Life of Charles Dickens Part 5

FOOTNOTES:

[25] d.i.c.kens did not accept the whole Carlyle creed. He retained a sort of belief in the collective wisdom of the people, which Carlyle certainly did not share.

CHAPTER XII.

d.i.c.kens' career as a reader reading for money commenced on the 29th of April, 1858, while the trouble about his wife was at the thickest; and, after reading in London on sixteen nights, he made a reading tour in the provinces, and in Scotland and Ireland. In the following year he read likewise. But meanwhile, which is more important to us than his readings, he was writing another book. On the 30th of April, 1859, in the first number of _All the Year Round_,[26] was begun "The Tale of Two Cities," a simultaneous publication in monthly parts being also commenced.

"The Tale of Two Cities" is a tale of the great French Revolution of 1793, and the two cities in question are London and Paris,--London as it lay comparatively at peace in the days when George III. was king, and Paris running blood and writhing in the fierce fire of anarchy and mob rule. A powerful book, unquestionably. No doubt there is in its heat and glare a reflection from Carlyle's "French Revolution," a book for which d.i.c.kens had the greatest admiration. But that need not be regarded as a demerit. d.i.c.kens is no pale copyist, and adds fervour to what he borrows. His pictures of Paris in revolution are as fine as the London scenes in "Barnaby Rudge;" and the interweaving of the story with public events is even better managed in the later book than in the earlier story of the Gordon riots. And the story, what does it tell? It tells of a certain Dr. Manette, who, after long years of imprisonment in the Bastille, is restored to his daughter in London; and of a young French n.o.ble, who has a.s.sumed the name of Darnay, and left France in horror of the doings of his order, and who marries Dr.

Manette's daughter; and of a young English barrister, able enough in his profession, but careless of personal success, and much addicted to port wine, and bearing a striking personal resemblance to the young French n.o.ble. These persons, and others, being drawn to Paris by various strong inducements, Darnay is condemned to death as a _ci-devant_ n.o.ble, and the ne'er-do-well barrister, out of the great pure love he bears to Darnay's wife, succeeds in dying for him. That is the tale's bare outline; and if any one says of the book that it is in parts melodramatic, one may fitly answer that never was any portion of the world's history such a thorough piece of melodrama as the French Revolution.

With "The Tale of Two Cities" Hablot K. Browne's connection with d.i.c.kens, as the ill.u.s.trator of his books, came to an end. The "Sketches" had been ill.u.s.trated by Cruikshank, who was the great popular ill.u.s.trator of the time, and it is amusing to read, in the preface to the first edition of the first series, published in 1836, how the trembling young author placed himself, as it were, under the protection of the "well-known individual who had frequently contributed to the success of similar undertakings." Cruikshank also ill.u.s.trated "Oliver Twist;" and indeed, with an arrogance which unfortunately is not incompatible with genius, afterwards set up a rather preposterous claim to have been the real originator of that book, declaring that he had worked out the story in a series of etchings, and that d.i.c.kens had ill.u.s.trated _him_, and not he d.i.c.kens.[27] But apart from the drawings for the "Sketches" and "Oliver Twist," and the first few drawings by Seymour, and two drawings by Buss,[28] in "Pickwick," and some drawings by Cattermole in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, and by Samuel Palmer in the "Pictures from Italy," and by various hands in the Christmas stories--apart from these, Browne, or "Phiz," had executed the ill.u.s.trations to d.i.c.kens'

