Charles Dickens as a Reader Part 3

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.

It can hardly be any matter for wonder that the "Christmas Carol" was, among all the Readings, the author's own especial favourite! That it was so, he showed from first to last unmistakeably. He began with it in 1853, and ended with it in 1870, upon the latter occasion appending to the long since abbreviated narrative, that other incomparable evidence of his powers as a humorist, "The Trial from Pickwick." Whoever went for the first time to see and hear Charles d.i.c.kens read one or other of his writings, did well in selecting a night when he was going to relate his immortal ghost story of Christmas. In compliance with the well-known wish of the Novelist, the audience, as a rule, contrived to a.s.semble and to have actually taken their places several minutes before the time fixed for the Reader's appearance upon the platform. Occasionally it happened, nevertheless, that a stray couple or so would be still drifting in, here and there, among the serried ranks of the stalls, when, book in hand, with a light step, a smile on his face, and a flower in his b.u.t.ton-hole, the author had already rapidly advanced and taken his place before his quaintly constructed but graceful little reading-desk. Then it was, perhaps, at those very times, that a stranger to the whole scene regarded himself almost as under a personal obligation to these vexatious stragglers. For, until every one of them had quietly settled down, there stood the Novelist, cheerfully, patiently, glancing to the right and to the left, taking the bearings of his night's company, as one might say, with an air of the most perfect ease and self-possession. Whosoever, consequently, was in attendance there for the first time, had an opportunity, during any such momentary pause, of familiarising himself with the appearance of the famous writer, with whose books he had probably been intimately acquainted for years upon years previously, but whom until then he had never had the chance of beholding face to face.

Everyone, even to the illiterate wayfarers in the public streets, had, to a certain extent, long since come to know what manner of man Charles d.i.c.kens was by means of his widely-scattered photographs. But, there, better than any photograph, was the man himself,--the master of all English humorists, the most popular author during his own lifetime that ever existed; one whose stories for thirty years together had been read with tears and with laughter, and whose books had won for him personal affection, as well as fame and fortune. Anyone seeing him at those moments for the first time, would unquestionably think--How like he was to a very few indeed, how utterly unlike the vast majority of his countless cartes-de-visites! To the last there was the bright, animated, alert carriage of the head--phrenologically a n.o.ble head--physiognomically a n.o.ble countenance. Encountering him within a very few weeks of his death, Mr. Arthur Locker has said, "I was especially struck with the brilliancy and vivacity of his eyes:" adding, "there seemed as much life and animation in them as in twenty ordinary pairs of eyes." Another keen observer, Mr. Arthur Helps, has in the same spirit exclaimed, "What portrait can do justice to the frankness, kindness, and power of his eyes?" None certainly that ever was painted by the pencil of the sunbeam, or by the brush of a Royal Academician.

Fully to realise the capacity for indicating emotion latent in them, and informing his whole frame--his hands for example, in their every movement, being wonderfully expressive--those who attended these Readings soon came to know, that you had but to listen to his variable and profoundly sympathetic voice, and to watch the play of his handsome features.

The different original characters introduced in his stories, when he read them, he did not simply describe, he impersonated: otherwise to put it, for whomsoever he spoke, he spoke in character. Thus, when everything was quiet in the crowded a.s.sembly, and when the ringing applause that always welcomed his appearance, but which he never by any chance acknowledged, had subsided--when he began: "A Christmas Carol, in four staves. Stave one, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead to begin with."

Having remarked, yet further, that "there was no doubt whatever about that," the register of his burial being signed by this functionary, that and the other--when he added, "_Scrooge_ signed it; and Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to"--Scrooge in the flesh was, through the very manner of the utterance of his name, brought vividly and upon the instant before the observant listener. "Oh!

but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was Scrooge!" _That_ we knew instinctively, without there being any need whatever for our hearing one syllable of the description of him, admirably given in the book, but suppressed in the Reading, judiciously suppressed enough, because, for that matter, we saw and heard it without any necessity for its being explained. As one might say--quoting here a single morsel from the animated description of Scrooge, that was actually ill.u.s.trated by Scrooge's impersonator--it all "spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice!" And it was thus, not merely with regard to the leading personages of the little acted drama, as, turn by turn, they were introduced; precisely the same artistic care was applied by the impersonating realist to the very least among the minor characters, filling in, so to speak, little incidental gaps in the background. A great fat man with a monstrous chin, for example, was introduced just momentarily in the briefest street-dialogue, towards the close of this very Reading, who had only to open his lips once or twice for an instant, yet whose individuality was in that instant or two so thoroughly realised, that he lives ever since then in the hearers'

remembrance. When, in reply to some one's inquiry, as to what was the cause of Scrooge's (presumed) death?--this great fat man with the monstrous chin answered, with a yawn, in two words, "G.o.d knows!"--he was before us there, as real as life, as selfish, and as substantial. So was it also with the grey-haired rascal, Joe, of the rag-and-bottle shop; with Topper, when he p.r.o.nounced himself, as a bachelor, to be "a wretched outcast;" with the Schoolmaster, when he "glared on Master Scrooge with ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him," all of whom were indicated by the merest touch or two, and yet each of whom was a living and breathing and speaking verisimilitude.

