Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2361 page)

“In the act of hanging up my hat on the eighth peg by the door, I caught Kimber’s visual ray. He lowered it, and passed a remark on the next change of the moon. I did not take particular notice of this at the moment, because the world was often pleased to be a little shy of ecclesiastical topics in my presence. For I felt that I was picked out (though perhaps only through a coincidence) to a certain extent to represent what I call our glorious constitution in Church and State. The phrase may be objected to by captious minds; but I own to it as mine. I threw it off in argument some little time back. I said: ‘Our Glorious Constitution in Church and State.’

“Another member of the Eight Club was Peartree; also member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Mr. Peartree is not accountable to me for his opinions, and I say no more of them here than that he attends the poor gratis whenever they want him, and is not the parish doctor. Mr. Peartree may justify it to the grasp of
his
mind thus to do his republican utmost to bring an appointed officer into contempt. Suffice it that Mr. Peartree can never justify it to the grasp of
mine
.

“Between Peartree and Kimber there was a sickly sort of feeble-minded alliance. It came under my particular notice when I sold off Kimber by auction. (Goods taken in execution). He was a widower in a white under-waistcoat, and slight shoes with bows, and had two daughters not ill-looking. Indeed the reverse. Both daughters taught dancing in scholastic establishments for Young Ladies — had done so at Mrs. Sapsea’s; nay, Twinkleton’s — and both, in giving lessons, presented the unwomanly spectacle of having little fiddles tucked under their chins. In spite of which, the younger one might, if I am correctly informed — I will raise the veil so far as to say I know she might — have soared for life from this degrading taint, but for having the class of mind allotted to what I call the common herd, and being so incredibly devoid of veneration as to become painfully ludicrous.

“When I sold off Kimber without reserve, Peartree (as poor as he can hold together) had several prime household lots knocked down to him. I am not to be blinded; and of course it was as plain to me what he was going to do with them, as it was that he was a brown hulking sort of revolutionary subject who had been in India with the soldiers, and ought (for the sake of society) to have his neck broke. I saw the lots shortly afterwards in Kimber’s lodgings — through the window — and I easily made out that there had been a sneaking pretence of lending them till better times. A man with a smaller knowledge of the world than myself might have been led to suspect that Kimber had held back money from his creditors, and fraudulently bought the goods. But, besides that I knew for certain he had no money, I knew that this would involve a species of forethought not to be made compatible with the frivolity of a caperer, inoculating other people with capering, for his bread.

“As it was the first time I had seen either of those two since the sale, I kept myself in what I call Abeyance. When selling him up, I had delivered a few remarks — shall I say a little homely? — concerning Kimber, which the world did regard as more than usually worth notice. I had come up into my pulpit;, it was said, uncommonly like — and a murmur of recognition had repeated his (I will not name whose) title, before I spoke. I had then gone on to say that all present would find, in the first page of the catalogue that was lying before them, in the last paragraph before the first lot, the following words: ‘Sold in pursuance of a writ of execution issued by a creditor.’ I had then proceeded to remind my friends, that however frivolous, not to say contemptible, the business by which a man got his goods together, still his goods were as dear to him, and as cheap to society (if sold without reserve), as though his pursuits had been of a character that would bear serious contemplation. I had then divided my text (if I may be allowed so to call it) into three heads: firstly, Sold; secondly, In pursuance of a writ of execution; thirdly, Issued by a creditor; with a few moral reflections on each, and winding up with, ‘Now to the first lot’ in a manner that was complimented when I afterwards mingled with my hearers.

“So, not being certain on what terms I and Kimber stood, I was grave, I was chilling. Kimber, however, moving to me, I moved to Kimber. (I was the creditor who had issued the writ. Not that it matters.)

“‘I was alluding, Mr. Sapsea,’ said Kimber, ‘to a stranger who entered into conversation with me in the street as I came to the Club. He had been speaking to you just before, it seemed, by the churchyard; and though you had told him who you were, I could hardly persuade him that you were not high in the Church.’