novels. Nor, with all my admiration for certain excellent qualities which his work undeniably possessed, do I think that this was altogether a good thing. Such, I know, is not a popular opinion. But I confess I am unable to agree with those critics who, from their remarks on the recent jubilee edition of "Pickwick," seem to think his ill.u.s.trations so pre-eminently fine that they should be permanently a.s.sociated with d.i.c.kens' stories. The editor of that edition was, in my view, quite right in treating Browne's ill.u.s.trations as practically obsolete. The value of d.i.c.kens' works is perennial, and Browne's ill.u.s.trations represent the art fas.h.i.+on of a time only. So, too, I am unable to see any great cause to regret that Cruikshank's artistic connection with d.i.c.kens came to an end so soon.[29] For both Browne and Cruikshank were pre-eminently caricaturists, and caricaturists of an old school. The latter had no idea of beauty. His art, very great art in its way, was that of grotesqueness and exaggeration. He never drew a lady or gentleman in his life. And though Browne, in my view much the lesser artist, was superior in these respects to Cruikshank, yet he too drew the most hideous Pecksniffs, and Tom Pinches, and Joey B.'s, and a whole host of characters quite unreal and absurd. The mischief of it is, too, that d.i.c.kens' humour will not bear caricaturing. The defect of his own art as a writer is that it verges itself too often on caricature. Exaggeration is its bane. When, for instance, he makes the rich alderman in "The Chimes" eat up poor Trotty Veck's little last t.i.t-bit of tripe, we are clearly in the region of broad farce. When Mr. Pancks, in "Little Dorrit," so far abandons the ordinary ways of mature rent collectors as to ask a respectable old accountant to "give him a back," in the Marshalsea court, and leaps over his head, we are obviously in a world of pantomime. d.i.c.kens' comic effects are generally quite forced enough, and should never be further forced when translated into the sister art of drawing. Rather, if anything, should they be attenuated. But unfortunately exaggeration happened to be inherent in the draftsmans.h.i.+p of both Cruikshank and Browne. And, having said this, I may as well finish with the subject of the ill.u.s.trations to d.i.c.kens'

books. "Our Mutual Friend" was ill.u.s.trated by Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., then a rising young artist, and the son of d.i.c.kens' old friend, Frank Stone. Here the designs fall into the opposite defect. They are, some of them, pretty enough, but they want character. Mr. Fildes' pictures for "Edwin Drood" are a decided improvement. As to the ill.u.s.trations for the later _Household Edition_, they are very inferior. The designs for a great many are clearly bad, and the mechanical execution almost uniformly so. Even Mr. Barnard's skill has had no fair chance against poor woodcutting, careless engraving, and inferior paper. And this is the more to be regretted, in that Mr. Barnard, by natural affinity of talent, has, to my thinking, done some of the best art work that has been done at all in connection with d.i.c.kens. His _Character Sketches_, especially the lithographed series, are admirable. The Jingle is a masterpiece; but all are good, and he even succeeds in making something pictorially acceptable of Little Nell and Little Dorrit.

Just a year, almost to a day, elapsed between the conclusion of "The Tale of Two Cities," and the commencement of "Great Expectations." The last chapter of the former appeared in the number of _All the Year Round_ for the 26th of November, 1859, and the first chapter of the latter in the number of the same periodical for the 1st of December, 1860. Poor Pip--for such is the name of the hero of the book--poor Pip, I think he is to be pitied. Certainly he lays himself open to the charge of sn.o.bbishness, and is unduly ashamed of his connections. But then circ.u.mstances were decidedly against him. Through some occult means he is removed from his natural sphere, from the care of his "rampageous" sister and of her husband, the good, kind, honest Joe, and taken up to London, and brought up as a gentleman, and started in chambers in Barnard's Inn. All this is done through the instrumentality of Mr. Jaggers, a barrister in highest repute among the criminal brotherhood. But Pip not unnaturally thinks that his unknown benefactress is a certain Miss Havisham, who, having been bitterly wronged in her love affairs, lives in eccentric fas.h.i.+on near his native place, amid the mouldering mementoes of her wedding day.

What is his horror when he finds that his education, comfort, and prospects have no more reputable foundation than the bounty of a murderous criminal called Magwitch, who has showered all these benefits upon him from the antipodes, in return for the gift of food and a file when he, Magwitch, was trying to escape from the hulks, and Pip was a little lad. Magwitch, the transported convict, comes back to England, at the peril of his life, to make himself known to Pip, and to have the pleasure of looking at that young gentleman. He is again tracked by the police, and caught, notwithstanding Pip's efforts to get him off, and dies in prison. Pip ultimately, very ultimately, marries a young lady oddly brought up by the queer Miss Havisham, and who turns out to be Magwitch's daughter.

