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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (June 7, 1908)
0 THE SUNDAY OREGOXIAX. PORTLAND, JUNE 7, 1908. OF ANNIVERSARY "4 !Sf 4 "m. 4 js S tdfMji 3L . BV WARWICK JAMES PRICE. LOVB knows no anniversaries. The heart never needs be prodded to warm remembrances by a decennial or a centenary. That the world, then, has reached the SSth June 9th since Charles Dickens, in 1870. laid by forever the pen which had made him master of the tears and laugh ter of thousands, neither broadens nor deepens ur love for the man, but it dooR impart a welcome timeliness to the retelling of his brief and brilliant story. English fiction offers many a name lying close to the hearts of today's "Gentle Readers." Joseph Addison seems a bit far-off, perhais a little cold in his persistent uprightness, but we hold him dear. The very frailties of Goldsmith make him the more truly an object of af fectionate regard. We take genuine de light In the great-heartedness of that Sir "Walter who "never lost a friend." Ad miration for "William Makepeace Thack eray, white waistcoat and all," grows 10 downright attachment. Brown-eyed, vi vacious Jane Austen stirs delight no less than lasting fondness. But none, of these (nor yet Robert Louis Stevenson, cherry and gallant) is so dseply loved as Charles Dickens. We know the person ages of "Boz" by heart, we play at games witli his incidents and names, while from grateful souls we believe that there never was such fun, and that there never will be conceived again such Inimitable beings as live today, immortal. In those ever-fresh, ever-varied pages. Hoy's Bravery Vnder Hardship. Charles John Huff ham Dickens (so was lie baptised) owed nothing to birth or culture. When he arrived in the world, February 7, 1812 (just as America was Joining conflict for the second time with the mother country), he entered the home of a procrastinating, Improvident, hand- 4 rt-m Ol 1 1 h -aovt nf a trn-ammant rarT at Landport, near Portsmouth. That father's failings have been drawn for-all time in Micawber and "Little Dorrit" still pictures forth vividly that Marshal sea Debtors Prison where the bankrupt parent was set to work when this sec ond of his eight children was a lad of ten. The family moved up to great, gray London to be near its Incompetent head, and little Charles, at an age when most children are at their games, went to work, for the princely salary of six shil lings the week, in a blacking factory. Think of the bright, imaginative little follow (he had actually written a "trag edy" when seven!) condemned to 14 hours of miserable drudgery In every 24, menial work In surroundings that are flattered by the word uncongenial. But that boy was father of the man that was to be. The uncomplaining manliness, the gallant endurance of hardship, the spirit of quiet heroism which the novelist was ever to hold up to admiration, these traits all shone clear in this over-worked, under-aged factory-boy, as he "Learned In suffering what he taught In song." Iater there chanced along a small leg acy to the unworthy father, who came out of tiie Marshalsea and began life anew as a reporter on the "Morning Chronicle." Then the boy was given a couple of years' schooling. The School of the Streets. Tears after, when an acquaintance asked where the creator of Pickwick had been educated, his Micawber of a parent guffawed unsympathetically and ven tured that "he sort o' educated himself." It was as true as unfeeling. The crumbs of learning which had fallen to Charles. sj?;jr m a Vr.-V-i" th 1 I 5 SI 1 ISw " ill way"" 4T m-L 1 5 A m 4 Just entering his teens, and earlier for a brief space at Chatham, were of scant account. Books and the London streets were his realest teachers. "Don Quixote" and "Gil Bias." "The Vicar of Wake field" and "Robinson Cruso," "Tom Jones" and "Sir Roger de Coverly" these had been his earliest masters, as well as glorious companions when the tedious factory hours had ended and he was again in his London garret, least alone when most solitary. " I Browning once said he had graduated from the "University of Italy," and In the same sense Dickens' alma mater was the busy, heartless "University of Lon don." The city highways and byways were his school and he became their au thentic historian. Like Dr. Johnson,' he bore passionate love for Fleet street and the Strand. When he depicts a country village it seeems conscious, dramatic, un real; but his pictures of the bustling metropolis are perfect. To the present day traveler, acquainted fitly with his Dickens, the whole of London Is redo lent of him. especially the sections which He along the river. His characters stilt. are everywhere to be met with in twen tieth century flesh. The Plunge Into Print. The youth tried a brief hand at the law. but newspaperdom held more fas cination