LITTLE NELL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 66, 19 March 1930, Page 6

LITTLE NELL.

I read "Cyrano's" article in tjie "Star" Supplement with much pleasure, but, being an ardent lover of Dickens, I get very restive over the — well, I can only call it stupidity—of "poor Andrew's" remarks on the pathos of my beloved author. At once I must say that Little Nell's deathbed never rent my heart in twain; and as for "What are the wild waves saying?" you don't remember that, at all. I think there are more heart-breaking scenes in "David Copperfield" and "Nicholas. Nickleby" than in any of Dickens' other works. Scenes between David and his mother—L'il Emily's loss; the agony of mind of the Peggottys about their little broken flower; and their bewildered grief over the false Steerforth. The passing of the sweet, ineffectual Dora, surely these scenes were pure pathos—not bathos. Smike and Newman Noggs in "Nicholas Nickleby" —weren't they purely pathetic? And who can say Dickens "wallowed" over them? All writers have their weak spots, but who cares about that when they so often reach the sublime ? Most writers know what ,it is to stare in amazement at a rejected effusion, which they really believed to be the best thing they had ever penned. And if Little Nell was tho "one ewe lamb" of # the beloved author, can't we for?'' l ; her and revel in many others? "7hen we think of Tennyson, can't we fasten our minds on - 'L> Memoriam" or "The Idylls of the King" and be iiscreetly silent about "The May. Queen," "New Year's Eve" 'a.ud "In the Children's Hospital"? Yes, I think it was simply stupid 0 f "Poor Andrew" to ■ chop out a few sentimental bits like that, and pretend they were a whole. —G. EDITH BURTON.