Critic views of the stories “Somebody’s Luggage” and “Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings”.
The power of Dickens is shown even in the scraps of Dickens, just as the virtue of a saint is said to be shown in fragments of his property or rags from his robe. It is with such fragments that we are chiefly concerned in the Christmas stories. Many of them are fragments in the literal sense; Dickens began them and then allowed someone else to carry them on; they are almost rejected notes. In all the other cases we have been considering the books he wrote; here we have rather to consider the books that he might have written. And here we find the final evidence and the unconscious stamp of greatness, as we might find it in some broken bust or some rejected moulding in the studio of Michael Angelo.
These sketches or parts of sketches all belong to that period in his later life when he had undertaken the duties of an editor, the very heavy duties of a very popular editor. He was not by any means naturally fitted for that position. He was the best man in the world for founding papers; but many people wished that he could have been buried under the foundations, like the first builder in some pagan and prehistoric pile. He called the Daily News into existence, but when once he existed, he objected to him strongly. It is not easy, and perhaps it is not important, to state truly his cause of his incapacity. It was not in the least what is called the ordinary fault or weakness of the artist. It was not that he was careless; rather it was that he was too conscientious. It was not that he had the irresponsibility of genius; rather it was that he had the irritating the responsibility of genius; he wanted everybody to see things as he saw them. But in spite of all this he certainly ran two great popular periodicals – Household Words and All the Year Round – the enormous popular success. And he certainly so far succeeded in throwing himself into the communism of journalism, into the nameless brotherhood of a big paper, that many earnest Dickensians are still engaged in picking out pieces of Dickens from the anonymous pages of Household Words and All the Year Round, and those parts which have been already beyond the question picked out and proved are often fragmentary. The genuine writing of Dickens breaks off; I fancy that we know it.[32]
The singular thing that some of the best work that Dickens ever did, better than the works in his best novels can be found in these slight and composite scraps of journalism. For instance, the solemn and self-satisfied account of the duty and dignity of a waiter given in the opening chapter of Somebody’s Luggage is quite as full and fine as anything done anywhere by its author in the same vein of sumptuous satire. It is as good as the account which Mr. Bumble gives of out-door relief, which “properly understood, is the parochial safeguard. The great thing is to give the paupers what they don’t want, and then they never come again.” It is as good as Mr. Podsnap’s description of the British Constitution, which was bestowed on him by Providence. None of these celebrated passages in more obviously Dickens at his best than this, the admirable description of “the true principles of waitering”, or the accounts of how the waiter’s father came back to his mother in broad daylight, “in itself an act of madness on the part of a waiter,” and how he expired repeating continually “two and six is three and four is nine.” That waiter’s explanatory soliloquy might easily have opened an excellent novel, as Martin Chuzzlewit is opened by the clever nonsense about the genealogy of the Chuzzlewit’s or as Bleak House opened by a satiric account of the damp, dim life of a law court. Yet Dickens practically abandoned the scheme of Somebody’s Luggage; he only wrote two sketches out of those obviously intended. He may almost be said to have only written a brilliant introduction to another man’s book.