for him than any barrister's of fice, and, studying shorthand, he became first one of the True Sun's parliamentary reporters, then serving the Chronicle in like capacity. It is Interesting to note the Inbred hankering after the Journal istic life which cropped to the surface through all the man's 68 years. Several times he actually ventured upon ther un certain waters of the Fourth Estate, but TYPICAL NOTES IN PRAISE OF DICKENS The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever-friendly,, noble Dickens ever' inch of him an Honest Man. Carlyle. Dickens' stymie is descriptive, racy and flowing; it is instinct with new images and singular illustrations. Bagehot. Dickens shows that the haunts of the blackest crimes are sometimes lighted up by the presence and influence of the noblest souls. Channing. Chief in thy generation born of men Whom English praise Reclaimed as English-born, Vilh eyes that matched the world-wide eyes of morn For gleam of tears or laughter, tenderest then . AVlien thoughts of children warmed their light, or when Reverence of age with love and labor worn, Or God-like pity fired with God-like scorn, Shot through the tame that winged thy swift pen : Where stars and suns that we beheld not burn. Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place, Ixve sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine AVith Shakespeare, and the soft, bright soul of Sterne, And Fieldings' kindliest might, and Goldsmith's grace; Scarce one more loved or worthier than thine. r Swinburne. - How poor the world of fancy would be, how "dispeopled of her dreams," if, in some ruin of the social system, the books of Dickens were lost. Lang. The philosophy of Dickens is the philosophy of kindness, of a genial interest in all things great and small, of a light English joyousness, and a sunny universal benevolence. Masson 1 r ft 1 ""ft!M''. J&LSS ALL'S JaST&I2 JT0R 'TfST OTTZJT V&sr 111 WMiW,wf jl J&0J242tfS STATGE: Or DZC?EN$',Z2aBZrZX never with success, save in Household Words, which started in 1S50 climbed, at the height of Its prosperity, to a cir culation close upon 100,000 copies a week. The reporter of other men's sayings and doings was soon to beget his own "shad ows of the real" shades far more actual, more living than the flesh and bIoodte lngs who were getting ready to put on mourning for the Fourth William. One Autumn day of 1S33 a young fellow of 21 almost stealthily dropped Into a red mail box on the Strand a stoutish envelope ad dressed to the old Monthly Magazine. A fortnight later and the same figure was buying a copy of the current Issue look ing down Its table of contents, trembling ly, shame-facedly! and then stepptng aside from the unseeing stream of passers-by. Into some convenient vestibule, to dash from his blue eyes the teal's that had sprung thereVat the sight of a title: "A Dinner "at Poplar Walk, by Box." So was taken the first doubting step which was to lead along the, now main traveled road whose millstones read Pickwick and Nlckleby and'Dombey .-and Copperfield. Boi figured for a year in the Monthly's pages, then "went over" to the columns of the evening edition of his own paper (his salary was by that raised from five to seven guineas a week) ; and then stood before, the world "between covers." with no less an one than Crulk shank's self as his illustrator. Master of Tears and Laughter. Sketches by. Boz bears date of 1836 on the title page of the much-to-be-desired first edition, and the same Spring saw the initial issue of the "Postjiumous Pa pers of the Pickwick Club." Four of the monthly numbers came out in the amber of Chapman and Hall's types; Seymour, the original illustrator, yielded to "Phiz" Browne but "Pretty good" was the best that London was saying of the venture. Then the fifth installment Introduced its readers to the innyard of the White Hart Tavern, and to one Samuel Weller, blacking the maidenly boots of that no-longer-young lady who had just eloped with Mr. Jingle and success dawned clear and sure. That sun was -never to set. It still shines as unwaveringly as when the 25-year-old Dickens was there introduced to fame by 'Son Samlvel." The first five years of the reign of Victoria C37-'4J) saw "Oliver Twist" and "Nicholas Nickleby," "Old Curios ity Shop" and "Barnaby Rudge," as well as "Pickwick": all of them In that "monthly parts" form of issue which antedated our present-day "serial." Had Dickens never written .another word, how mucjt this world would yet owe him! There was the ' benevolent, verdant, elderly chairman of the Pick wick Club; tne Fat Boy, and the Wellers, father and son. There were unhappy little Oliver Twist, and Bea-. die Bumble, and Fagln, and the charm ing Artful Dodger. There were Mrs. Nickleby, weak and wordy copy of the novelist's own mother, and Dick Swlv eller, and Little Nell, and Dolly Varden, and