Charles Dickens [pp. 162-163]

162APPLETONS' JO URNAL OF POPULAR [AUGUST 6,
CHARLES DICKENS.
D EATH is continually walking the rounds of a great city, and,
sooner or later, stops at every man's door: yet, after all, the
shortest life is long enough if it lead to a better, and the longest life
is too short if it do not. The grim messenger could have paused at no
man's door, even in mighty London, nor in all England, and beckoned
silently away a man who would have been more missed, or who could
have created a deeper void, than Charles Dickens. He lived to do
good to his fellow-men and fellow-sinners, and he did it continually.
There is nothing surer than the correctness of the assumption
that all those "unco gude" ministers who assail Dickens as an ir religious man, are of the Chadband class which he has so keenly de picted: and the beauty of it is, that reverend editors of religious jour nals are admitting the fact, and accusing each other of having sat to
the great painter for Pecksniff and Chadband. Like Disraeli's
"stingless insult" of Professor Goldwin Smith, the portrait bites, and,
what is more, the sting lives, and will live forever, in their persons.
The London Times never said a truer word —(but truth is not com parative; it has no degrees; what is true, is true, and nothing else) than when it said: "There are minds of such jealous fibre, that the
very merits of an author, his mightiest gifts and his most special
talents, only serve as food on which to nourish their prejudices. Such
are they who, while forced to admit the wit, humor, and power of
Charles Dickens, always added,'but he was vulgar.' Yes, in one
sense he was vulgar; he delighted in sketching the characters, not of
dukes and duchesses, but of the poor and lowly. He had listened to
their wants and sorrows, seen them in their alleys and garrets, had
learned their accents and dialects by heart; and then, with a truth
and liveliness all his own, he photographed them in his immortal
works. In that sense alone seas Charles Dickens'vulgar.' He was
of the people, and lived among them. His was not the close atmos phere of a saloon or of a forcing-house. In the open air of the streets
and woods and fields, he lived and moved, and had his being; and so
he came into closer union with common men, and caught, with an
intuitive force and fulness of feature, every detail of their daily life."
Even Sydney Smith, unpretending and sensible man as he was,
with no crest to stamp his letters with but his thumb, I cannot help
inferring had, at the commencement of Dickens's literary career, im bibed a prejudice against him, in consequence of this charge, in lofty
circles, of "vulgarity." But it soon vanished; for he said, one day
at dinner, at the great aristocratic Holland House, to Countess Grey:
"I can hold out no longer. I give in to Dickens. His inexpressible
genius has won me over." And he opened a correspondence with him
afterward, inviting him to dinner, and cordially accepting his invitations in return, in his peculiar style, as thus: "I accept your obliging
invitation conditionally. If I am invited by any man of greater genius
than yourself, or one by whose works I have been more completely
interested, I will repudiate you, and dine with the more splendid
phenomenon of the two." When "Chuzzlewit" opened-and it must
have appeared not long before the death of the pious and witty Prebend
of Saint Paul's-he wrote to its author: "You have been so used to
this sort of impertinences, that I believe you will excuse me for saying
how very much I am pleased with the first number of your new work.
Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable-quite firstrate painting, such as no one but yourself could execute. P. S.
Chuffey is admirable. I never read a finer piece of writing. It is
deeply pathetic and affecting."
So natural were his characters, so perfect his photbgraphs, taken
in the clear sunlight of actual life, that it was contended by one
of his jealous critics in Blackwood's Magazine, while "Chuzzlewit"
was appearing in monthly numbers, that "Dickens, it was quite
evident, had never any special plot in his mind in advance;" that
his characters were but casual personages, forcibly described and
artistically contrasted, perhaps, which he met with day after day, as
he traversed the tumultuous streets and populous alleys of London;
but that he had no preconceived disposition of these characters, no
prepared drama, in which they were to perform a part.