Such, as I have had occasion to say before in speaking of similar a.n.a.lyses, such are the dry bones of the story. Pip's character is well drawn. So is that of Joe. And Mr. Jaggers, the criminal's friend, and his clerk, Wemmick, are striking and full of a grim humour. Miss Havisham and her _protegee_, Estella, whom she educates to be the scourge of men, belong to what may be called the melodramatic side of d.i.c.kens' art. They take their place with Mrs. Dombey and with Miss Dartle in "David Copperfield," and Miss Wade in "Little Dorrit"--female characters of a fantastic and haughty type, and quite devoid, Miss Dartle and Miss Wade especially, of either verisimilitude or the milk of human kindness.

"Great Expectations" was completed in August, 1861, and the first number of "Our Mutual Friend" appeared in May, 1864. This was an unusual interval, but the great writer's faculty of invention was beginning to lose its fresh spring and spontaneity. And besides he had not been idle. Though writing no novel, he had been busy enough with readings, and his work on _All the Year Round_. He had also written a short, but very graceful paper[30] on Thackeray, whose death, on the Christmas Eve of 1863, had greatly affected him. Now, however, he again braced himself for one of his greater efforts.

Scarcely, I think, as all will agree, with the old success. In "Our Mutual Friend" he is not at his best. It is a strange complicated story that seems to have some difficulty in unravelling itself: the story of a man who pretends to be dead in order that he may, under a changed name, investigate the character and eligibility of the young woman whom an erratic father has destined to be his bride. A golden-hearted old dust contractor, who hides a will that will give him all that erratic father's property, and disinherit the man aforesaid, and who, to crown his virtues, pretends to be a miser in order to teach the young woman, also aforesaid, how bad it is to be mercenary, and to induce her to marry the unrecognized and seemingly penniless son; their marriage accordingly, with ultimate result that the bridegroom turns out to be no poor clerk, but the original heir, who, of course, is not dead, and is the inheritor of thousands; subsidiary groups of characters, of course, one which I think rather uninteresting, of some brand-new people called the Veneerings and their acquaintances, for they have no friends; and some fine sketches of the river-side population; striking and amusing characters too--Silas Wegg, the scoundrelly vendor of songs, who ferrets among the dust for wills in order to confound the good dustman, his benefactor; and the little deformed dolls' dressmaker, with her sot of a father; and Betty Higden, the st.u.r.dy old woman who has determined neither in life nor death to suffer the pollution of the workhouse; such, with more added, are the ingredients of the story.

One episode, however, deserves longer comment. It is briefly this: Eugene Wrayburn is a young barrister of good family and education, and of excellent abilities and address, all gifts that he has turned to no creditable purpose whatever. He falls in with a girl, Lizzie Hexham, of more than humble rank, but of great beauty and good character. She interests him, and in mere wanton carelessness, for he certainly has no idea of offering marriage, he gains her affection, neither meaning, in any definite way, to do anything good nor anything bad with it.

There is another man who loves Lizzie, a schoolmaster, who, in his dull, plodding way, has made the best of his intellect, and risen in life. He naturally, and we may say properly, for no good can come of them, resents Wrayburn's attentions, as does the girl's brother.

Wrayburn uses the superior advantages of his position to insult them in the most offensive and brutal manner, and to torture the schoolmaster, just as he has used those advantages to win the girl's heart. Whereupon, after being goaded to heart's desire for a considerable time, the schoolmaster as nearly as possible beats out Wrayburn's life, and commits suicide. Wrayburn is rescued by Lizzie as he lies by the river bank sweltering in blood, and tended by her, and they are married and live happy ever afterwards.

