Sybil.
3 To the same period belong a number of contributions to The Times, The Morning
Post (June 1834), the short-lived Press and Fraser's Magazine, all of which were


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348
[CH.
The Political and Social Novel
In Disraeli's two great political novels, and, in a measure, in
their companion romance, Tancred, or The New Crusade (1847),
he fully developed the revised tory creed. Equally removed from
the 'stupid' and stagnant toryism of the Liverpool era, and from
the colourless conservatism proposed by the party without prin-
ciples which followed Peel after the passing of the Reform bill,
the new generation represented by the young England party
makes open war upon political radicalism and utilitarian philosophy,
upon the coldblooded whigs who have allied themselves with these
tendencies, upon the middle classes, the merchants and the manu-
facturers who profit from their ascendancy, upon the cruelty
of the new poor law (against which, in parliament, Disraeli had
voted with a small minority) and upon the unimaginative and un-
aesthetic impoverishment of the life of the peasantry! . Contempt
is poured upon the existing system of government, which a 'heroic'
effort must be made to overthrow, instead of continuing to depend
on 'a crown robbed of its prerogative, a church extended to a
Commission, and an aristocracy that does not lead? '; and the
heart must thus be taken out of chartism, the fondly trusted
gospel of the second of the 'two nations' into which the English
people is divided. In Sybil, we seem to be nearing the thought
that, in the emancipation of the people, the idealism of the church
of Rome will lend powerful aid, and, in the earlier part of Tancred,
we are treated to an excursus on the English church and its
defects, which might seem to tend in the same direction? But
the defects of that church, we learn, lie not only in the mediocrity
of its bishops, but, primarily, in its deficiency in oriental knowledge,
and, thus, with a note that Tancred began to doubt'whether faith
is sufficient without race,' we pass into another sphere of Disraeli's
unacknowledged and some of which have only recently been discovered to be his.
A selection from these articles, which illustrate their author's genius for invective-
some of them in a way which, perhaps, he might prefer not to be too closely remem-
bered—has been reprinted with the Runnymede Letters by Hutcheon, W. , under the
title Whigs and Whiggism, covering the period from the passing of the first Reform
bill to the year 1841.
1 Cf. Cazamian, L. , Le Roman Social en Angleterre (1904), pp. 334 ff.
2 Coningsby.
3 The Roman church had an irresistible attraction for Disraeli, though the anti-
papal agitation of 1850 caused him to abandon the 'tractarian' tendencies of his
young England' days. His admiration for the Roman system may be traced in a
phase of the experiences of Contarini Fleming, in the influence exercised upon the
young duke by Mary Dacre, and, passim, in Henrietta Temple, as well as in Sybil.
In Lothair and Endymion, the admiration is not extinct, but has passed into an
ironical stage. The movement for protestantising Ireland is mentioned with scorn in
Tancred.
6


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XI]
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349
political and historical philosophy, which concerns itself with the
question of race. Here, we are scarcely any longer in the region
of practical politics, but, rather, in that of semi-occult influences
such as are best demonstrated by the esoteric knowledge and
prophetical certainty of Sidonia, or illustrated by the traditional
tale Alroy. The inner meaning of Tancred may be veiled, but its
courage, as a declaration of faith in the destinies of the Jewish
race, must be described as magnificent. Disraeli's last two novels
-Lothair (1870) and Endymion (1880)—are, of course, full of
political passages and invaluable to the historical and political
student as containing the obiter dicta of a statesman to whom the
world of contemporary politics was as familiar as the boards of the
stage are to its veteran protagonists. But these books have no
longer any political purpose; the writer looks on the contentions
of ultramontanism and Mazzinianism from the outside, and the
very motto of Endymionbetrays the unimpassioned spirit of the
observer for whom political life no longer has any secrets.
Among those secrets is the mysterious action of personal
character, on the paramount importance of which Disraeli (who
never shrank from repeating himself) again and again descants.
He possessed a wonderful insight into the motives that actuate
men not only in their public doings, but in the shaping of their
lives, or in the leaving of them to be shaped by circumstances as
the agents of Providence. Thus, when he worked with special
care and elaborated his presentiments, he could place on his
canvas figures typically true and yet highly original, such as
Monmouth in Coningsby, the selfish aristocrat of whom Carabas, in
Vivian Grey, is merely a first sketch and Montfort, in Endymion,
a more delicate part-copy, the omniscient Sidonia, Rigby, the
embodiment of official meanness, and the radiant Mr Phoebus.
All these have in them features of actual individuals well known
to fame? ; but they are, at the same time, types worthy to stand
by the side of the best remembered in English fiction ; and the
same may be asserted of a few others who are types only, such
as the immortal Tadpole and Taper. In many of the characters
which crowd his pages, Disraeli was content to introduce con-
temporaries under a more or less thin disguise, without, on the
one hand, working them out with fullness or, on the other, aiming
at photographic exactitude. It is not of much importance whether
1 Quidquid agunt homines.
3 In Sidonia, these features are, of course, purely external; and the author goes
out of his way to make Sidonia appear at the ball of baroness S. de R-d.