There was produced, to begin with, however, a sense of exhilaration in the very manner with which d.i.c.kens commenced the Reading of one of his stories, and which was always especially noticeable in the instance of this particular ghost story of his about Christmas. The opening sentences were always given in those cheery, comfortable tones, indicative of a double relish on the part of a narrator--to wit, his own enjoyment of the tale he is going to relate, and his antic.i.p.ation of the enjoyment of it by those who are giving him their attention.

Occasionally, at any rate during the last few years, his voice was husky just at the commencement, but as he warmed to his work, with him at all times a genuine labour of love, everything of that kind disappeared almost at the first turn of the leaf. The genial inflections of the voice, curiously rising, in those first moments of the Reading, at the end of every sentence, there was simply no resisting. Had there been a wedding guest present, he would hardly have repined in not being able to obey the summons of the loud ba.s.soon. The narrator had his will with one and all. However large and however miscellaneous the audience, from the front of the stalls to the back of the gallery, every one listened to the familiar words that fell from his lips, from the beginning to the end, with unflagging attention. There could be small room for marvel at this, however, in the instance of the "Carol," on first reading which, Thackeray spoke of its author as that "delightful genius!" The _Edinburgh_ editor, Lord Jeffrey, at the very same time, namely, towards the close of 1843, on the morrow of the little book's original publication, avowing, in no less glowing terms, that he had been nothing less than charmed by the exquisite apologue: "chiefly," as he declared, "for the genuine goodness which breathes all through it, and is the true inspiring angel by which its genius has been awakened." Never since he had first--and that but a very few years previously--taken pen in hand as a story-teller, had this "delightful genius" sat down in a happier vein for writing anything, than when he did so for the purpose of recounting how Scrooge was converted, by a series of ghostly apparitions, from the error of his utterly selfish way in life, until then, as a tough-skinned, ingrained curmudgeon.

Characters and incidents, brought before us anew in the Reading, were all so cordially welcomed,--the former being such old friends, the latter so familiarly within our knowledge! Insomuch that many pa.s.sages were, almost word for word, remembered by those who, nevertheless, listened as if curious to learn what might follow, yet who could readily, any one of them, have prompted the Reader, that is the Author himself, supposing by some rare chance he had happened, just for one moment, to be at fault. It is curious to observe, on turning over the leaves of the marked copy of this Reading, the sententious little marginal notes for his own guidance, jotted down by the hand of this wonderful master of elocutionary effect. "Narrative" is written on the side of p. 5 where Scrooge's office, on Christmas Eve, is described, just before mention is made of the Clerk's dismal little cell seeming to be "a sort of tank," and of his fire being so small that it looked like "one coal," and of his trying at last to warm himself by the candle, "in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed." Again, "Cheerful" is penned on the side of p. 6, where Scrooge's Nephew comes in at a burst with "A Merry Christmas, uncle! G.o.d save you!"

After Scrooge's inhuman retort of "Bah! humbug!" not a word was added of the descriptive sentence immediately following. Admirable though every word of it is, however, one could hardly regret its suppression. Is it asked why? Well then, for this simple reason--the force of which will be admitted by anyone who ever had the happiness of grasping Charles d.i.c.kens's hand in friends.h.i.+p--that his description of Scrooge's Nephew was, quite unconsciously but most accurately, in every word of it, a literal description of himself, just as he looked upon any day in the blithest of all seasons, after a brisk walk in the wintry streets or on the snowy high road. "He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this Nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again." The Novelist himself was depicted there to a nicety. No need, therefore, was there for even one syllable of this in the Reading.

Scrooge's Nephew was visibly before us, without a word being uttered.