Now the amazing part of this story is, that d.i.c.kens' sympathies throughout are with Wrayburn. How this comes to be so I confess I do not know. To me Wrayburn's conduct appears to be heartless, cruel, unmanly, and the use of his superior social position against the schoolmaster to be like a foul blow, and quite unworthy of a gentleman. Schoolmasters ought not to beat people about the head, decidedly. But if Wrayburn's thoughts took a right course during convalescence, I think he may have reflected that he deserved his beating, and also that the woman whose affection he had won was a great deal too good for him.

d.i.c.kens' misplaced sympathy in this particular story has, I repeat, always struck me with amazement. Usually his sympathies are so entirely right. Nothing is more common than to hear the accusation of vulgarity made against his books. A certain cla.s.s of people seem to think, most mistakenly, that because he so often wrote about vulgar people, uneducated people, people in the lower ranks of society, therefore his writing was vulgar, nay more, he himself vulgar too.

Such an opinion can only be based on a strange confusion between subject and treatment. There is scarcely any subject not tainted by impurity, that cannot be treated with entire refinement. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving wrote to d.i.c.kens, most justly, of "that exquisite tact that enabled him to carry his reader through the veriest dens of vice and villainy without a breath to shock the ear or a stain to sully the robe of the most shrinking delicacy;" and added: "It is a rare gift to be able to paint low life without being low, and to be comic without the least taint of vulgarity." This is well said; and if we look for the main secret of the inherent refinement of d.i.c.kens' books, we shall find it, I think, in this: that he never intentionally paltered with right and wrong. He would make allowance for evil, would take pleasure in showing that there were streaks of lingering good in its blackness, would treat it kindly, gently, humanly. But it always stood for evil, and nothing else. He made no attempt by cunning jugglery to change its seeming. He had no sneaking affection for it. And therefore, I say again, his attachment to Eugene Wrayburn has always struck me with surprise. As regards d.i.c.kens' own refinement, I cannot perhaps do better than quote the words of Sir Arthur Helps, an excellent judge.

"He was very refined in his conversation--at least, what I call refined--for he was one of those persons in whose society one is comfortable from the certainty that they will never say anything which can shock other people, or hurt their feelings, be they ever so fastidious or sensitive."

FOOTNOTES:

[26] His foolish quarrel with Bradbury and Evans had necessitated the abandonment of _Household Words_.

[27] See his pamphlet, "The Artist and the Author." The matter is fully discussed in his life by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold.

[28] Buss's ill.u.s.trations were executed under great disadvantages, and are bad. Those of Seymour are excellent.

[29] I am always sorry, however, that Cruikshank did not ill.u.s.trate the Christmas stories.

[30] See _Cornhill Magazine_ for February, 1864.

CHAPTER XIII.

But we are now, alas, nearing the point where the "rapid" of d.i.c.kens'

life began to "shoot to its fall." The year 1865, during which he partly wrote "Our Mutual Friend," was a fatal one in his career. In the month of February he had been very ill, with an affection of the left foot, at first thought to be merely local, but which really pointed to serious mischief, and never afterwards wholly left him.

Then, on June 9th, when returning from France, where he had gone to recruit, he as nearly as possible lost his life in a railway accident at Staplehurst. A bridge had broken in; some of the carriages fell through, and were smashed; that in which d.i.c.kens was, hung down the side of the chasm. Of courage and presence of mind he never showed any lack. They were evinced, on one occasion, at the readings, when an alarm of fire arose. They shone conspicuous here. He quieted two ladies who were in the same compartment of the carriage; helped to extricate them and others from their perilous position; gave such help as he could to the wounded and dying; probably was the means of saving the life of one man, whom he was the first to hear faintly groaning under a heap of wreckage; and then, as he tells in the "postscript" to the book, scrambled back into the carriage to find the crumpled MS.

of a portion of "Our Mutual Friend."[31] But even pluck is powerless to prevent a ruinous shock to the nerves. Though d.i.c.kens had done so manfully what he had to do at the time, he never fully recovered from the blow. His daughter tells us how he would often, "when travelling home from London, suddenly fall into a paroxysm of fear, tremble all over, clutch the arms of the railway carriage, large beads of perspiration standing on his face, and suffer agonies of terror.... He had ... apparently no idea of our presence." And Mr. Dolby tells us also how in travelling it was often necessary for him to ward off such attacks by taking brandy. d.i.c.kens had been failing before only too surely; and this accident, like a coward's blow, struck him heavily as he fell.

