116
F. W.
DUPEE
dren which the listless but ineluctably fertile Catherine bears him,
he is often a very put-upon man, a condition which he supports
with amazing humor, fortitude and cleverness. But he doesn't mere–
ly support this life; he turns it into elaborate gaiety with his inven–
tive parties, games, theatricals, pet names. And if he sometimes
seems to adhere to the type of the tycoon, like Scott, the elder Du–
mas, Mark Twain and other writers of the nineteenth century,
he succeeds in avoiding what was often their fate. His unsuccessful
ventures are few and he never knows the ultimate disgrace of a
bankruptcy.
This triumphant man of action naturally admires the active
virtues and suspects the passive ones. "What a long time he is,
growing up," he says with wry indulgence about his father. "Man–
ly," meaning what we mean by "mature," is a favorite word of
praise with him; and his passion for maturity helps to determine
the moral atmosphere of his letters. It is, however, an atmosphere
in which the
style
of a deed, the tact or humor or pride that goes
into its performance, contributes much to its value. In his feeling
for the aesthetics of conduct he is not to be surpassed by Henry
J
ames. And in his moral sense the Dickens of the letters is more
urbane, sinuous, experimental than the reader of his novels might
expect him to be. Where the novelist is often instinctively identified
with the stark taboos and inclusive judgments of the folk mind of
his time, the letter-writer draws his standards more from his daily
experience in the world, often ignoring the taboos, judging people
according to their merits as individuals, or simply suspending judg–
ment. The very firmness of his literary bond with the popular
morality seems to allow him a large liberty when it comes to par–
ticular cases. The Victorian smugness- there are other kinds–
which in its very excess of feeling seems to advertise an uneasy
relation to the popular morality, is wholly alien to Dickens. He
probably could not write what Thackeray wrote to his mother,
speaking of
Villette:
"I don't make my
good
women ready to fall
in love with two men at once." Nor would he, in all likelihood,
simply
refuse
to read the dubious Balzac, as George Eliot refused.
Sometimes Dickens appears to
be
surprised by his own sus-
