[new page, new column]
forth and venturing perpetually some new flight of
astonishing imagination, we see, unknown to Mr. Micaw-
ber, into the depths of his soul. We say, as Dickens
himself says while Micawber holds forth: "How won-
derfully like Mr. Micawber that is!" Why trouble,
then, if the scenes where emotion and psychology are to
be expected fail us completely? Subtlety and com-
plexity are all there if we know where to look for them,
if we can get over the surprise of finding them—as it
seems to us, who have another convention in these
matters—in the wrong places. As a creator of character
his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest—
he has the visualizing power in the extreme. His people
are branded upon our eyeballs, before we hear them
speak, by what he sees them doing, and it seems as if
it were the sight that sets his thought in action. He
saw Uriah Heep "breathing into the pony's nostrils
and immediately covering them with his hand"; he
saw David Copperfield looking in the glass to see how
red his eyes were after his mother's death; he saw
oddities and blemishes, gestures and incidents, scars,
eyebrows, everything that was in the room in a second.
His eye brings in almost too rich a harvest for him to
deal with, and gives him an aloofness and a hardness
which freeze his sentimentalism and make it seem a
concession to the public, a veil thrown over the pene-
trating glance, which, left to itself, pierced to the bone.
With such a power at his command Dickens made his
books blaze up not by tightening the plot or sharpening
the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon
the fire. The interest flags, and he creates Miss Mow-
cher, completely alive, equipped in every detail as if
she were to play a great part in the story, whereas, once
the dull stretch of road is passed by her help, she disa-
ppears; she is needed no longer. Hence a Dickens novel
is apt to become a bunch of separate characters loosely
held together, often by the most arbitrary conventions,
who tend to fly asunder and split our attention into so
many different parts that we drop the book in despair.
But that danger is surmounted in “David Copper-
Field.” There, though characters swarm and life flows
into every creek and cranny, some common feeling—
youth, gaiety, hope—envelops the tumult, brings the
scattered parts together, and invests the most perfect
of all the Dickens novels with an atmosphere of beauty.
Collected Essays by Virginia Woolf. Vol. I. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.,
[1925] 1967. 4 vols. Pp. 191- 195.
David Copperfield
LIKE the ripening of strawberries, the swelling of apples, and all other natural processes, new
editions of Dickens—cheap, pleasant-looking, well printed—are born into the world and call for
no more notice than the season's plums and strawberries, save when by some chance the
emergence of one of these masterpieces in its fresh green binding suggests an odd and
overwhelming enterprise—that one should read David Copperfield for the second time. There is
perhaps no person living who can remember reading David Copperfield for the first time. Like
Robinson Crusoe and Grimm's Fairy Tales and the Waverley Novels, Pickwick and David
Copperfield are not books, but stories communicated by word of mouth in those tender years
when fact and fiction merge, and thus belong to the memories and myths of life, and not to its
aesthetic experience. When we lift it from this hazy atmosphere, when we consider it as a book,
bound and printed and ordered by the rules of art, what impression does David Copperfield make
upon us? As Peggotty and Barkis, the rooks and the workbox with the picture of St. Paul's,
Traddles who drew skeletons, the donkeys who would cross the green, Mr. Dick and the
Memorial, Betsey Trotwood and Jip and Dora and Agnes and the Heeps and the Micawbers once
more come to life with all their appurtenances and peculiarities, are they still possessed of the old
fascination or have they in the interval been attacked by that parching wind which blows about
books and, without our reading them, remodels them and changes their features while we sleep?
The rumour about Dickens is to the effect that his sentiment is disgusting and his style
commonplace; that in reading him every refinement must be hidden and every sensibility kept
under glass; but that with these precautions and reservations he is of course Shakespearian; like
Scott, a born creator; like Balzac, prodigious in his fecundity; but, rumour adds, it is strange that
while one reads Shakespeare and one reads Scott, the precise moment for reading Dickens
seldom comes our way. This last charge may be resolved into this—that he lacks charm and
idiosyncrasy, is everybody's writer and no one's in particular, is an institution, a monument, a
public thoroughfare trodden dusty by a million feet. It is based largely upon the fact that of all
great writers Dickens is both the least personally charming and the least personally present in his
books. No one has ever loved Dickens as he loves Shakespeare and Scott. Both in his life and in
his work the impression that he makes is the same. He has to perfection the virtues
conventionally ascribed to the male; he is self-assertive, self-reliant, self-assured; energetic in the
extreme. His message, when he parts the veil of the story and steps forward in person, is plain
and forcible; he preaches the value of 'plain hardworking qualities', of punctuality, order,
diligence, of doing what lies before one with all one's might. Agitated as he was by the most
violent passions, ablaze with indignation, teeming with queer characters, unable to keep the
dreams out of his head at night, nobody appears, as we read him, more free from the foibles and
eccentricities and charms of genius. He comes before us, as one of his biographers described
him, 'like a prosperous sea captain', stalwart, weather-beaten, self-reliant, with a great contempt
for the finicky, the inefficient, or the effeminate. His sympathies indeed have strict limitations.