To our thinking, it has always seemed as if the one c.h.i.n.k through which Scrooge's sympathies are got at and his heart-strings are eventually touched, is discernable in his keen sense of humour from the very outset. It is precisely through this that there seems hope, from the very beginning, of his proving to be made of "penetrable stuff." When, after his monstrous "Out upon merry Christmas!" he goes on to say, "If I had my will every idiot who goes about with 'merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart: he should!" one almost feels as if he were laughing in his sleeve from the very commencement. Instance, as yet more strikingly to the point in respect to what we are here maintaining, the wonderfully comic effect of the bantering remarks addressed by him to the Ghost of Jacob Marley all through their confabulation, even when the spectre's voice, as we are told, was disturbing the very marrow in his bones. True, it is there stated that, all through that portentous dialogue, he was only trying to be smart "as a means of distracting his own attention." But the jests themselves are too delicious, one would say, for mere make-believes. Besides which, hear his laugh at the end of the book! Hardly that of one really so long out of practice--"a splendid laugh, a most ill.u.s.trious laugh, the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!" A laugh, one might suppose, as contagious as that of his own Nephew when he was "so inexpressibly tickled that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp!" Speaking of which our author writes so delectably, "If you should happen by any unlikely chance to know a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's Nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his acquaintance." At which challenge one might almost have been tempted antic.i.p.atively to say at a venture--Scrooge! Good-humoured argument apart, however, what creatures were those who, one by one--sometimes, it almost seemed, two or three of them together--appeared and disappeared upon the platform, at the Reader's own good-will and pleasure!

After Scrooge's "Good afternoon!"--delivered with irresistibly ludicrous iteration--we caught something more than a distant glimpse of the Clerk in the tank, when--on Scrooge's surly interrogation, if he will want all day to-morrow?--the Reader replied in the thinnest and meekest of frightened voices, "If quite convenient, sir!" It brought into full view instantaneously, and for the first time, the little Clerk whom one followed in imagination with interest a minute afterwards on his "going down a slide at the end of a lane of boys twenty times in honour of Christmas, and then, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no greatcoat) running home as hard as he could pelt to play at blind man's buff." Instantly, upon the heels of this, we find noted on the margin, p. 18, "Tone to mystery." The spectral illusion of the knocker on Scrooge's house-door, looking for all the world not like a knocker, but like Marley's face, "with a dismal light about it like a bad lobster in a dark cellar," prepared the way marvellously for what followed. Numberless little tid-bits of description that anybody else would have struck out with reluctance, as, for instance, that of Scrooge looking cautiously behind the street door when he entered, "as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall," were unhesitatingly erased by the Reader, as, from his point of view, not necessarily to the purpose. Then, after the goblin incident of the disused bell slowly oscillating until it and all the other bells in the house rang loudly for a while--afterwards becoming in turn just as suddenly hushed--we got to the clanking approach, from the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt of the old building, of the noise that at length came on through the heavy door of Scrooge's apartment! "And"--as the Reader said with startling effect, while his voice rose to a hurried outcry as he uttered the closing exclamation--"upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, '_I know him! Marley's Ghost!_'" The apparition, although the description of it was nearly stenographically abbreviated in the Reading, appeared to be, in a very few words, no less startlingly realised. "Same face, usual waistcoat, tights, boots," even to the spectral illusion being so transparent that Scrooge (his own marrow, then, we may presume, becoming sensitized) looking through his waistcoat "could see the two back b.u.t.tons on the coat behind"--with the incorrigible old joker's cynical reflection to himself that "he had often heard Marley spoken of as having no bowels, but had never believed it until then." The grotesque humour of his interview with the spectre seemed scarcely to have been realised, in fact, until their colloquy was actually listened to in the Reading.

Scrooge's entreaty addressed to the Ghost, when the latter demanded a hearing, "Don't be flowery, Jacob, pray!" was only less laughable, for example, than the expression of the old dreamer's visage when Marley informed him that he had often sat beside him invisibly! Promised a chance and hope in the fixture--a chance and hope of his dead partner's procuring--Scrooge's "Thank 'ee!"--full of doubt--was a fitting prelude to his acknowledgment of the favour when explained. "You will be haunted," quoth the Ghost, "by three Spirits." The other faltering, "I--I think I'd rather not:" and then quietly hinting afterwards, "Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?"

As for the revelations made to Ebenezer Scrooge by those three memorable Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future, who can ever hope to relate them and impersonate them as they were related and impersonated by the Author himself of this peerless ghost-story! Fezziwig, for example, with his calves s.h.i.+ning like moons, who, after going through all the intricacies of the country dance, bow, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place, cut--"cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger!" The very Fiddler, who "went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches!" Master Peter Cratchit, again, arrayed in his father's s.h.i.+rt collars, who, rejoicing to find himself so gallantly attired, at one moment "yearned to show his linen in the fas.h.i.+onable parks," and at another, hearing his sister Martha talk of some lord who "was much about as tall as Peter, pulled up his collars so high that you couldn't have seen him if you had been there." As for the pathetic portions of the narrative, it is especially observable in regard to those, that they were anything rather than made too much of. There, more particularly, the elisions were ruthless. Looking through the marked copy, it really would appear that only a very few indeed of the salient points were left in regard to the life and death of Tiny Tim. Bob's visit to the death-bed was entirely unmentioned. Even the words "Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from G.o.d!" were never uttered. Two utterances there _were_, however, the one breathing an exquisite tenderness, the other indicative of a long-suppressed but pa.s.sionate outburst of grief, that thrilled to the hearts of all who heard them, and still, we doubt not, haunt their recollection. The one--where the mother, laying her mourning needlework upon the table, put her hand up to her face. "'The colour hurts my eyes,' she said. The colour? Ah! poor Tiny Tim!" The other, where the father, while describing the little creature's grave, breaks down in a sudden agony of tears. "It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday--_My little, little child! My little child!_" It was a touch of nature that made the Reader and his world of hearers, upon the instant, kin. The tearful outcry brimmed to the eyes of those present a thousand visible echoes. "He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it," said the Reader, adding in subdued accents the simple words, "If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been further apart perhaps than they were." With that ended all reference to the home-grief at Bob Cratchit's. Everything else in relation to the loss of Tiny Tim was foregone unhesitatingly.

