Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition by DavidPrice,
BY
ANDREW LANG
LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
1905
Forster tells us that Dickens, inhis later novels, from Bleak House onwards (1853),“assiduously cultivated” construction, “thisessential of his art.” Some critics may think, thatsince so many of the best novels in the world “have nooutline, or, if they have an outline, it is a demnedoutline,” elaborate construction is not absolutely“essential.” Really essential are character,“atmosphere,” humour.
But as, in the natural changes of life, and under the strainof restless and unsatisfied activity, his old buoyancy andunequalled high spirits deserted Dickens, he certainly wrote nolonger in what Scott, speaking of himself, calls the manner of“hab nab at a venture.” He constructedelaborate plots, rich in secrets and surprises. He emulatedthe manner of Wilkie Collins, or even of Gaboriau, while hecombined with some of the elements of the detective novel, orroman policier, careful study of character. ExceptGreat Expectations, none of his later tales rivals inmerit his early picaresque stories of the road, such asPickwick and Nicholas Nickleby. “Youthwill be served;” no sedulous care could compensate for theexuberance of “the first sprightly runnings.” In the early books the melodrama of the plot, the secrets ofRalph Nickleby, of Monk, of Jonas Chuzzlewit, were the least ofthe innumerable attractions. But Dickens was more and moredrawn towards the secret that excites curiosity, and to the gameof hide and seek with the reader who tried to anticipate thesolution of the secret.
In April, 1869, Dickens, outworn by the strain of his Americanreadings; of that labour achieved under painful conditions ofominously bad health—found himself, as Sir Thomas Watsonreported, “on the brink of an attack of paralysis of hisleft side, and possibly of apoplexy.” He thereforeabandoned a new series of Readings. We think ofScott’s earlier seizures of a similar kind, after whichPeveril, he said, “smacked of theapoplexy.” But Dickens’s new story of TheMystery of Edwin Drood, first contemplated in July, 1869, andaltered in character by the emergence of “a very curiousand new idea,” early in August, does not “smack ofthe apoplexy.” We may think that the mannerisms ofMr. Honeythunder, the philanthropist, and of Miss Twinkleton, theschoolmistress, are not in the author’s best vein ofhumour. “The Billickin,” on the other hand, thelodging-house keeper, is “in very gracious fooling:”her unlooked-for sallies in skirmishes with Miss Twinkleton arerich in mirthful surprises. Mr. Grewgious may becaricatured too much, but not out of reason; and Dickens, alwaysgood at boys, presents a gamin, in Deputy, who is in notunpleasant contrast with the pathetic Jo of BleakHouse. Opinions may differ as to Edwin and Rosa, butthe more closely one studies Edwin, the better one thinks of thatcharacter. As far as we are allowed to see Helena Landless,the restraint which she puts on her “tigerish blood”is admirable: she is very fresh and original. The villainis all that melodrama can desire, but what we do miss, I think,is the “atmosphere” of a small cathedral town. Here there is a lack of softness and delicacy of treatment: onthe other hand, the opium den is studied from the life.
On the whole, Dickens himself was perhaps most interested inhis plot, h