The Dickens Centenary

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The Empire Club of Canada Addresses (Toronto, Canada), 1 Feb 1912, p. 117-124
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O'Hagan, Thomas, Speaker
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Text
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Speeches
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Celebrating, this year, the centenary of one of our greatest masters of fiction, Charles Dickens. Feeling the loss of his son, Charles Tennyson Dickens, who passed away yesterday. Forming an estimate of the genius of Dickens with some knowledge of the conditions of the times into which he was born; some history. The literary world at the time of Dickens' birth in 1812. Social and political conditions in England at the time of his birth, 20 years before the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. A time of suffering, of conflict, of expansion, of progress. Dickens' father as the model for Micawber in "David Copperfield." Details of Dickens' early life. Responses to Dickens' early writing. Origins of Dora. A comparison of Dickens' writing with that of Thackeray and Scott. Dickens' early fame. Dickens, coming to the world as an apostle of love to the children of poverty. Dickens' mission and enduring fame. The humorous element in the novels of Dickens, with several examples. Reaction to the author's death in 1870.
Date of Original
1 Feb 1912
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English
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Full Text
THE DICKENS CENTENARY
An Address by THOMAS O'HAGAN, PH. D., Editor New World, Chicago, before the Empire Club of Canada, February 1, 1912.

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--year we are called upon, early in its Kalends, to celebrate the centenary of one of our greatest masters of fiction, Charles Dickens. Assuredly the author of "The Pickwick Papers" and "David Copperfield" is in every way worthy of this commemoration. But a few short weeks ago we heard his son, the late Charles Tennyson Dickens, lecture on his gifted father, and though more than forty years hive passed since his distinguished father was laid in death beside the kings and statesmen, men of science and men of letters in Westminster Abbey, we felt his loss as if he had passed away but yesterday.

Now, in forming an estimate of the genius of Dickens, it would be well that we should first gain some knowlege of the condition of the times into which he was born. For, while neither time nor place creates genius, they have a good deal to do in moulding and fashioning an art product. Charles Dickens, we are told, was born on the 7th of February, 1812, at Landsport, near Portsmouth, England. George III was then King of England. Wellington was waging war in the Spanish Peninsula. Daniel O'Connell, one of the greatest of Irish leaders, was carrying on his agitation for Catholic emancipation.

In the literary world there had been a junction of fortunate stars. The age of romance and nature had set in full force. Wordsworth was leading back the heart of mankind in pilgrimage to the shrine of nature, whose altar-lamp had burned unheeded during the reign of the Correct School of Poets; Tom Moore was pouring out his sweet Irish heart lyrics. John Buskin, the great art critic and master of style, who passed away a few years ago, was not yet born; John Henry may whose fine spirituality was afterwards to find expression from the pulpit of St. Mary's, in Oxford, was a boy of eleven; Robert Browning, the great psychological poet, was not yet born, and his future wife, the gifted Elizabeth Barrett, a child of three years, while neither Darwin nor Gladstone was old enough to even dream of Evolution or Home Rule.

Now, what was the condition of England, social and political, when Dickens was born? The great novelist had birth twenty years before the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. It was a time of, suffering, of conflict, of expansion, of progress. The great Corn Law struggle had set in England with- Ebenezer Elliott, as its poet laureate. Children were earing out their young lives in dark coal-pits, for as yet no law had been passed for their redress. Murderous Newgate, with its gallows, was still the objective point to which thousands flocked to witness the ghastly scenes of hanging.

"Sheer ugliness of every-day life," says Mr. Gissing, in his admirable study of Dickens, "had reached a limit not easily surpassed;" thick-headed national prejudice, in consequence of great wars and British victories, had marvellously developed; aristocracy was losing its better influence and power passing to a well fed multitude, remarkable for dogged practicality, which as often as not meant ferocious egoism. "With all this," says Mr. Gissing, "a prevalence of such ignoble vices as religious hypocrisy and servile snobbishness."

Surely the time was ripe for a novelist who could depict such conditions, who could deal with life as he saw it enacted every day around him. We will not follow in detail the early life of Dickens. Shelley tells us that poets learn in suffering what they teach in song. So, indeed, frequently do novelists. To him who had written "Tiny Tim" and "Tom All Alones," early sorrows had come that could not well be forgotten. Indeed, many a character depicted in Dickens is Dickens himself. His mother appears to have been a good and thrifty woman. His father, while Dickens was still young, was seized for debt and cast into Marshalsea Prison. It is here worth noting that his father is the original Micawber in "David Copperfield."