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Yet it is exactly in such broken outbreaks that his greatness appears. If a man has flung away bad ideas he has shown his sense, but he has flung away good ideas he has shown his genius. He has proved that he actually has that over-pressure of pure creativeness which we see in nature itself, “that of a hundred seeds, she often brings but one to bear.” Dickens had to be Malthusian about his spiritual children. Critics have called Keats and other who died young “the great Might-have-beens of literary history.” Dickens certainly was not merely a great Might-have-been. Dickens, to say the least of him, was a great Was. Yet this fails fully to express the richness of his talent; for the truth is that he was a great Was and also a great Might-have-been. He said what he had to say. Wild pictures, possible stories, tantalizing and attractive trains of thought, perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually upon his mind that at the end there was a vast mass of them left over, ideas that he literally had not the opportunity to develop, tales that he literally had not the time to tell. This is shown clearly in his private notes and letters, which are full of schemes singularly striking and suggestive, schemes which he never carried out. It is indicated even more clearly by these Christmas stories, collected out of a chaotic opulence of Household Words and All the Year Round. He wrote short stories actually because he had no time to write long story; many of his long stories, so to speak, broke off short. This is where he differs from most who are called the Might-have-beens of literature. Marlowe and Chatterton failed because of their weakness. Dickens failed because of his force. Examine for example this case of the waiter in Somebody’s Luggage. Dickens obviously knew enough about that waiter to have made him a running spring to joy throughout a whole novel; as a beadle in Oliver Twist, or the undertaker in Martin Chuzzlewit. Every touch of him tingles with truth, from the vague gallantry with which he asks, “Would’st thou know, fair reader (if of the adorable female sex)” to the official severity with which he takes the chambermaid down, “as many pegs as is desirable for the future comfort to all parties.” If Dickens has developed this character at full length in a book he would have preserved for ever in literature a type of great humour and great value, and a type which may only too soon be disappearing from English history. He would have eternalized the English waiter. He still exists in some sounds old taverns and decent country inns, but there is no one left really capable of singing his praises. I know that Mr. Bernard Shaw has done something of the sort in the delightfully whimsical account of William in You Never Can Tell. But nothing will persuade me that Mr. Bernard Shaw can really understand the English waiter. He can never have ordered wine from his for instance. And though the English waiter is by the nature of things solemn about everything, he can never reach the true height and ecstasy of his solemnity except about wine. What the real English waiter would do or say if Mr. Shaw asked him for a vegetarian meal it can not be predicted. We can guess that for the first time in his life he would laugh – a horrible sight. Dickens’ waiter is described by one who is not merely witty, truthful, and observant, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, but one who really knew the atmosphere of inns, one who knew and even liked the smell of beef, and beer, and brandy. Hence there is richness in Dickens’ portrait which doesn’t exist in Mr. Shaw’s. Mr. Shaw’s waiter is an opportunist in politics. Dickens’ waiter is ready to stand up seriously for “the true principle of waitering,” just as Dickens was ready to stand up for the true principles pf Liberalism. Shaw’s waiter is agnostic; his motto is “You never can tell.” Dickens’ waiter is dogmatist; his motto is “You can tell; I will tell you.” And the true old-fashioned English waiter had really this grave and even moral attitude; he was the servant of the customers as the priest is the servant of the faithful, but scarcely in any less dignified sense. Surely it is not mere patriotic partially that makes one lament the disappearance of this careful and honorable figure crowded out by meaner men at meaner wages, by the German waiter who has learnt five languages in the course of running away from his own, or the Italian waiter who regards those he serves with a darkling contempt which must certainly be that either of a dynamiter or an exiled prince. The human and hospitable English waiter is vanishing. Dickens might perhaps have saved him, as he saved Christmas.[33]
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It is taken this case of waiter in Dickens and equally important counterpart in England as an example of the sincere and genial sketches scattered about these short stories. But there are many others, and one at least demands special mention; this is Mrs. Lirriper, the London landlady. Not only did Dickens never do anything better in a literary sense, but he never performed more perfectly his main moral function, that of insisting through laughter and flippancy upon the virtue of Christian charity. There has been much broad farce against the lodging-house keeper: he alone could have written broad farce in her favor. Ti is fashionable to represent the landlady as a tyrant; it is too much forgotten that if she is one if the oppressors she is at least as much one of the oppressed. If she is bad-tempered it is often for the same reasons that make all women bad-tempered; if she is grasping it is often because when a husband makes generosity a vice it is often necessary that a wife should make avarice a virtue. This entire Dickens suggested very soundly and in a few strokes in the more remote character Miss Wozenham. But in Mrs. Lirriper he went further and did not fare worse. In Mrs., Lirriper he suggested quite truly how huge a mass of real good humor, of grand unconscious patience, of unfailing courtesy and constant and difficult benevolence is concealed behind many a lodging-house door and compact in the red-faced person of many a preposterous landlady. Any one could easily excuse the ill-humor of the poor. But great masses of the poor have not even any ill-humor to be excused. Their cheeriness is startling enough to be the foundation of a miracle play; and certainly is startling enough to be foundation of a romance. Yet there is no any romance in which it is expressed except this one. “Mrs. Lirriper `s Lodgings” is one of the Christmas stories written by Charles Dickens. The main character of the story is Mrs. Lirriper, an old lady, gives the furnished rooms of her house for rent. She furnished her old house as good as she could to make it more comfortable for inhabitants and for herself. This is how he earns for living. Every person living in her house is kind to her because of her behavior with them. Story begins with the Mrs. Lirriper`s description of her daily life, her neighbors, her relatives and the lodgers. She talks about the persons one by one, tells of the good and bad sides of their characters. She calls Jamie her grand-son. But in reality he is not. His mother died of sickness and Jamie was left by his father too, and was grown up by Mrs. Lirriper having no idea that she is not his real grandmother. Here we recognize the inner goodness of this lady, her kind heart and nobility.
