'Pickwick' was
succeeded
by 'Oliver Twist,' begun in Bent-
ley's Magazine in January, 1837, and printed in book form in 1838.
ley's Magazine in January, 1837, and printed in book form in 1838.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v08 - Dah to Dra
Cortés then ordered them to be pros-
trated, which we immediately did, rolling them down some steps.
He next sent for lime, of which there was abundance in the
place, and Indian masons, by whom under our direction a very
handsome altar was constructed, whereon we placed an image of
the Holy Virgin; and the carpenters having made a crucifix,
which was erected in a small chapel close to the altar, mass was
said by the Reverend Father Juan Diaz, and listened to by the
priests, chiefs, and the rest of the natives, with great attention.
·
## p. 4620 (#410) ###########################################
4620
CHARLES DIBDIN
(1745-1814)
TOG HE saying, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care
not who makes its laws," receives an interesting illustration
in the sea songs of Charles Dibdin. They were written at
a momentous period in English history. The splendid gallantry and
skill of England's sailors, and the genius of her naval commanders,
had made her mistress of the seas, and the key of all combinations
against the French Cæsar. The sterling qualities of the British sea-
man are the inspiration of Dibdin's songs.
Many of these were first given at Dib-
din's monodramatic entertainments at the
Sans Souci Theatre in London, or as parts
of his musical dramas. They appealed at
once to Englishmen, and were sung by
every ship's crew; they fired the national
spirit, and played so important a part in
the quickening of English patriotism that
the government, recognizing their stirring
force in animating the naval enthusiasm
during the Napoleonic wars, granted a pen-
sion of £200 a year to the "Ocean Bard of
England. "
CHARLES DIBDIN
Charles Dibdin was born in 1745, in a
small village near the great seaport of Southampton. His love of
the salt air drew him often to the ocean's shores, where he saw the
ships of all lands pass and repass, and heard the merry sailors'
songs. And yet his own songs, upon which his title to a place in
literature rests, were incidental products of his active mind. He
was an actor, a dramatist, and a composer as well. He wrote some
thirty minor plays and the once popular operettas of The Shep-
herd's Artifice,' 'The Padlock,' The Quaker,' and 'The Waterman. '
He wrote also a 'History of the Stage,' 'Musical Tour through
England,' and an autobiography which bore the title 'Professional
Life,' His two novels are now forgotten, but it is interesting to
recall that for the Stratford Jubilee in honor of Shakespeare, the
words of which were by Garrick, Dibdin composed the much admired
songs, dances, and serenades. He wrote more than thirteen hundred
songs, most of which had of course only a brief existence; but there
## p. 4621 (#411) ###########################################
CHARLES DIBDIN
4621
were enough of them, burning with genuine lyric fire, to entitle him
to grateful remembrance among England's poets.
In all of these songs, whether the theme be his native land or the
wind-swept seas that close it round, love is the poet's real inspira-
tion; love of old England and her sovereign, love of the wealth-
bringing ocean, love of the good ship that sails its waves. This
fundamental affection for the things of which he sings has endeared
the songs of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this
lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and me-
lodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have
the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too,
the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to
his country and his king. There is nothing quite like them in any
other literature.
SEA SONG
SAILED in the good ship the Kitty,
I
With a smart blowing gale and rough sea;
Left my Polly, the lads call so pretty,
Safe at her anchor. Yo, Yea!
She blubbered salt tears when we parted,
And cried "Now be constant to me! "
I told her not to be down-hearted,
So up went the anchor. Yo, Yea!
And from that time, no worse nor no better,
I've thought on just nothing but she,
Nor could grog nor flip make me forget her,-
She's my best bower-anchor. Yo, Yea!
When the wind whistled larboard and starboard,
And the storm came on weather and lee,
The hope I with her should be harbored
Was my cable and anchor. Yo, Yea!
And yet, my boys, would you believe me?
I returned with no rhino from sea;
Mistress Polly would never receive me,
So again I heav'd anchor. Yo, Yea!
## p. 4622 (#412) ###########################################
4622
CHARLES DIBDIN
G
SONG: THE HEART OF A TAR
YET
ET though I've no fortune to offer,
I've something to put on a par;
Come, then, and accept of my proffer,-
'Tis the kind honest heart of a tar.
Ne'er let such a trifle as this is,
Girls, be to my pleasure a bar;
You'll be rich though 'tis only in kisses,
With the kind honest heart of a tar.
Besides, I am none of your ninnies;
The next time I come from afar,
I'll give you a lapful of guineas,
With the kind honest heart of a tar.
Your lords, with such fine baby faces,
That strut in a garter and star,
Have they, under their tambour and laces,
The kind honest heart of a tar?
POOR JACK
O PATTER to lubbers and swabs, do you see,
'Bout danger, and fear, and the like;
A tight-water boat and good sea-room give me,
And it ain't to a little I'll strike.
Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should
smite
And shiver each splinter of wood,
Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight,
And under reef foresail we'll scud:
Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft,
To be taken for trifles aback;
For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!
I heard our good chaplain palaver one day
About souls, heaven, mercy, and such;
And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay;
Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch;
For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see,
Without orders that come down below;
## p. 4623 (#413) ###########################################
CHARLES DIBDIN
4623
And a many fine things that proved clearly to me oft
That Providence takes us in tow:
For, says he, do you mind me, let storms ne'er so oft
Take the topsails of sailors aback,
There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!
I said to our Poll (for d'ye see, she would cry
When last we weighed anchor for sea),
What argufies sniveling and piping your eye?
Why, what a young fool you must be!
Can't you see the world's wide, and there's room for us all,
Both for seamen and lubbers ashore ?
And so if to old Davy I go, my dear Poll,
Why, you never will hear of me more.
What then? all's a hazard: come, don't be so soft;
Perhaps I may, laughing, come back;
For d'ye see? there's a cherub sits smiling aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.
D'ye mind me? a sailor should be every inch
All as one as a piece of the ship,
And with her brave the world, without offering to flinch,
From the moment the anchor's a-trip.
As for me, in all weathers, all times, sides, and ends,
Naught's a trouble from duty that springs;
For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino's my friend's,
And as for my life, 'tis the King's.
Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so soft;
As for grief to be taken aback;
For the same little cherub that sits up aloft
Will look out a good berth for poor Jack.
TOM BOWLING
H
ERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For Death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful below he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.
## p. 4624 (#414) ###########################################
4624
CHARLES DIBDIN
Tom never from his word departed,
His virtues were so rare;
His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair:
And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly;
Ah, many's the time and oft!
But mirth is turned to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.
Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
When He who all commands
Shall give, to call life's crew together,
The word to pipe all hands.
Thus Death, who kings and tars dispatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;
For though his body's under hatches,
His soul is gone aloft.
## p. 4624 (#415) ###########################################
## p. 4624 (#416) ###########################################
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## p. 4624 (#418) ###########################################
CHARLES DI ME NR.
## p. 4625 (#419) ###########################################
4625
CHARLES DICKENS
(1812-1870)
W
HEN a great genius arises he makes his place in the world
and explains himself. Criticism does not make him and
cannot unmake him. He may have great defects and great
faults. By exposing them and dwelling upon them, the critics may
apparently nibble him all away. When the critics get through, how-
ever, he remains pretty much the force he was originally. For real
genius is a sort of elemental force that enters the human world, both
for good and evil, and leaves its lasting impression. It is like a new
river, of waters sweet and bitter, clear and muddy, bearing on its
bosom ships and wrecks, the lovely and the ugly, the incongruous
elements of human life and human contrivance. When it floods and
overflows, the critics run away; when it subsides the critics come
back and begin to analyze it, and say, "It wasn't much of a shower. "
Charles Dickens is to be judged, like any other genius, by what
he created, what he brought into the world. We are not called on to
say whether he was as great as Homer, as Shakespeare, as Cer-
vantes, as Fielding, as Manzoni, as Thackeray. He was always quite
himself, and followed no model, though thousands of writers have
attempted to follow him and acquire the title of being Dickens-y.
For over half a century he had the ear of the English-reading public
the world over. It laughed with him, it cried with him, it hungered
after him. Whatever he wrote, it must read; whenever he read, it
crowded to hear his masterly interpretations; when he acted, it was
delighted with his histrionic cleverness. In all these manifestations
there was the attraction of a most winning personality.
He invented a new kind of irresistible humor, he told stories that
went to the heart of humanity, he amused, he warmed, he cheered
the world. We almost think that modern Christmas was his inven-
tion, such an apostle was he of kindliness and brotherly love, of
sympathy with the poor and the struggling, of charity which is not
condescension. He made pictures of low life, and perhaps unreal
shadows of high life, and vivid scenes that lighted up great periods
of history. For producing effects and holding the reader he was a
wizard with his pen. And so the world hung on him, read him and
re-read him, recited him, declaimed him, put him into reading-books,
diffused him in common speech and in all literature.
