Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens — Dombey and Son Part 1

DOMBEY AND SON

In Dickens's literary life _Dombey and Son_ represents a break so important as to necessitate our casting back to a summary and a generalisation.

In order fully to understand what this break is, we must say something of the previous character of Dickens's novels, and even something of the general character of novels in themselves.

How essential this is we shall see shortly.

It must first be remembered that the novel is the most typical of modern forms.

It is typical of modern forms especially in this, that it is essentially formless.

All the ancient modes or structures of literature were definite and severe.

Any one composing them had to abide by their rules; they were what their name implied.

Thus a tragedy might be a bad tragedy, but it was always a tragedy.

Thus an epic might be a bad epic, but it was always an epic.

Now in the sense in which there is such a thing as an epic, in that sense there is no such thing as a novel.

We call any long fictitious narrative in prose a novel, just as we call any short piece of prose without any narrative an essay.

Both these forms are really quite formless, and both of them are really quite new.

The difference between a good epic by Mr. John Milton and a bad epic by Mr. John Smith was simply the difference between the same thing done well and the same thing done badly.

But it was not (for instance) like the difference between _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _The Time Machine_.

If we class Richardson's book with Mr. Wells's book it is really only for convenience; if we say that they are both novels we shall certainly be puzzled in that case to say what on earth a novel is.

But the note of our age, both for good and evil, is a highly poetical and largely illogical faith in liberty.

Liberty is not a negation or a piece of nonsense, as the cheap reactionaries say; it is a belief in variety and growth.

But it is a purely poetic and even a merely romantic belief.

The nineteenth century was an age of romance as certainly as the Middle Ages was an age of reason.

Mediaevals liked to have everything defined and defensible; the modern world prefers to run some risks for the sake of spontaneity and diversity.

Consequently the modern world is full of a phenomenon peculiar to itself--I mean the spectacle of small or originally small things swollen to enormous size and power.

The modern world is like a world in which toadstools should be as big as trees, and insects should walk about in the sun as large as elephants.

Thus, for instance, the shopkeeper, almost an unimportant figure in carefully ordered states, has in our time become the millionaire, and has more power than ten kings.

Thus again a practical knowledge of nature, of the habits of animals or the properties of fire and water, was in the old ordered state either an almost servile labour or a sort of joke; it was left to old women and gamekeepers and boys who went birds'-nesting.

In our time this commonplace daily knowledge has swollen into the enormous miracle of physical size, weighing the stars and talking under the sea.

In short, our age is a sort of splendid jungle in which some of the most towering weeds and blossoms have come from the smallest seed.

And this is, generally speaking, the explanation of the novel.

The novel is not so much the filling up of an artistic plan, however new or fantastic.

It is a thing that has grown from some germ of suggestion, and has often turned out much larger than the author intended.

And this, lastly, is the final result of these facts, that the critic can generally trace in a novel what was the original artistic type or shape of thought from which the whole matter started, and he will generally find that this is different in every case.

In one novel he will find that the first impulse is a character.

In another novel he will find that the first impulse is a landscape, the atmosphere of some special countryside.

In another novel he will find that the first impulse is the last chapter.

Or it may be a thrust with sword or dagger, it may be a theology, it may be a song.

Somewhere embedded in every ordinary book are the five or six words for which really all the rest will be written.

Some of our enterprising editors who set their readers to hunt for banknotes and missing ladies might start a competition for finding those words in every novel.

But whether or no this is possible, there is no doubt that the principle in question is of great importance in the case of Dickens, and especially in the case of _Dombey and Son_.

In all the Dickens novels can be seen, so to speak, the original thing that they were before they were novels.

The same may be observed, for the matter of that, in the great novels of most of the great modern novelists.

For example, Sir Walter Scott wrote poetical romances before he wrote prose romances.

Hence it follows that, with all their much greater merit, his novels may still be described as poetical romances in prose.

While adding a new and powerful element of popular humours and observation, Scott still retains a certain purely poetical right--a right to make his heroes and outlaws and great kings speak at the great moments with a rhetoric so rhythmical that it partakes of the nature of song, the same quite metrical rhetoric which is used in the metrical speeches of Marmion or Roderick Dhu.

In the same way, although _Don Quixote_ is a modern novel in its irony and subtlety, we can see that it comes from the old long romances of chivalry.

In the same way, although _Clarissa_ is a modern novel in its intimacy and actuality, we can see that it comes from the old polite letter-writing and polite essays of the period of the _Spectator_.

Any one can see that Scott formed in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ the style that he applied again and again afterwards, like the reappearances of a star taking leave of the stage.

All his other romances were positively last appearances of the positively last Minstrel.