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She hates Mrs.Wozenham who lives in the same street and who also gives for rent her furnished rooms. They have disliking to each other. But, in spite of that, Mrs. Lirriper helps her in Miss.Wozenham `s hard situation and discovers her real internal life, that she is not negative person at all and even shy for bad behavior of herself. In general, main hero of this story is not rude, bad-tempered. She is always ready to be useful at any moment to men even she can not agree with or she does not like them. For example, her late husband `s brother always make troubles, disturbs her, asks money, but despite all that, when he was caught by policemen Mrs. Lirriper was even crying and doing her best to make policemen to let him out. Or another example can prove what is said above, that Mrs. Lirriper met her neighbors, whom she completely disliked, with great hospitality when their house fired. They all were very grateful to Mrs. Lirriper for saving their lives and accepting them with kindness and pity.
Charles Dickens describing Mrs. Lirriper shows us the ideal picture of simple, pleasant, kind-hearted person. She always finds good characters in everyone whether she likes him or not. Her geniality takes her even out of borders, to France. Mrs. Lirriper goes there to recognize the dying person who is going to leave his heritage to her. But when she finds out that this man - at death – is little Jamie `s father, who left him, she forgives him seeing his regret in his mirrowlike eyes, and leaves him to be judged by God.
The entire story long, Charles Dickens opens all good nature of that woman – Mrs. Lirriper. The idea of the story “Mrs. Lirriper `s Lodgings” is kindness, goodness, nobility etc. It has very deep meaning in itself, and reading this story you can learn so much useful things for yourself. The story has one simple plot. It is told by Mrs. Lirriper `s own words, and the comprehendible speech makes the story more interesting and entertaining.
Of the landlady as the waiter it may be said that Dickens left in a slight sketch what might have developed through a long and strong novel. For Dickens had hold of one great truth, the neglect of which has , as it were, truncated and made meager the work of many brilliant modern novelists. Modern novelists try to make long novels out of subtle characters. But a subtle character soon comes to an end, because it works in and in to its own centre and dies there. But a simple character goes on for ever in a fresh interest and energy, because it works out and out into the infinite universe. Mr. George Moore in France is not by any means as interesting as Mrs. Lirriper in France; for she is trying to find France and he is only trying to find George Moore. Mrs. Lirriper is the female equivalent of Mr. Pickwick. Unlike Mrs. Bardell she was fully worthy to be Mrs. Pickwick. For in both cases the essential truth is the same; that original innocence which alone deserves adventures and because it alone can appreciate them. We have had Mr. Pickwick in England and we can imagine him in France. We have had Mrs. Lirriper in France and we can imagine her in Mesopotamia or in heaven. The subtle character in the modern novels we cannot really imagine anywhere except in the suburbs or in Limbo.[34]
Conclusion
The vitality of Dickens’ works is singularly great. They are all a-throb, as it were, with hot human blood. They are popular in the highest sense because their appeal is universal, to the as well as the educated. The humor is superb, and most of it, so far as one can judge, of no ephemeral kind. The pathos is more questionable, but that too, at its simplest and best; and especially when the humour is shot with it – is worthy of a better epithet than excellent. It is supremely touching. Imagination, fancy, wit, eloquence, the keenest observation, the most strenuous endeavor to reach the highest artistic excellence, the largest kindliness, - all these he brought to his life-work. And that work, as I think, will live, it can be prophecy for ever. Of course fashions change. Of course no writer of fiction, writing for his own little day, can permanently meet the needs of all after times. Some loss of immediate vital interest is inevitable. Nevertheless, in Dickens’ case, all will not die. Half a century, a century hence, he will still be read; not perhaps as he was read when his words flashed upon the world in their first glory and freshness, nor as he is read now in the noon of his fame. But he will be read much more than we read the novelists of the last century – be read as much, shall I say, as we still read Walter Scott. And so long as he is read, there will be one gentle and humanizing influence the more at work among men.[35]