In all Eng-
lish literature his characters are familiar, stand for types, and need
no explanation. And now, having filled itself up with him, been
VIII-290
## p. 4626 (#420) ###########################################
4626
CHARLES DICKENS
saturated with him, made him in some ways as common as the air,
does the world tire of him, turn on him, say that it cannot read him
any more, that he is commonplace? If so, the world has made him
commonplace. But the publishers' and booksellers' accounts show
no diminution in his popularity with the new generation.
At a dinner where Dickens was discussed, a gentleman won dis-
tinction by this sole contribution to the conversation:-"There is no
evidence in Dickens's works that he ever read a book. " It is true
that Dickens drew most of his material from his own observation of
life, and from his fertile imagination, which was often fantastic. It
is true that he could not be called in the narrow sense a literary
writer, that he made no literary mosaic, and few allusions to the
literature of the world. Is it not probable that he had the art to
assimilate his material? For it is impossible that any writer could
pour out such a great flood about the world and human nature with-
out refreshing his own mind at the great fountains of literature.
And when we turn to such a tale as 'The Tale of Two Cities,' we
are conscious of the vast amount of reading and study he must have
done in order to give us such a true and vivid picture of the Revo-
lutionary period.
It has been said that Dickens did not write good English, that he
could not draw a lady or a gentleman, that he often makes ear-marks
and personal peculiarities stand for character, that he is sometimes
turgid when he would be impressive, sometimes stilted when he
would be fine, that his sentiment is often false and worked up, that
his attempts at tragedy are melodramatic, and that sometimes his
comedy comes near being farcical. His whole literary attitude has
been compared to his boyish fondness for striking apparel.
There is some truth in all these criticisms, though they do not
occur spontaneously to a fresh reader while he is under the spell of
Dickens, nor were they much brought forward when he was creating
a new school and setting a fashion for an admiring world. His
style, which is quite a part of this singular man, can easily be pulled
in pieces and condemned, and it is not a safe one to imitate. No
doubt he wrought for effects, for he was a magician, and used exag-
geration in high lights and low lights on his crowded canvas. Say
what you will of all these defects, of his lack of classic literary train-
ing, of his tendency to melodrama, of his tricks of style, even of a
ray of lime-light here and there, it remains that he is a great power,
a tremendous force in modern life; half an hour of him is worth a
lifetime of his self-conscious analyzers, and the world is a more
cheerful and sympathetic world because of the loving and lovable
presence in it of Charles Dickens.
A sketch of his life and writings, necessarily much condensed for
use here, has been furnished by Mr. Laurence Hutton.
## p. 4627 (#421) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4627
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DICKENS
BY LAURENCE HUTTON
C
HARLES DICKENS was born at Landport in Portsea, on the 7th of
February, 1812. His childhood was a very unhappy one. He
describes himself in one of his essays as "a very queer, small
boy," and his biographer tells us that he was very sickly as well as
very small.
He had little schooling, and numberless hard knocks,
and rough and toilsome was the first quarter of his journey through
life. Many of the passages in 'David Copperfield' are literally true
pictures of his own early experiences, and much of that work may
be accepted as autobiographical. He was fond of putting himself
and his own people into his books, and of drawing his scenes and
his characters from real life, sometimes only slightly disguised. Tra-
dition says that he built both Mr. Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop out
of his own father; that Mrs. Nickleby was based upon his own
mother; and that his wife, who was the Dora of 'Copperfield' in the
beginning of their married life, became in later years the Flora of
'Little Dorrit. ' The elder Dickens had unquestionably some of the
traits ascribed to the unpractical friend of Copperfield's youth, and
something of the cruel self-indulgence and pompous deportment of
the dancing-master in Bleak House. ' And it was during his father's
imprisonment for debt when the son was but a youth, that Dickens
got his intimate knowledge of the Marshalsea, and of the heart-
breaking existence of its inmates. Some years before 'Copperfield'
was written, he described in a fragment of actual autobiography,
quoted by Forster, the following scene:-
"My father was waiting for me in the lodge [of the Debtor's Prison]; and
we went up to his room, on the top story but one, and cried very much.
And he told me, I remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to
observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year, and spent nineteen pounds
nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent
the other way would make him wretched. "
In these chambers Dickens afterwards put Mr. Dorrit. And while
the father remained in confinement, the son lived for a time in a
back attic in Lant Street, Borough, which was to become the home
of the eccentric Robert Sawyer, and the scene of a famous supper
party given to do honor to Mr. Pickwick "and the other chaps. "
"If a man wishes to abstract himself from the world, to remove
himself from the reach of temptation, to place himself beyond the
possibility of any inducement to look out of the window, he should
by all means go to Lant Street. " Lant Street still exists, as Mr. Pick-
wick found it, and as Dickens knew it between 1822 and 1824. He
## p. 4628 (#422) ###########################################
4628
CHARLES DICKENS
had numerous lodgings, alone and with his family, during those hard
times; all of them of the same miserable, wretched character; and it
is interesting to know that the original of Mrs. Pipchin was his land-
lady in Camden Town, and that the original of the Marchioness
waited on the elder Dickens during his stay in the Marshalsea.
The story of the unhappy drudgery of the young Copperfield is
the story of the young Dickens without exaggeration.
"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
companionship," he wrote in 1845 or 1846,- «compared these every-day asso-
ciates with those of my happier childhood, and felt my early hopes of grow-
ing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast. The
deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hope-
less; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young
heart to believe that, day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and
delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, was passing
away from me, never to be brought back any more, cannot be written. My
whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such con-
siderations, that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget,
in my dreams, that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man;
and I wander desolately back to that time of my life. "
In the course of a few years, happily, the cloud lifted; and in 1831,
when Dickens was a youth of nineteen, we find him beginning life as
a reporting journalist. He wrote occasional "pieces" for the maga-
zines, and some faint hope of growing up to be a distinguished and
learned man rose again, no doubt, in his breast. N. P. Willis met
him one day in 1835, when, as Willis expresses it, Dickens was a
"paragraphist" for the London Morning Chronicle. The "paragraph-
ist," according to Willis, was lodging in the most crowded part of
Holborn, in an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table,
two or three chairs, and a few books. It was up a long flight of
stairs, this room; and its occupant "was dressed very much as he has
since described Dick Swiveller-minus the swell look. His hair was
cropped close to his head, his clothes were scant, though jauntily cut;
and after exchanging a ragged office coat for a shabby blue, he stood
by the door collarless and buttoned up, the very personification, I
thought, of a close sailer to the wind.
Not long after this
Macrone sent me the sheets of 'Sketches by Boz,' with a note saying
they were by the gentleman [Dickens] who went with us to Newgate.
I read the book with amazement at the genius displayed in it; and
in my note of reply assured Macrone that I thought his fortune was
made, as a publisher, if he could monopolize the author. " This pic-
ture is very graphic. But it must be accepted with a grain of salt.
The Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-
Day People,' Dickens's first printed book, appeared in 1835. A further
·
## p. 4629 (#423) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4629
series of papers, bearing the same title, was published the next year.
"Boz" was the nickname he had bestowed upon his younger brother
Augustus, in honor of the Moses of the Vicar of Wakefield. ' The
word, pronounced through the nose, became "Boses," afterwards
shortened to "Boz," which, said Dickens, "was a very familiar house-
hold word to me long before I was an author. And so I came to
adopt it. " The sketches, the character of which is explained in their
sub-title, were regarded as unusually clever things of their kind.
They attracted at once great attention in England, and established
the fact that a new star had risen in the firmament of British letters.
Dickens was married on the 2d of April, 1836, to Miss Catherine
Hogarth, just a week after he had published the first shilling number
of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: Edited by Boz. '
The work appeared in book form the next year. Its success was phe-
nomenal, and it brought to its author not only fame but a fixed sum
per annum, which is better. It assured his comfort in the present and
in the future, and it wiped out all the care and troubles of his past.