We are told that Dickens, when young, was an omnivorous reader--that he read without intermission the great novelists and essayists of the eighteenth century--Fielding and Richardson and Smollett and Sterne and Addison and Goldsmith, also Ben Jonson, Shakespeare and the Bible. It is well that Dickens read these great writers, for it gave him a command of clear-cut idiomatic English.

One year before Queen Victoria ascended the English throne, that is in 1836, appeared Dickens' first literary effort, "Sketches, by Boz." Dickens took the pen name of Boz from the nickname given to one of his brothers, the original of which was Moses in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield." These early sketches revealed the gift and power of the future great novelist. They further revealed the fact that his literary "metier" was to be among the lower and middle classes. Dickens' next work, "Pickwick," was a masterpiece. It took London by storm. Everybody laughed at Sam Weller, Tony Weller, and the Fat Boy, and the question was facetiously asked, "Who the Dickens is Boz?" and as facetiously answered

"Who the Dickens Boz could be

Puzzled many a learned elf;

But time revealed the mystery

And Boz appeared as Dickens' self."

Of course, every one knows that "Pickwick" originated in the suggestion of a publisher that the author of "Sketches by Boz" should write certain facetious chapters to accompany certain facetious drawings; it was a joke at the expense of Cockney sportsmen. It was after Pickwick had appeared and the last installment of "Oliver Twist" was published that there appeared in "Bentley's Miscellany" a poetical epistle to Boz, dated at Genoa from Father Prout, in which, speaking of the genius of Dickens, the author of "Shandon Bells" says:

But neither when, you sport your pen, O potent mirth compeller, Winning our hearts in monthly parts, can Pickwick or Sam Weller Cause us to weep with pathos deep, or shake with laugh spasmodical, As When you drain your copious vein for Bentley's periodical."

About this time, while living at Furneval Inn, Dickens married Catherine, eldest daughter of Mr. George Hogarth. Doubtless he lived in the early matrimonial days much in the same way as Tommy Traddles did, as described in "David Copperfield."

It has been thought for a long time by many that the original of Dora, in "David Copperfield," was Catherine Hogarth, the future Mrs. Dickens, but an article from Sir Robertson Nicoll, which appeared a short time ago in the British Weekly, satisfies us that this is not the fact-that the original of Dora was a Miss Maria. Beadhell with whom Dickens fell madly in love at the age of eighteen=a futile love, seeing that Miss Beadnell rejected his suit, though Dickens, it is said, begged his acceptance on his knees.

In quick succession following the publication of "Pickwick" appeared "Oliver Twist," "Nicholas Nickleby," "Old Curiosity Shop," and "Barnaby Rudge." And this brings us to a consideration of Charles Dickens as an artist. Wherein 'does he differ from Thackeray and Scott, and what does this gifted triumvirate hold in common? One thing is very evident to the reader of Dickens-that he could not invent an organic and powerful plot and carry out an elaborate scheme. It is certain, at least, that he has not done so. It is plain, too, that Dickens had nothing of that epical gift which gave us "Tom Jones" and "Ivanhoe."

When Dickens was at the zenith of his fame Thackeray appeared, and when "Vanity Fair" reached the public these two novelists were placed side by side. It will be noticed that Dickens and Thackerav were almost of the same age, but the genius of Thackerav ripened much more slowly than did that of Dickens. When the latter had written "Pickwick," at the youthful age of twenty-four, he woke up one morning and found himself famous. There has been no other example of such early ripening in our day. The nearest resemblance to it is Rudyard Kipling, and I feel like apologizing to the author of "David Copperfield" for coupling his name with that of the author of ".Plain Tales From the Hills."

Dickens and Thackeray started out under a different philosophy of life-if that is to be called a philosophy which was probably only the result of peculiarity of temperament in each case. Dickens set out on the literary theory, that in life everything is better than it looks; Thackeray with the impression that it is worse. Dickens worked from the externals inward; and Thackeray realized the unseen and left the externals to grow of themselves. Thackeray and Dickens shared in several peculiarities. Each lived and wrote of and for London. Dickens created for art the London of the middle and poorer classes. Thackeray did the same for the London of the upper class and for those who strive to imitate their ways. Again, in both Dickens and Thackeray, the emotions described are conventional. And lastly Dickens, like Thackeray, is stronger in characterization than in plot.

Now, when we contrast Dickens and Scott we find them alike and yet not alike. Both are national. Scott has stamped his genius on an entire country, Dickens has stamped his on an entire language. Scott saw the present as a result of the historical past. Dickens had no sense of the historical past. Various objects of life appeal to each in different degrees. What a mountain or a castle was to Scott, a stage-coach or a lawyer's office was to Dickens.

