CHARLES DICKENS AS A READER.* THAT Dickens's career as a
reader was eiceptional in the life of an author does not seem to us a sufficient reason for publishing a separate account of that career. Because a thing is exceptional it does not follow that it is curious or valuable, nor can the fact
* Charles Dickens as a Reader. By Charles Bent. London : Chipman and Hall. that Mr. Kent bad always proposed to write this record, and that Dickens approved of the intention, make it either the one or the other ; and for the rest, Dickens's readings, as far as their immense popularity and financial success went, are facts suffi- ciently registered, we think, in his life. Mr. Kent's book is rather the loving dalliance with a favourite theme for the author's own pleasure than an essential or important supplement to Mr. Forster's "Life." Were it possible for any looker-on, however anxious an admirer and keen an observer, to fix for us in his word-pictures the attitude, voice, and expression of such a reader as Mr. Dickens --as character after character was personated by him—we might, indeed, add largely to our knowledge of histrionic art ; but nothing is so utterly unsatisfactory as the very slight, distant, and meagre approach which the best description affords to the living expression conveyed by the movements of the muscles and the inflections of the voice of a great actor directly to the heart and mind of the spectator. A book, the vast portion of which is occupied with this kind and loving, but perfectly vain attempt, is to us tantalis- ing at the best, if not distressing, and it is of necessity so slight and sketchy, so vague and desultory, that it is only to those who saw for themselves, that it can yield even the recollections of pleasure which the word " tantalising" conveys. It is sometimes quite touching, though tedious, to follow Mr. Kent's fond repetition of praises, triumphs, and successes ; of accounts of tears flowing, and smiles " rippling," and laughter echoing ; of the crowds that came, "attracted by the glamour of his name," and the crowds that went away because there was no room for them ; of the hundreds of pounds that were netted—" the money value of the house that night was £422 "—of the generosity with which so much of it was distributed ; of the love and admiration he won, and the salvers and goblets that were presented to him ; of the vast number of readings he gave, and how Thackeray, and Jeffrey, and Cockburn, and O'Connell, and many others had been moved, and wept, and written their admiration, and delight, and thanks, and gratitude to Mr. Kent's great hero ; of how the secret of his success was not his talent only, but unremitting study, and thought, and careful reconsideration of details. Of this doing thoroughly whatever he took in hand, we hear over and over again in almost the same words ; as we do also of the'unflactuating nature of his popularity, which " lasted with- out fading or faltering during thirty-four years altogether." Not content with all this, Mr. Kent calls Dickens a Proteus, and goes back thousands of years to compare him with Herodotus- the silliest of all possible comparisons—and to more modern times, to measure him with Henderson, and Betterton, and Garrick, and Kean, and Kemble. " Hence," says Mr. Kent, "as an amateur actor, he was simply unapproachable. He passed, in fact, beyond the range of mere amateurs, and was brought into contrast by right with the most gifted professionals among his contemporaries." This is gross overstatement. Mr. Dickens's comic readings were wonderful. His pathos was thoroughly melodramatic, and never satisfied the higher tastes, never ap- proached, for instance, the grotesque pathos of Robson, or the soft artistic pathos of Jefferson. Mr. Kent, however, says nothing fulsome; there is not a trace of the flatterer in his writing—it is the simple, unmitigated hero-worship of a blindly-loving, enthusiastic disciple, from beginning to end—from the comparison with Herodotus, through the 500 readings and the marginal notes prepared by Dickens for his own guidance, down to his farewell of the public, and the hiss of his hand, and the Parting " for evermore."
Mr. Kent overrates very much, we think, the speciality of the power which Mr. Dickens possessed of touching the feelings of his readers and his audience so deeply as to draw tears. Any one who has read-much either in private or public, or who has fre- quented theatres, will know bow easily a leave-taking, or'a death, or even an unexpected meeting, when described at all naturally and nicely by only an average writer, and interpreted by an average actor or reader, will send the handkerchief to the eye, and if the reader be unprepared, will even peremptorily suspend the reading. But it is more to the point, and it is, we think, the most interesting feature in Mr. Kent's book, that he believes himself firmly in the reality and depth of Mr. Dickens's own emotions, and sentiments of pity, and sorrow, and love, both as ex- pressed in his stories and as rekindled when his own voice re-aroused the memory of them. For ourselves, while enjoying to the fall the riches of his humour, we have no question at all but that his pathos and religious and poetic sentiment, however sincere they may have been in him, were of a rather poor and gushing and melo- dramatic type. There was a marked want of refinement, delicacy, and reserve about his manipulation of the higher sentiments. It is not new to us to hear that Dickens was not a nervous man, but, on the contrary, remarkably self-possessed, but the following anecdote illustrates this quality forcibly and amusingly, on the principle that the exception proves the rule :— " As corroborative of which remark, the present writer recalls to re- collection very clearly the fact of Dickens saying to him one day,—say- ing it with a most whimsical air, by-the-bye, but very earnestly,—'
and but once only in my life, I was—frightened!' The occasion he referred to was simply this, as he immediately went on to explain, that somewhere about the middle of the serial publication of David Coppet•- fteld, happening to be out of writing-paper, he sallied forth one morning. to get a fresh supply at the stationer's. He was living then in his favourite haunt, at Fort House, in Broadstairs. As he was about to enter the stationer's shop, with the intention of buying the needful writing.- paper, for the purpose of returning home with it, and at once setting to- work upon his next number, not one word of which was yet written, ha stood aside for a moment at the threshold to allow a lady to pass in before him. He then went on to relate—with a vivid sense still upon him of mingled enjoyment and dismay in the mere recollection—how the next instant he had overheard this strange lady ask the person behind the counter for the new green number. When it was handed to her, Oh! this,' said she, 'I have read. I want the next one.' The next one she was thereupon told would be out by the end of the month. 'Listening to this, unrecognised,' he added,.in conclusion, ' knowing the purpose for which I was there, and remembering that not one word of the number she was asking for was yet written, for the first and only time in my life, I felt—frightened !' "
Mr. Kent's style is not easy—it has a stiff, old-fashioned smack about it, as belonging to one whose principal studies are of the old writers ; here is a sample :—" Voice, eyes, bearing, gesture,. countenance, each in turn, all of them together, are to the spoken- words, or rather than that, it should be said, to the thoughts and emotions of which those articulate sources are but the winged symbols, as to the barbed and feathered arrows are the bowstring."' But to those who love the statistical gossip about Mr. Dickens's read- ings, and still more to those who attended those readings and who• will live over again many a delightful hour, and have many an inimitable look and word and gesture vividly recalled, we can cordially recommend these honest, enthusiastic, and unquestionably over-zealous pages.
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