CHAPTER I

DICKENS'S FAVOURITE THEME

It has been said by Wendell Holmes that every man has in him one good novel, if he could but manage to write it. Most of us leave our novel carefully unwritten. But it has not yet been noticed, I think, that even those novelists whose variety of conception has been regarded as their most remarkable quality have usually had one favourite idea, which reappears again and again, even in the texture of works otherwise most varied in structure.

For example, even Sir Walter Scott has his favourite theme, which sometimes is the chief feature of the story, at other times occupies quite a subordinate position, but is nearly always present in one form or another. Scott's favourite idea, brought in so often that but for his marvellous skill in clothing it in ever-varying garb it would have become wearisome, is to present the youthful hero of his plot as a young and inexperienced man, treated by the older characters as little more than a boy, often their unconscious agent in important political plots, occasionally looked down upon by the heroine herself (who knows more of such plans and takes a more leading part in carrying them out than the hero of the story), but showing himself worthier, or at least manlier, than his elders had imagined him to be.

Scott has not always, perhaps, contented us with his hero; often another character is more interesting, as Fergus than Waverley, Bois Guilbert than Ivanhoe, Evandale than Morton; possibly because all Scott's heroes show the peculiarity we have described. In Edward Waverley we have the original of the type. In Guy Mannering "Harry Bertram" never shakes off the manner of a very young man, whether with Meg Merrilies, the Dominie, Mr. Pleydell, or Colonel Mannering. Frank Osbaldistone, in "Rob Roy," treated by his father as a mere boy, is afterwards a mere tool in the hands of older men. Even Die Vernon treats him till near the end as but an inexperienced lad. Lovell, in "The Antiquary" plays a similar part, alike with Monkbams, with the Baronet, and with old Edie Ochiltree, and remains to the end unconscious of his real position, in regard both to his putative father and to Earl Geraldine. In "Redgauntlet" — the plot of which, by the way, is not very interesting — we find Darsie Latimer similarly situated, and unconsciously taking part in a dangerous political plot. Alan Fairford holds a kindred position.

The hero of "The Black Dwarf" is still more cavalierly treated, insomuch that no one, I imagine, takes the least interest in him. Young Arthur, in "Anne of Geierstein," is a puppet in his father's hands to the end.

The scenes between Quentin Durward and Louis XI illustrate well Scott's favourite theme.

But Durward is also treated as a mere boy by Le Belafre, by Earl Crawford, and by Charles of Burgundy ; we note, too, that he is entirely unconscious of the part he is really playing in the journey to Liege.

Ivanhoe is under Cedric's high displeasure till near the end of the story, and is as boyish a hero as Quentin Durward, despite the bravery they both show in the saddle. Henry Morton,, with his uncle, with Dame Wilson, and afterwards with Balfour of Burley; Halbert Glendinning with the monks; Julian Avenel with Lady Avenel, and afterwards with Queen Mary and Catharine Seyton; Harry Gow (and Conachar) with Simon; Edgar Eavenswood with the elder Ashton and Caleb Balderstone; Tressilian in "Kenilworth"; Monteith in "The Legend of Montrose"; Merton in "The Pirate" (with old Mordaunt, with Noma of the Fitful Head, and even with Minna and Brenda, and their father); all these are samples of Sir Walter Scott's favourite theme. It is the same with Damian in "The Betrothed "; with the Varangian, in "Count Robert of Paris"; with young Nigel in "The Fortunes of Nigel''; with Julian in "Peveril of the Peak"; and with the Knight of the Leopard in "The Talisman."

Only one exception, and that rather apparent than real, can be mentioned — the "Heart of Midlothian," perhaps the finest of all Scott's novels: but this is a novel without a hero, or, rather, Jeanie Deans is both hero and heroine (for Reuben Butler can scarcely be considered a hero). Now, strangely enough, Jeanie, thus taking a double part, womanlike in her patience and goodness, manlike in her endurance and courage illustrates Scott's pet theme (as obviously as Edward Waverley or Frank Osbaldistone) in the scenes with Staunton and Staunton's father, with the Duke of Argyll and Queen Caroline — nay, even with Madge Wildfire.

Dickens a writer of another type, had also his favourite theme. So far as I know, the point has not yet been noticed; but I think there can be no doubt that one special idea had more attraction for him than any other, and seemed to him the most effective leading idea for a plot.

The idea which more than any other had a fascination for Dickens, and was apparently regarded by him as likely to be most potent in its influence on others, was that of a wrong-doer watched at every turn by one of whom he has no suspicion, for whom he even entertains a feeling of contempt. This characteristic, although, as I have said, it has been generally overlooked, is so marked that, as soon as attention is directed to it, men wonder it had not been noticed at once.