Grip the Raven worst and best of all "nature fakes." As the literary parent of this Immortal family trav eled north to the Highlands, and then across seas to 'The States," he might have gone assured (thought he was far. too modest a man ? -for ' any such thought) that undytnf re'nown was al ready his. , i Helping the World Along. "American Notes." "A Christmas Carol" and "The Chimes" were the next books he was to father. The keenly observant sketches of our land back In the forties is entertaining through - very contrast with today's realities, but the other two little tales are far more than this. The humanity which- was, through all his work, the keynote of, Dickens, here sounded most unmistakably. The tune xf that carol and-the tone of those chimes have rung down through all the intervening years to uplift and aid the world. Many a man has, because of them, looked about him for his own "Tiny Tim," for whom a Christmas dinner must be bought. Never a man read the "Chimes," as an old year went out, who did not at least begin the new one better. Other holiday stories were to come "The Battle of Life." "The Cricket on the Health," "Crips the Carrier," "'lhe Haunted Man," and all the r'est-r but. these first two .remained (and re main) unequalled. , ' There were to be eight more novels. "Martin Chuzzlwit" was to bring hypocritical Pecksniff; Paul Pombey was-.to ccme to claim and hold our love and pity; David Copperfield was to live again the hungry days and garret nights of Dickens' own .hard boyhood; "Bleak House" was to carry us for the moment Into better, society than the earlier novels, had. Introduced us to; splendid SldneV Carton was, to shine out Inspiring)' against the dark back ground of "A Tale of Two Cities"; de lightful little Jennie Wren was ' to "drtssmake" for her doll customers in "Our Mutual Friend": Pip's autobiog raphy waa to be written in "Great Ex pectations." Attacking the" phams and wrongs of that early Vlctnrlan period, tearing off the veils that for years had concealed tha cruelties and horrors and injustices of the poor laws, the workhouses, the debtors, prisons, and the public schools of the- time, Dickens often takes us deep and dark. Yet he never befouls us. We are the better for the experi ences he gives; uplifted by his own cheerinesai and hopefulness: strength ened for the fight, here and now, against such modern woes and wicked nesses as we. feel he would go bravely attack. A Moneymaker, but Modest. America welcomed Dickens upon his second visit here in '67, as few other notabilities have been welcomed. He came over to read "The Holytrte Inn" to us. and "Dr. Marigold," as well as selections from the longer books, never to be forgotten by those whoso privi lege it was to sit and listen. He read well, because there was inborn in him so much of the actor, and lie made from those readings full' as much money as. during his lifetime, waa to come In from all his 15 volumes. The man took good rare of his profits, too: the boy had had too hard a time keeping body and soul together to fail to know the value of shillings and pence. "'Gadshlll," the roomy, homey, solid-looking place near Roch ester, which he had admired and covet ed from boyhood became his in fact, and there he died, on the 9th of June, fust 38 years ago. leaving unfinished "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" only the other day dragged anew Into no tion through Its alleged connections with the Druce case) ever to remain a mystery. He left, too, th request that there should be raised no monument to htm. and that neither "Mr." nor "Esq." should be carved upon his tombstone. Wherefore the heavy slab, which .cov ers his last resting-place In the "Poet's Corner" of Westminster Abbey bears only: "Charles Dickens; 1812-1870," an epitaph as straightforward and modest as was the whole life of the master. The art of Dickens was close kin to that, of Hogarth. Each was possessed of m. remarkable power of observation; each directed it to the study of hu manity. Each, too, was constitution ally . democratic, as It were; sprung from the people, and drawing, for the people, the very life they knew, and with insistent sympathy. Miss Aus ten's country canvasses are perfect; Dickens' are worse than mediocre. Thackeray's lords and ladles are con vincingly true; Dickens was at his worst when he left the masses for the classes. He hal! much of 'George Elliot's heart-deep skill in telling the day-to-day, hand-to-mouth struggle of the poor, and he cared Uttle as did she for a sudden heroism; the heretic, in Dickens' eyes, was the dally doing of hard duties, cheerily and uncom plainingly. Only Shakespeare has given the lan guage more "name-words." Who needs be told that a "Micawber" Is a worthless fellow, waiting for some thing to turn up, and never once dreaming of doing any of the turning himself? "Qullp" is