Though Charles Dickens’ novels continued to be read by large numbers of readers, his literary reputation was an eclipse. There was a tendency to see his novels as appropriate for children and young adults. Russian writers came into vogue and were generally regarded as superior to Dickens from 1880 through the early part of the twentieth century. This preference is ironic because the Russian novelists both admired Dickens and learned from him. Turgenev praised Dickens’ work and even wrote for Dickens’ magazine, Household Words, during the Crimean War. Tolstoy wrote of Dickens, “All his characters are my personal friends – I am constantly comparing them with living persons, and living persons with them, and what a spirit there was in all he wrote.” Dostoevsky was so impressed that he imitated the death of Little Nell, including the sentimentality, in describing the death of Nelli Valkovsky in The Insulted and the Injured (1862). Supposedly, during his exile in Siberia, he read only Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield. Even if this story is apocryphal, Dickens’ influence on Uncle’s Dream and The Friend of the Family (1859), written while Dostoevsky was in Siberia, is unmistakable. Ironically, English critics in the 1880s were puzzled by Dostoevsky’s similarities to Dickens.
Dickens’ literary standing was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s because of essays written by George Orwell and Edmund Wilson, who called him “the greatest writers of his time,” and full-length study by Humphrey House, The Dickens World. Critics discovered complexity, darkness, and even bitterness in his novels, and by the 1960s some critics felt that, like Shakespeare. Dickens could not be classified into existing literary categories. This view of Dickens as incomparable continues to the present day. Edgar Johnson expresses the prevailing modern view in his assessments of Dickens: “Far more than a great entertainer, a great comic writer, he looks into the abyss. He is one of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art.” This is not to say that every critic or reader accepts Johnson’s view; F.R. Leavis could not take Dickens so seriously: “The adult mind doesn’t as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness.” In the resurgence of Dickens’ reputation, his essays, sketches, and articles have received attention and praise. K.J. Fielding believes, “If he were not so well known as a novelist, he might have been recognized as a great essayist.”[36]
Dickens as a modern novelist and all his books are modern novels. Dickens didn’t know at what really point he became a novelist. 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. His Christmas stories publishing in the Household Words and All the Year Round had great fame in his time, but it doesn’t mean that it is forgotten nowadays. The Christmas theme always attracted people, and the warmth, loveliness, kindliness of these stories fills everybody’s heart with joy and happiness. They are translated into many languages and are read present days and I hope they will be loved by the readers many centuries. There was painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading form the modern world. We have watched a little longer, and with a great relief we begin to realize that it is the modern world that is fading.
Now Dickens must definitely be considered in the light of the changes which his soul foresaw. Dickens has done much; he belongs to Queen Victoria as much as Addison belongs to Queen Anne, and it is not only Queen Anne dead. But Dickens, in a dark prophetic kind of way, belongs to the developments. His name comes to the tongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or Country Council Steam Boats or Guilds of Play. Charles Dickens was a very great man, and there are many ways of testing and stating the fact. But one permissible way is to say this, that he was an ignorant man, ill-read in the past, and often confused about the present. Yet he remains great and true, and even essentially reliable, if we suppose him to have known not only all that went before his lifetime, but also all that was to come after.[37]
He was simple man; he loved ordinary people from lower classes. He did not evaluate them by their education, job or economic situation. That is why many of his heroes of his novels and especially of Christmas stories were poor, pity men who earned for living hardly but honestly. He believed in better future. This optimism is mentionable in most of his creative works. Capitalist society did not appeal him because he wanted people from lower classes to live less unhappy, less hungry, less insulted. Reading the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens we meet such problems, sentimental nuances. He was realistic writer and showed real picture of life with all of its good and bad sides, however, humor, high mood of these stories make us to believe in happy, joyful future.
