Charles Dickens

by Jane Smiley

  But Dickens’s larger ambition for Martin Chuzzlewit is evident, too, in its failures. In his eagerness to press his point, he belabors it, and the first chapters of the novel are tedious and wordy. This tendency to expand upon each idea until it is driven into the ground is a feature of Martin Chuzzlewit more than of earlier or later novels, evidence that Dickens doesn’t trust his readers to understand the larger theme of which he is enamored, and it gives the novel a tiresome quality. Critics who are impatient with Dickens’s abundance and see it simply as surfeit have ammunition in Martin Chuzzlewit.

  In fact, Dickens is attempting a bildungsroman unlike anything he has done before—his theme is the moral education of young Martin, whose origins in the selfish bosom of the Chuzzlewit family compromise his innocence in a way that Oliver’s, Nicholas’s, and Nell’s have not been. The question of the narrative is whether or not Martin will go the same way as Jonas, his cousin, who is so much cast in the family mold that “he had gradually come to look, with impatience, on his parent as a certain amount of personal estate, which had no right whatever to be going at large, but ought to be secured in that particular description of iron safe which is commonly called a coffin, and banked in the grave.” Martin’s tale has no inherent structure, unlike Nicholas’s tale, which takes its structure from the popular melodrama, or Oliver’s tale, which takes its structure from orphan narratives. Nor is Martin himself of particular interest as a character; he is overshadowed by the changelessly grotesque comic figures like Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp, in whose variations upon the theme of selfishness and solipsism the author finds more of interest.

  In volume form, Martin Chuzzlewit, which was dedicated to Angela Burdett-Coutts, did sell well enough. Dickens himself was enthusiastic about it, no doubt for the same reason that he was enthusiastic about The Old Curiosity Shop—it satisfactorily expressed his state of mind while he was writing it. He was, in fact, coming up with a unified social vision, something that marks the maturation of every serious novelist, since the novel is first and foremost about how individuals fit, or don’t fit, into their social worlds. That this novelist, just thirty, hadn’t quite refined his ideas, that he belabored some of them, that some of them were unsophisticated and harsh, should come as no surprise. Equally, that he fell back upon his natural gifts of language, invention, and character drawing to get himself through, while failing at story construction, something he always had to work hard at, comes as no surprise, either. That his social, as opposed to what might be called his “interpersonal,” vision would be dark surely had its source in the inequities, suffering, and indifference he saw around him. While by Dickens’s time the novel had not yet become the dominant European literary form, it had been around long enough to explore one broad theme—the discovery of the World—and to begin upon the second: the exploration of domestic life. Dickens’s own favorite novels, Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (Dickens named his eighth child and sixth son Henry Fielding Dickens), Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Roderick Random, and Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which Dickens loved as a child, all followed their heroes on adventures of discovery. What the heroes discovered was not as important, historically, as the conviction that there was something to discover, that whatever it was would be interesting, illuminating, or enriching in some way. This mimics the European adventure of discovering and colonizing the New World. The adventure winds up bitterly, in the hands of Voltaire, when Candide returns, resolved henceforth to cultivate his own garden. The assumption of adventure literature is that domestic life is by nature already known, worth hardly a backward glance. In addition, the domesticated Cunegonde, originally Candide’s romantic inspiration, ends up as a drudge and a disappointment, hardly worth depicting.

  By Dickens’s time, in many ways as a result of Sir Walter Scott’s interest not only in the hero and his adventure, but also in the social and domestic circumstances of the hero’s world, domestic life becomes as interesting as the adventure; in Dickens’s work, domestic life becomes the goal of the journey, the prospective haven from the alienation and cruelty of homelessness. Dickens’s heroes and heroines take many journeys, but only the travels of the Pickwick Club are embarked upon willingly. Most often, the protagonist is ejected from his original home and forced out upon a quest to make another. Dickens’s social vision is formed by the recognition that in the world around him there are few bonds of social responsibility or generous humanity linking class to class or individual to individual, and that the government speaks and acts only for a small portion of the citizens, whereas the majority have no voice, no power, and no privileges. By contrast, small social groups, such as families, groups of friends, theater companies, and gangs of thieves, can mediate between the isolated individual and the vast social machine. But their mediation and companionableness can go either way, morally and spiritually, depending upon whether the members are motivated by love and kindness or by greed and selfishness. In all of Dickens’s early novels, at least one group represented the possibility of sociable safety and contentment—the Pickwickians, Mr. Brownlow’s household, Nicholas’s family and friends. In Martin Chuzzlewit, the selfish, greedy groups are dominant; Martin must find his way against a strong tide.

  Much of what Dickens was trying to get at in Martin Chuzzlewit was distilled in nearly perfect, supremely popular, and highly theatrical fashion in A Christmas Carol, which Dickens conceived of suddenly a few weeks after visiting the Field Lane School for Miss Coutts. He worked on it during October and November 1843, while the tenth and eleventh numbers of the longer novel were appearing; and in spite of his vow of the summer, A Christmas Carol was published by Chapman and Hall. He delivered the manuscript in early December, to be published for the Christmas trade. In an effort to avoid the sorts of contractual problems he had encountered with the low sales of his longer novel, he agreed with the publishers to publish on a commission basis—that is, he would design, edit, and produce the book (rather like book packaging today). Unfortunately, his desire to produce a beautiful artifact as well as a popular story meant that production costs were very high, and he realized, once again, only a small profit on what turned out to be a very large sale.

