The children of Dickens

I ONCE sat with several thousand people on one summer evening to watch an historical pageant at Warwick in England. Back of us were the walls of the great Norman castle, around us were the old trees that had been there for centuries, and through the trees we could see the little River Avon. Then the townspeople acted out for us the romantic scenes that had taken place on that very spot. First we saw the Druids building their altars; then the Romans came; and after them the Saxons. After a while we saw Norman knights riding under the greenwood trees. Warwick the king-maker rode up to his castle. Then there was a stir on the river, and we saw Queen Elizabeth in her barge. When she had been received in state, the officers of the neighboring towns were presented to her. Among them was Mr. Shakespeare from Stratford, who brought with him his young son, William. Then came Cromwell’s soldiers and the men who have made history since Queen Elizabeth’s day.

It was all very picturesque, and we felt that we were really watching the events that had taken place on that spot through the centuries of English history. But when the Druids and the Saxons and the Normans and the great personages of every degree had passed out of our sight, there was only one person left. It was the little boy from Stratford. He stood there all alone, thinking it all over. Then he walked away.

Now the thing that made the most impression upon us was this boy who had the gift of seeing all we saw and more in his imagination. For, after all, the great thing about the River Avon is that this boy once played upon its banks. And the pleasant Warwickshire country has for its chief charm the fact that William Shakespeare knew it and loved it.

Now and then a person is born who has the gift not only of seeing things more clearly than we do, but of making us see them more vividly than we could without his help. Such a person we call a genius. He gives us the use of his mind. When such a person writes a book, it is as if he had created an interesting country and filled it with all sorts of things for our amusement. He invites us to visit him and make ourselves at home. And the best of it is that we are not invited for a particular day. The invitation is open to us for a lifetime. Whenever we feel inclined, we may visit Shakespeare’s country and meet all the Shakespearian people and listen to their talk. And the more often we go on such visits, the more enjoyment we find.

Now it is the same with Dickens. To be sure, his hospitality is not on so grand a scale as Shakespeare’s. He does not show us kings, or knights in armor, or vast parks and lordly castles. But he opens to us a world of imagination that is his own. It is filled with common people, but they are uncommonly amusing. We see not only what they are doing, but also what they think they are doing, which is often absurdly different. We see their “tricks and their manners” as they cannot possibly see them. That is where we have the advantage of them. Some of them strut about as if they owned the earth, while some that wear poor clothes and endure hard knocks turn out to be the real heroes. Dickens is not like some writers who pride themselves on not telling what they think of their characters. He has his likes and his dislikes, and he doesn’t care who knows it. He hates a bully, whether he is a man or boy, and he loves the people who knock the bully down. That is because he suffered so much from bullies when he was a boy.

When he was twelve years old, his father lost his money and was thrown into a debtors’ prison. It was a queer way they had then of treating a person who couldn’t pay his debts. They shut him up where he couldn’t earn anything. Charles had to visit pawn-shops to try to borrow money for the family. Then he was put to work in a big, gloomy establishment where they made blacking for shoes. His work was to sit all day on a bench pasting labels on the boxes. Then he would have to find ways of keeping alive on a few pennies he got each day.

But though he had a very hard time for a year or two, he spent his time greatly to his own and our advantage. Before he was thirteen, he had accumulated a great deal of experience. He had kept his eyes open and had seen a side of life that most people never see at all.

When I think of Dickens and of his way of finding out obscure people, and making them interesting, I remember the advice I once read in a newspaper as to how to find a collar-button. When a collar-button rolls off the dressing-table, it seems to have an uncanny way of rolling out of sight. The gentleman who is in need of it feels himself greatly aggrieved over the collar-button’s easy way of getting lost. Now the newspaper man said that the reason the man doesn’t see the collar-button is that he stands too high above it. If he will forget all about his dignity and lie down on the floor, he can’t help but see what he is looking for. In order to see it he must get down to the level where the collar-button is. There he will see it shining like a little mountain of gold.

I think that explains why Dickens sees so much more in his characters than other persons would who did not have his advantages. He does not look down on his characters. He meets them on their own level, because he has been there. And so he makes us see them.

He learned very early that, no matter where a person is, he is always the centre of his little world. He always has something that he is afraid of and always has something that he hopes for. And he learned to sympathize not only with the big hopes and fears but with the little hopes and fears. They are the things which wise people often overlook, but they are really very important, for there are so many of them.

Dickens did not write children’s stories, that is, stories about children who stayed as children. Of course there are children in his novels just as there are in the London streets—plenty of them. But they are all mixed up with the older people. And then they are all the time growing up just as they do in real life. You get acquainted with a small boy in one chapter; and the next time you meet him he is at boarding-school, and before the end of the book he is out walking with children of his own.

This is the reason why it would not be worth while to try to tell the stories of the children in the novels of Dickens. The moment you got to the most exciting part of the story you would find that they weren’t children at all. They are quite grown up. The fact is that Dickens was not very much of a story-teller. We do not read him for the plot, which is often hard to follow. He gives us scenes, one after another, each one really complete in itself.

When we sit down by the fire on a winter evening, some one says: “What shall we read? We haven’t time to read a book through—only a chapter.” Now the chances are that we choose a chapter from Dickens. And it’s very likely that we will choose some scene which we all are most familiar with.

We come into an inn. The coach has just arrived, and there is a cheerful bustle. We hear the blowing of the horns and the cracking of the whips, and if Mr. Weller happens to be driver, or if Mr. Pickwick and his friends happen to be on board, we are sure that we will be left in a state of great good humor.

Or we drop into a shabby little house, and climb the stairs till we come to a room where some of our friends are having a little dinner. They are making speeches to one another, and acting in a most extraordinary manner. It’s their way of having a good time, and we are glad that they can enjoy themselves over so little.

We hear people quarrelling and crying and laughing, and we are curious to know what it is all about. The best of it is that Dickens always tells us. If a man is a villain, we see it at once; and if he is a good-hearted person, we give him credit for it. We do not have to read the book through to get the flavor of it. We go at once to the scenes that please us best.

The scenes that are selected for this book are those in which children appear, and we want to see them as Dickens did.