It was in itself the result of an accident. Messrs. Chapman and Hall,
attracted by the popularity of the Sketches, proposed to their author
a series of monthly articles to illustrate certain pictures of a comic
character by Robert Seymour, an artist in their employment. Dickens
assented, upon the condition that "the plates were to be so modified
that they would arise naturally out of the text. " And so between
them Mr. Pickwick was born, although under the saddest of circum-
stances; for only a single number had appeared when Seymour died
by his own hand. Hablot K. Browne succeeded him, signing the name
of "Phiz"; and with "Boz" was "Phiz" long associated in other
prosperous ventures. Mr. Pickwick is a benevolent, tender-hearted
elderly gentleman, who, as the president of a club organized "for the
purpose of investigating the source of the Hampstead ponds," jour-
neys about England in all directions with three companions, to whom
he acts as guide, philosopher, and friend. He is an amiable old
goose, and his companions are equally verdant and unsophisticated;
but since 1837 they have been as famous as any men in fiction. The
story is a long one, the pages are crowded with incidents and with
characters. It is disconnected, often exaggerated, much of it is as
improbable as it is impossible, but it has made the world laugh for
sixty years now; and it still holds its own unique place in the hearts
of men.
From this period the pen of Dickens was never idle for forty-three
years.
'Pickwick' was succeeded by 'Oliver Twist,' begun in Bent-
ley's Magazine in January, 1837, and printed in book form in 1838.
It is the story of the progress of a parish boy, and it is sad and
serious in its character. The hero was born and brought up in a
## p. 4630 (#424) ###########################################
4630
CHARLES DICKENS
workhouse. He was starved and ill-treated; but he always retained
his innocence and his purity of mind. He fell among thieves,- Bill
and Nancy Sykes, Fagin and the Artful Dodger, to whom much pow-
erful description is devoted, but he triumphed in the end. The life
of the very poor and of the very degraded among the people of Eng-
land during the latter end of the first half of the nineteenth century
is admirably portrayed; and for the first time in their existence the
British blackguards of both sexes were exhibited in fiction, clad in
all their instincts of low brutality, and without that glamour of
attractive romance which the earlier writers had given to Jack Shep-
pard, to Jonathan Wild, or to Moll Flanders.
Two dramatic compositions by Dickens, neither of them adding
very much to his reputation, appeared in 1836, to wit:-'The Stran-
ger Gentleman, A Comic Burletta in Three Acts'; and 'The Village
Coquette,' a comic opera in two acts. They were presented upon
the stage towards the close of that year, with fair success.
In 1838 Dickens edited the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, a cele-
brated clown. His share in the composition of this work was com-
paratively small, and consisted of a Preface, dated February of that
year. It was followed by 'Sketches of Young Gentlemen,' and by
'The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,' both published in
1839. To this latter he signed his name, Charles Dickens, dropping
from that period the pseudonym of "Boz. " The titular hero is the
son of a poor country gentleman. He makes his own way in the
world as the usher of a Yorkshire school, as an actor in a traveling
troupe, and as the clerk and finally the partner in a prosperous
mercantile house in London. Smike, his pupil; Crummles, his theat-
rical manager; Ninetta Crummles, the Infant Phenomenon of the
company, Newman Noggs, the clerk of his uncle Ralph Nickleby,
the Cheeryble Brothers, his employers, are among the most success-
ful and charming of Dickens's earlier creations. "Mr. Squeers and
his school," he says, << were faint and feeble pictures of an existing
reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they should be deemed
impossible. " That such establishments ceased to exist in reality in
England after the appearance of 'Nickleby,' is proof enough of the
good his pictures did in this and in many other ways.
In 1840-1841 appeared 'Master Humphrey's Clock,' comprising the
two stories of The Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Barnaby Rudge,' which
were subsequently printed separately. The story of Little Nell, the
gentle, lovable inmate of the Curiosity Shop, is one of the most sad
and tender tales in fiction, and Dickens himself confessed that he
was almost heart-broken when she died. Her path was crossed by
Quilp, a cunning and malicious dwarf of hideous appearance, who
consumed hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, for his breakfast; ate his
## p. 4631 (#425) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4631
prawns with their heads and their tails on, drank scalding hot tea,
and performed so many horrifying acts that one almost doubted that
he was human; and by Christopher Nubbles, a shock-headed, sham-
bling, awkward, devoted lad, the only element of cheerfulness that
ever came into her life. In this book appear Richard Swiveller and
his Marchioness, Sampson and Sarah Brass and Mrs. Jarley, who to
be appreciated must be seen and known, as Dickens has drawn them,
at full length.
Barnaby Rudge was a half-witted lad, who, not knowing what he
did, joined the Gordon rioters-the scenes are laid in the "No
Popery» times of 1779-because he was permitted to carry a flag
and to wear a blue ribbon. The history of that exciting period of
English semi-political, semi-religious excitement is graphically set
down. Prominent figures in the book are Grip the raven, whose cry
was "I'm a devil," "Never say die"; and Miss Dolly Varden, the
blooming daughter of the Clerkenwell locksmith, who has given her
name to the modern feminine costume of the Watteauesque style.
The literary results of Dickens's first visit to the United States, in
1842, when he was thirty years of age, were 'American Notes, for
General Circulation'; published in that year, and containing portions
of 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' which appeared in 1844. His observations in
the 'Notes' upon the new country and its inhabitants gave great
offense to the American people, and were perhaps not in the best
taste. He saw the crude and ridiculous side of his hosts, he empha-
sized their faults, while he paid little attention to their virtues; and
his criticisms and strictures rankled in the sensitive American mind
for many years.
Martin Chuzzlewit, the hero of the novel bearing his name, spent
some time in the western half-settled portion of America, with Mark
Tapley, his light-hearted, optimistic friend and companion. The pic-
tures of the morals and the manners of the men and women with
whom the emigrants were brought into contact were anything but
flattering, and they served to widen the temporary breach between
Dickens and his many admirers in the United States. The English
scenes of 'Chuzzlewit' are very powerfully drawn. Tom and Ruth
Pinch, Pecksniff, Sarah Gamp, and Betsey Prig are among the lead-
ing characters in the work.
In 1843 appeared the 'Christmas Carol,' the first and perhaps the
best of that series of tales of peace and good-will, with which, at
the Christmas time, the name of Dickens is so pleasantly and famil-
iarly associated. It was followed by The Chimes' in 1844, by The
Cricket on the Hearth' in 1845, by The Haunted Man' in 1848, all
the work of Dickens himself; and by other productions written by
Dickens in collaboration with other men. Concerning these holiday
## p. 4632 (#426) ###########################################
4632
CHARLES DICKENS
stories, some unknown writer said in the public press at the time of
Dickens's death:-"He has not only pleased us— - he has softened the
hearts of a whole generation. He made charity fashionable; he
awakened pity in the hearts of sixty millions of people. He made a
whole generation keep Christmas with acts of helpfulness to the
poor; and every barefooted boy and girl in the streets of England
and America to-day fares a little better, gets fewer cuffs and more
pudding, because Charles Dickens wrote. "
In 1846 he produced his 'Pictures from Italy'; 'The Battle of Life,
A Love Story,' and began in periodical form his 'Dealings with the
Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation,'
published in book form in 1847. Here we have the pathetic story of
Little Paul, the tragic fate of Carker, the amusing episode of Jack
Bunsby with his designing widow, and the devotion of Susan Nipper,
Mr. Toots, Captain Cuttle, and Sol Gills to the gentle, patient, lov-
able Florence.
On the 'Personal History of David Copperfield,' published in 1850,
and of Dickens's share in its plot, something has already been said
here. It is perhaps the most popular of all his productions, con-
taining as it does Mr. Dick, the Peggottys, the Micawbers, the Heeps,
Betsey Trotwood, Steerforth, Tommy Traddles, Dora, Agnes, and
Little Em'ly, in all of whom the world has been so deeply interested
for so many years.
'A Child's History of England' and 'Bleak House' saw the light
in 1853. The romance was written as a protest and a warning
against the law's delays, as exhibited in the Court of Chancery; and
it contains the tragedy of Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, and the
short but touching story of Poor Jo.
'Hard Times,' a tale in one volume, was printed in 1854. It
introduces the Gradgrind family.
'Little Dorrit' appeared in 1857. In this book he returns to the
Debtor's Prison of Micawber and of his own father. Little Dorrit
herself was "the child of the Marshalsea," in which she was born
and brought up; and the whole story is an appeal against the injus-
tice of depriving of personal liberty those who cannot pay their
bills, or meet their notes, however small. Its prominent characters
are the Clennams, mother and son, the Meagleses, Flintwinch, Sir
Decimus Tite Barnacle, Rigaud and Little Cavalletto.
'A Tale of Two Cities,' a remarkable departure for Dickens, and
unlike any of his other works, was the book of the year 1859. It is
conceded, even by those who are not counted among the admirers of
its author, to be a most vivid and correct picture of Paris during the
time of the Revolution, when the guillotine was the king of France.
Its central figure, Sydney Carton, one of the most heroic characters
## p. 4633 (#427) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4633
in romance, gives his life to restore his friend to the girl whom they
both love.