  A Christmas Carol, like Martin Chuzzlewit, concerns itself with the social ramifications of selfishness, but the characters of young Martin and old Martin are combined in that of Ebenezer Scrooge, and his moral journey, which takes place in three acts in one night, has the force of revelation rather than the tedium of a lengthy trek by ox-drawn wagon. Some of the narrative had its origins in one of Dickens’s own vivid dreams, and surely the idea of using dreams as a structural device had its origins there as well. The thirty-one-year-old Dickens was evidently in a state of considerable psychological turmoil. He was beset by money worries and family obligations at the same time that Catherine was pregnant with a fifth child. He had found his experience at the Field Lane School disturbing, and he must have recognized the vast insolubility of the larger task no matter what he and Miss Coutts were able to do with her funds. He was halfway through a serialization that no one considered a success, and he was in conflict with his father and mother as well as with his publishers. Just as every literary character is the author in some guise, just as Ralph Nickleby and Daniel Quilp were “Dickensian,” so Ebenezer Scrooge was Charles Dickens, a man for whom money itself offered the prospect of safety, a man for whom isolation from the obligations of human relationship might be a form of peace.

  The story is familiar from countless renditions, takeoffs, and parodies. In fact, pirates began to appropriate Dickens’s characters and ideas immediately upon publication. But what makes A Christmas Carol work—what makes it so appealing a novella that William Makepeace Thackeray, Dickens’s most self-conscious literary rival, called it “a national benefit”—is the lightness of Dickens’s touch. Instead of hammering his moral points home, as he does in Martin Chuzzlewit, he is content (or more content) to let his images speak for themselves. For example, when Scrooge returns home after business, he
sees Jacob Marley’s face in his door knocker: “Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” Subsequently, ascending his staircase, Scrooge sees a hearse in front of him, but he seeks no more light than that of his candle—“Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it.” After a further series of mysterious noises, which Scrooge declines to believe in, Marley himself appears, and Dickens’s description of him is economical but perfectly apt: “Marley in his pig-tail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pig-tail, and his coatskirts, and the hair on his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent: so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.” Not only are these details both picturesque and thematically evocative, they are conveyed without any overbearing tone of self-display. Melodrama (which Dickens loved) always carries a lack of conviction, because the gestures of the characters and the tone of the author overstate rather than understate the emotions that are being conveyed. Here, Dickens’s descriptions underscore Scrooge’s resistance to the implications of the scene, enhancing our sense of Scrooge’s coldness, but also his bravery. Additionally, it enables the reader to see what is happening more clearly than if Scrooge’s feelings cluttered the picture. Every line performs more than one literary function, something that is a hallmark of Dickens’s best writing. When he is trying too hard, every line performs less than one function, simply because he elaborates until he is sure the reader gets it. Immediately in the next paragraph, Dickens goes for a laugh—“Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.” Scrooge’s state of mind is believably mixed. He is observant, alert, frightened but incredulous, stubborn, ironic, and, most of all, interested. The scene is a masterpiece of narrative depiction, conveying simultaneously what is being seen, who is seeing it, and the narrator’s attitude toward it, as only narrative can do.

  Dickens took easily to the form of the novella, understanding intuitively that in focus and scope it is similar to a play but offers a novelist the opportunity to explore a single idea in depth and, in a way, at leisure. He seems to have had no trouble controlling his natural expansiveness, which the serial form of publication both tested and encouraged. The musical model for the composition (not only are songs evoked in the title of the work, but each part is called a “stave”) gave him a sure sense of rhythm and symmetry. The style is free, but the freedom stays within the tight confines of the plot—the first bit, Scrooge in company, disdaining others, balances the last bit, Scrooge in company, welcoming others, while the three dreams, of course, fall into the utterly natural symmetry of past, present, and future—what Scrooge has forgotten, what he is missing, and what might happen if he persists in his misanthropic ways. The philosophy and psychology of A Christmas Carol are so familiar to us now that we forget that in Dickens’s own day, his views competed with much less sophisticated notions of the origins and effects of states of mind. Indeed, this idea—that shifts in objective conditions, such as wealth, social relationships, and class disparities, begin within the individual and are then manifested outwardly in material changes—runs counter to notions of materialism and determinism that were beginning to take hold among such political thinkers as Bentham, Marx, and Engels, who were at work in the same period. Karl Marx, in fact, seems to have been quite a fan of Dickens. But Dickens’s Christmas stories (A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Haunted Man in particular) are increasingly specific and pointed about where necessary social change must come from. It is not enough to seize power or to change where in society power lies. With power must come an inner sense of connection to others that, in Dickens’s life and work, comes from the model of Jesus Christ as benevolent Savior. The truth of A Christmas Carol that Dickens understood perfectly and bodied forth successfully is that life is transformed by an inner shift that is then acted upon, not by a change in circumstances.