Of course, in a story like "Pickwick," started originally as a comic sporting tale, and only worked into a more serious form after the death of the sporting artist who was to have illustrated it, we should not expect to find any trace of an idea, which Dickens valued chiefly for its effect in exciting tragic emotions. We have only to consider how he worked this idea to see how unsuitable it would have been in such a novel as "Pickwick" — if, indeed, "Pickwick" can be called a novel.

But in two out of the first four novels which Dickens wrote we find this idea of patient watching — even to death or doom — a marked feature of the story. In "Barnaby Rudge" Haredale steadily waits and watches for Rudget till, after more than twenty years, "at last, at Iast," as he cries, he captures his brother's murderer on the very spot, where the murder had been committed. In this case, too, it is to be noticed that Rudge has been supposed to be dead during all the years of Haredale's watch: and this was so important a part of Dickens's conception, that he makes Haredale speak of it, even in the fierce rush in which he seizes Budge. "Villain!" he says, "dead and buried, as all men supposed, through your infernal arts, but reserved by Heaven for this." It became a favourite idea of Dickens to associate the thought of death either with the watcher or the watched; and, unless I mistake, in the final and finest development of his favourite theme, he made one "dead and buried as all men supposed" watch the very man who supposed him dead, and not only buried but destroyed.

In "Nicholas Nickleby" it is the untiring enmity of Brooker, not the work of those he chiefly dreads, which drives Ralph Nickleby to self-murder. "Ralph had no reason," we are told, "that he knew, to fear this man; he had never feared him before"; but he trembles when Brooker comes forth from the darkness in which he had been concealed, and confronts him — to tell the story which is to be as the doom of death to him.

In the other two of these first four works — "Oliver Twist" and "The Old Curiosity Shop'' — we find less marked use of Dickens's favourite idea, though it is not wholly absent from either work. In "The Old Curiosity Shop" the two Brass scamps (to include that "old fellow," Miss Sally Brass, in the term) are watched by the despised Marchioness, and it is by her — their powerless victim, as they supposed — that their detection is brought about. "Oliver Twist" was written specially to attack the workhouse system in England, and other ideas gave place to that leading one.

In Dickens's next novel the idea is further developed. In passing, I note that naturally the idea could never be presented twice in the same precise form. It is indeed wonderful how many changes Dickens was able to ring on this general notion of an untiring watch kept on one not suspecting that he was watched^ and least of all that he was watched by the man who was really holding his ways and doings constantly in view In "Martin Chuzzlewit" the two chief villains of the story, Jonas Chuzzlewit, the murderer (perhaps the most shadowy murderer ever pictured by novelist), and Pecksniff, the hypocrite, are both watching in the melodramatic way that Dickens loved. Jonas has no fear of Nadgett, and, indeed, never suspects that Tom Pinch's silent landlord is watching him at all. All his thoughts are directed towards Montague Tigg.

To see how Dickens delighted in the idea I am considering, we have only to notice the way in which he presents Jonas Chuzzlewit's thoughts when Nadgett denounces him. "I never watched a man so close as I have watched him," says Nadgett; and the thoughts of the frightened murderer shape themselves thus: "Another of the phantom forms of this terrific truth! Another of the many shapes in which it started tip about him out of vacancy! This man, of all men in the world, a spy upon him; this man, changing his identity, casting off his shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and springing up into a watchfull enemy ! The dead man might have come out of his grave and not confounded and appalled him so.''

Later, Dickens meant to have made use of this supreme horror, a dead man watching his murderer; for note: Jonas thinks not of some dead man, but of the dead man whom he has murdered. We may observe also that Jonas Chuzzlewit, like the latest of Dickens's villains, is but a murderer in intent, and in the supposed achievement of his purpose, at first; he commits an actual murder to escape punishment for a supposed murder, as Jasper, in killing Neville Landless, was to be brought to death in trying to escape death ; probably, too, by self-slaughter like Jonas.

While Jonas is watched by Nadgett, whom he despises ("Old What's-his-name," he calls him, "looking as usual as if he wanted to skulk up the chimney; of all the precious dummies in appearance that ever I saw, he's about the worst; he is afraid of me, I think"), Pecksniff is watched by one whom he regards as to all intents and purposes dead, who had lived in his house "weak and sinking," but who suddenly shows that he has been keen and resolute, ''with watchful eye, vigorous hand on staff, and triumphal purpose in his figure." "I have lived in this house, Pinch," says old Martin, "and had him fawning on me days and weeks and months; I have suffered him to treat me as his tool and instrument; I have undergone ten thousand times as much as I could have endured if I had been the miserable old man he took me for. I have had his base soul bare before me day by day, and have not betrayed myself. I never could have undergone such torture but for looking forward to this time. The time now drawing on will make amends for all, and I wouldn't have him die or hang himself for millions of golden pieces."