< The Uncommercial Traveller,' a number of sketches and stories
originally published in his weekly journal All the Year Round, ap-
peared in 1860. They were supplemented in 1868 by another volume
bearing the same title, and containing eleven other papers collected
from the same periodical.
'Great Expectations,' 1861, like 'Copperfield,' is the story of a boy's
childhood told by the boy himself, but by a boy with feelings, sen-
timents, and experiences very different from those of the earlier
work. The plot is not altogether a cheerful one, but many of the
characters are original and charming; notably Joe Gargery, Jaggles,
Wemmick, the exceedingly eccentric Miss Havisham, and the very
amiable and simple Biddy.
'Somebody's Luggage,' 1862; 'Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' 1863;
'Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy,' 1864; Dr. Marigold's Prescription,' 1865;
'Mugby Junction,' 1866; and 'No Thoroughfare,' 1867,- Christmas
stories, all of them,- were written by Dickens in collaboration with
other writers.
'Our Mutual Friend,' the last completed work of Dickens, was
printed in 1865. Mr. Boffin, the Golden Dustman with the great
heart, Silas Wegg, Mr. Venus, the Riderhoods, Jenny Wren, the
Podsnaps, the Veneerings, Betty Higden, Mrs. Wilfer, and the "Boo-
fer Lady," are as fresh and as original as are any of his creations,
and show no trace of the coming disaster.
Before the completion of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' Dickens
died at his home, Gadshill Place, literally in harness, and without
warning, on the 9th of June, 1870.
But six numbers of this last work appeared, in periodical form. .
Its author left no notes of what was to follow, and the Mystery has
never been solved. Mr. Charles Collins, Dickens's son-in-law, however,
in a private letter to Mr. Augustin Daly of New York, who had pro-
posed to dramatize the tale, gave some general outline of the scheme
for Edwin Drood. ' "The titular character," he said, «< was never to
reappear, he having been murdered by Jasper. The girl Rosa, not
having been really attached to Edwin, was not to lament his loss
very long, and was, I believe, to admit the sailor, Mr. Tartar, to
supply his place. It was intended that Jasper should urge on the
search after Edwin, and the pursuit of the murderer, thus endeavor-
ing to divert suspicion from himself, the real murderer.
As to any-
thing further, it would be purely conjectural. "
Besides this immense amount of admirable work, Dickens founded,
conducted, and edited two successful periodicals, Household Words,
established in March 1850, and followed by All the Year Round,.
## p. 4634 (#428) ###########################################
4634
CHARLES DICKENS
beginning in April 1859. To these he contributed many sketches and
stories. He began public readings in London in 1858; and con-
tinued them with great profit to himself, and with great satisfaction
to immense audiences, for upwards of twelve years. He appeared in
all the leading cities of Great Britain; and he was enormously popu-
lar as a reader in America during his second and last visit in 1868.
As an after-dinner and occasional speaker Dickens was rarely
equaled; and as an actor upon the amateur stage, in plays of his
own composition, he was inimitable.
Of his attempts at verse, 'The Ivy Green' is the only one that
is held in remembrance.
A strong argument in favor of what may be called "the staying
qualities of Dickens is the fact that his characters, even in a muti-
lated, unsatisfactory form, have held the stage for half a century or
more, and still have power to attract and move great audiences,
wherever is spoken the language in which he wrote. The dramatiza-
tion of the novel is universally and justly regarded as the most
ephemeral and worthless of dramatic production; and the novels of
Dickens, on account of their length, of the great number of figures
he introduces, of the variety and occasional exaggeration of his dia-
logues and his situations, have been peculiarly difficult of adaptation
to theatrical purposes. Nevertheless the world laughed and cried
over Micawber, Captain Cuttle, Dan'l Peggotty, and Caleb Plummer,
behind the footlights, years after Dolly Spanker, Aminadab Sleek,
Timothy Toodles, Alfred Evelyn, and Geoffrey Dalk, their contempo-
raries in the standard and legitimate drama, created solely and par-
ticularly for dramatic representation, were absolutely forgotten. And
Sir Henry Irving, sixty years after the production of 'Pickwick,' drew
great crowds to see his Alfred Jingle, while that picturesque and
ingenious swindler Robert Macaire, Jingle's once famous and familiar
confrère in plausible rascality, was never seen on the boards, except
as he was burlesqued and caricatured in comic opera.
It is pretty safe to say-and not in a Pickwickian sense that
Pecksniff will live almost as long as hypocrisy lasts; that Heep will
not be forgotten while mock humility exists; that Mr. Dick will go
down to posterity arm-in-arm with Charles the First, whom he could
not avoid in his memorial; that Barkis will be quoted until men cease
to be willin'. And so long as cheap, rough coats cover faith, charity,
and honest hearts, the world will remember that Captain Cuttle and
the Peggottys were so clad.
Раш
Hilto
m
-
## p. 4635 (#429) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4635
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
From Hard Times'
"Now
ow what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls
nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant
nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only
form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else
will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on
which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on
which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! "
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-
room, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observa-
tions by underscoring every sentence with a line on the school-
master's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's
square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base,
while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves,
overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the
speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The em-
phasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible,
dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's
hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of
firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with
knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely
warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's
obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,-
nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with
an unaccommodating grasp like a stubborn fact, as it was,-all
helped the emphasis.
"In this life we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but
Facts! "
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown per-
son present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the in-
clined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order,
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until
they were full to the brim.
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts
and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that
two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be
talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir,
## p. 4636 (#430) ###########################################
4636
CHARLES DICKENS
- peremptorily Thomas,-Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and
a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket,
sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature,
and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of
figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get
some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind,
or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind
(all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of
Thomas Gradgrind-no, sir!
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced him-
self, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the pub-
lic in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words
"boys and girls," for "sir," Thomas Gradgrind now presented
Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to
be filled so full of facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage
before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the
muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the
regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing
apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for
the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
"Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing
with his square forefinger; "I don't know that girl. Who is that
girl? "
"Sissy Jupe, sir," explained number twenty, blushing, stand-
ing up, and courtesying.
"Sissy is not a name," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Don't call
yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia. "
"It's father as calls me Sissy, sir," returned the young girl
in a trembling voice, and with another courtesy.
"Then he has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind.
"Tell him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is
your father? »
"He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir. "
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable call-
ing with his hand.
"We don't want to know anything about that here. You
mustn't tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses,
don't he? "
"If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do
break horses in the ring, sir. "
## p. 4637 (#431) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4637
"You mustn't tell us about the ring here. Very well, then.
Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses,
I dare say? "
"Oh yes, sir. "
"Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse. "
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand. )
«< Girl number twenty unable to define a horse! " said Mr.
Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers.
"Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one
of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse.
Bitzer, yours. "
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly
on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of
sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the
intensely whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For the boys and
girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies,
divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at
the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the begin-
ning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row
on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But
whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired that she
seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous color from the sun
when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-
haired that the selfsame rays appeared to draw out of him what
little color he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have
been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing
them into immediate contrast with something paler than them-
selves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have
been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead
and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural
tinge, that he looked as though if he were cut he would bleed
white.
"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind.
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth; namely, twenty-
four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in
the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard,
but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known
mouth. " Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
by marks in
horse. "
"Your definition of a
## p. 4638 (#432) ###########################################
4638
CHARLES DICKENS
"Now, girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know
what a horse is. "
She courtesied again, and would have blushed deeper, if she
could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time.
Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both
eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends
of lashes that they looked like the antennæ of busy insects, put
his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at
cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way
(and in most other people's too), a professed pugilist; always in
training, always with a system to force down the general throat
like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little
Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic
phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch,
wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly cus-
tomer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with
his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore
his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and
fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out
of common-sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the
call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to
bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commis-
sioners should reign upon earth.
"Very well," said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and fold-
ing his arms. "That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls
and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of
horses ? »
After a pause one-half of the children cried in chorus, "Yes,
sir! " Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face
that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, "No, sir! "
custom is in these examinations.
as the
"Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?
trated, which we immediately did, rolling them down some steps.
He next sent for lime, of which there was abundance in the
place, and Indian masons, by whom under our direction a very
handsome altar was constructed, whereon we placed an image of
the Holy Virgin; and the carpenters having made a crucifix,
which was erected in a small chapel close to the altar, mass was
said by the Reverend Father Juan Diaz, and listened to by the
priests, chiefs, and the rest of the natives, with great attention.