Charles Dickens was above all a moral reformer. Had he been less of this-written less with a purpose-he would have been a greater artist, though purpose with , Dickens did not, as with George Eliot, preoccupy his mind. When he had written "Pickwick" people thought the mission of this novelist was to jest and make the world laugh, but the publication of "Oliver Twist" re vealed to the world his real mission, which was not only to amuse but, to effect-that he came to cast his lot on the side of the unfortunate, as with pen, more magical than 'that of Cervantes, he entered the arena, of reform.,

Above all Charles Dickens came to the world as an apostle of love to the children of poverty. This was his mission, this his enduring fame. As a writer tells us, he, carried light into the dark places, into the very byways and alleys of crime and distress. He turned X-Rays upon the poor houses and boarding schools in the North of England, which, in his time, were full of abuses. He saw a great evil in the Dotheboy schools in the North of England, and resolved to lay it bare for correction. So he put on his great coat and went down to Yorkshire in the depth of winter to make a personal investigation, and he brought back a fadeless and never-to-be-forgotten photograph of Squeers and his whole family.

But, as yet, I have touched only incidentally on the humorous element in the novels-of Dickens. His humor is so obvious, so all-pervading, that it needs not emphasizing. Indeed, Dickens was before all things a great humorist-the greatest of the nineteenth century.

Dickens, too, is supreme in purity. Thackeray said-"I -am grateful for the innocent laughter and the sweet and unsullied page which the author of 'David Copperfield' gives to my children." The author of "Vanity Fair" adds further: "All children ought to love him. I know two that do, and read his books ten times for once they peruse the dismal preachments of their father. I know one who when she is happy reads 'Nicholas Nickleby'; when she is unhappy reads 'Nicholas Nickleby'; when she is tired reads 'Nicholas Nickleby'; when she is in bed reads 'Nicholas Nickleby'; when she has nothing to do reads 'Nicholas Nickleby,' and when she has finished reads 'Nicholas Nickleby over again. This candid young critic at ten years of age said: 'I like Mr. Dickens' books better than yours, papa. Why do you not write a book like his?"

Between 1843 and 1870, the date of his death, Dickens wrote fifteen novels, two of the, best of which may be considered to be "David Copperfield" and "Great Expectations." The great novelist paid two visits to America-one in 1842 and the other in 1867. His reception in America was one grand ovation, but as a .writer says: "Evidently this vast country was too great for the island novelist to comprehend in a single visit." I think, too, we may well pardon him for his "American Notes" and "Martin Chuzzlewit," when we consider the kind of stories that even the tourist of today is fed on.

But the ardent and sympathetic heart, the throbbing and tireless brain of the great novelist was soon to cease from labour. In April, 1870, Dickens had an interview with the late Queen Victoria when Her Majesty presented him with a copy of her work, "Life in the Highlands." A few short months more and there was mourning at Gadshill--nay, there was mourning in every home in England and America-in every home in the Old and New World where the name of Charles Dickens was lovingly lisped even by the little children. The great novelist was dead! The golden ripple came back upon the wall and then-the old, old fashion-Death!

They laid him where the shrouded centuries keep watch by the tombs of the departed; where the pompous glory and heraldry of yesterday are but dust; where crowns and sceptres and the acclamations of a nation are but empty bubbles that break and disappear upon the bosom of the great ocean of eternity; where England's kings and statesmen, heroes and men of science and men of letters sleep side by side within the hallowed walls of Westminster Abbey.

The heart of the New World went out in sorrow and, sympathy, and placed a wreath upon the newly made grave. From cultured New England, from the throbbing cities of the West, from the homes of our great chivalrous Southland-yea, even from the mining camps of the Pacific Coast, where the genius of Dickens had found audience among the rugged but tender hearts of the miners, there sped across the ocean a message of sympathy, a message of love

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, The river sang below;

The dim Sierras far beyond uplifting Their minarets of snow.

The roaring campfire with rude humour painted The ruddy tints of health

On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the fierce race for wealth.

Till one arose and from his pack's scant treasure A hoarded volume drew;

And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure To hear the tale anew.

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster And as the firelight fell,

He read aloud the book wherein the Master Had writ of little Nell.

Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy, for the reader Was youngest of them all;

But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall.

The fir trees, gathered closer in their shadows, Listened in every spray;

While the whole camp with Nell on English meadows Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes, o'ertaken As by some spell divine,

Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken From out the gusty pine.

Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire, As he who wrought that spell--

Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, Ye have one tale to tell!

Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story Blend with the breath that thrills

With hop vine's incense all the pensive glory That fills those Kentish hills.

And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreaths entwine,

Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly This spray of western pine.

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