It is clear that the idea of patient, unsuspected watching to bring an evil-doer to justice must have been strong in Dickens's mind when he thus worked it into the warp of his most characteristic plots, and into both warp and woof of the work which was perhaps most characteristic of them all. That the theme is melodramatic and utterly unlike anything in real life makes this all the clearer. Probably no man that ever lived has been willing to devote months or years of his life to such a task as Dickens thus imagined; but so much the more obvious is it that the idea was specially his own.

In Dickens's next important work — "Dombey and Son" — we do not find this, characteristic idea in so marked a form. Yet it is present, and in more ways than one. Thus we find Dombey watched by Carker (whom he regards as a mere business manager for his great house), all his ways noted, and the ruin of his house wrought, by a man whom he considers scarce worth nothing. But Carker himself in turn is tracked by those whom he regards as utterly contemptible — old Mother Brown and her unhappy daughter. So again, in the pursuit of Carker by the man whom he has wronged and whom he despises, we have the same idea, though in a changed form. The pursuit reminds one of a hideous dream, in which some enemy from whom we fly appears always at the moment when we imagine we have reached safety. "In the fever of his mortification and rage," we are told, "panic mastered him completely. He would gladly have encountered almost any risk rather than meet the man of whom two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival, which he had never expected, the sound of his voice, their having been so near meeting face to face — he would have braved out this; but the springing of his mine upon himself seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance."

In "David Copperfield," which was in large degree autobiographical, we might have expected that the idea we are considering would not present itself. Yet here also it is seen, and more than once. The plots of Uriah Heep are defeated by the close watch kept on him by Micawber, whom Heep thoroughly despises. Littimer, the "second villain'' of the story, is brought to punishment, as one of his gaolers tells Copperfield, by the devotion of little Miss Mowcher, who, once on his track, follows him till he is in the toils, and finally aids in his capture.

In "Bleak House" the interest of an important part of the story turns on a murder. Mystery is not suggested chiefly by the question, "Who is the murderer?'' (about which no reader of average intelligence pan have any doubt), but by doubts as to the way in which the murder has been committed and suspicion thrown on two innocent persons. Here, again, Dickens adopts his favourite idea. Mademoiselle Hortense spares no pains to bring the charge of murder on another, who is her enemy — a theme which Dickens was to have wrought out more fully in his latest work. In her anxiety to throw suspicion on Lady Dedlock she loses sight of her own danger. If she has any fears, she certainly has none of the woman with whom she lodges. Yet this is where her real danger lies. This woman keeps watch upon her night and day. This woman had Undertaken ("speaking to me" says her husband, Inspector Bucket, "as well as she could on account of the sheet in her mouth") "that the murderess should do nothing without her knowledge, should be her prisoner without suspecting it, should no more escape from her than from death."

In "Little Dorrit" we find Dickens's favourite theme in a new aspect. I think the importance of this part of the rather bewildering plot of "Little Dorrit" obtained less recognition than Dickens expected. The murderous Rigaud-Blandois or Blandois-Rigaud (as best suits his convenience), disguises himself as a much older man with white hair — an idea which in a modified form was to reappear in Dickens's last novel. He is watched closely and patiently by the despised Cavaletto, the "Contraband beast," as Blandois calls him. "It is necessary," says Cavaletto, telling the story, "to have patience. I have patience ... I wait patientissamentally. I watch, I hide, until he walks and smokes. He is a soldier with grey hair. But! ... he is also this man that you see." What Dickens felt (or supposed) to be the effects of the sudden discovery that a watch of this sort had been kept is shown by the way in which even Bigaud-Blandois (whose chief characteristic, outside his villainy, is his coolness) blanches when he hears how Cavaletto had watched him so patientissamentally. "White to the lips" — yet when he knows that his story is known, he "faces it out with a bare face, as the infamous wretch he was." The "Tale of Two Cities," of course, turns wholly on the general idea which we have thus found in more or less important parts of Dickens's chief works. It is the undying hate, handed on from generation to generation, of the despised French peasantry — a hate patiently waiting for vengeance, even on the innocent descendants of the feudal tyrants of old — which brings about the series of events leading to the catastrophe. i Dickens himself called attention to this point. The objection was raised that the feudal cruelties did not come sufficiently within the date of the action to justify his use of them. "I had, of course, full knowledge" he replied, "of the formal surrender of the feudal privileges"; but he had also sufficient knowledge of human nature, he went on to say, to know that hatreds which had been growing during twenty generations would not die out, or even perceptibly diminish, in the first few generations after their cause was removed — nay, that even the direct effects of that evil cause would not quickly cease, and assuredly had not ceased when the French Revolution began.*