“My trust in people, who rule, is insignificant. My trust in people, who are being ruled, is boundless.”
Charles Dickens
Bibliography
The sources in Azerbaijan
1) Əhmədoğlu B. - Çarlz Dikkens. Kommunist qəz. Bakı, 1962, 7 fevral
2) “Ədəbiyyat və incəsənət” qəz. - Çarlz Dikkens. Bakı, 1970, 10 fevral
The sources in Russian
1) А.А. Аникст и В.В. Ивашев - Чарльз Диккенс: Собрание сочинений в 30-ти томах. Т.12, Москва, 1959
2) А.А. Аникст - Диккенс Чарльз. Т.1. Москва, 1957
3) Катарский Игорь Максимилианович - Диккенс в России: Середина XIX века. Москва, 1966
4) Мадзигон М.В. - Реализм раннего творчества Чарльза Диккенса. Тбилиси, 1962
5) Скуратовская Л. - Творчество Диккенса. Москва, 1969
6) Уилсон Энгус - Мир Чарльза Диккенса. Москва, 1975
7) Урнов М.В. - Неподражаемый Чарльз Диккенс. Москва, 1990. стр. 204-257
The sources in English
1) Ackroyd, Peter - Dickens. London, 1990
2) Butt, John E. and Kathleen Tillotson - Dickens at Work. 1957, reprinted 1982
3) Chesterton G.K. - Charles Dickens. London, 1903, reprinted 1977
4) Churchill, Reginald C. - Bibliography of Dickensian Criticism. London: Routledge (1836-1974-75)
5) Collins, Philip - Dickens and Crime. New York, 1962
6) Collins, Philip (ed.) - Dickens, the Critical Heritage. New York, 1971, on his critical reception in 1836-82
7) Collins, Philip - A Dickens Bibliography. 1970, offprinted from George Watson/ New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1969, vol.3, pp. 779-850
8) Dexter, Walter - The Letters by Charles Dickens. 3 vol., London, 1938
9) Fielding, K.J. – Speeches. London, 1960, pp. 124-127
10) Fielding, K.J. - A Critical Introduction. London, revised edition 1966
11) Ford, George H. - A Second Guide to Research. London, 1978, pp. 34-113
12) Ford, George H. - Dickens and His Readers. London, 1955, reprinted 1976
13) Ford, George H. and L. Lane (eds.) - The Dickens Critics. London, 1961, reprinted 1976
14) Garis, Robert - The Dickens Theatre. London, 1965
15) Gissing, George R. - Charles Dickens.A Critical Study. London, 1898, reissued 1976
16) Gissing, George R., abr. - Forster's Life of Dickens London: Chapman & Hall, 1903.
17) Johson, Edgar - Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph 3 vol., Manchester, 1952
18) Johnson, Edgar - The Heart Of Charles Dickens, As Revealed in His Letters to Angela Burdett-Coutts. New York, 1952, reprinted 1976
19) Kaplan, Fred - Dickens: A Biograph. London, 1988
20) Kitton, Frederic G. - Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality. London, 1956
21) Miller, J. Hillis - Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. London, 1958, reissued 1969
22) Orwell, George – Dickens:In Critical Essays. Boston, 1946, pp. 7-56
23) Rice, C. M. - The Story of Our Mutual Friend: Transcribed into Phonetic Notation from the Work of Charles Dickens. Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1920.
24) Wall, Stephen (ed.) - Charles Dickens: A Critical Anthology. London, 1970
25) Wilson, Angus - The World of Charles Dickens. New York, 1970
26) Wilson, Edmund - Dickens: The Two Scrooges in “The Wound and the Bow”. London, 1941, pp. 1-104
27) Ward, Henry S. - The Real Dickens Land. London: Chapman & Hall, 1904.