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350
[CH.
The Political and Social Novel
Disraeli hit upon this device unassisted, or whether he borrowed
it from a popular novelist of a rather earlier day, who had personal
experience of political life, Robert Plumer Ward'. In Disraeli's
novels, the real personages introduced are all recognisable by
those acquainted with the social history of the age, even if they
cannot attest the likeness on the strength of personal intercourse
or even of a deprecatory vidi tantum.
Such are, among a
multitude of others, the delightful Mirabel in Henrietta Temple ;
the almost equally delightful St Aldegonde in Lothair, who re-
appears as Waldershare in Endymion ; besides Coningsby himself,
lord Henry Sidney, Sir Charles Buckhurst, Eustace Lyle in
Coningsby; Vavasour in Tancred; Monsignore Catesby and
the cardinal, and, at the other pole, Mirandola, in Lothair; and
prince, afterwards king, Florestan in Endymion. As a rule, all
these are touched with equal humour and a kindliness, or, at
least, gentleness, in accordance with the obvious demands of good
taste; but there are a few notable exceptions. The character of
Rigby in Coningsby has already been mentioned ; and it remains,
so far as we are aware, unknown why Disraeli should have
displayed so vitriolic a hatred of Croker as is displayed in this
portrait-unmistakable, at all events, in the account of him as
a man of letters, the author of slashing articles, full of detail
constantly incorrect. Here and there, in his political novels, Disraeli
gives piquancy to his array of dramatis personae by introducing
among them actual personages, such as lord (John) Russell, who
intervenes in the action of Sybil and whose character is not
unfairly drawn in Coningsby. But no such treatment is accorded
to Sir Robert Peel, whom Disraeli hated with a bitterness that
can only be accounted for by the fact that the great minister, on
one occasion, had behaved to him with undeserved generosity.
In return, he is assailed in Coningsby (though, in the same work,
a recognition is accorded to his courage), insulted in The Young
Duke and held up to scorn in Tancred. Disraeli's spite against
Goldwin Smith, in the character of the Oxford professor in
A perusal of Ward's Tremaine ; or the Man of Refinement (1825) can hardly fail to
suggest to readers of Disraeli's best known novels some similarity in style and treat-
ment—more especially in the way of introducing characters and recalling, in an easy
fashion, as if treating of familiar circumstances, their antecedents and surroundings.
But the resemblance does not go deep; and the story of a tired man of pleasure and
fashion, led gradually by the influences of friendship and love, but, also, by sustained
argument in moral theology and philosophy, to a nobler view of life and its duties, takes
the reader out of Disraeli's sphere of thought and experience. Very ample and very
polite, the style of Tremaine is, at the same time, easy and attractive, and the success
of the book is not surprising.


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XI]
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351
Lothair, was, perhaps, provoked, and certainly requited; but it
is really too inept to have deserved notice. Could his equally
violent, if not equally pointless, caricature of Thackeray, as
St Barbe in Endymion, have been merely the result of annoyance
at the happy parody of himself as a prize novelist in Scaramouch?