* In the last chapter of the fourth volume of Alison's "History of Europe" (I refer to the first edition of twenty-one volumes, the form in which I read that light and elegant little work as a boy) this is very fully pointed out — perhaps eyen somewhat too fully.

In "Great Expectations" the whole plot turn on two watchings, by men whom the watched persons despise. First, Magwitch keeps watch (and kindly ward, too, despised though he is) on Pip, whose disgust and horror when he learns who has been his unknown benefactor must be regarded as undoubtedly illustrating Dickens's, favourite theme. But also the despised and thoroughly despicable Compeyson keeps patient and finally successful watch on his enemy Magwitch. The interest of the story culminates in the close of this long watch, the death of the watcher, and the mortal injury of the watched. A minor part of the action shows the same characteristic idea in the watch kept by Orlick, first on Mrs. Gargery, till he strikes her a death blow, and then long and patiently on Pip, till finally he succeeds in inveigling him to the lonely place by the marshes, where he had intended that not only should Pip be slain, but destroyed from off the face of the earth. Another villain was to have planned a similar end for his victim in Dickens's latest story.

Never surely had any leading idea been so thoroughly worked by a novelist as this pet theme of Dickens Had been worked—and over-worked , one would have said— in the stories I have dealt with. It would seem as though Dickens conceived that nothing could more impress and move his readers than the idea of patient, unsuspected watch kept by someone supposed either to be indifferent or insignificant or powerless or dead, that he thus used the idea in so many forms in his chief works up to the time when "Great Expectations" had appeared. It might be imagined that now at last he could feel it to be no longer available. The thought may indeed present itself that as a man advances in years his first notions become more and more his leading themes: yet it would seem as though Dickens could not, without repeating himself, make further use of his favourite idea.

What, however, do we find? In his next novel, "Our Mutual Friend," Dickens takes "as the leading incident for his stor " (I quote his own words), "the idea of a man, young and perhaps eccentric, feigning to be dead, and being dead to all intents and purposes external to himself." (This man keeps patient watch on more than one character, in this the most varied in colouring of all Dickens's novels. We find him trying to recall the manner of his own death, in order that the reader may more fully recognise how' thoroughly dead is this patiently-watching man to all external to himself. "I have no clue to the scene of my death," he says ; "not that it matters now." "It is a sensation not experienced by many mortals" he adds, "to be looking into a churchyard on a wild, windy night, and to feel that I no more hold a place among the living than these dead do, and even to know that I lie buried as they lie buried; nothing uses me to it; a spirit that was once a man could hardly feel stranger or lonelier, going unrecognised among men, than I feel."

In his latest story Dickens meant to have brought out still more prominently the idea of a man, supposed to be dead, thus looking into the place where, to all intents and purposes external to himself, he lay dead, buried, and destroyed.

Even this is not quite all, however. In "No Thoroughfare" (in the part written by Dickens) we have a man described as dead— if it means anything to say that his "heart stood still" (not momentarily, but during events that must have lasted many minutes)— coming to life, and confronting the man who supposed he had murdered him. The circumstances of this supposed murder are akin, by the way, in two striking circumstances, to the supposed murder which was the real mystery of Dickens's last story.

Again, in "Hunted Down," we have a man whom the villain of the story supposes to be dying: (as surely murdered by him as if he had slain him outright) turning out to be another man, disguised, who is not dying at all, but tracks Slinkton to his own death by self-murder, — as it was to have been with the villain of Dickens's last story, and as it had been with so many of his earlier villains.

"You shall know," says Meltham, speaking as Beckwith, "for I hope the knowledge will be terrible and bitter to you, why you have been pursued by one man, and why you have been tracked to death at a single individual's charge. That man Meltham was as absolutely certain that you could never elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to your destruction with the utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he divided this sacred duty with no other duty ill life, as he was certain that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hand of Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out from among living men. I am that man, and I thank God that I have done my work."

