Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1928. DEFAMING THE DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 56, 15 September 1928, Page 8

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1928. DEFAMING THE DEAD

In an article dealing fiercely, but not too fiercely, with the "Whispering Gallery" case about two years ago, the "Saturday Review" said that "The whole of the 'stunt' Press— and particularly the Sunday 'stunt' Press—have become one vast whispering gallery." The defaming of the dead was denounced as the most disgusting part of the scandalmongers' activity. Cowardly-, libels have been uttered on the dead, great names have been bandied over the not of controversy like shuttlecocks, eminent corpses have been exposed naked to bo torn and devoured by the vultures. And while the dead are unable to answer, the best of the living are unwilling to do so, either out of regard for an old-fashion-ed reticence, or for fear of still further advertising the wrongs they seek to redress. And so an undiscriminating public is left to believe what it is told. It was Gladstone's turn when the "Saturday Review's" article was written, but. fortunately neither oldfashioned reticence nor the fear of further advertising the scandal nor the burden of years deterred Lord Gladstone from forcing the defamer into Court and clearing his father's name from the outrageous charges of immorality and hypocrisy. Two years later the turn of another of the great Victorians has come. A man who during their lives surpassed even Gladstone in popularity with none of the correlative hatred from which the statesman never escapes, and who by his books has established a far firmer hold on the affections of posterity, is now the target of similar charges. The latest of the eminent corpses which have been "exposed naked to be torn and devoured by the vultures" is that of Charles Dickens. The book in which this operation has been carried out is described by the Rev. Frank Johnson, of the Dickens Fellowship, as an attempt to construe the facts in the worst possible way by raking over the muck-heap of oid slanders. Some colour is given to the description .at the very outset by the naivete with which "Ephesian's" publishers explain his reasons for abandoning his original intention of writing a biography:— The publishers claim that the author originally conceived the book as a biography, based on research in England, Germany, Italy, and America; but changed the form to a novel owing to restrictions upon the quotation of Diekens's letters. If, as biographer, "Ephesian" could not quote the written words of Dickens, he was free as novelist to invent what spoken words he chose, and any difficulty that there might have been in proving his case from his victim's own pen vanishes when the evidence can thus be freely manufactured from the unfortunate man's own mouth. The historical novel and the biographical novel have thus an immense advantage as propaganda over the dry-as-dust history or biography which sticks to facts, and present a perilous trap to the unwary. "The mixture of a lie," which, as Bacon says, "doth ever add pleasure," serves for the imaginative historian the dual purpose of pleasure and business. If the cabled criticisms of "This Side Idolatry" may be trusted, "Ephesian" has freely availed himself of this privilege of the literary form to which he was driven when the law of copyright barred'the publication of the results of his researches. The author, says the "Daily Chronicle," purports to reveal intimate incidents in. Dickens's life in the form of dialogue, from which a quite different Dickens from the traditional view is set out. The author accuses Dickens of parsimony, foppery, vanity, of spitefully caricaturing his own parents, and being guilty of effeminate streaks. The author claims that the truth of Diekens's separation from his wife lias never been told. When Dickens himself is brought before us to testify by his own words or by his guilty silence that the charges are true, how can we refuse to believe them? On the last point mentioned in our quotation from the "Daily Chronicle" it must be admitted that "Ephesian" is correct. The truth of Dickens's separation from his wife has never been told. The necessity of complying with times, said Johnson, and of sparing persons is the great impediment of biography. Forster's reverence for Dickens, his tenderness for the family with whom he had been on intimate terms all their lives, and a delicacy and a reticence which are already beginning to date disqualified him from telling the whole story in the great biography which was completed within three or four years after Dickens's death. Had Forster's wise advice been taken, the scandal of the separation would have been greatly reduced during the lifetime of the parties. After twenty-two years of married life and the birth of ten children vthe step was taken in 1858 as the result apparently of no offence on either side but a progressive incompatibility and estrangenient on both sides. As

Dickens, who was then giving public readings from the stories, found the ugly rumours arising from the separation very embarrassing, he proposed to contradict them in a public statement. Strongly dissuaded by Forster, Yates, andJVlark Lemon of "Punch," Dickens agreed on Forster's suggestion to refer the matter to Delane of the "Times/ who decided in Dickens's favour. How the discreet adviser of Prime Ministers and .Foreign Secretaries ennio to give such bad advice in this case is, says Mr. J. \V. T. Ley, a lasting puzzle. The result was that Dickens published his statement on the subject on the front page of "Household Words" on the 12th June, 1858, quarrelled with his publishers, who were also the publishers of "Punch," because they refused to insert it in that of all papers in the world, and for the same reason was not on speaking terms with Lemon for nearly ten years! This astonishing episode supplies a good illustration of the moral which Sir Leslie Stephen draws from Coleridge's career:— Never marry a man, of genius; don't be his brother-in-law, or his publisher, or his editor, or anything that is his. Logically, the position of a sister-in-law of a genius should be equally intolerable, but though two sisters-in-law play prominent parts in the life of Dickens it does not appear that even "Ephesia'n" would like to extend Stephen's wording to meet their case. If Dickens was unhappily married, surely nobody was ever better provided with sisters-in-law, and that was a part of the tragedy. The marriage of fervent genius to solid prose, says Mr. Garvin,. can bo terrible. Dickons was not the first man who, at the age of twenty-four, .fell in love with a family of sisters and married the wrong one. Compared with most of the historic imaginative geniuses Dickens was almost a monster of innocence. He showed it in every book. Mary Hogarth, the elder of the two sisters that Dickens did not marry, died, at the age of 17, a year after his marriage. The immediate effect was that the publication of "Pickwick," which had just reached its ■ twelfth number, was suspended for two months. From the ultimate effect it seems to be the literal truth that Dickens never recovered. Never from his waking thoughts, writes Forater, was the recollection altogether absent; and though the dream would leave him for a time, it unfailingly came back. It was the feeling of his life that always had a j mastery over him. What he said on ! the sixth anniversary of the death of his • sister-in-law, that friend of his youth whom he had made his ideal of all moral excellence, lie might have said as truly after twenty-six years more. In the very year before he died, the influence was potently upon him. "She is so much in my thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful, and have greatly prospered in anything, that the recollection of her is an essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as tho beating of my heart is." j Through later troubled years, whatever was worthiost in him found in this an Ark of safety; and it was tlie nobler part of his being which had thus become also tho essential. Georgina Hogarth, the second of Dickens's sisters-in-law, became a member of his household seven years after his marriage, remained there to the end, and was evidently to his family the best possible aunt in the world. What Dickens himself thought of her is recorded in his will. Along with a substantial legacy,. he leaves her his "grateful blessing as the best and truest friend man ever had," and towards the close of die document, taking the pen from his lawyer but still retaining a queer touch of legal phraseology, he admonishes his children as follows: — And lastly, as I have now set down the form of words which my legal advisors assure mo are necessary to the plain objects of this my will, I solemnly enjoin my dear children always to remember how much they owe to the said Georgina Hogarth, and never to bo wanting in a grateful and affectionate attachment to her, for they know well that she has been, through all the stages of their growth and progress, their ever useful self-denying and devoted friend. Contrast with this Forster's statement that he finds no evidence of deep affection in Dickens's correspondence with his wife. The strange quadrilateral that he formed with these three sisters leaves some cause for gratitude in the fact that the latest scandal-monger seems to have confined his aspersions to Dickens alone. . j