  The conditions that so appalled Dickens constituted the major political and philosophical challenge of his era. The novel, like any other artistic form, makes an inherent philosophical assertion—that the mental life of the individual is worth anatomizing and that the disruptions that exist among individuals and between individuals and groups are understandable and soluble through individual transformation and action. Dickens expanded and expanded his canvas because he intuited that the complexities of the social dilemmas he was interested in could not be convincingly portrayed in miniature. Other thinkers, not novelists, had other ideas about the significance of individuals and individualism, but Dickens’s chosen form saddled him with a philosophical question he tried ardently to solve, both artistically and personally, for his entire life. The controversies that arise about Dickens’s real political views, in my opinion, arise primarily from the fact that a novelist always, and increasingly, sees the trees rather than the forest, and is naturally unsympathetic to a collective solution, while always more or less in favor of a connective solution.

  When the first six thousand copies of A Christmas Carol showed a very small profit, owing to the expenses of production, Dickens panicked. He wrote Forster, “Such a night as I have passed! I really believed that I should never get up again, until I had passed through all the horrors of a fever” (meaning a serious, delirious illness), and added, “I shall be ruined past all mortal hope of redemption.” He became convinced that he needed to remove his household of wife, sister-in-law, and five children to continental Europe, where they could live more frugally and where Dickens could write more travel pieces. Ackroyd points out that Dickens was afraid of overexposure. He did not want to wear out his welcome with his audience and possibly thought that it was overexposure that accounted for the continuing poor sales of Martin Chuzzlewit.

  Catherine’s pregnancy with Francis, the fifth child of the family in seven years, seems to have marked a turning point in Dickens’s attitude toward his wife. The agitation he betrayed in his money worries and his eagerness to go abroad met with great reluctance and depression on her part. He seems to have held against her both the inconvenience of the pregnancy and her inability to rally quickly after the birth. The stresses of their life together accentuated their temperamental differences. Where perhaps he had valued her placidity in the past, now he grew impatient with it and was willing to air his impatience to friends. Georgina Hogarth, too, was a continued contrast to Catherine—quicker, younger, perhaps able to share Dickens’s mental life more readily than her sister. The balance among the three was shifting, and Dickens seems at this point to have begun to have brief infatuations with young women. The first of these was an eighteen-year-old girl he met while giving a speech in Liverpool, Christiana Weller, in whose album he wrote, “I love her dear name which has won me some fame / But Great Heaven how gladly I’d change it.” Some weeks later, a friend of his, T. J. Thompson, informed Dickens that he wished to marry Christiana, and Dickens asked him to save the dress Dickens had first seen her in, just as he had saved one of Mary Hogarth’s dresses after she died.

  When the family departed for the Continent at the end of June 1844, it is safe to say that every aspect of Dickens’s life was in turmoil, including, again, his relationship with his publishers. With the end of Martin Chuzzlewit, he left Chapman and Hall for Bradbury and Evans, still smarting over the idea that fifteen months before, it had been suggested that he repay part of his Chuzzlewit advance. Finance, family life, relations with his parents, the direction of his work, his emotional attachments, and, of course, his domiciliary arrangements, all were in flux. He was determined that these worries were to be resolved in Genoa, where the family settled in a large house in the suburbs overlooking the
sea.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN THE TWO YEARS between the end of Martin Chuzzlewit and the beginning of Dombey and Son, Dickens tried several things that failed to come to fruition, each in a different way, and that were expressive of his unsettled mind and his anxiety about how he was to live with his well-populated family. The first of these, of course, was the move to Genoa, first to the Villa Bagnerello and then, at the approach of winter, to the Palazzo Peschiere, which was easier to heat. Over the course of his Italian sojourn, he wrote Pictures from Italy (to be published in 1846), and in October, eager to repeat the success of A Christmas Carol, he began to write The Chimes, which has a more explicit satirical purpose than the earlier work but is similar in theme. Trotty Veck—an impoverished ticket porter who carries messages and does small jobs—is accosted by a magistrate, a Benthamite, and another idle gentleman, who discuss his meal and his life in utilitarian terms. Afterward, he has a dream or a vision of his future: himself dead, his daughter worked to death, and her fiancé a drunkard. Once again, Dickens expresses his opinion that mental images create worldly conditions. To embrace the utilitarian view, or the puritanical view, or the Tory view, that poor people have no reason to live, or are inherently prone to evil, or are a burden on the rich, is to create a more than self-fulfilling prophecy—not only do the individuals themselves live joyless, wasted lives, they are sundered from one another by suspicion and solipsism. Only connection, forgiveness, and hope can prevent such an outcome. The Chimes has not been nearly as popular as A Christmas Carol, and it was very controversial in its day, but it sold well and made Dickens a quick £1,000. As usual, it was faithful to his state of mind at the time he wrote it, so he was extremely pleased with it and went back to London for the publication, traveling alone by laborious stages.