28) Welsh, Charles - Character Portraits from Dickens. London: Chatto & Windus, 1908.
[1] А.А. Аникст Диккенс Чарльз. Т 1. Москва, 1957. стр. 7-12
[2] Philip Collins - A Dickens Bibliography, 1970, offprinted from George Watson, New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 1969, vol.3, pp. 779-182
[3] Мадзигон М.В. - Реализм раннего творчества Чарльза Диккенса, Тбилиси, 1962. стр. 24-37
[4] George R. Gissing – Charles Dickens/ A Critical Study, London, 1947, reissued 1976. pp. 105-116
[5] George Orwell – Dickens / In Critical Essays, Boston, 1946. pp. 7-20
[6] John E. Butt and Kathleen Tillotson – Dickens at Work, New York, 1957, reprinted 1982. pp.203-212
[7] George H. Ford – Dickens and His Readers, London, 1955, reprinted 1974. pp.46-48
[8] Fred Kaplan – A Biography, London, 1988. pp.138
[9] Урнов М.В. – Неподражаемый Чарльз Диккенс, Москва, 1990. стр.204-257
[10] Philip Collins – Dickens, the Critical Heritage, New York, 1971, on his critical reception in 1836-1882. pp.68-81
[11] Reginald C. Churchill – Bibliography of Dickensian Criticism. London: Routledge (1836-1974-75), a selective, partly annotated bibliography. pp.98-123
[12] Angus Wilson – The World of Charles Dickens, New York, 1970. pp.58-64
[13] Ackroyd Peter – Dickens, London, 1990. p.85
[14] Ədəbiyyat və incəsənət qəz. Çarlz Dikkens, Baki, 1970, 10 fevral
[15] Скуратовская Л. – Творчество Диккенса, Москва, 1969. стр.92-96
[16] George H. Ford and L. Lane (eds.), - The Dickens Critics, London, 1961, reprinted 1976. pp. 148-158
[17] J. Hillis Miller – Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels, London, 1958, reissued 1969. pp. 62-69
[18] Stephen Wall (ed.) – Charles Dickens: A Critical Anthology, London, 1970. pp. 70-92
[19] Уилсон Энгус – Мир Чарльза Диккенса, Москва, 1975. стр.48-52
[20] G.K. Chesterton – Charles Dickens, London, 1903, reprinted 1977. pp. 114-127
[21] George H. Ford – A Second Guide to Research, London, 1978. pp.34-113
[22] Катарский Игорь Максимилианович – Диккенс в России. Середина XIX века, Москва, 1966. стр.65-77
[23] Philip Colins – Dickens and Crime, New York, 1962. pp. 267-281
[24] А.А. Аникст и В.В. Ивашев – Чарльз Диккенс / Собрание сочинений в 30-ти томах. Т.12., Москва, 1959. стр.81-89
[25] Walter Dexter – The Letters by Charles Dickens. 3 vol., London, 1938
[26] Edmund Wilson – Dickens: Two Scrooges, in the Wound and the Bow, London, 1941. pp.1-104
[27] K.J. Fielding – Speeches, London, 1960. pp.124-127
[28] K.J. Fielding – A Critical Introduction, London, revised edition 1966, pp.78-86
[29] Edgar Johnson – Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vol., Manchester, 1952. pp.39-42
[30] Chesterton G.K. – Charles Dickens, London, 1903, reprinted 1977. pp.76-85
[31] Edgar Johnson – The Heart of Charles Dickens, As Revealed in His Letters to Angela Burdett-Coutts, New York, 1952, reprinted 1976. pp.142-150
[32] Frederic Kitton G. - Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, London, 1900. pp. 77-102
[33] Əhmədoğlu B. – Çarlz Dikkens, Kommunist, Bakı, 1962, 7 fevral
[34]Welsh Charles – Character Portraits from Dickens, London, 1908
[35] George R. Gissing abr. – Forster’s Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1943
[36] Rice, C. M. - The Story of Our Mutual Friend: Transcribed into Phonetic Notation from the Work of Charles Dickens/ Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1920. pp.152-158
1Henry Ward – The Real Dickens Land. London, 1954, pp.26-28
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