But whether failing or stricken, he bated no jot of energy or courage; nay, rather, as his health grew weaker, did he redouble the pressure of his work. I think there is a grandeur in the story of the last five years of his life, that dwarfs even the tale of his rapid and splendid rise. It reads like some antique myth of the t.i.tans defying Jove's thunder. There is about the man something indomitable and heroic. He had, as we have seen, given a series of readings in 1858-59; and he gave another in the years 1861 to 1863--successful enough in a pecuniary sense, but through failure of business capacity on the part of the manager, entailing on the reader himself a great deal of anxiety and worry.[32] Now, in the spring of 1866, with his left foot giving him unceasing trouble, and his nerves shattered, and his heart in an abnormal state, he accepted an offer from Messrs. Chappell to read "in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Paris," for 1,500, and the payment of all expenses, and then to give forty-two more readings for 2,500. Mr. Dolby, who accompanied d.i.c.kens as business manager in this and the remaining tours, has told their story in an interesting volume.[33] Of course the wear was immense. The readings themselves involved enormous fatigue to one who so identified himself with what he read, and whose whole being seemed to vibrate not only with the emotions of the characters in his stories, but of the audience. Then there was the weariness of long railway journeys in all seasons and weathers--journeys that at first must have been rendered doubly tedious, as he could not bear to travel by express trains. Yet, notwithstanding failure of strength, notwithstanding fatigue, his native gaiety and good spirits smile like a gleam of winter sunlight over the narrative. As he had been the brightest and most genial of companions in the old holiday days when strolling about the country with his actor-troupe, so now he was occasionally as frolic as a boy, dancing a hornpipe in the train for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his companions, compounding bowls of punch in which he shared but sparingly--for he was really convivial only in idea--and always considerate and kindly towards his companions and dependents. And mingled pathetically with all this are confessions of pain, weariness, illness, faintness, sleeplessness, internal bleeding,--all bravely borne, and never for an instant suffered to interfere with any business arrangement.

But if the strain of the readings was too heavy here at home, what was it likely to be during a winter in America? Nevertheless he determined, against all remonstrances, to go thither. It would almost seem as if he felt that the day of his life was waning, and that it was his duty to gather in a golden harvest for those he loved ere the night came on. So he sailed for Boston once more on the 9th of November, 1867. The Americans, it must be said, behaved n.o.bly. All the old grudges connected with "The American Notes," and "Martin Chuzzlewit," sank into oblivion. The reception was everywhere enthusiastic, the success of the readings immense. Again and again people waited all night, amid the rigours of an almost arctic winter, in order to secure an opportunity of purchasing tickets as soon as the ticket office opened. There were enormous and intelligent audiences at Boston, New York, Was.h.i.+ngton, Philadelphia--everywhere. The sum which d.i.c.kens realized by the tour, amounted to the splendid total of nearly 19,000. Nor, in this money triumph, did he fail to excite his usual charm of personal fascination, though the public affection and admiration were manifested in forms less objectionable and offensive than of old. On his birthday, the 7th of February, 1868, he says, "I couldn't help laughing at myself ...; it was observed so much as though I were a little boy." Flowers, garlands were set about his room; there were presents on his dinner-table, and in the evening the hall where he read was decorated by kindly unknown hands. Of public and private entertainment he might have had just as much as he chose.

But to this medal there was a terrible reverse. Travelling from New York to Boston just before Christmas, he took a most disastrous cold, which never left him so long as he remained in the country. He was constantly faint. He ate scarcely anything. He slept very little.