Before passing to the last work of all, I may note here that Dickens himself noted among his "subjects for stories" a form of the theme we have been considering. "Here is a fancy,'' Forster says, "that I remember him to have been more than once bent upon using; but the opportunity never came "Two men to be guarded against" — the words are Dickens's own now — "one whom I openly hold in some serious animosity, whom I am at the pains to wound and defy, and whom I estimate as worth wounding and defying; the other, whom I treat as a sort of insect, and contemptuously and pleasantly flick aside with my glove. But it turns out to be the latter who is the really dangerous man; and when I expect the blow from the other — it comes from him."

This idea (in a somewhat strengthened form) was worked out in "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." Here is a young man, who seemed light and wayward, has been swept aside and is supposed to be dead, as an insect might be crushed. Jasper has no further thought of him, but he plots serious measures against a man whom he holds in serious animosity, and whom he has been at the pains to wound and defy. But the fatal blow was to have come, had the story been finished, from the man who had seemed so wanting in purpose, the "bright boy" of the opening scenes.

Every conceivable form of his favourite theme had now been tried, save that which Dickens had himself indicated as the most effective of all — that the dead should rise from the grave to confront his murderer. This idea was at length to be used, difficult though it seemed to work it out successfully. "I have a very curious and new idea for my new story," he wrote to Forster; "not a communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a very strong one, though difficult to work."

From what we know of Forster's restless inquisitiveness in regard to Dickens's plans, we learn without surprise that immediately after he had been told that the idea was not communicable he asked to have it communicated to him. Nor does it seem to have been regarded by Forster as at all strange that at once (his own words are "immediately afterwards") Dickens communicated to him the idea which had been described as "incommunicable" or that the new and curious idea should be both stale and common-place — nothing, in fact, but the off-told tale of a murder detected by the presence of indestructible jewellery in lime into which the body of the murdered man had been flung.

Forster's vanity blinded him in such sort that the patent artifice was not detected. Yet he asked where the originality of the idea came in. Dickens explained, he naively adds, that it was to consist ''in the review of the murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to be dwelt upon as if not he, the culprit, but some other man, were the tempted."

But of course, so far as this special feature was concerned, the idea had been already worked out in the "Madman's Manuscript" in "Pickwick," and in the "Clock-case Confession" in "Master Humphrey's Clock".

The real idea underlying "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" was a very striking and novel form of Dickens's favourite theme. Before showing this, however, it may be as well to make a few general remarks respecting this powerful story.

The usual idea about "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" has been that the novel was one of the dullest Dickens ever wrote. I remember an eminent novelist say, in 1873, that, as part after part came out, he felt that "Charles Dickens was gone, positively gone" — just as the great dramatic critic in "Nicholas Nickleby" felt about the Shakesperian drama. Longfellow, however, thought differently, and I take him to have been far and away the better judge. He thought that "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" promised to be the finest work Dickens had written. That opinion, expressed within a few weeks of Dickens's death, led me to read a story which I had determined to avoid, as incomplete, and likely therefore to be tantalising in the reading; and I have always felt grateful to the poet for thus sending me to read a work which, even though incomplete, is worth, to my mind, any two of Dickens's early novels together.

I take it that "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" is disliked chiefly because the idea presents itself to many readers that the plot really is formed on the commonplace and well-worn idea mentioned to Forster, and artfully suggested at every turn of the narrative. Longfellow, as a poet, felt the real meaning of the tones in which Dickens told that seemingly common-place story, and heard beneath them voices telling a story full of pathos and tragic force.

To the ordinary reader "Edwin Drood" is merely the story of a murder, the murder of a wayward, careless young man. The very details of the murder seem clear. The reader knows, he thinks, how the murder is to be found out, whom the heroine and her friend are to marry, and how the murderer is to tell the story of his own crime as well as of his defeated attempt to bring about the death of the man he hates and fears.

In such a story there is little of interest; and the tone of the completed half of the book seems quite unsuited to the intrinsic insignificance of the plot. Thus judged "Edwin Drood" promised to be as worthless as many considered it.

It was not of such a story, thus ill told, that Longfellow spoke with such enthusiasm. The real story is more mysterious, more terrible; it is at once more pathetic and more humorous. All that we know of Dickens's favourite ideas, all he said to his most intimate friends about his plot of "Edwin Drood," all that the unfinished story really tells us, assures those who understand Dickens, that his favourite theme was to have been worked into this novel in striking and masterly fashion. The lovers of Dickens who have not cared to read his unfinished story, because fearing lest the end should not be known, may read it with full assurance that its great charm is scarcely affected by any doubt as to the fate of the principal characters. The delicate clue running through the story suffices, if followed, to make "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," incomplete though it is, one of the most interesting (to myself it is far the most interesting) of Dickens's novels.

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