“‘Idiot!’ said Peartree.

“‘Ass!’ said Kimber.

“‘Idiot and Ass!” said the other five members.

“‘Idiot and Ass, gentlemen,’ I remonstrated, looking around me, ‘are strong expressions to apply to a young man of good appearance and address.’ My generosity was roused; I own it.

“‘You’ll admit that he must be a Fool,’ said Peartree.

“‘You can’t deny that he must be a Blockhead, said Kimber.

“Their tone of disgust amounted to being offensive. Why should the young man be so calumniated? What had he done? He had only made an innocent and natural mistake. I controlled my generous indignation, and said so.

“‘Natural?’ repeated Kimber; ‘
He’s
a Natural!’

“The remaining six members of the Eight Club laughed unanimously. It stung me. It was a scornful laugh. My anger was roused in behalf of an absent, friendless stranger. I rose (for I had been sitting down).

“‘Gentlemen,’ I said with dignity, ‘I will not remain one of this Club allowing opprobrium to be cast on an unoffending person in his absence. I will not so violate what I call the sacred rites of hospitality. Gentlemen, until you know how to behave yourselves better, I leave you. Gentlemen, until then I withdraw, from this place of meeting, whatever personal qualifications I may have brought into it. Gentlemen, until then you cease to be the Eight Club, and must make the best you can of becoming the Seven.’

“I put on my hat and retired. As I went down stairs I distinctly heard them give a suppressed cheer. Such is the power of demeanour and knowledge of mankind. I had forced it out of them.

“II.

“Whom should I meet in the street, within a few yards of the door of the inn where the Club was held, but the self-same young man whose cause I had felt it my duty so warmly — and I will add so disinterestedly — to take up.

“Is it Mr. Sapsea,’ he said doubtfully, ‘or is it —
 
— ’

“‘It is Mr. Sapsea,’ I replied.

“‘Pardon me, Mr. Sapsea; you appear warm, sir,’

“‘I have been warm,’ I said, ‘and on your account.’ Having stated the circumstances at some length (my generosity almost overpowered him), I asked him his name.

“‘Mr. Sapsea,’ he answered, looking down, ‘your penetration is so acute, your glance into the souls of your fellow men is so penetrating, that if I was hardy enough to deny that my name is Poker, what would it avail me?’

“I don’t know that I had quite exactly made out to a fraction that his name
was
Poker, but I daresay I had been pretty near doing it.

“‘Well, well,’ said I, trying to put him at his ease by nodding my head in a soothing way. ‘Your name is Poker, and there is no harm in being named Poker.’

“‘Oh Mr. Sapsea!’ cried the young man, in a very well-behaved manner. ‘Bless you for those words!’ He then, as if ashamed of having given way to his feelings, looked down again.

“‘Come, Poker,’ said I, ‘let me hear more about you. Tell me. Where are you going to, Poker? and where do you come from?’

“‘Ah Mr. Sapsea!’ exclaimed the young man. ‘Disguise from you is impossible. You know already that I come from somewhere, and am going somewhere else. If I was to deny it, what would it avail me?’

“‘Then don’t deny it,’ was my remark.

“‘Or,’ pursued Poker, in a kind of despondent rapture, ‘or if I was to deny that I came to this town to see and hear you sir, what would it avail me? Or if I was to deny —
 
— ’“

The fragment ends there, and the hand that could alone have completed it is at rest for ever.

Some personal characteristics remain for illustration before the end is briefly told.

CHAPTER XIX.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

1836-1870.

