IN writing an introduction to this volume compiled by Mr. B. W. Matz and illustrated by Mr. Harold Copping, I am uncertain if I should attempt a criticism of Mr. Copping's clever work, which is far too well known to need an introduction, or whether I should allude in any way to the manner the book is presented to the artistic and literary world; nothing has been said to me on the subject, and I am generously left to my own devices and may write as I will.
Taking advantage, therefore, of my freedom in this respect, and taking also into consideration how the drawings and the book itself appeal to my sense of what is fitting and beautiful, I trust I may not be wrong in omitting all criticism, and in expressing merely a few words of sincere appreciation concerning what must surely give delight to thousands of my father's readers.
It is true that most of us have very definite views with regard to the appearance and bearing of every character to whom we are introduced in my father's novels, and it may happen sometimes these views (which are, of course, invariably the right ones) will vary ever so slightly from those held by Mr. Copping, on which rare occasions it were well if we agreed to differ, as Mr. Copping's ideas are always happy, and very often breathe the very spirit of the familiar figures and well remembered scenes they represent. As to the charming way his illustrations are reproduced and given to the public, the book speaks for itself and requires no interpreter. [7/8]
It may not be out of place if I mention here that, in answer to a request lately made, I have just heard from Mr. B. W. Matz, the well-known Editor of The Dickensian, who is more learned, I believe, in artistic and literary matters connected with my father than anyone else I know. He tells me no fewer than sixty artists resident in England and sixteen American artists have illustrated his works, and probably the number is still increasing, so tempting are his subjects to publisher and artist alike.
From The Pickwick Papers toThe Mystery of Edwin Drood is a long journey. From the light-hearted though thrilling adventures of Mr. Pickwick and his followers to the mysterious gloom and evil doings of Jasper in the dear and dull old city of Cloisterham are many milestones, pointing to the names of Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend, besides those half-mile or quarter-mile stones, as they might be called, on which are engraved A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, The Haunted Man, and a host of articles, papers and shorter stories which appeared in "Household Words" and "All the Year Round."All these have been carefully noted and studied by Mr. Copping, and as we linger over some of the results of his meditations, our minds turn, as they have often turned before' to the man whose years were marked by such landmarks, which, like those on the Dover road, are self-evident, standing as they do in this case as the memorials of a busy life indeed; for my father was most certainly the 'strenuous worker " he has been constantly described by those authors who have made him the subject of their memoirs.
Yet there was nothing aggressively industrious in his manner of
working, or in the quiet way he seemed to achieve more than many
who made a greater parade of what they did. He was not " faddy "
nor over particular in his choice of a study; indeed, during the
years he lived at Gad's Hill he changed his writing room three times.[8/9]
He seldom, if ever, volunteered any statement or information
regarding his work unless directly called upon to do so, and I have
known him leave it in the middle of a sentence, and without protest,
if a slight domestic difficulty of any kind hurried him into acting as
judge or adviser. Writing appeared as natural to him as breathing, and
was so much the expression of his being and so satisfying to the
intense restlessness of his nature, which for ever craved expression,
as to make it doubtful whether, had that excitement been withdrawn,
he could possibly have attained the comparatively early age
at which he died. No one, however, enjoyed a holiday more than
he, and no one could "laze " with more satisfaction to himself and
others, but only for a short time. His real happiness throughout
life consisted, I am convinced, in following the destinies of those
imaginary people, who were scarcely imaginary to him, in the same
way as he has caused them to seem living to his readers, through the
light of his sympathy and understanding. To those of us who
looked in upon him sometimes as he sat at his desk, with an eager
expression of interest and enjoyment on his sensitive face, the swift
conviction would come that here, if anywhere, was the right man in
the right place, doing what was his, by right of an enormous capacity
for the work before him.