·
## p. 4620 (#410) ###########################################
4620
CHARLES DIBDIN
(1745-1814)
TOG HE saying, "Let me make the songs of a nation and I care
not who makes its laws," receives an interesting illustration
in the sea songs of Charles Dibdin. They were written at
a momentous period in English history. The splendid gallantry and
skill of England's sailors, and the genius of her naval commanders,
had made her mistress of the seas, and the key of all combinations
against the French Cæsar. The sterling qualities of the British sea-
man are the inspiration of Dibdin's songs.
Many of these were first given at Dib-
din's monodramatic entertainments at the
Sans Souci Theatre in London, or as parts
of his musical dramas. They appealed at
once to Englishmen, and were sung by
every ship's crew; they fired the national
spirit, and played so important a part in
the quickening of English patriotism that
the government, recognizing their stirring
force in animating the naval enthusiasm
during the Napoleonic wars, granted a pen-
sion of £200 a year to the "Ocean Bard of
England. "
CHARLES DIBDIN
Charles Dibdin was born in 1745, in a
small village near the great seaport of Southampton. His love of
the salt air drew him often to the ocean's shores, where he saw the
ships of all lands pass and repass, and heard the merry sailors'
songs. And yet his own songs, upon which his title to a place in
literature rests, were incidental products of his active mind. He
was an actor, a dramatist, and a composer as well. He wrote some
thirty minor plays and the once popular operettas of The Shep-
herd's Artifice,' 'The Padlock,' The Quaker,' and 'The Waterman. '
He wrote also a 'History of the Stage,' 'Musical Tour through
England,' and an autobiography which bore the title 'Professional
Life,' His two novels are now forgotten, but it is interesting to
recall that for the Stratford Jubilee in honor of Shakespeare, the
words of which were by Garrick, Dibdin composed the much admired
songs, dances, and serenades. He wrote more than thirteen hundred
songs, most of which had of course only a brief existence; but there
## p. 4621 (#411) ###########################################
CHARLES DIBDIN
4621
were enough of them, burning with genuine lyric fire, to entitle him
to grateful remembrance among England's poets.
In all of these songs, whether the theme be his native land or the
wind-swept seas that close it round, love is the poet's real inspira-
tion; love of old England and her sovereign, love of the wealth-
bringing ocean, love of the good ship that sails its waves. This
fundamental affection for the things of which he sings has endeared
the songs of Dibdin to the heart of the British sailor; and in this
lies the proof of their genuineness. His songs are simple and me-
lodious; there is a manly ring in their word and rhythm; they have
the swagger and the fearlessness of the typical tar; they have, too,
the beat of his true heart, his kindly waggery, his sturdy fidelity to
his country and his king. There is nothing quite like them in any
other literature.
SEA SONG
SAILED in the good ship the Kitty,
I
With a smart blowing gale and rough sea;
Left my Polly, the lads call so pretty,
Safe at her anchor. Yo, Yea!
She blubbered salt tears when we parted,
And cried "Now be constant to me! "
I told her not to be down-hearted,
So up went the anchor. Yo, Yea!
And from that time, no worse nor no better,
I've thought on just nothing but she,
Nor could grog nor flip make me forget her,-
She's my best bower-anchor. Yo, Yea!
When the wind whistled larboard and starboard,
And the storm came on weather and lee,
The hope I with her should be harbored
Was my cable and anchor. Yo, Yea!
And yet, my boys, would you believe me?
I returned with no rhino from sea;
Mistress Polly would never receive me,
So again I heav'd anchor. Yo, Yea!
## p. 4622 (#412) ###########################################
4622
CHARLES DIBDIN
G
SONG: THE HEART OF A TAR
YET
ET though I've no fortune to offer,
I've something to put on a par;
Come, then, and accept of my proffer,-
'Tis the kind honest heart of a tar.
Ne'er let such a trifle as this is,
Girls, be to my pleasure a bar;
You'll be rich though 'tis only in kisses,
With the kind honest heart of a tar.
Besides, I am none of your ninnies;
The next time I come from afar,
I'll give you a lapful of guineas,
With the kind honest heart of a tar.
Your lords, with such fine baby faces,
That strut in a garter and star,
Have they, under their tambour and laces,
The kind honest heart of a tar?
POOR JACK
O PATTER to lubbers and swabs, do you see,
'Bout danger, and fear, and the like;
A tight-water boat and good sea-room give me,
And it ain't to a little I'll strike.
Though the tempest topgallant-mast smack smooth should
smite
And shiver each splinter of wood,
Clear the deck, stow the yards, and house everything tight,
And under reef foresail we'll scud:
Avast! nor don't think me a milksop so soft,
To be taken for trifles aback;
For they say there's a Providence sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!
I heard our good chaplain palaver one day
About souls, heaven, mercy, and such;
And, my timbers! what lingo he'd coil and belay;
Why, 'twas just all as one as High Dutch;
For he said how a sparrow can't founder, d'ye see,
Without orders that come down below;
## p. 4623 (#413) ###########################################
CHARLES DIBDIN
4623
And a many fine things that proved clearly to me oft
That Providence takes us in tow:
For, says he, do you mind me, let storms ne'er so oft
Take the topsails of sailors aback,
There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack!
I said to our Poll (for d'ye see, she would cry
When last we weighed anchor for sea),
What argufies sniveling and piping your eye?
Why, what a young fool you must be!
Can't you see the world's wide, and there's room for us all,
Both for seamen and lubbers ashore ?
And so if to old Davy I go, my dear Poll,
Why, you never will hear of me more.
What then? all's a hazard: come, don't be so soft;
Perhaps I may, laughing, come back;
For d'ye see? there's a cherub sits smiling aloft,
To keep watch for the life of poor Jack.
D'ye mind me? a sailor should be every inch
All as one as a piece of the ship,
And with her brave the world, without offering to flinch,
From the moment the anchor's a-trip.
As for me, in all weathers, all times, sides, and ends,
Naught's a trouble from duty that springs;
For my heart is my Poll's, and my rhino's my friend's,
And as for my life, 'tis the King's.
Even when my time comes, ne'er believe me so soft;
As for grief to be taken aback;
For the same little cherub that sits up aloft
Will look out a good berth for poor Jack.
TOM BOWLING
H
ERE, a sheer hulk, lies poor Tom Bowling,
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the tempest howling,
For Death has broached him to.
His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was kind and soft;
Faithful below he did his duty,
But now he's gone aloft.
## p. 4624 (#414) ###########################################
4624
CHARLES DIBDIN
Tom never from his word departed,
His virtues were so rare;
His friends were many and true-hearted,
His Poll was kind and fair:
And then he'd sing so blithe and jolly;
Ah, many's the time and oft!
But mirth is turned to melancholy,
For Tom is gone aloft.
Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
When He who all commands
Shall give, to call life's crew together,
The word to pipe all hands.
Thus Death, who kings and tars dispatches,
In vain Tom's life has doffed;
For though his body's under hatches,
His soul is gone aloft.
## p. 4624 (#415) ###########################################
## p. 4624 (#416) ###########################################
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## p. 4624 (#418) ###########################################
CHARLES DI ME NR.
## p. 4625 (#419) ###########################################
4625
CHARLES DICKENS
(1812-1870)
W
HEN a great genius arises he makes his place in the world
and explains himself. Criticism does not make him and
cannot unmake him. He may have great defects and great
faults. By exposing them and dwelling upon them, the critics may
apparently nibble him all away. When the critics get through, how-
ever, he remains pretty much the force he was originally. For real
genius is a sort of elemental force that enters the human world, both
for good and evil, and leaves its lasting impression. It is like a new
river, of waters sweet and bitter, clear and muddy, bearing on its
bosom ships and wrecks, the lovely and the ugly, the incongruous
elements of human life and human contrivance. When it floods and
overflows, the critics run away; when it subsides the critics come
back and begin to analyze it, and say, "It wasn't much of a shower. "
Charles Dickens is to be judged, like any other genius, by what
he created, what he brought into the world. We are not called on to
say whether he was as great as Homer, as Shakespeare, as Cer-
vantes, as Fielding, as Manzoni, as Thackeray. He was always quite
himself, and followed no model, though thousands of writers have
attempted to follow him and acquire the title of being Dickens-y.
For over half a century he had the ear of the English-reading public
the world over. It laughed with him, it cried with him, it hungered
after him. Whatever he wrote, it must read; whenever he read, it
crowded to hear his masterly interpretations; when he acted, it was
delighted with his histrionic cleverness. In all these manifestations
there was the attraction of a most winning personality.