Any one can see that Thackeray formed in fragmentary satires like _The Book of Snobs_ or _The Yellowplush Papers_ the style, the rather fragmentary style, in which he was to write _Vanity Fair_.

In most modern cases, in short (until very lately, at any rate), the novel is an enormous outgrowth from something that was not a novel.

And in Dickens this is very important.

All his novels are outgrowths of the original notion of taking notes, splendid and inspired notes, of what happens in the street.

Those in the modern world who cannot reconcile themselves to his method--those who feel that there is about his books something intolerably clumsy or superficial--have either no natural taste for strong literature at all, or else have fallen into their error by too persistently regarding Dickens as a modern novelist and expecting all his books to be modern novels.

Dickens did not know at what exact point he really turned into a novelist.

Nor do we.

Dickens did not know, in his deepest soul, whether he ever really did turn into a novelist.

Nor do we.

The novel being a modern product is one of the few things to which we really can apply that disgusting method of thought--the method of evolution.

But even in evolution there are great gaps, there are great breaks, there are great crises.

I have said that the first of these breaks in Dickens may be placed at the point when he wrote _Nicholas Nickleby_.

This was his first serious decision to be a novelist in any sense at all, to be anything except a maker of momentary farces.

The second break, and that a far more important break, is in _Dombey and Son_.

This marks his final resolution to be a novelist and nothing else, to be a serious constructor of fiction in the serious sense.

Before _Dombey and Son_ even his pathos had been really frivolous.

After _Dombey and Son_ even his absurdity was intentional and grave.

In case this transition is not understood, one or two tests may be taken at random.

The episodes in _Dombey and Son_, the episodes in _David Copperfield_, which came after it, are no longer episodes merely stuck into the middle of the story without any connection with it, like most of the episodes in _Nicholas Nickleby_, or most of the episodes even in _Martin Chuzzlewit_.

Take, for instance, by way of a mere coincidence, the fact that three schools for boys are described successively in _Nicholas Nickleby_, in _Dombey and Son_, and in _David Copperfield_.

But the difference is enormous.

Dotheboys Hall does not exist to tell us anything about Nicholas Nickleby.

Rather Nicholas Nickleby exists entirely in order to tell us about Dotheboys Hall.

It does not in any way affect his history or psychology; he enters Mr. Squeers's school and leaves Mr. Squeers's school with the same character, or rather absence of character.

It is a mere episode, existing for itself.

But when little Paul Dombey goes to an old-fashioned but kindly school, it is in a very different sense and for a very different reason from that for which Nicholas Nickleby goes to an old-fashioned and cruel school.

The sending of little Paul to Dr. Blimber's is a real part of the history of little Paul, such as it is.

Dickens deliberately invents all that elderly pedantry in order to show up Paul's childishness.

Dickens deliberately invents all that rather heavy kindness in order to show up Paul's predestination and tragedy.

Dotheboys Hall is not meant to show up anything except Dotheboys Hall.

But although Dickens doubtless enjoyed Dr. Blimber quite as much as Mr. Squeers, it remains true that Dr. Blimber is really a very good foil to Paul; whereas Squeers is not a foil to Nicholas; Nicholas is merely a lame excuse for Squeers.

The change can be seen continued in the school, or rather the two schools, to which David Copperfield goes.

The whole idea of David Copperfield's life is that he had the dregs of life before the wine of it.

He knew the worst of the world before he knew the best of it.

His childhood at Dr. Strong's is a second childhood.

Now for this purpose the two schools are perfectly well adapted.

Mr. Creakle's school is not only, like Mr. Squeers's school, a bad school, it is a bad influence upon David Copperfield.

Dr. Strong's school is not only a good school, it is a good influence upon David Copperfield.

I have taken this case of the schools as a case casual but concrete.

The same, however, can be seen in any of the groups or incidents of the novels on both sides of the boundary.

Mr. Crummles's theatrical company is only a society that Nicholas happens to fall into.

America is only a place to which Martin Chuzzlewit happens to go.

These things are isolated sketches, and nothing else.

Even Todgers's boarding-house is only a place where Mr. Pecksniff can be delightfully hypocritical.

It is not a place which throws any new light on Mr. Pecksniff's hypocrisy.

But the case is different with that more subtle hypocrite in _Dombey and Son_--I mean Major Bagstock.

Dickens does mean it as a deliberate light on Mr. Dombey's character that he basks with a fatuous calm in the blazing sun of Major Bagstock's tropical and offensive flattery.

Here, then, is the essence of the change.

He not only wishes to write a novel; this he did as early as _Nicholas Nickleby_.

He wishes to have as little as possible in the novel that does not really assist it as a novel.

Previously he had asked with the assistance of what incidents could his hero wander farther and farther from the pathway.

Now he has really begun to ask with the assistance of what incidents his hero can get nearer and nearer to the goal.