Latterly he was so lame, as scarcely to be able to walk. Again and again it seemed impossible that he should fulfil his night's engagement. He was constantly so exhausted at the conclusion of the reading, that he had to lie down for twenty minutes or half an hour, "before he could undergo the fatigue even of dressing." Mr. Dolby lived in daily fear lest he should break down altogether. "I used to steal into his room," he says, "at all hours of the night and early morning, to see if he were awake, or in want of anything; always though to find him wide awake, and as cheerful and jovial as circ.u.mstances would admit--never in the least complaining, and only reproaching me for not taking my night's rest." "Only a man of iron will could have accomplished what he did," says Mr. Fields, who knew him well, and saw him often during the tour.

In the first week of May, 1868, d.i.c.kens was back in England, and soon again in the thick of his work and play. Mr. Wills, the sub-editor of _All the Year Round_, had met with an accident. d.i.c.kens supplied his place. Chauncy Hare Townshend had asked him to edit a chaotic ma.s.s of religious lucubrations. He toilfully edited them. Then, with the autumn, the readings began again;--for it marks the indomitable energy of the man that, even amid the terrible physical trials incident to his tour in America, he had agreed with Messrs. Chappell, for a sum of 8,000, to give one hundred more readings after his return. So in October the old work began again, and he was here, there, and everywhere, now reading at Manchester and Liverpool, now at Edinburgh and Glasgow, anon coming back to read fitfully in London, then off again to Ireland, or the West of England. Nor is it necessary to say that he spared himself not one whit. In order to give novelty to these readings, which were to be positively the last, he had laboriously got up the scene of Nancy's murder, in "Oliver Twist," and persisted in giving it night after night, though of all his readings it was the one that exhausted him most terribly.[34] But of course this could not last. The pain in his foot "was always recurring at inconvenient and unexpected moments," says Mr. Dolby, and occasionally the American cold came back too. In February, in London, the foot was worse than it had ever been, so bad that Sir Henry Thompson, and Mr.

Beard, his medical adviser, compelled him to postpone a reading. At Edinburgh, a few days afterwards, Mr. Syme, the eminent surgeon, strongly recommended perfect rest. Still he battled on, but "with great personal suffering such as few men could have endured."

Sleeplessness was on him too. And still he fought on, determined, if it were physically possible, to fulfil his engagement with Messrs.

Chappell, and complete the hundred nights. But it was not to be.

Symptoms set in that pointed alarmingly towards paralysis of the left side. At Preston, on the 22nd of April, Mr. Beard, who had come post-haste from London, put a stop to the readings, and afterwards decided, in consultation with Sir Thomas Watson, that they ought to be suspended entirely for the time, and never resumed in connection with any railway travelling.

Even this, however, was not quite the end; for a summer of comparative rest, or what d.i.c.kens considered rest, seemed so far to have set him up that he gave a final series of twelve readings in London between the 11th of January and 15th of March, 1870, thus bringing to its real conclusion an enterprise by which, at whatever cost to himself, he had made a sum of about 45,000.

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1869, he had gone back to the old work, and was writing a novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." It is a good novel unquestionably. Without going so far as Longfellow, who had doubts whether it was not "the most beautiful of all" d.i.c.kens' works, one may admit that there is about it a singular freshness, and no sign at all of mental decay. As for the "mystery," I do not think _that_ need baffle us altogether. But then I see no particular reason to believe that d.i.c.kens had wished to baffle us, or specially to rival Edgar Allan Poe or Mr. Wilkie Collins in the construction of criminal puzzles. Even though only half the case is presented to us, and the book remains for ever unfinished, we need have, I think, no difficulty in working out its conclusion. The course pursued by Mr. Jasper, Lay Precentor of the Cathedral at Cloisterham, is really too suspicious.