He invented a new kind of irresistible humor, he told stories that
went to the heart of humanity, he amused, he warmed, he cheered
the world. We almost think that modern Christmas was his inven-
tion, such an apostle was he of kindliness and brotherly love, of
sympathy with the poor and the struggling, of charity which is not
condescension. He made pictures of low life, and perhaps unreal
shadows of high life, and vivid scenes that lighted up great periods
of history. For producing effects and holding the reader he was a
wizard with his pen. And so the world hung on him, read him and
re-read him, recited him, declaimed him, put him into reading-books,
diffused him in common speech and in all literature.
In all Eng-
lish literature his characters are familiar, stand for types, and need
no explanation. And now, having filled itself up with him, been
VIII-290
## p. 4626 (#420) ###########################################
4626
CHARLES DICKENS
saturated with him, made him in some ways as common as the air,
does the world tire of him, turn on him, say that it cannot read him
any more, that he is commonplace? If so, the world has made him
commonplace. But the publishers' and booksellers' accounts show
no diminution in his popularity with the new generation.
At a dinner where Dickens was discussed, a gentleman won dis-
tinction by this sole contribution to the conversation:-"There is no
evidence in Dickens's works that he ever read a book. " It is true
that Dickens drew most of his material from his own observation of
life, and from his fertile imagination, which was often fantastic. It
is true that he could not be called in the narrow sense a literary
writer, that he made no literary mosaic, and few allusions to the
literature of the world. Is it not probable that he had the art to
assimilate his material? For it is impossible that any writer could
pour out such a great flood about the world and human nature with-
out refreshing his own mind at the great fountains of literature.
And when we turn to such a tale as 'The Tale of Two Cities,' we
are conscious of the vast amount of reading and study he must have
done in order to give us such a true and vivid picture of the Revo-
lutionary period.
It has been said that Dickens did not write good English, that he
could not draw a lady or a gentleman, that he often makes ear-marks
and personal peculiarities stand for character, that he is sometimes
turgid when he would be impressive, sometimes stilted when he
would be fine, that his sentiment is often false and worked up, that
his attempts at tragedy are melodramatic, and that sometimes his
comedy comes near being farcical. His whole literary attitude has
been compared to his boyish fondness for striking apparel.
There is some truth in all these criticisms, though they do not
occur spontaneously to a fresh reader while he is under the spell of
Dickens, nor were they much brought forward when he was creating
a new school and setting a fashion for an admiring world. His
style, which is quite a part of this singular man, can easily be pulled
in pieces and condemned, and it is not a safe one to imitate. No
doubt he wrought for effects, for he was a magician, and used exag-
geration in high lights and low lights on his crowded canvas. Say
what you will of all these defects, of his lack of classic literary train-
ing, of his tendency to melodrama, of his tricks of style, even of a
ray of lime-light here and there, it remains that he is a great power,
a tremendous force in modern life; half an hour of him is worth a
lifetime of his self-conscious analyzers, and the world is a more
cheerful and sympathetic world because of the loving and lovable
presence in it of Charles Dickens.
A sketch of his life and writings, necessarily much condensed for
use here, has been furnished by Mr. Laurence Hutton.
## p. 4627 (#421) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4627
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DICKENS
BY LAURENCE HUTTON
C
HARLES DICKENS was born at Landport in Portsea, on the 7th of
February, 1812. His childhood was a very unhappy one. He
describes himself in one of his essays as "a very queer, small
boy," and his biographer tells us that he was very sickly as well as
very small.
He had little schooling, and numberless hard knocks,
and rough and toilsome was the first quarter of his journey through
life. Many of the passages in 'David Copperfield' are literally true
pictures of his own early experiences, and much of that work may
be accepted as autobiographical. He was fond of putting himself
and his own people into his books, and of drawing his scenes and
his characters from real life, sometimes only slightly disguised. Tra-
dition says that he built both Mr. Micawber and Mr. Turveydrop out
of his own father; that Mrs. Nickleby was based upon his own
mother; and that his wife, who was the Dora of 'Copperfield' in the
beginning of their married life, became in later years the Flora of
'Little Dorrit. ' The elder Dickens had unquestionably some of the
traits ascribed to the unpractical friend of Copperfield's youth, and
something of the cruel self-indulgence and pompous deportment of
the dancing-master in Bleak House. ' And it was during his father's
imprisonment for debt when the son was but a youth, that Dickens
got his intimate knowledge of the Marshalsea, and of the heart-
breaking existence of its inmates. Some years before 'Copperfield'
was written, he described in a fragment of actual autobiography,
quoted by Forster, the following scene:-
"My father was waiting for me in the lodge [of the Debtor's Prison]; and
we went up to his room, on the top story but one, and cried very much.
And he told me, I remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to
observe that if a man had twenty pounds a year, and spent nineteen pounds
nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent
the other way would make him wretched. "
In these chambers Dickens afterwards put Mr. Dorrit. And while
the father remained in confinement, the son lived for a time in a
back attic in Lant Street, Borough, which was to become the home
of the eccentric Robert Sawyer, and the scene of a famous supper
party given to do honor to Mr. Pickwick "and the other chaps. "
"If a man wishes to abstract himself from the world, to remove
himself from the reach of temptation, to place himself beyond the
possibility of any inducement to look out of the window, he should
by all means go to Lant Street. " Lant Street still exists, as Mr. Pick-
wick found it, and as Dickens knew it between 1822 and 1824. He
## p. 4628 (#422) ###########################################
4628
CHARLES DICKENS
had numerous lodgings, alone and with his family, during those hard
times; all of them of the same miserable, wretched character; and it
is interesting to know that the original of Mrs. Pipchin was his land-
lady in Camden Town, and that the original of the Marchioness
waited on the elder Dickens during his stay in the Marshalsea.
The story of the unhappy drudgery of the young Copperfield is
the story of the young Dickens without exaggeration.
"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
companionship," he wrote in 1845 or 1846,- «compared these every-day asso-
ciates with those of my happier childhood, and felt my early hopes of grow-
ing up to be a learned and distinguished man crushed in my breast. The
deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hope-
less; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young
heart to believe that, day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and
delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, was passing
away from me, never to be brought back any more, cannot be written. My
whole nature was so penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such con-
siderations, that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget,
in my dreams, that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man;
and I wander desolately back to that time of my life. "
In the course of a few years, happily, the cloud lifted; and in 1831,
when Dickens was a youth of nineteen, we find him beginning life as
a reporting journalist. He wrote occasional "pieces" for the maga-
zines, and some faint hope of growing up to be a distinguished and
learned man rose again, no doubt, in his breast. N. P. Willis met
him one day in 1835, when, as Willis expresses it, Dickens was a
"paragraphist" for the London Morning Chronicle. The "paragraph-
ist," according to Willis, was lodging in the most crowded part of
Holborn, in an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table,
two or three chairs, and a few books. It was up a long flight of
stairs, this room; and its occupant "was dressed very much as he has
since described Dick Swiveller-minus the swell look. His hair was
cropped close to his head, his clothes were scant, though jauntily cut;
and after exchanging a ragged office coat for a shabby blue, he stood
by the door collarless and buttoned up, the very personification, I
thought, of a close sailer to the wind.
Not long after this
Macrone sent me the sheets of 'Sketches by Boz,' with a note saying
they were by the gentleman [Dickens] who went with us to Newgate.
I read the book with amazement at the genius displayed in it; and
in my note of reply assured Macrone that I thought his fortune was
made, as a publisher, if he could monopolize the author. " This pic-
ture is very graphic. But it must be accepted with a grain of salt.
The Sketches by Boz, Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-
Day People,' Dickens's first printed book, appeared in 1835. A further
·
## p. 4629 (#423) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4629
series of papers, bearing the same title, was published the next year.
"Boz" was the nickname he had bestowed upon his younger brother
Augustus, in honor of the Moses of the Vicar of Wakefield. ' The
word, pronounced through the nose, became "Boses," afterwards
shortened to "Boz," which, said Dickens, "was a very familiar house-
hold word to me long before I was an author. And so I came to
adopt it. " The sketches, the character of which is explained in their
sub-title, were regarded as unusually clever things of their kind.
They attracted at once great attention in England, and established
the fact that a new star had risen in the firmament of British letters.
Dickens was married on the 2d of April, 1836, to Miss Catherine
Hogarth, just a week after he had published the first shilling number
of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club: Edited by Boz. '
The work appeared in book form the next year. Its success was phe-
nomenal, and it brought to its author not only fame but a fixed sum
per annum, which is better. It assured his comfort in the present and
in the future, and it wiped out all the care and troubles of his past.