Dickens not a Bookish Man — Character of his Talk — Dickens made to tell his Own Story — Lord Russell on Dickens’s Letters — No Self-conceit in Dickens — Letter to his Youngest Son — Personal Prayer — Hymn in a Christmas Tale — Objection to Posthumous Honours — Source of Quarrel with Literary Fund — Small Poets — On “Royalty” Bargains — Editorship — Relations with Contributors — Foreign Views of English People — Editorial Pleasures — Adverse Influences of Periodical Writing — Anger and Satire — No desire to enter the House of Commons — Reforms he took most Interest in — The Liverpool Dinner in 1869 — Tribute to Lord Russell — The People governing and the People governed — Tone of Last Book — Alleged Offers from the Queen — The Queen’s Desire to see Dickens act — Her Majesty’s Wish to hear Dickens read — Interview with the Queen — Dickens’s Grateful Impression from it — ”In Memoriam” by Arthur Helps — Rural Enjoyments — A Winner in the Games — Dickens’s Habits of Life everywhere — Centre and Soul of his Home — Daily Habits — London Haunts — First Attack of Lameness — How it affected his Large Dogs — His Hatred of Indifference — At Social Meetings — Agreeable Pleasantries — Ghost Stories — Marvels of Coincidence — Predominant Impression of his Life — Effects on his Career.

Objection has been taken to this biography as likely to disappoint its readers in not making them “talk to Dickens as Boswell makes them talk to Johnson.” But where will the blame lie if a man takes up
Pickwick
and is disappointed to find that he is not reading
Rasselas?
A book must be judged for what it aims to be, and not for what it cannot by possibility be. I suppose so remarkable an author as Dickens hardly ever lived who carried so little of authorship into ordinary social intercourse. Potent as the sway of his writings was over him, it expressed itself in other ways. Traces or triumphs of literary labour, displays of conversational or other personal predominance, were no part of the influence he exerted over friends. To them he was only the pleasantest of companions, with whom they forgot that he had ever written anything, and felt only the charm which a nature of such capacity for supreme enjoyment causes every one around it to enjoy. His talk was unaffected and natural, never bookish in the smallest degree. He was quite up to the average of well read men, but as there was no ostentation of it in his writing, so neither was there in his conversation. This was so attractive because so keenly observant, and lighted up with so many touches of humorous fancy; but, with every possible thing to give relish to it, there were not many things to bring away.

Of course a book must stand or fall by its contents. Macaulay said very truly that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by what is written about them, but by what is written in them. I offer no complaint of any remark made upon these volumes, but there have been some misapprehensions. Though Dickens bore outwardly so little of the impress of his writings, they formed the whole of that inner life which essentially constituted the man; and as in this respect he was actually, I have thought that his biography should endeavour to present him. The story of his books, therefore, at all stages of their progress, and of the hopes or designs connected with them, was my first care. With that view, and to give also to the memoir what was attainable of the value of autobiography, letters to myself, such as were never addressed to any other of his correspondents, and covering all the important incidents in the life to be retraced, were used with few exceptions exclusively; and though the exceptions are much more numerous in the present volume, this general plan has guided me to the end. Such were my limits indeed, that half even of those letters had to be put aside; and to have added all such others as were open to me would have doubled the size of my book, not contributed to it a new fact of life or character, and altered materially its design. It would have been so much lively illustration added to the subject, but out of place here. The purpose here was to make Dickens the sole central figure in the scenes revived, narrator as well as principal actor; and only by the means employed could consistency or unity be given to the self-revelation, and the picture made definite and clear. It is the peculiarity of few men to be to their most intimate friend neither more nor less than they are to themselves, but this was true of Dickens; and what kind or quality of nature such intercourse expressed in him, of what strength, tenderness, and delicacy susceptible, of what steady level warmth, of what daily unresting activity of intellect, of what unbroken continuity of kindly impulse through the change and vicissitude of three-and-thirty years, the letters to myself given in these volumes could alone express. Gathered from various and differing sources, their interest could not have been as the interest of these; in which everything comprised in the successive stages of a most attractive career is written with unexampled candour and truthfulness, and set forth in definite pictures of what he saw and stood in the midst of, unblurred by vagueness or reserve. Of the charge of obtruding myself to which their publication has exposed me, I can only say that I studied nothing so hard as to suppress my own personality, and have to regret my ill success where I supposed I had even too perfectly succeeded. But we have all of us frequent occasion to say, parodying Mrs. Peachem’s remark, that we are bitter bad judges of ourselves.