OUR MUTUAL FRIEND
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don. On the opposite shore dwell the Gorgons, Andromeda and
Perseus, the Minotaur in the Cretan maze. The Harpies call across
the separating waters to Miss Flite's birds-Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace,
Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness,
Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder,
Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. In this underground
metropolis (whose visual aspects have been so wonderfully reported
by
Phiz) no one need be surprised to see Lady Dedlock emerging
from Tom-all-alone's, and Quilp creeping into Little Nell's bed, or
eating eggs, shell and all, to terrify his wife.
How does Dickens keep the vaulting of
his
cave-world secure,
and stop each chink against skepticism and outer day, of which the
least beam would disintegrate Miss Havisham's wedding cake where
generations of rats had failed?
Consider first the variety and energy of invention Dickens in–
fuses into every part of his books, an inventiveness which, like the
music of Beethoven, sweeps away any apprehension of fatigue with
iu
great mood of boundless improvisation. Each object, each creature,
animal or human, must be given personality and a unique vitality.
He will play with the description of a tavern sign with such bril–
iant fancy, so many allusions to unexpected domains, that one scarcely
notices that this painted board occupies two pages of the text. The
horse, as in
The Old Curiosity Shop,
is characterized as thoroughly
IS
his drivers. Each waiter, coachman, clerk, although perhaps never
to
be seen again, during
his
brief appearance is impaled in the bright
center of our attention, and we are obliged to see his qualities and
failings ludicrous or sad, before he is released to his invisible life.
Dickens is like a medium who bids us look into his crystal ball, and
15
we see the images form, he keeps a sharp eye on us to see that
the
spell does not falter, and at the same time urges: Look! Look
more closely! Are you sure that you see it
all?
In short he can find interest, and the material of art, in almost
anything. Often this liveliness is effected by simple but surprising
~tapositions,
by odd angles of vision, by ironic reversals of his
meaning (as "the
divine
Tippins"), by sheer verbal vivacity, by
lIIlorous rhetorical devices of alliteration and repetition-which some–
lines indeed embarrass by their excessiveness. But take this: Mr.
Pecksniff
is merely warming his hands at the fire, but he warms
