THE SOUL OF DICKENS.*
Ma. Caorcii's book is essentially one for the ardent Dickens-lover. To any one less than an enthusiast the almost reverent admiration which breathes through it will, wo imagine, be a little irritating. To such enthusiasts, however, and they aro a multitude, it should prove very welcome. There is nothing more delightful to the admirers of any writer than to exchange opinions as to his work, to examine his characteristics, and to discover wherein lies his special power. But while they may be agreed as to the main principle of admiration, there remain numberless points of detail to engage the attention and delight the mind of the devotee, be the object of his devotion Dickens or Meredith, Walter Scott or Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare or Browning, and at some period of the• discussion there will be sure to arise the enjoyable necessity of taking down this or that volume and proving a disputed point by quotation.
It is therefore a delightful enterprise to which Mr. Crotch invites us— that of examining the aims and ideals of Dickens, to discover the spirit that inspired him, and if possible to define what was the essence, t lie soul, of the master. It is only natural that in the course of such an examination he should make many controversial statements, and the one that will perhaps be the most startling to orthodox Dickensian, is his conception of Dickens as first and foremost a realist. It has become a habit with many latter-day critics to regard him, quite wrongly we think, as merely a sentimentalist, and even the Dickens-lover, though repudiating this description, will at first sight be inclined to resent the label of realist. But Mr. Crotch's • 21e Soul of Dickens. Dy W. Walter Crotch. London : Chapman and Hall. 16e. bet-1 interpretation of realism has little connexionwith the modern misuse of the word, by which it has come to signify merely the reverse of idealism :- " The truth is that most people, when they think of realism, think of it in the terms of Mr. Gradgrind's Hard Fact ' school, and even then they think of it loosely and inaccurately. For the whimsical, the irrational, the irresponsible and poetic parts of man are as much facts as the serious, solid and sombre qualities which draw their strength from them. Wemmick is as real in his castle at Walworth as in Jaggers's office, and who would say that Daggers would have been better served had that castle never existed and had Wemmick gone home to read law reports or, like his master, to dine in solitary state with a murderess to wait on him ? "
" The abounding optimism and quenchless joie de nitre that mark the great romantic writers," he goes on, which were abundant in Dickens, had " their fount and inspiration in his preternaturally keen sense of the immanent actuality of things : a sense that never left him in his wildest flights nor caused him to lose his grip upon life." In this use of tho word "realism " we are entirely in agreement with Mr. Crotch's definition of Dickens as a realist. In spito of extravagance, caricature, and overemphasis, it is impossible not to feel the reality of the people he created. Their peculiarities
become amusing or irritating idiosyncrasies, as the case may be, of living personalities, and aro never mere arbitrary mannerisms, invented by the author. This reality is proved by the fact, so often insisted upon, that his people have stepped out from between their covers and become for us figures of history.
Mr. Crotch conceives Dickens further as the Great Englishman :-
" The English people found themselves described and portrayed by one after their own heart. ` I have shown my soul to the peflple,' says a neglected poet in one of Mr. Crosland's clever Literary Parables, ' and they were not interested. What shall I do ? ' And the wise mentor answers : Show them their own I ' That Dickens did in Pickwick. The English people had at last an interpreter, a man, whose outlook on life was theirs, who worshipped with them at the very shrines of their idolatry, whose pulse quickened with theirs, and whose sorrows partook of their own ; a man, who loved the wholesome carelessness of jocund strength, who delighted in the same irresponsibility that finds its vent in badinage and quips, who enjoyed an exhilarating walk through the English country, with a carouse. at an inn to bring the day to a close ; a man who revelled in good cheer, good feeling and good fellowship and had an eye for the strange unaccountable paradoxes that go to make up the life of that strange race which he instinctively understood ; a man who expressed,' as a great Dickensian has told us, ` with an energy and brilliance quite uncommon the things close to the common mind.' ` In everybody,' says Mr. G. K. Chesterton, ' there is a certain thing that loves babies, that fears death, that likes sunlight ; that thing enjoys Dickens.' " Many people, no doubt, might be found to challenge this statement, and to maintain that though Dickens might have interpreted the Englishman of his own ago, it is not true of the nation to-day. We do not agree. We believe that Dickens is still true to type, and that, as Mr. Crotch claims, this has been very largely proved by the Great War. Dick Swiveller is in the trenches, quoting bad poetry at the Hun ; Nicholas Nickleby is a 2nd Lieutenant in a London regiment ; Traddles has never got and never will get beyond a lance- corporal and spends quantities of pocket-money on postcards for " the dearest girl in all the world " ; Tom Pinch is in the R.A.M.C. and Ruth is a V.A.D. nurse ; Silas Wegg is an incurable pessimist ; and Horace Skimpole borrows money on the strength of war articles in the magazines.
It is to be regretted that in writing of Dickens as reformer as well as artist Mr. Crotch has been inveigled into the perennial con- troversy of Art versus Morals. It is no doubt true that the " burning zeal of the propagandist., obsessed with a consuming com- passion for outraged humanity," helped to make Dickens such a living force as he was in his own age, but that it wholly made him we do not agree. And most certainly do wo disagree with Mr. Crotch's claim that it is this quality which keeps Dickens a living force to-day. " Men read him, and they read him yet, not merely to laugh and cry . . . but because they are moved furiously to think." We venture to say that the great majority of people road Dickens to-day " merely to laugh and cry " and have little thought for the problems he touched upon. Respect and admiration we must all have for the man who so courageously attacked corruption, ineptitude, and hypocrisy, but we think it is truer to say that his books live to-day not because of the propaganda in them but in spite of it. What we are interested in are not so much tho reforms inaugurated or advo- cated by him as the people through whom he advocated or developed them. In Little Dorrit, for example, our interest is much more with the conversational powers of Flora and the terrifying directness of Mr. F's Aunt than with the miseries of Fleet Street prisoners. It is Mr. and Mrs. Kenwigs and the Miss ICenwigs, Newman Nogga and the Crummles family, in whom we are absorbed, and not the iniquities of the Squeers boarding-school for little boys. Our interest is much more lively in the chronicles of Mrs. Todgers's boarding establishment or Mrs. Gamp and her relation with Mrs. Harris than in bogus American land speculations. Mr. Crotch's obsession by Dickens the moralist leads him to mako one amazing statement which will, we imagine, cause a delightful wrangle among a circle of Dickensian- " The most amusing chapter of Pickwick," he says,- " is when _
[Dickens] deliberately exposes the follies of the law in the memorable Trial Scene that has moved all the world to mirth." But it is surely a debatable point that this is " the most amusing chapter." There would no doubt be many readers to give the preference to many other chapters—the wedding party at Dingley Dell, the elopement and the pursuit of the Spinster Aunt and Mr. Jingle, and the discovery of the immortal Sam. But if the Trial Scene cannot be proved to be " the most amusing chapter " Mr. Crotch's argument fails. He is also on very dangerous ground when ho says that, however inartistic the introduction of propaganda into fiction may be in theory, " in practice at any rate it gave Dickens his greatest successes." It is astonishing to us that any serious student of the great novelist can be led into such statements. Is David Copperfield less a success than Oliver Twist ?
As we said at the beginning, Mr. Crotch invites us to a fascinating study. He has not been able to say the final word as to what was the essential Dickens, nor can any one hope to do so. His abounding vitality, his irresistible humour, his sympathy, his amazing creative- ness, his power of description, defy any attempt to express him in a phrase, but the impossibility of the task detracts in no whit from the attractiveness of the attempt.
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