The descriptive pa.s.sages were cut out by wholesale. While the Christmas dinner at Scrooge's Clerk's, and the Christmas party at Scrooge's Nephew's, were left in almost in their entirety, the street-scenes and shop-window displays were obliterated altogether. Nothing at all was said about the "great round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen lolling at the doors and tumbling into the streets in their apoplectic opulence." Nothing about the ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, s.h.i.+ning in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and "winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe." Nothing about the canisters of tea and coffee "rattled up and down like juggling tricks," or about the candied fruits, "so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint, and subsequently bilious."

Nay, we were denied even a momentary glimpse, on the snow-crusted pavement at nightfall, of that group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripping lightly off to some near neighbour's house, "where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!" Topper was there, however, and the plump sister in the lace tucker, and the game of Yes-and-No, the solution to which was, "It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"

Happiest of all these non-omissions, as one may call them, there was that charming picture of Scrooge's niece by marriage, which--as brightly, exquisitely articulated by the lips of her imaginer--was like the loveliest girl-portrait ever painted by Greuze. "She was very pretty, exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory." The grave face and twinkling eyes with which this cordial acquiescence in the conclusion arrived at was expressed were irresistibly exhilarating. Just in the same way there was a sort of parenthetical smack of the lips in the self-communing of Scrooge when, at the very close of the story, after hesitating awhile at his Nephew's door as to whether he should knock, he made a dash and did it. "Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge. "_Nice girl! very._" Then, as to the cordiality of his reception by his Nephew, what could by possibility have expressed it better than the look, voice, manner of the Reader.

"'Will you let me in, Fred?' _Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off._" The turkey that "never could have stood upon its legs, that bird," but must have "snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax!"--the remarkable boy who was just about its size, and who, when told to go and buy it, cried out "Walk-ER!"--Bob Cratchit's trying to overtake nine o'clock with his pen on his arriving nearly twenty minutes afterwards; his trembling and getting a little nearer the ruler when regenerated Scrooge talks about raising his salary, prior to calling him Bob, and, with a clap on the back, wis.h.i.+ng him a merry Christmas!--brought, hilariously, the whole radiant Reading of this wonderful story to its conclusion. It was a feast of humour and a flow of fun, better than all the yule-tide fare that ever was provided--fuller of good things than any Christmas pudding of plums and candied fruit-peel--more warming to the c.o.c.kles of one's heart, whatever those may be, than the mellowest wa.s.sail-bowl ever brimmed to over-flowing. No wonder those two friends of Thackeray, who have been already mentioned, and who were both of them women, said of the Author of the "Carol," by way of criticism, "G.o.d bless him!" This being exclaimed by them, as will be remembered, simply after reading it to themselves. If only they had heard him read it!

THE TRIAL FROM PICKWICK.

