When I started this blog a little over a month ago, I selected a quote by Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet as its title. I did so because, like Dylan Thomas, I too had fallen in love with words. And it has been a life-long love affair. In past blogs, I have mentioned William Shakespeare, Matthew Arnold, Emily Dickinson and Thomas Gray, to name a few. I want to add another author to this list tonight. Not a poet, as the others have been, but a man who knew how to write prose as if he were writing poetry, relishing the cadence in the language he put into the mouths of his many memorable characters, and even in the names he gave those characters.
When I was in high school, I was told that Charles Dickens wrote long novels because he was paid by the word. And, to some extent, that was true. Many of his novels were first published in serial form in literary journals. It was this reality in the early publishing of his work that also forced him to end his chapters, or installments, with "cliff-hangers" to keep the reading public coming back for more. It also made his novels eminently readable. But technique was not what brought people back to reading Dickens again and again. It is not what made his reading public write thousands of letters to him, begging him to bring Little Nell back to life at the end of The Old Curiosity Shop. It was a combination of his acute social conscience, developed by a childhood of extremes of comfort and penury, and his amazing talent to use the language to weave tales full of description and colorful characters. It was that social conscience that forced him to see the abuses of the Industrial Revolution in England, replete with boarding schools (Nicholas Nickleby, Little Dorrit, Hard Times), where children were abused and starved, with poverty (Oliver Twist), child labor (David Copperfield), and a bloated legal system that worked for some and not for others (Bleak House), yet, still allowed him, in novels like his first, The Pickwick Papers, to produce stories that poked playful fun at "the haves" in society.
It is not my intention to be an essayist on this blog, or a literary critic, just a "gushing" fan of great literature and the authors that wrote them. Dickens is certainly one of them. While his words themselves don't always sound like poetry, it is his unique ability to phrase an idea that leaves the reader saying to him or herself, "Boy! I wish I could have said that!"
In his autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, he has his main character, David, now an author himself, look back at his past life and ahead to his future at the same time. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
The first lines of his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, is as memorable as the last lines, said by a character who sacrifices his own life for the happiness of another.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ..."
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."
An example of his mastery of description from Hard Times is equaled many times over in his other works.
"The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders, - nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was, - all helped the emphasis."
One of my favorite works, a novel he wrote to be read aloud in one night and divided into "staves" rather than chapters, for each chapter would probably need another piece of wood (stave) put on the fire to keep the room warm while reading, is A Christmas Carol. It is a novel full of characters that are known by their name to people who never read the novel, characters like Ebenezer Scrooge, Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. While a short novel, Dickens puts in puns as well as profundity.
"You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
"They are Man's and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance and this girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."
And sometimes, just pure descriptive opinion.
"...every idiot who goes about with a 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."
Dickens uses names that sound like the personality they represent. His novels are filled with them. Names like Mr M’Choakumchild, the grinding schoolteacher in Hard Times,Sir Leicester Dedlock, the husband of Lady Dedlock in Bleak House, Mr. Fezziwig, a jolly employer who hosts a Christmas party that Scrooge visits with the Ghost of Christmas past in A Christmas Carol, Thomas Gradgrind, the notorious headmaster in Hard Times, Sir Mulberry Hawk, a lecherous, parasitic nobleman in Nicholas Nickleby, Uriah Heep, a devious clerk who works for Mr. Wickfield in David Copperfield, Mr. Alfred Jingle, a garrulous strolling player and mountebank in The Pickwick Papers, Mr. Murdstone, the second and emotionally distant husband of David Copperfield's mother, Clara in David Copperfield, and Wackford Squeers, the sadistic master of the Yorkshire school, Doutheboys Hall, in Nicholas Nickleby.
But, by far, my favorite Dickens character is Sam Weller, the manservant to Mr. Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers. This cockney philosopher is responsible for some of the most interesting observations and most humorous advice in all of the Dickens novels.
". . . out vith it, as the father said to the child, wen he swallowed a farden."
"He wants you particklar; no one else'll do, as the Devil's private secretary said ven he fetched avay Doctor Faustus."
"There's nothin' so refreshin' as sleep, sir, as the servant-girl said afore she drank the egg-cupful o' laudanum."
"It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they alway say in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man's head off."
"Werry sorry to 'casion any personal inconvenience, ma'am, as the house-breaker said to the old lady when he put her on the fire...."
". . . now we look compact and comfortable, as the father said ven he cut his little boy's head off, to cure him o' squintin'."
Yes, I believe that Dickens has earned mention in this blog. His use of the English language to prick the conscience of a nation as well as to tell a good tale makes him amply deserving in my book. However, I will leave you to form your own opinion, for, as Sam Weller would say, ". . . vether it's worth while goin' through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o' taste."
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