It was in itself the result of an accident. Messrs. Chapman and Hall,
attracted by the popularity of the Sketches, proposed to their author
a series of monthly articles to illustrate certain pictures of a comic
character by Robert Seymour, an artist in their employment. Dickens
assented, upon the condition that "the plates were to be so modified
that they would arise naturally out of the text. " And so between
them Mr. Pickwick was born, although under the saddest of circum-
stances; for only a single number had appeared when Seymour died
by his own hand. Hablot K. Browne succeeded him, signing the name
of "Phiz"; and with "Boz" was "Phiz" long associated in other
prosperous ventures. Mr. Pickwick is a benevolent, tender-hearted
elderly gentleman, who, as the president of a club organized "for the
purpose of investigating the source of the Hampstead ponds," jour-
neys about England in all directions with three companions, to whom
he acts as guide, philosopher, and friend. He is an amiable old
goose, and his companions are equally verdant and unsophisticated;
but since 1837 they have been as famous as any men in fiction. The
story is a long one, the pages are crowded with incidents and with
characters. It is disconnected, often exaggerated, much of it is as
improbable as it is impossible, but it has made the world laugh for
sixty years now; and it still holds its own unique place in the hearts
of men.
From this period the pen of Dickens was never idle for forty-three
years.
'Pickwick' was succeeded by 'Oliver Twist,' begun in Bent-
ley's Magazine in January, 1837, and printed in book form in 1838.
It is the story of the progress of a parish boy, and it is sad and
serious in its character. The hero was born and brought up in a
## p. 4630 (#424) ###########################################
4630
CHARLES DICKENS
workhouse. He was starved and ill-treated; but he always retained
his innocence and his purity of mind. He fell among thieves,- Bill
and Nancy Sykes, Fagin and the Artful Dodger, to whom much pow-
erful description is devoted, but he triumphed in the end. The life
of the very poor and of the very degraded among the people of Eng-
land during the latter end of the first half of the nineteenth century
is admirably portrayed; and for the first time in their existence the
British blackguards of both sexes were exhibited in fiction, clad in
all their instincts of low brutality, and without that glamour of
attractive romance which the earlier writers had given to Jack Shep-
pard, to Jonathan Wild, or to Moll Flanders.
Two dramatic compositions by Dickens, neither of them adding
very much to his reputation, appeared in 1836, to wit:-'The Stran-
ger Gentleman, A Comic Burletta in Three Acts'; and 'The Village
Coquette,' a comic opera in two acts. They were presented upon
the stage towards the close of that year, with fair success.
In 1838 Dickens edited the Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, a cele-
brated clown. His share in the composition of this work was com-
paratively small, and consisted of a Preface, dated February of that
year. It was followed by 'Sketches of Young Gentlemen,' and by
'The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby,' both published in
1839. To this latter he signed his name, Charles Dickens, dropping
from that period the pseudonym of "Boz. " The titular hero is the
son of a poor country gentleman. He makes his own way in the
world as the usher of a Yorkshire school, as an actor in a traveling
troupe, and as the clerk and finally the partner in a prosperous
mercantile house in London. Smike, his pupil; Crummles, his theat-
rical manager; Ninetta Crummles, the Infant Phenomenon of the
company, Newman Noggs, the clerk of his uncle Ralph Nickleby,
the Cheeryble Brothers, his employers, are among the most success-
ful and charming of Dickens's earlier creations. "Mr. Squeers and
his school," he says, << were faint and feeble pictures of an existing
reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they should be deemed
impossible. " That such establishments ceased to exist in reality in
England after the appearance of 'Nickleby,' is proof enough of the
good his pictures did in this and in many other ways.
In 1840-1841 appeared 'Master Humphrey's Clock,' comprising the
two stories of The Old Curiosity Shop' and 'Barnaby Rudge,' which
were subsequently printed separately. The story of Little Nell, the
gentle, lovable inmate of the Curiosity Shop, is one of the most sad
and tender tales in fiction, and Dickens himself confessed that he
was almost heart-broken when she died. Her path was crossed by
Quilp, a cunning and malicious dwarf of hideous appearance, who
consumed hard-boiled eggs, shells and all, for his breakfast; ate his
## p. 4631 (#425) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4631
prawns with their heads and their tails on, drank scalding hot tea,
and performed so many horrifying acts that one almost doubted that
he was human; and by Christopher Nubbles, a shock-headed, sham-
bling, awkward, devoted lad, the only element of cheerfulness that
ever came into her life. In this book appear Richard Swiveller and
his Marchioness, Sampson and Sarah Brass and Mrs. Jarley, who to
be appreciated must be seen and known, as Dickens has drawn them,
at full length.
Barnaby Rudge was a half-witted lad, who, not knowing what he
did, joined the Gordon rioters-the scenes are laid in the "No
Popery» times of 1779-because he was permitted to carry a flag
and to wear a blue ribbon. The history of that exciting period of
English semi-political, semi-religious excitement is graphically set
down. Prominent figures in the book are Grip the raven, whose cry
was "I'm a devil," "Never say die"; and Miss Dolly Varden, the
blooming daughter of the Clerkenwell locksmith, who has given her
name to the modern feminine costume of the Watteauesque style.
The literary results of Dickens's first visit to the United States, in
1842, when he was thirty years of age, were 'American Notes, for
General Circulation'; published in that year, and containing portions
of 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' which appeared in 1844. His observations in
the 'Notes' upon the new country and its inhabitants gave great
offense to the American people, and were perhaps not in the best
taste. He saw the crude and ridiculous side of his hosts, he empha-
sized their faults, while he paid little attention to their virtues; and
his criticisms and strictures rankled in the sensitive American mind
for many years.
Martin Chuzzlewit, the hero of the novel bearing his name, spent
some time in the western half-settled portion of America, with Mark
Tapley, his light-hearted, optimistic friend and companion. The pic-
tures of the morals and the manners of the men and women with
whom the emigrants were brought into contact were anything but
flattering, and they served to widen the temporary breach between
Dickens and his many admirers in the United States. The English
scenes of 'Chuzzlewit' are very powerfully drawn. Tom and Ruth
Pinch, Pecksniff, Sarah Gamp, and Betsey Prig are among the lead-
ing characters in the work.
In 1843 appeared the 'Christmas Carol,' the first and perhaps the
best of that series of tales of peace and good-will, with which, at
the Christmas time, the name of Dickens is so pleasantly and famil-
iarly associated. It was followed by The Chimes' in 1844, by The
Cricket on the Hearth' in 1845, by The Haunted Man' in 1848, all
the work of Dickens himself; and by other productions written by
Dickens in collaboration with other men. Concerning these holiday
## p. 4632 (#426) ###########################################
4632
CHARLES DICKENS
stories, some unknown writer said in the public press at the time of
Dickens's death:-"He has not only pleased us— - he has softened the
hearts of a whole generation. He made charity fashionable; he
awakened pity in the hearts of sixty millions of people. He made a
whole generation keep Christmas with acts of helpfulness to the
poor; and every barefooted boy and girl in the streets of England
and America to-day fares a little better, gets fewer cuffs and more
pudding, because Charles Dickens wrote. "
In 1846 he produced his 'Pictures from Italy'; 'The Battle of Life,
A Love Story,' and began in periodical form his 'Dealings with the
Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation,'
published in book form in 1847. Here we have the pathetic story of
Little Paul, the tragic fate of Carker, the amusing episode of Jack
Bunsby with his designing widow, and the devotion of Susan Nipper,
Mr. Toots, Captain Cuttle, and Sol Gills to the gentle, patient, lov-
able Florence.
On the 'Personal History of David Copperfield,' published in 1850,
and of Dickens's share in its plot, something has already been said
here. It is perhaps the most popular of all his productions, con-
taining as it does Mr. Dick, the Peggottys, the Micawbers, the Heeps,
Betsey Trotwood, Steerforth, Tommy Traddles, Dora, Agnes, and
Little Em'ly, in all of whom the world has been so deeply interested
for so many years.
'A Child's History of England' and 'Bleak House' saw the light
in 1853. The romance was written as a protest and a warning
against the law's delays, as exhibited in the Court of Chancery; and
it contains the tragedy of Sir Leicester and Lady Dedlock, and the
short but touching story of Poor Jo.
'Hard Times,' a tale in one volume, was printed in 1854. It
introduces the Gradgrind family.
'Little Dorrit' appeared in 1857. In this book he returns to the
Debtor's Prison of Micawber and of his own father. Little Dorrit
herself was "the child of the Marshalsea," in which she was born
and brought up; and the whole story is an appeal against the injus-
tice of depriving of personal liberty those who cannot pay their
bills, or meet their notes, however small. Its prominent characters
are the Clennams, mother and son, the Meagleses, Flintwinch, Sir
Decimus Tite Barnacle, Rigaud and Little Cavalletto.
