An intimate view of the Inimitable

Press, 31 October 1981, Page 17

An intimate view of the Inimitable

The Mutual Friend. By Frederick Busch First published 1975; Penguin, 1980. 225 pp. $7.60 (paperback). (Reviewed by Glyn Strange) There are some superficial similarities between this novel and “David Copperfield.” Both are partly about Dickens, yet neither should be too readily trusted as a repository of intimate details about the Inimitable. “David Copperfield” has been called “a very complicated interweaving of truth and fiction,” and the same must be said of Busch’s novel. It is thoroughly researched and so vividly imagined that one often feels that Dickens, in his last years, may well have been as he is portrayed here. Yet it is fiction, and must finally be read as such. Chapter by chapter, Dickens’s private life is described by different characters. Most important is George Dolby, once Dickens’s manager on the Public Reading Tours of Britain and America between 1866 and 1870, now (round 1900) an alcoholic, lying on his pauper’s deathbed in the Fulham Infirmary. He drinks cheap gin, coughs blood, and writes down his memories of Charles Dickens as he knew him.

Other characters to relate their memories include Kate Dickens (the wife he cast off in 1858) and Ellen Ternan (his cold mistress). The portrait of the artist that arises is far from the respectful image fostered in late nineteenth-century biographies and memoirs — including one of Busch’s major sources, the now littleread “Charles Dickens As I Knew Him” (published in 1885). It is well known that writers in that era either did not know of or concealed many of the less savoury aspects of their hero’s private life, so that the public reputation did not tally with all the facts. On this score, Busch’s novel is an imaginative subversion of the respectful image created by the late nineteenth century. The Dickens portrayed is a neurotic,

unfulfilled, over-bearing and extremely histrionic genius. In fact the novel contains a parody of modern criticism’s, “dark Dickens” outrageous enough to force “The Dickensian” to dismiss it as an “utter distortion of Dickens’s life.” However, this is an unfair judgment because distortion seems to be Busch’s aim. Why else would he make gin-sodden Dolby the fictional author of the whole? Thirty years on, and through an alcoholic haze, even his memory may be suspect, let alone his dreams of what it must have been like to be Kate or Ellen — even Dickens himself in the final weeks of his life. There is a strong suspicion that he creates a Dickens to suit his present predicament. For example, the Dickens portrayed needs the applause of his audiences the way an alcoholic needs drink, and the reader wonders if this was true of the real Dickens, or whether it is simply evidence of Dolby’s inability to escape his own needs. Yet there is a further twist to it all, because Dolby's Dickens is often so like

the modern "dark Dickens” that Busch seems to be suggesting that the modern age may, like Dolby, be passing off its delusions as facts. Both Victorian and modern writers create the Dickens that suits them. What will happen in the next generation, at a further remove from the Inimitable? A cynical prediction is made when, in the final pages of the novel, a mysterious character called Moon takes over. He promises to re-write the story with a happy ending, but since Moon is an alien and partly lunatic, further distortion can only result. So described, Busch’s novel may seem to be for an academic few, and it is certainly too demanding for casual lunchtime reading. But he has taken care to stress the universal issues that remain important beyond thfe concern with Dickens’s reputation. He questions whether any man can be sure that he knows another and whether one age can ever know a previous age. Men and ages are. separated from each other by their consciousness of themselves and their own needs and not even attempted communication by words can break down the barriers, because words may deceive, they may be misunderstood — or they may be “mere words,” sounds without real meaning. The novel takes us no nearer to “knowing” Dickens because it is impossible to get any nearer. It is a complicated interweaving of what we call truth with what we call fiction, but it is a brave man who will claim to know one from the other.

Judged simply as a word of fiction, “The Mutual Friend” is brilliant. All of the characters — Dickens especially — are vividly realised, as are the places, from the garish lights of an American provincial theatre to Dolby’s revolting doss-house. The novel is a structural masterpiece which is full of witty and often very cruel irony. It is well worth the price for those who prefer serious and fairly demanding modern novels.