No intelligent British jury, seeing the facts as they are presented to us, the readers, could for a moment think of acquitting him of the murder of his nephew, Edwin Drood. Take those facts seriatim. First, we have the motive: he is pa.s.sionately in love with the girl to whom his nephew is engaged. Then we have a terrible coil of compromising circ.u.mstances: his extravagant profession of devotion to his nephew, his attempts to establish a hidden influence over the girl's mind to his nephew's detriment and his own advantage, his gropings amid the dark recesses of the Cathedral and inquiries into the action of quicklime, his endeavours to foment a quarrel between Edwin Drood and a fiery young gentleman from Ceylon, on the night of the murder, and his undoubted doctoring of the latter's drink. Then, after the murder, how damaging is his conduct. He falls into a kind of fit on discovering that his nephew's engagement had been broken off, which he might well do if his crime turned out to be not only a crime but also a blunder. And his conduct to the girl is, to say the least of it, strange. Nor will his character help him. He frequents the opium dens of the East-end of London. Guilty, guilty, most certainly guilty.

There is nothing to be said in arrest of judgment. Let the judge put on the black cap, and Jasper be devoted to his merited doom.

Such was the story that d.i.c.kens was unravelling in the spring and early summer of 1870. And fortune smiled upon it. He had sold the copyright for the large sum of 7,500, and a half share of the profits after a sale of twenty-five thousand copies, plus 1,000 for the advance sheets sent to America; and the sale was more than answering his expectations. Nor did prosperity look favourably on the book alone. It also, in one sense, showered benefits on the author. He was worth, as the evidence of the Probate Court was to show only too soon, a sum of over 80,000. He was happy in his children. He was universally loved, honoured, courted. "Troops of friends," though, alas! death had made havoc among the oldest, were still his. Never had man exhibited less inclination to pay fawning court to greatness and social rank. Yet when the Queen expressed a desire to see him, as she did in March, 1870, he felt not only pride, but a gentleman's pleasure in acceding to her wish, and came away charmed from a long chatting interview. But, while prosperity was smiling thus, the shadows of his day of life were lengthening, lengthening, and the night was at hand.

On Wednesday, June 8th, he seemed in excellent spirits; worked all the morning in the Chalet[35] as was his wont, returned to the house for lunch and a cigar, and then, being anxious to get on with "Edwin Drood," went back to his desk once more. The weather was superb. All round the landscape lay in fullest beauty of leaf.a.ge and flower, and the air rang musically with the song of birds. What were his thoughts that summer day as he sat there at his work? Writing many years before, he had asked whether the "subtle liquor of the blood" may not "perceive, by properties within itself," when danger is imminent, and so "run cold and dull"? Did any such monitor within, one wonders, warn him at all that the hand of death was uplifted to strike, and that its shadow lay upon him? Judging from the words that fell from his pen that day we might almost think that it was so--we might almost go further, and guess with what hopes and fears he looked into the darkness beyond. Never at any time does he appear to have been greatly troubled by speculative doubt. There is no evidence in his life, no evidence in his letters, no evidence in his books, that he had ever seen any cause to question the truth of the reply which Christianity gives to the world-old problems of man's origin and destiny. For abstract speculation he had not the slightest turn or taste. In no single one of his characters does he exhibit any fierce mental struggle as between truth and error. All that side of human experience, with its anguish of battle, its despairs, and its triumphs, seems to have been unknown to him. Perhaps he had the stronger grasp of other matters in consequence--who knows? But the fact remains. With a trust quite simple and untroubled, he held through life to the faith of Christ. When his children were little, he had written prayers for them, had put the Bible into simpler language for their use. In his will, dated May 12, 1869, he had said, "I commit my soul to the mercy of G.o.d through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the broad teaching of the New Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its letter here or there." And now, on this last day of his life, in probably the last letter that left his pen, he wrote to one who had objected to some pa.s.sage in "Edwin Drood" as irreverent: "I have always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour--because I feel it." And with a significance, of which, as I have said, he may himself have been dimly half-conscious, among the last words of his unfinished story, written that very afternoon, are words that tell of glorious summer suns.h.i.+ne transfiguring the city of his imagination, and of the changing lights, and the song of birds, and the incense from garden and meadow that "penetrate into the cathedral" of Cloisterham, "subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life."