Now I have before me a letter from Mr. Dickens, written almost
at the same time, probably, that this critic was eking out his manuscript "sheet" for old "Ebony," in which he says: "I am glad you
are pleased with the opening of' Chuzzlewit.' I hope it may improve
upon you as it goes on. I would especially commend to your partial
attention a certain Tom Pinch and his sister, who will one day appear
upon the scene." Now, to say nothing of the preeminent Chuzzlewit's
father, uncle, and son, does anybody, can anybody suppose that Peck sniff was not at that time a foregone conclusion, or his precious
daughters, or self-sacrificing Mrs. Gamp, "sickly " officiating, or
"monthly "-ing for the little tender red new-comers into this breath ing world, "which blessed is the man as has his quiver full of sech,"
as she often said to Gamp toward the last quarter of their thirteen,
"when dispukes aroge betwixt them on account of the expenge " does anybody, I say, now fancy that Dickens had not his plot of
Chuzzlewit prepared beforehand, and all his characters and scenes
engendered and placed?
A forcible tribute to one of the great characteristics of Dickens is
the uniform testimony of the London journals to his worldly wisdom,
his business habits, his intense regard for perfect accuracy in detail.
"Whatever he said should be done," says the Times, "those who
knew him regarded as accomplished."
Soon after his first return to England from this country, and while
"Chuzzlewit" was in concoction, but as yet scarcely commenced, he
ascertained that a certain book-keeper (who shall be nameless now stat aominis umbra), in a large banking establishment in Thread needle Street, London, under whose care a younger brother, as clerk,
had been placed by the firm, had been discovered to be a forger and
a thief to the amount of several thousands of pounds. He had been
found out, arrested, prosecuted, tried, pronounced guilty, imprisoned;
but sympathy for his family had secured his escape. He fled to
America, arrived in New York; and the first act which he committed,
after hastening to Wall Street, was to forge a draft upon the compa ny's London correspondents in Canada, and pocket the proceeds,
with which he made a characteristic display.
These facts were communicated to me by Mr. Dickens, in a care fully-worded letter, which he desired me to have published, as a ne cessary public precaution, in a New York daily journal. I sent it to
the Tribune, as requested, and it duly appeared. Words cannot ex press the spasms of the accused, whom I met next day in Broadway.
"You have not heard the last of this!" he said, with white lips: and
he was right; I had not. The journal in which the "libel" had ap peared was left unmolested; but I was summoned to be and to appear,
and then and there to answer to a charge of malicious libel.
And now comes what I wish to say of Dickens's "shrewd comr mon-sense, his indefatigable industry, and knowledge of business de tail," of which his contemporaries speak. I wrote him that I had
been sued for libel, inclosed him the printed copy of his letter to me,
the legal document with which I had been served, etc.; informing
him, also, that I had placed the matter in the hands of my friend
David Graham, Jr., whom he knew as an eminent criminal lawyer,
and who feared that a commission to London might be rendered ne cessary.
Within two days after the receipt of this letter by Mr. Dickens, he
forwarded to Mr. Graham, by steamer from Liverpool, documents
alphabetically arranged, so complete, and in such perfect legal order,
that, when the accomplished advocate had read them, he said: "Why,
L- this is wonderful! Our friend is a profound lawyer! From
-beginning to end, in consecutive demand, there is every thing made
ready to hand for a perfect defence. Not a word need be said by me
after producing these documents."
Among them were the original entries, in the handwriting of the
accused; the altered checks, from six pounds to sixty, from seven
pounds to seventy, etc., with a copy of the counterfeits; copy of a note
addressed by the forger to the senior of the firm, after his discovery,
admitting his crime, craving forgiveness, and imparting the "gratifying fact" (which was a lie, of course), that the remorseful writer was
on his way to commit suicide; an office-copy of the depositions taken
before the magistrates at Croydon, miles away from London; their
warrant for his committal to prison, etc., together with a long summing-up article firom the criminal department of the London Tiraes,
copied by Dickens in a handwriting as clear, and almost as fine, as
the original type.
"I may have sent you," he wrote Mr. Graham, "more facts than
you want; but I desire to make the case irrcfragably legal and strong
The unprecedented, audacious fellow should be promptly dealt with
and stayed in his villanous career. If he had availed himself of the
opportunity for reformation which his flitting to America might have
given him, I should never have molested him, or breathed a word of