Reader and audience about equally, one may say, revelled in the "Trial from Pickwick." Every well-known person in the comic drama was looked for eagerly, and when at last Serjeant Buzfuz, as we were told, "rose with more importance than he had yet exhibited, if that were possible, and said, 'Call Samuel Weller,'" a round of applause invariably greeted the announcement of perhaps the greatest of all d.i.c.kens's purely humorous characters. The Reading copy of this abbreviated report of the great case of _Bardell v. Pickwick_ has, among the complete set of Readings, one very striking peculiarity. Half-bound in scarlet morocco like all the other thin octavos in the collection, its leaves though yellow and worn with constant turning like the rest, are wholly _un_like those of the others in this, that the text is untouched by pen or pencil. Beyond the first condensation of that memorable 34th chapter of Pickwick, there is introduced not one single alteration by way of after-thought. Struck off at a heat, as it was, that first humorous report of the action for breach of promise of marriage brought by Martha Bardell against Samuel Pickwick admitted in truth in no way whatever of improvement. Anything like a textual change would have been resented by the hearers--every one of them Pickwickian, as the case might be, to a man, woman, or child--as in the estimation of the literary court, nothing less than a high crime and misdemeanour. Once epitomised for the Reading, the printed version, at least of the report, was left altogether intact. Nevertheless, strange to say, there was perhaps no Reading out of the whole series of sixteen, in the delivery of which the Author more readily indulged himself with an occasional gag. Every interpolation of this kind, however, was so obviously introduced on the spur of the moment, so refres.h.i.+ngly spontaneous and so ludicrously _apropos_, that it was always cheered to the very echo, or, to put the fact not conventionally but literally, was received with peals of laughter. Thus it was in one instance, as we very well remember, in regard to Mr. Justice Stareleigh--upon every occasion that we saw him, one of the Reader's most whimsical impersonations. The little judge--described in the book as "all face and waistcoat"--was presented to view upon the platform as evidently with no neck at all (to speak of), and as blinking with owl-like stolidity whenever he talked, which he always did under his voice, and with apparently a severe cold in the head. On the night more particularly referred to, Sam Weller, being at the moment in the witness-box, had just replied to the counsel's suggestion, that what he (Sam) meant by calling Mr. Pickwick's "a very good service" was "little to do and plenty to get."--"Oh, quite enough to get, sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred and fifty lashes." Thereupon--glowering angrily at Sam, and blinking his eyes more than ever--Mr. Justice Stareleigh remarked, with a heavier cold in the head than hitherto, in a severe monotone, and with the greatest deliberation, "You must not tell us what the soldier says unless the soldier is in court, unless that soldier comes here in uniform, and is examined in the usual way--it's not evidence." Another evening, again, we recall quite as clearly to mind, when the Reader was revelling more even than was his wont, in the fun of this representation of the trial-scene, he suddenly seemed to open up the revelation of an entirely new phase in Mr. Winkle's idiosyncrasy. Under the badgering of Mr. Skimpin's irritating examination, as to whether he was or was not a particular friend of Mr. Pickwick the defendant, the usually placable Pickwickian's patience upon this occasion appeared gradually and at last utterly to forsake him. "I have known Mr. Pickwick now, as well as I can recollect at this moment, nearly----"

"Pray, Mr. Winkle, do not evade the question. Are you or are you not a particular friend of the defendant's?" "I was just about to say----"

"Will you, or will you not, answer my question, sir?" "Why, G.o.d bless my soul, I was just about to say that------" Whereupon the Court, otherwise Mr. Justice Stareleigh, blinking faster than ever, blurted out severely, "If you don't answer the question you'll be committed to prison, sir!"

And then, but not till then, Mr. Winkle was sufficiently restored to equanimity to admit at last, meekly, "Yes, he was!"

In the Reading of the Trial the first droll touch was the well-remembered reference to the gentlemen in wigs, in the barristers'

seats, presenting as a body "all that pleasing variety of nose and whisker for which the bar of England is so justly celebrated." Even the allusion to those among their number who carried a brief "scratching their noses with it to impress the fact more strongly on the observation of the spectators," and the other allusion to those who hadn't a brief, carrying instead red-labelled octavos with "that under-done-pie-crust cover, technically known as law calf," was each, in turn, welcomed with a flutter of amus.e.m.e.nt. Every point, however minute, told, and told eifectively. More eifectively than if each was heard for the first time, because all were thoroughly known, and, therefore, thoroughly well appreciated. The opening address of Serjeant Buzfuz every one naturally enough regarded as one of the most mirth-moving portions of the whole representation. In the very exordium of it there was something eminently absurd in the Serjeant's extraordinarily precise, almost mincing p.r.o.nunciation. As where he said, that "never in the whole course of his professional experience--never from the first moment of his applying himself to the study and practice of the law--had he approached a case with such a heavy sense of respon-see-bee-lee-ty imposed upon him--a respon-see-bee-lee-ty he could never have supported were he not," and so forth. Again, a wonderfully ridiculous effect was imparted by the Reader to his mere contrasts of manner when, at one moment, in the bland and melancholy accents of Serjeant Buzfuz, he referred to the late Mr.

Bardell as having "glided almost imperceptibly from the world to seek elsewhere for that repose and peace which a custom-house can never afford," adding, the next instant in his own voice, and with the most cruelly matter-of-fact precision, "This was a pathetic description of the decease of Mr. Bardell, who had been knocked on the head with a quart-pot in a public-house cellar." The gravity of the Reader's countenance at these moments, with, now and then, but very rarely, a lurking twinkle in the eye, was of itself irresistibly provocative of laughter. Even upon the Serjeant's mention of the written placard hung up in the parlour window of Goswell Street, bearing this inscription, "Apartments furnished for single gentlemen: inquire within," the sustained seriousness with which he added, that there the forensic orator paused while several gentlemen of the jury "took a note of the doc.u.ment," one of that intelligent body inquiring, "There is no date to that, is there, sir?" made fresh ripples of laughter spread from it as inevitably as the concentric circles on water from the dropping of a pebble. The crowning extravagances of this most Gargantuan of comic orations were always of course the most eagerly welcomed, such, for example, as the learned Serjeant's final allusion to Pickwick's coming before the court that day with "his heartless tomato-sauce and warming-pans," and the sonorous close of the impa.s.sioned peroration with the plaintiff's appeal to "an enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a dispa.s.sionate, a sympathising, a contemplative jury of her civilised countrymen." It was after this, however, that the true fun of the Reading began with the examination and cross-examination of the different witnesses. These, as a matter of course, were acted, not described.