Speaking roughly, they fail him whenever a man or woman has more than two thousand a year,
has been to the university, or can count his ancestors back to the third generation. They fail him
when he has to treat of the mature emotions—the seduction of Emily, for example, or the death of
Dora; whenever it is no longer possible to keep moving and creating, but it is necessary to stand
still and search into things and penetrate to the depths of what is there. Then, indeed, he fails
grotesquely, and the pages in which he describes what in our convention are the peaks and
pinnacles of human life, the explanation of Mrs. Strong, the despair of Mrs. Steerforth, or the
anguish of Ham, are of an indescribable unreality—of that uncomfortable complexion which, if
we heard Dickens talking so in real life, would either make us blush to the roots of our hair or
dash out of the room to conceal our laughter. '. . . Tell him then,' says Emily, 'that when I hear the
wind blowing at night I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was going
up to God against me.' Miss Dartle raves—about carrion and pollution and earthworms, and
worthless spangles and broken toys, and how she will have Emily 'proclaimed on the common
stair'. The failure is akin to that other failure to think deeply, to describe beautifully. Of the men
who go to make up the perfect novelist and should live in amity under his hat, two—the poet and
the philosopher—failed to come when Dickens called them.
But the greater the creator the more derelict the regions where his powers fail him; all about
their fertile lands are deserts where not a blade of grass grows, swamps where the foot sinks
deep in mud. Nevertheless, while we are under their spell these great geniuses make us see the
world any shape they choose. We remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens;
we forget that we have ever felt the delights of solitude or observed with wonder the intricate
emotions of our friends, or luxuriated in the beauty of nature. What we remember is the ardour,
the excitement, the humour, the oddity of people's characters; the smell and savour and soot of
London; the incredible coincidences which hook the most remote lives together; the city, the
law courts; this man's nose, that man's limp; some scene under an archway or on the high road;
and above all some gigantic and dominating figure, so stuffed and swollen with life that he does
not exist singly and solitarily, but seems to need for his own realization a host of others, to call
into existence the severed parts that complete him, so that wherever he goes he is the centre of
conviviality and merriment and punch-making; the room is full, the lights are bright; there are
Mrs. Micawber, the twins, Traddles, Betsey Trotwood—all in full swing.
This is the power which cannot fade or fail in its effect—the power not to analyse or to interpret,
but to produce, apparently without thought or effort or calculation of the effect upon the story,
characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild
and yet extraordinarily revealing remarks, bubble climbing on the top of bubble as the breath of
the creator fills them. And the fecundity and apparent irreflectiveness have a strange effect. They
make creators of us, and not merely readers and spectators. As we listen to Micawber pouring
himself forth and venturing perpetually some new flight of astonishing imagination, we see,
unknown to Mr. Micawber, into the depths of his soul. We say, as Dickens himself says while
Micawber holds forth: 'How wonderfully like Mr. Micawber that is!' Why trouble, then, if the
scenes where emotion and psychology are to be expected fail us completely? Subtlety and
complexity are all there if we know where to look for them, if we can get over the surprise of
finding them—as it seems to us, who have another convention in these matters—in the wrong
places. As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest—he has
the visualizing power in the extreme. His people are branded upon our eyeballs before we hear
them speak, by what he sees them doing, and it seems as if it were the sight that sets his thought
in action. He saw Uriah Heep 'breathing into the pony's nostrils and immediately covering them
with his hand'; he saw David Copperfield looking in the glass to see how red his eyes were after
his mother's death; he saw oddities and blemishes, gestures and incidents, scars, eyebrows,
everything that was in the room, in a second. His eye brings in almost too rich a harvest for him
to deal with, and gives him an aloofness and a hardness which freeze his sentimentalism and
make it seem a concession to the public, a veil thrown over the penetrating glance which left to
itself pierced to the bone. With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up,
not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon
the fire. The interest flags and he creates Miss Mowcher, completely alive, equipped in every
detail as if she were to play a great part in the story, whereas once the dull stretch of road is
passed by her help, she disappears; she is needed no longer. Hence a Dickens novel is apt to
become a bunch of separate character loosely held together, often by the most arbitrary
conventions, who tend to fly asunder and split our attention into so many different parts that we
drop the book in despair. But that danger is surmounted in David Copperfield. There, though
characters swarm and life flows into every creek and cranny, some common feeling—youth,
gaiety, hope—envelops the tumult, brings the scattered parts together, and invests the most
perfect of all the Dickens novels with an atmosphere of beauty.