For now the end had come. When he went in to dinner Miss Hogarth noticed that he looked very ill, and wished at once to send for a doctor. But he refused, struggled for a short s.p.a.ce against the impending fit, and tried to talk, at last very incoherently. Then, when urged to go up to his bed, he rose, and, almost immediately, slid from her supporting arm, and fell on the floor. Nor did consciousness return. He pa.s.sed from the unrest of life into the peace of eternity on the following day, June 9, 1870, at ten minutes past six in the evening.

And now he lies in Westminster Abbey, among the men who have most helped, by deed or thought, to make this England of ours what it is.

Dean Stanley only gave effect to the national voice when he a.s.signed to him that place of sepulture. The most popular, and in most respects the greatest novelist of his time; the lord over the laughter and tears of a whole generation; the writer, in his own field of fiction, whose like we shall probably not see again for many a long, long year, if ever; where could he be laid more fittingly for his last long sleep than in the hallowed resting-place which the country sets apart for the most honoured of her children?

So he lies there among his peers in the Southern Transept. Close beside him sleep Dr. Johnson, the puissant literary autocrat of his own time; and Garrick, who was that time's greatest actor; and Handel, who may fittingly claim to have been one of the mightiest musicians of all time. There sleeps, too, after the fitful fever of his troubled life, the witty, the eloquent Sheridan. In close proximity rests Macaulay, the artist-historian and essayist. Within the radius of a few yards lies all that will ever die of Chaucer, who five hundred years ago sounded the spring note of English literature, and gave to all after-time the best, brightest glimpse into mediaeval England; and all that is mortal also of Spenser of the honey'd verse; and of Beaumont, who had caught an echo of Shakespeare's sweetness if not his power; and of st.u.r.dy Ben Jonson, held in his own day a not unworthy rival of Shakespeare's self; and of "glorious" and most masculine John Dryden. From his monument Shakespeare looks upon the place with his kindly eyes, and Addison too, and Goldsmith; and one can almost imagine a smile of fellows.h.i.+p upon the marble faces of those later dead--Burns, Coleridge, Southey, and Thackeray.

Nor in that great place of the dead does d.i.c.kens enjoy cold barren honour alone. Nearly seventeen years have gone by since he was laid there--yes, nearly seventeen years, though it seems only yesterday that I was listening to the funeral sermon in which Dean Stanley spoke of the simple and sufficient faith in which he had lived and died. But though seventeen years have gone by, yet are outward signs not wanting of the peculiar love that clings to him still. As I strolled through the Abbey this last Christmas Eve I found his grave, and his grave alone, made gay with the season's hollies. "Lord, keep my memory green,"--in another sense than he used the words, that prayer is answered.

And of the future what shall we say? His fame had a brilliant day while he lived; it has a brilliant day now. Will it fade into twilight, without even an after-glow; will it pa.s.s altogether into the night of oblivion? I cannot think so. The vitality of d.i.c.kens' works is singularly great. They are all a-throb, as it were, with hot human blood. They are popular in the highest sense because their appeal is universal, to the uneducated as well as the educated. The humour is superb, and most of it, so far as one can judge, of no ephemeral kind.

The pathos is more questionable, but that too, at its simplest and best; and especially when the humour is shot with it--is worthy of a better epithet than excellent. It is supremely touching. Imagination, fancy, wit, eloquence, the keenest observation, the most strenuous endeavour to reach the highest artistic excellence, the largest kindliness,--all these he brought to his life-work. And that work, as I think, will live, I had almost dared to prophesy for ever. Of course fas.h.i.+ons change. Of course no writer of fiction, writing for his own little day, can permanently meet the needs of all after times.

Some loss of immediate vital interest is inevitable. Nevertheless, in d.i.c.kens' case, all will not die. Half a century, a century hence, he will still be read; not perhaps as he was read when his words flashed upon the world in their first glory and freshness, nor as he is read now in the noon of his fame. But he will be read much more than we read the novelists of the last century--be read as much, shall I say, as we still read Scott. And so long as he _is_ read, there will be one gentle and humanizing influence the more at work among men.