Mrs. Cluppins first entered the box, with her feelings, so far as they could be judged from her voice, evidently all but too many for her. Her fluttered reply showed this at the very commencement, in answer to an inquiry as to whether she remembered one particular morning in July last, when Mrs. Bar-dell was dusting Pickwick's apartment. "Yes, my lord and jury, I do." "Was that sitting-room the first-floor front?" "Yes, it were, sir"--something in the manner of Mrs. Crupp when at her faintest.

The suspicious inquiry of the red-faced little Judge, "What were you doing in the back-room, ma'am?" followed--on her replying lackadaisically, "My lord and jury, I will not deceive you"--by his blinking at her more fiercely, "You had better not, ma'am," were only exceeded in comicality by Justice Stare-leigh's bewilderment a moment afterwards, upon her saying that she "see Mrs. Bardell's street-door on the jar."

Judge (in immense astonishment).--"On the what?"

Counsel.--"Partly open, my lord."

Judge (with more owl-like stolidity than ever).--"She said on the jar."

Counsel.--"It's all the same, my lord."

Then--blinking more quickly than before, with a furtive glance at witness, and a doubtful look of abstraction into s.p.a.ce--the little Judge made a note of it.

As in Mrs. Cluppins' faintness there was a recognizable touch of Mrs.

Crupp, when the spasms were engendering in the nankeen bosom of that exemplary female, so also in the maternal confidences volunteered by the same witness, there was an appreciable reminder of another lady who will be remembered as having been introduced at the Coroner's Inquest in Bleak House as "Anastasia Piper, gentlemen." Regarding that as a favourable opportunity for informing the court of her own domestic affairs, through the medium of a brief dissertation, Mrs. Cluppins was interrupted by the irascible Judge at the most interesting point in her revelations, when, having mentioned that she was already the mother of eight children, she added, that "she entertained confident expectations of presenting Mr. Cluppins with a ninth about that day six months"--whereupon the worthy lady was summarily hustled out of the witness-box.

Nathaniel Winkle, however, consoled us immediately. Don't we remember how, even before he could open his lips, he was completely disconcerted?

Namely, when, bowing very respectfully to the little Judge, he had that complimentary proceeding acknowledged snappishly with, "Don't look at me, sir; look at the jury----" Mr. Winkle, in obedience to the mandate, meekly looking "at the place where he thought that the jury might be." Don't we remember also perfectly well how the worst possible construction was cast by implication beforehand upon his probable reply to the very first question put to him, namely, by the mere manner in which that first question was put? "Now, sir, have the goodness to let his lords.h.i.+p and the jury know what your name is, will you?" Mr.

Skimpin, in propounding this inquiry, inclining his head on one side and listening with great sharpness for the answer, "as if to imply that he rather thought Mr. Winkle's natural taste for perjury would induce him to give some name which did not belong to him." Giving in, absurdly, his surname only; and being asked immediately afterwards, if possible still more absurdly, by the Judge, "Have you any Christian name, sir?" the witness, in the Reading, more naturally and yet more confusedly even it seemed than in the book, got that eminent functionary into a great bewilderment as to whether he (Mr. Winkle) were called Nathaniel Daniel, or Daniel Nathaniel. Bewildered himself, in his turn, and that too almost hopelessly, came Mr. Winkle's reply, "No, my lord; only Nathaniel--not Daniel at all." Irascibly, the Judge's, "What did you tell me it was Daniel for, then, sir?" Shamefaced and yet irritably, "I didn't, my lord." "You did, sir!"--with great indignation, topped by this cogent reasoning,--"How could I have got Daniel on my notes, unless you told me so, sir?" Nothing at all was said about it in the Reading; but, again and again, Mr. Winkle, as there impersonated, while endeavouring to feign an easiness of manner, was made to a.s.sume, in his then state of confusion, "rather the air of a disconcerted pickpocket."