This does not mean there were not hours, sombre hours, when
he strove and nothing came of all his labour—hours when he called
upon the invisible friends of his enchanted life and not one, perhaps,
would answer to his call; sad hours of dulness, when he grew
miserably depressed because he could not cover even one of the
little blue "slips " on which he wrote and pondered; his poor tired
brain refusing absolutely the work that lay before it. My father's habit was to retire to his study after breakfast,
and there remain until one-thirty, hard at work, or, if he had a bad
day, waiting as cheerfully as he could for something to "turn up,"
in the true Micawber spirit: one of the chief and most significant
unlikenesses between himself and the real Micawber being that
something usually did turn up for the son, though never for the father.[9/10]
On more fortunate mornings he enjoyed what in romantic Victorian
days would have been called by elderly ladies " a flow of inspiration,"
an expression which did not in the least tally with my father's
rather severe teaching that constant application and an honest
determination bent on improving any small talent inherent in the individual
were the only secrets of success, and without those plodding
virtues, the much envied, often discussed, mysterious fairy-like gift
men call "genius " would remain always but a beautiful wasted
thing, incapable of doing any permanent good in the world, and as
fleeting and unsubstantial as the pretty white butterflies hovering
over the flower beds in the garden. My father's vivid imagination, fancy and love of romance and
mystery were curiously at variance with—if they may not be called
the compensating qualities of&mash;his strong practical common-sense, the
healthy sanity and vigour of his mind and his orderly precision
and desire of accounting for whatever struck him as strange in himself
or others. In early life, and warned by certain faults in the character
of the father he dearly loved, he laid down a few wise rules for the
guidance of his own conduct, which for many, many years of his life,
I believe, he never departed from. He was hard upon himself in
his self-training, although l have every reason for supposing this
hardness was not extended to those friends who failed where he succeeded.
He has often been called a self-made man, and perhaps was
so in more ways than one, for in striving after qualities he felt he
lacked in his neglected youth, he became possessed of some not
originally his, and moulding these to his compelling will, they
became as much part of himself as those more engaging and lovable
characteristics born with him, for which he was loved and honoured. "No gift of the mind, however great, however promising," he
would say, "can ever compensate for the want of energy and patient
attention in every-day work, and if these are present then everything
is possible." This theory, advanced for the encouragement
of his children, no doubt, has its weak side, for I fear not all the
patient attention or energy the world holds can give the eye that [10/11]
sees or the brain that understands; possibly, some such doubt
passed through the minds of his young people as they listened to
his exhortations, although they never breathed to one another any
revolutionary sentiment on the subject, or allowed themselves to
doubt for one moment that from the height of his own standards
and the knowledge he possessed of things and human nature he was
not absolutely right. Perhaps, in the curiously receptive, silent
way children have of learning what they have not been taught,
they realized completely the difference between their own thoughts
and the imaginings of their father as shown in his stories, and knew
that not to them, and maybe to none other for many years to come,
would be given that which they recognized as beautiful and rare,
even though they seldom heard it called in their own home by the
high-sounding title of " genius"; the word seemed to them of small
account, however, for the substance of it lay in the books they loved
and devoured. And what delights are to be found in those books, apart from
the characterization and interest of the stories. What delights
and constant change from town to country for the reader who can
forget, if he wishes, dingy houses and crowded streets, and, wandering
away with a little girl and her grandfather, will come presently
upon a kindly schoolmaster living in a green, secluded village; or,
tired of rough winds blowing upon him from the Yarmouth sea, can
take shelter with Bob Cratchit and his family in a London home,
and share their Christmas dinner. Much have been said and written on the subject of my father's
pathos, and some have praised and others blamed it; but of
the greater gift of humour which was his above all other gifts, and
which in his case included so much that was pathetic and even
tragic, who shall say enough of what it has done for those who
have studied his works and turned to them for comfort in moments
of depression and weariness? In Pickwick,
the most frankly humorous of his books, his own youthful high spirits did
not allow of his dwelling for long on sorrow of any kind, though here, in old
[11/12] Mr. Weller's description of the death of his wife which he gives to
his son Sam, is a curious foreshadowing of my father's combined
humour and pathos which is very beautiful indeed, and which to
many of us strikes a truer note than is to be found in his more
hackneyed scenes of sentiment and long drawn-out distress. And
this radiant gift of humour never deserted him, but remained
spontaneously fresh and refreshing until his death, vindicating by
its immortal presence the word he was so chary of using. Matz, B. W., and Kate Perugini; illustrated by Harold
Copping. Character Sketches from Dickens.
London: Raphael Tuck, 1924. Copy in the
Paterson Library, Lakehead University. Last modified 19 February 2009Bibliography