'A Tale of Two Cities,' a remarkable departure for Dickens, and
unlike any of his other works, was the book of the year 1859. It is
conceded, even by those who are not counted among the admirers of
its author, to be a most vivid and correct picture of Paris during the
time of the Revolution, when the guillotine was the king of France.
Its central figure, Sydney Carton, one of the most heroic characters
## p. 4633 (#427) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4633
in romance, gives his life to restore his friend to the girl whom they
both love.
< The Uncommercial Traveller,' a number of sketches and stories
originally published in his weekly journal All the Year Round, ap-
peared in 1860. They were supplemented in 1868 by another volume
bearing the same title, and containing eleven other papers collected
from the same periodical.
'Great Expectations,' 1861, like 'Copperfield,' is the story of a boy's
childhood told by the boy himself, but by a boy with feelings, sen-
timents, and experiences very different from those of the earlier
work. The plot is not altogether a cheerful one, but many of the
characters are original and charming; notably Joe Gargery, Jaggles,
Wemmick, the exceedingly eccentric Miss Havisham, and the very
amiable and simple Biddy.
'Somebody's Luggage,' 1862; 'Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings,' 1863;
'Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy,' 1864; Dr. Marigold's Prescription,' 1865;
'Mugby Junction,' 1866; and 'No Thoroughfare,' 1867,- Christmas
stories, all of them,- were written by Dickens in collaboration with
other writers.
'Our Mutual Friend,' the last completed work of Dickens, was
printed in 1865. Mr. Boffin, the Golden Dustman with the great
heart, Silas Wegg, Mr. Venus, the Riderhoods, Jenny Wren, the
Podsnaps, the Veneerings, Betty Higden, Mrs. Wilfer, and the "Boo-
fer Lady," are as fresh and as original as are any of his creations,
and show no trace of the coming disaster.
Before the completion of 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood' Dickens
died at his home, Gadshill Place, literally in harness, and without
warning, on the 9th of June, 1870.
But six numbers of this last work appeared, in periodical form. .
Its author left no notes of what was to follow, and the Mystery has
never been solved. Mr. Charles Collins, Dickens's son-in-law, however,
in a private letter to Mr. Augustin Daly of New York, who had pro-
posed to dramatize the tale, gave some general outline of the scheme
for Edwin Drood. ' "The titular character," he said, «< was never to
reappear, he having been murdered by Jasper. The girl Rosa, not
having been really attached to Edwin, was not to lament his loss
very long, and was, I believe, to admit the sailor, Mr. Tartar, to
supply his place. It was intended that Jasper should urge on the
search after Edwin, and the pursuit of the murderer, thus endeavor-
ing to divert suspicion from himself, the real murderer.
As to any-
thing further, it would be purely conjectural. "
Besides this immense amount of admirable work, Dickens founded,
conducted, and edited two successful periodicals, Household Words,
established in March 1850, and followed by All the Year Round,.
## p. 4634 (#428) ###########################################
4634
CHARLES DICKENS
beginning in April 1859. To these he contributed many sketches and
stories. He began public readings in London in 1858; and con-
tinued them with great profit to himself, and with great satisfaction
to immense audiences, for upwards of twelve years. He appeared in
all the leading cities of Great Britain; and he was enormously popu-
lar as a reader in America during his second and last visit in 1868.
As an after-dinner and occasional speaker Dickens was rarely
equaled; and as an actor upon the amateur stage, in plays of his
own composition, he was inimitable.
Of his attempts at verse, 'The Ivy Green' is the only one that
is held in remembrance.
A strong argument in favor of what may be called "the staying
qualities of Dickens is the fact that his characters, even in a muti-
lated, unsatisfactory form, have held the stage for half a century or
more, and still have power to attract and move great audiences,
wherever is spoken the language in which he wrote. The dramatiza-
tion of the novel is universally and justly regarded as the most
ephemeral and worthless of dramatic production; and the novels of
Dickens, on account of their length, of the great number of figures
he introduces, of the variety and occasional exaggeration of his dia-
logues and his situations, have been peculiarly difficult of adaptation
to theatrical purposes. Nevertheless the world laughed and cried
over Micawber, Captain Cuttle, Dan'l Peggotty, and Caleb Plummer,
behind the footlights, years after Dolly Spanker, Aminadab Sleek,
Timothy Toodles, Alfred Evelyn, and Geoffrey Dalk, their contempo-
raries in the standard and legitimate drama, created solely and par-
ticularly for dramatic representation, were absolutely forgotten. And
Sir Henry Irving, sixty years after the production of 'Pickwick,' drew
great crowds to see his Alfred Jingle, while that picturesque and
ingenious swindler Robert Macaire, Jingle's once famous and familiar
confrère in plausible rascality, was never seen on the boards, except
as he was burlesqued and caricatured in comic opera.
It is pretty safe to say-and not in a Pickwickian sense that
Pecksniff will live almost as long as hypocrisy lasts; that Heep will
not be forgotten while mock humility exists; that Mr. Dick will go
down to posterity arm-in-arm with Charles the First, whom he could
not avoid in his memorial; that Barkis will be quoted until men cease
to be willin'. And so long as cheap, rough coats cover faith, charity,
and honest hearts, the world will remember that Captain Cuttle and
the Peggottys were so clad.
Раш
Hilto
m
-
## p. 4635 (#429) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4635
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
From Hard Times'
"Now
ow what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls
nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant
nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only
form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else
will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on
which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on
which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! "
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-
room, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observa-
tions by underscoring every sentence with a line on the school-
master's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's
square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base,
while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves,
overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the
speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The em-
phasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible,
dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's
hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of
firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with
knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely
warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's
obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,-
nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with
an unaccommodating grasp like a stubborn fact, as it was,-all
helped the emphasis.
"In this life we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but
Facts! "
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown per-
son present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the in-
clined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order,
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until
they were full to the brim.
THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts
and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that
two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be
talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir,
## p. 4636 (#430) ###########################################
4636
CHARLES DICKENS
- peremptorily Thomas,-Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and
a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket,
sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature,
and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of
figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get
some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind,
or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind
(all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of
Thomas Gradgrind-no, sir!
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced him-
self, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the pub-
lic in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words
"boys and girls," for "sir," Thomas Gradgrind now presented
Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to
be filled so full of facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage
before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the
muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the
regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing
apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for
the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
"Girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing
with his square forefinger; "I don't know that girl. Who is that
girl? "
"Sissy Jupe, sir," explained number twenty, blushing, stand-
ing up, and courtesying.
"Sissy is not a name," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Don't call
yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia. "
"It's father as calls me Sissy, sir," returned the young girl
in a trembling voice, and with another courtesy.
"Then he has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind.
"Tell him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is
your father? »
"He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir. "
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable call-
ing with his hand.
"We don't want to know anything about that here. You
mustn't tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses,
don't he? "
"If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do
break horses in the ring, sir. "
## p. 4637 (#431) ###########################################
CHARLES DICKENS
4637
"You mustn't tell us about the ring here. Very well, then.
Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses,
I dare say? "
"Oh yes, sir. "
"Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse. "
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand. )
«< Girl number twenty unable to define a horse! " said Mr.
Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers.
"Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one
of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse.
Bitzer, yours. "
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly
on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of
sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the
intensely whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For the boys and
girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies,
divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at
the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the begin-
ning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row
on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But
whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired that she
seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous color from the sun
when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-
haired that the selfsame rays appeared to draw out of him what
little color he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have
been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing
them into immediate contrast with something paler than them-
selves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have
been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead
and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural
tinge, that he looked as though if he were cut he would bleed
white.
"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind.
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth; namely, twenty-
four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in
the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard,
but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known
mouth. " Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
by marks in
horse. "
"Your definition of a
## p. 4638 (#432) ###########################################
4638
CHARLES DICKENS
"Now, girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, "you know
what a horse is. "
She courtesied again, and would have blushed deeper, if she
could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time.
Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both
eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends
of lashes that they looked like the antennæ of busy insects, put
his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at
cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way
(and in most other people's too), a professed pugilist; always in
training, always with a system to force down the general throat
like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little
Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic
phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch,
wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly cus-
tomer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with
his right, follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore
his opponent (he always fought All England) to the ropes, and
fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out
of common-sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the
call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to
bring about the great public-office Millennium, when Commis-
sioners should reign upon earth.
"Very well," said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and fold-
ing his arms. "That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls
and boys, Would you paper a room with representations of
horses ? »
After a pause one-half of the children cried in chorus, "Yes,
sir! " Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face
that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, "No, sir! "
custom is in these examinations.
as the
"Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?