Better almost than Mr. Winkle himself, however, as an impersonation, was, in look, voice, manner, Mr. Skimpin, the junior barrister, under whose cheerful but ruthless interrogations that unfortunate gentleman was stretched upon the rack of examination. His (Mr. Skimpin's) cheery echoing--upon every occasion when it was at last extorted from his victim--of the latter's answer (followed instantly by his own taunts and insinuations), remains as vividly as anything at all about this Reading in our recollection. When at length Mr. Winkle, with no reluctance in the world, but only seemingly with reluctance, answers the inquiry as to whether he is a particular friend of Pickwick, "Yes, I am!"--"Yes, you are!" said Mr. Skimpin (audibly to the court, but as if it were only to himself). "And why couldn't you say that at once, sir? Perhaps you know the plaintiff, too--eh, Mr. Winkle?" "I don't know her; I've seen her!"

"Oh, _you don't know her, but you've seen her!_ Now have the goodness to tell the gentlemen of the jury what you mean by _that_, Mr. Winkle." As to how this unfortunate witness, after being driven to the confines of desperation, on being at last released, "rushed with delirious haste"

to the hotel, "where he was discovered some hours after by the waiter, groaning in a hollow and dismal manner, with his head buried beneath the sofa cus.h.i.+ons"--not a word was said in the Reading.

A flavour of the fun of Mrs. Sanders's evidence was given, but only a pa.s.sing flavour of it, in reference to Mr. Sanders having, in the course of their correspondence, often called her duck, but never chops, nor yet tomato-sauce--he being particularly fond of ducks--though possibly, if he had been equally fond of chops and tomato-sauce, he might have called her that instead, as a term of affection.

_The_ evidence of all, however, was that of Sam Weller, no less to the enjoyment of the Author, it was plain to see, than to that of his hearers. After old Weller's hoa.r.s.e and guttural cry from the gallery, "Put it down a wee, my lord," in answer to the inquiry whether the immortal surname was to be spelt with a V. or a W.; Sam's quiet "I rayther suspect it was my father, my lord," came with irresistible effect from the Reader, as also did his recollection of something "wery partickler" having happened on the memorable morning, out of which had sprung the whole of this trial of Bardell v. Pickwick, namely, that he himself that day had "a reg'lar new fit out o' clothes." Beyond all the other Wellerisms, however, was Sam's overwhelmingly conclusive answer to counsel's inquiry in regard to his not having seen what occurred, though he himself, at the time, was in the pa.s.sage, "Have you a pair of eyes, Mr. Weller?" "Yes, I _have_ a pair of eyes; and that's just it If they wos a pair o' patent double-million magnifying gas microscopes of hextra power, p'r'aps I might be able to see through two flights o' stairs and a deal door; but _bein'_ only eyes, you see, my wision's limited."

Better by far, in our estimation, nevertheless, than the smart c.o.c.kney facetiousness of the inimitable Sam; better than the old coachman's closing lamentation, "Vy worn't there a alleybi?" better than Mr.

Winkle, or Mrs. Cluppins, or Serjeant Buzfuz, or than all the rest of those engaged in any capacity in the trial, put together, was the irascible little Judge, with the blinking eyes and the monotonous voice--himself, in his very _pose_, obviously, "all face and waistcoat."

Than Mr. Justice Stareleigh there was, in the whole of this most humorous of all the Readings, no more highly comic impersonation.

DAVID COPPERFIELD.

The sea-beach at Yarmouth formed both the opening and the closing scene of this Reading, in six chapters, from "David Copperfield." In its varied portraiture of character and in the wonderful descriptive power marking its conclusion, it was one of the most interesting and impressive of the whole series in its delivery. Through it, we renewed our acquaintance more vividly than ever with handsome, curry-headed, reckless, heartless Steerforth! With poor, lone, lorn Mrs. Gummidge, not only when everythink about her went contrairy, but when her better nature gushed forth under the great calamity befalling her benefactor.

With pretty little Emily, and bewitching little Dora. With Mr. Micawber, his s.h.i.+rt-collar, his eye-gla.s.s, the condescending roll in his voice, and his intermittent bursts of confidence. With Mrs. Micawber, who, as the highest praise we can bestow upon her, is quite worthy of her husband, and who is always, it will be remembered, so impa.s.sioned in her declaration that, come what may, she never _will_ desert Mr. Micawber!

With Traddles, and his irrepressible hair, even a love-lock from which had to be kept down by Sophy's preservation of it in a clasped locket!

