A DICKENS CLUB.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 1 (Supplement)

A DICKENS CLUB.

THE BOOKS AND THE MAN.

BY MATAN'GA

The project of a Dickens Club for Auckland bad consideration this week by a group .of enthusiasts. It was a little group. Such things are not to be done in the gay tumult of public meeting. The club itself cannot be a large one, however widespread is the regard for its literary idol. Its membership must of necessity bo limited to those who love Dickens so much and know him so well that they long to exchange with kindred souls their treasures of appreciation. Only on rare occasions need there be any publicity, for there is happily little call to impress the world with tho merits of its most human novelist, and the club should grow by easy stages of natural selection. Next May, perhaps, there might bo given to the multitude a share of the good things the club enjoys. As every Dickens lover knows, there will then fall the centenary of that august body, tho Corresponding Society of the Pickwick Club. Why should not so remarkable a date have commemoration ? Dickens chose May 12, 1827, as the occasion of that society's foundation in token of the club's being very deeply sensible of the advantages accruing to the cause of science from the paper communicated by Samuel Pickwick, Esq., G.C.M.P.C., entitled " Speculations on the Source of the Hampstead Ponds, with some Observations on the Theory of Tittlebats," and as deeply anxious that the inestimable benefits of the researches of that learned man should be extended. Is it not all written in the immortal transactions of the club ? So began the journeyings and investigations of tho aforesaid G.C.M.P.C., and his trusty associates, Tupman and Snodgrass and Winkle, each a worthy .M.P.C., assisted not a little by Sam W 7 eller. Many have no doubt that their exploits contributed to " the advancement of knowledge and the diffusion of learning." Nobody questions that they added vastly to the gaiety of nations. Why then should not so auspicious an event have a centenary celebration ? Fiction is often less strange than fact, and sometimes more illuminating.

Enrichment of Literature. The club will surely keep the coming date in view and make preparations accordingly. Meanwhile, many an admirer of Dickens, inspired by the thought that the club is in being, will take down from its resting-place this or that imperishable book of the master, and renew acquaintance with the England—and perchance the Paris and the New York—of a faraway time, and be touched again with the broad sympathy that is Dickens' even better legacy.

His claim to admiration has not faded with the years. • Critics of his craftsmanship have belittled his powers of plot construction, but " Great Expectations " is proof against their shafts. Let them try their hands at story-writing for serial publication, with the printer's devil waiting to clutch, page by page, , the chapters as they are penned, and see if they can .do anything equal to "Pickwick. A series of vignettes it. is, of course; but what vignettes! And for the rest, this succession of books must be accounted a deathless enrichment of literature, • even of that literature of power which De Quincey rates higher than the literature of knowledge. The club will do well to keep alive among its members interest in Dickens the man. He is inseparable from his books. His heart's blood was poured into them. Even in " A Dinner at Poplar Walk," best known now as " Mr. Minns and His Cousin," for all the marks it has of a first venture into boisterous humour, there are touches of the sympathy which the foibles of his fellows aroused in Dickens. It is Thackeray's merit to excel him in social satire, but the palm for human understanding goes still to this unspoiled lover of his kind. His Passion oi Pity. In the Times' centenary appreciation this acknowledgment was well made. "The dazzling spectacle of life," this judgment emphatically insisted, " did inspire him with one lasting passion—the passion of pity; and it was that which gave music to his. laughter and weight to his thought. He loved the essential virtues and hated the essential vices. If life could be as he wished it to be, it would be neither dull 1101 cruel. There would be room in it both for the weak and for the strong, for the citv clerk and' the man of genius. We can best u<"W=tapd a great writer by noticing whai he Dickens' masterpiece is not Mrs. Gamp, nor eveti Peggotty or Joe Gargery, but the convict Abel Magwitch. It was not fun but pitv that lifted his genius to its greatest heights." There is the secret of the hold he still has upon popular affection, and will always have. The Dickens' centenary was naturally made the' occasion of recollection of the master's personality. We are a prying people. Peeping Toms are everywhere, and even genius can have no sanctum. We hardly let our kings get cold before we rummage their wardrobes and ransack their escritoires. All reputations nowadays have to run the gauntlet. So in 1912 this god was taken off the pedestal. His own foibles were remorselessly exposed to general 'view. Being intensely human, he had them, and there was then quite a riot of enjoyment in making thern known. Keen delight was manifested in such fancies as his love for patent-leather •shoes, once a rare luxury. There was more eagerness to learn the style of his bright waistcoats than to analyse the style of his bright passages. Out. of this inquisition he came with impressive credit. Even the raw material of a scandal in his separation from his wife after 20 years of home-making together was found insufficient, to justify mischievous gossip, so honourable did that event, however regrettable, prove to be. He was crowned anew as a wholly lovable soul, full of a simple faith and a brave outlook on life. Espousal of the Best Things. So fine a man is fit to stand beside the best of bis own creations and to give their virtues reinforcement. To his frank espousal of the things that keep life true the smug insincerity of Chadband and Stiggins is a revealing foil. He detested shams. Someone wrote to him complaining of the presentment of Stiggins as " The Shepherd," and protesting that this ridiculed religion. Dickens' reply was a manful assertion that this very title and every other allusion to Stiggins were designed td show how sacred things were degraded and vulgarised when who were incompetent to teach commonsense things took it upon themselves to expound religious mysteries, and how, in turning divine words into mere cant phrases, these persons missed the spirit in which the words had their origin. All that is known of his own devout spirit confirms this vehement defence.

Untroubled by speculative doubt, and leaving to the philosophers of every school all disputatious controversy, he went through life with good cheer and a helping hand. The whimsical fun that plays with Pickwick's puny erudition shows how lightly he regarded a merely " Pickwickian construction " of the world and its people. We have philosophers in plenty. To magnify and multiply the influence of so unsophisticated a genius is well worth while in an age that lends to become nervously introspective and wearily morbid.