as accurate a syn onym for cruelty as "Othello" Is for Jealousy. "Jonas Chuzzlewit" Is as cer tain through all time to come to personify avarice as "Shylock's" self. As we call a man a "hypocrite" to his face as re fer to him as a "Pecusnift" or a "Uriah Heep." . Caricatures some of these are, un doubtedly, but the storymaker who could raise our smiles so readily with these convexed and concaved mirrors, could with equal ease hold up the truest mirror to mother nature. A score of instances bear witness that Dickens' characters lived. One reader, .n Invalid, told he had only a few days more to live, de clared he could die quite gladly if only his hours could be drawn out somehow till the last installment of "Pickwick" had come to him he had only one more to read! Another saddled his horse and rode six miles at night to waken a friend with the welcome news that "that damned Carker's dead at last! Got run over by the train!" And wli "Old Curiosity Shop" was appearing liundreds of letters came to the author begging that "Little Nell" be not allowed to die. Three Million Copies a Year. ' Among a certain class it has become rather "the thing" to criticise the masters of English letters. .Dickens, such as these announce, lacked culture and breed ing. He Is downright vulgar. London as he drew it, moreover, is passing,, and the dialect In which many of his cre ations speak is fast becoming extinct. Would such as these rather have blue blood or a great, loving heart? Would they prefer even the widest intellectual attainments to the praise which came to the memory of Dickens, at his death: "Every inch of him was an honest man!" For one who laughs at Dickens, ten thousand laugh with him. For a single critic to call him vuigar' their name is legion who name him divine. As to his being a 'novelist of yester day's scenes and ways of speech, let It be remembered that great books live in spite of form, not because of it; oth erwise what of the poems of Robert Burns? Is a man's vogue Justly to be considered as passing when London alnne sold copies of his books in 1907? All England. It is estimated, disposed of quile 1.500.000. In the United States probably as manymore were sold. If this points to literary demise, well may an author wonder where is death's sting. The Self-Written Monody. Charles Dickens was burled in the Abbey on June 14, 1S70, and that morn ing there appeared in the Ne'w York Tribune a monody in his memory, com piled from his own dearly-loved pages. No better eulogy was pronounced over those honored remains for It was as though the voice of the man himself had spoken: Dead. Your Majesty. Ied. mv TjOrd and Gentlemen. Dead, Right Keverend and Wrong Reverends or every order. Dead, men and 'women born with heavenly com passion In your hearts. Tlleak House, "the spirit of the hlld rettirntnK. Inno cent and radlent. tourhed tlte old man with Its hand, and beckoned him away. The Chime" The Star had shown him the way to find the god of the poor; and through humility and sorrow and forgiveness lie had gone to his Redeemer's reet. Hard Times. . .. died like a child that had gone to sleep. David Copperfield .and began the world not this world, oh, not this world. The world that sels this right. Bleak House, gone before the Father; far be yond the twilight Judgements of this world, high above its mists and obscurities. I Little Dorrit. . . and lay at rvst. tRvid Copperfield. Too Much Tolling. Chirago News. There are times I have to hustle and get out and use my muscle; It's a cinch because a feller has to eat; An' I've found few ways of gettin' what l want except by swealin'. For the game's a-growin' mighty hard to beat; But it seems a shame this spoilin' ail our bright glad day- by toilin' This exerin' through our life's allotted span As some people struggle through it. If I have to. I will do It. But 1 like to take ft eaay when I can. cases I have got somethin' for my though 1 find be no other when I'm When the boss Is keepin to show my paces Make a bluff at.doin' pay : I must keep the dirt a-flyln It mighty tryin". For there doesn't seem I way. But I adways feel Ilk ktckin1 shovelin' and plrkin' And 1 wish that there waa somethin' I could plan That would keep my back trom stralnln', and no cussln' nor compluinin'. For 1 liksttto take it easy when I can. It would be all right supposin' I could Jest lie somewhere dozin' And a-smokln' where a bit of sunshine fell; With no big-mouthed drivin' bosses and no other oares nor crosses I believe I'd like to try it for a spell. If they'd bring the grub and feed It to a feller when he'd need It And stand by to keep the flies off with a fan. With no call for any motion, that would be about my notion. For 1 like to lake It easy when I can. Marrying a girl against the wishes of her parent is. next lo murder, the most severe ly punishable crime -in Lapland.