With Mr. Peggotty, in fine, who, in his tender love for his niece, is, according to his own account, "not to-look at, but to think on," nothing less than a babby in the form of a great sea Porkypine! Remembering the other originals, crowding the pages of the story in its integrity, how one would have liked to have seen even a few more of them impersonated by the protean Novelist! That "most wonderful woman in the world," Aunt Betsey, for example; or that most laconic of carriers, Mr. Barkis; or, to name yet one other, Uriah Heep, that reddest and most writhing of rascally attornies. As it was, however, there were abundant realizations within the narrow compa.s.s of this Reading of the princ.i.p.al persons introduced in the autobiography of David Copperfield. The most loveable, by the way, of all the young heroes portrayed in the d.i.c.kens' Gallery was there, to begin with, for example--the peculiar loveableness of David being indicated as plainly as by any means through the extraordinary variety of pet names given to him by one or another in the course of the narrative. For, was he not the "Daisy" of Steerforth, the "Doady" of Dora, the "Trotwood" of Aunt Betsy, and the "Mas'r Davy" of the Yarmouth boatmen, just as surely as he was the "Mr. Copper-full"

of Mrs. Crupp, the "Master Copperfield" of Uriah Heep, and the "Dear Copperfield" of Mr. Wilkins Micawber?

That "The Personal History and Experiences of David Copperfield the Younger" was, among all its author's works, his own particular favourite, he himself, in his very last preface to it, in 1867, formally acknowledged. Several years previously, while sauntering with him to and fro one evening on the gra.s.s-plot at Gads.h.i.+ll, we remember receiving from him that same admission. "Which of all your books do you think I regard as incomparably your best?" "Which?" "David Copperfield." A momentary pause ensuing, he added, readily and without the smallest reservation, "You are quite right." The acknowledgment then made as to this being in fact his own opinion was thus simply but emphatically expressed. Pen in hand, long afterwards, he made the same admission, only with yet greater emphasis, when the Preface to the new edition of the story in 1867 was thus closed by Charles d.i.c.kens--"Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is 'David Copperfield.'"

Having that confession from his own lips and under his own hand, it will be readily understood that the Novelist always took an especial delight when, in the course of his Readings, the turn came for that of "David Copperfield."

One of the keenest sensations of pleasure he ever experienced as a Reader--as he himself related to us with the liveliest gratification, evidently, even in the mere recollection of the incident--occurred in connection with this very Reading. Strange to say, moreover, it occurred, not in England or in America, in the presence of an English-speaking audience, but in Paris, and face to face with an audience more than half of which was composed of Frenchmen. And the hearer who caused him, there, that artistic sense, one might almost call it thrill of satisfaction---was a Frenchman! All that was expressed on the part of this appreciative listener, being uttered by him instantaneously in a half-whispered, monosyllabic e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n. As we have already explained upon an earlier page, the Readings which took place in Paris, and which were in behalf of the British Charitable Fund in that capital, were given there before a densely crowded but very select audience at the British Emba.s.sy, Lord Cowley being then her Majesty's amba.s.sador. The Reading on the occasion referred to was "David Copperfield," and the Reader became aware in the midst of the hushed silence, just after he had been saying, in the voice of Steerforth, giving at the same moment a cordial grasp of the hand to the briny fisherman he was addressing: "Mr. Peggotty, you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are to-night. My hand upon it!" when, turning round, he added, still as Steerforth, but speaking in a very different voice and offering a very different hand-grip, as though already he were thinking to himself what a chuckle-headed fellow the young s.h.i.+pwright was--"Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that too!" The always keenly observant Novelist became aware of a Frenchman, who was eagerly listening in the front row of the stalls, suddenly exclaiming to himself, under his breath, "Ah--h!"--having instantly caught the situation! The sound of that one inarticulate monosyllable, as he observed, when relating the circ.u.mstance, gave the Reader, as an artist, a far livelier sense of satisfaction than any that could possibly have been imparted by mere acclamations, no matter how spontaneous or enthusiastic.

As a Reading, it always seemed to us, that "David Copperfield" was cut down rather distressingly. That, nevertheless, was unavoidable. Turning in off Yarmouth sands, we went straight at once through the "delightful door" cut in its side, into the old black barge or boat, high and dry there on the sea-beach, and which was known to us nearly as familiarly as to David himself, as the odd dwelling-house inhabited by Mr.

Peggotty. All the still-life of that beautifully clean and tidy interior we had revealed to us again, as of old: lockers, boxes, table, Dutch clock, chest of drawers--even tea-tray, only that we failed to hear anything said about the painting on the tea-tray, representing "a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child, who was trundling a hoop." The necessities of condensation in the same way restricted the definition of Mr. Peggotty's occupation in the Reading, to the simple mention of the fact that he dealt in lobsters, crabs, and craw-fish, without any explanation at all as to those creatures being heaped together in a little wooden out-house "in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of." Little Emily appeared as a beautiful young woman, and no longer as the prattling la.s.sie who, years before had confided to her playfellow, David, how, if ever she were a lady, she would give uncle Dan, meaning Mr. Peggotty, "a sky-blue coat, with diamond b.u.t.tons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a c.o.c.ked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money." Mrs. Gummidge, as became a faithful widow, was still fretting after the Old 'Un. Ham, something of Mr. Peggotty's own build, as the latter described him, "a good deal o'