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F. W.
DUPEE
ties. It follows him around all his days like a brass band and can
be heard sounding from the distant square even when he is in seclu–
sion. Indeed it has the peculiar interest of seeming to exceed its
natural causes, as poetry does, or what is called "grace." A self–
enhancing sort of fame, a celebrated celebrity, it is the kind of
thing that people of all classes and tastes enjoy participating in.
Dickens is the man you love to love, as Charlie Chaplin has been
in his heyday, only Dickens is far more so. And Dickens never has
a heyday followed by a fall from grace of the sort that often occurs
in these situations. When opposition threatens, as it frequently does,
especially in the easily stampeded American public which he con–
fronts during his two stormy tours, he knows how to defy it and
make it work for him. The band music never turns to jeers and
never really stops.
His reporting of his exploits, in his letters, is a triumph of
what I have called his accommodating pride. No other hero has
ever made the life of heroism more attractive, more believable.
Mere modesty is as foreign to him as mere vanity. He can delight
in his fame without either exaggerating it or diminishing it, so that
his readers become naturalized citizens of his privileged world and
yet are allowed their sense of the privilege. Sharing the pleasures of
his celebrity with his correspondents, he is able to avoid the nemesis
of mere egotism. The Dickens of the letters is superstitious in the
profound way that other great men of action have been supersti–
tious. Rarely does he announce any plan without adding ''God will–
ing," as
if
intent on appeasing a still greater plan-maker than him–
self. So too with the news he gives his correspondents of his feats
as a writer, actor, reader from his works, party giver, or whatever.
He takes the curse off his ego by splitting his ego up. There is the
Charles Dickens who writes the letters and there is "the inimitable
Boz," that convenient alter-ego early bestowed on him by a
former teacher. Dickens becomes, along with his friends, the fascin–
ated observer of this phenomenal homunculus of a Boz. Boz can do
anything.
If
he starts to break down under the strain, just feed him
a dozen oysters and a pint of champagne and he will bounce back.
Boz acts; Dickens watches, enjoys, and records the results in his
letters. This process makes for accuracy as well as detachment on
