CHARLES DICKENS AMONG THE SCOTS

Otago Witness, Issue 3017, 10 January 1912, Page 83

CHARLES DICKENS AMONG THE SCOTS

(By J. M. Si.oan.)

‘‘Blessings on your kind heart, my dearest Dickens, for that, after all, _ia your great talisman, and the gift for which you will he not only most loved, but longest remembered.” A sentence of prophecy which time tends to fulfil! It was the opening passage cf a letter received / by Charles Dickens from Lord Jeffrey m ' 1844. What puzzling contrasts are men 1 As editor of the Edinburgh Review Jeffrey had poured the scorn of an implacable criticism upon Wordsworth, and denounced the Lake poets for “a most midable conspiracy against sound judgment in matters poetical.” The same Boanerges of criticism. 20 years after, waa completely fascinated by Dickens’s early work. In the simplicity, directness, and cunning force of his style ‘‘Boz appealed to Jeffrey, of whom. Lord Holland remarked that he had lost his broad Scotch at Oxford, and only gained the narrow English. —Judge Jeffrey.— The year 1841 found Jeffrey no longer wielding the tomahawk of criticism, bub enjoying otium cum dignitate in_ the office of a judge of the Court of Session. Although he might not commend Dickens to the Scots in the magazines, he introduced him in the flesh to his then increasing throng of northern admirers. The old judge—he was 70 then —drove about in Edinburgh, it was said, telling everybody that literature had seen nothing “so good as Nell since Cordelia. He met Dickens in London, and informed him of a desire, widespread among influential Scots, that he should visit Edinburgh. —ln Edinburgh.— Dickens accepted Jeffrey’s invitation, and arranged to visit Edinburgh and make a considerable tour in Scotland at midsummer of the same year —1841. He waif happy then in the earliest years of marriage' His Kate was by his side. Cradle and nursery were vocal with the childhood he loved. Accompanied by his wife, and with the eccentric Angus Fletcher, a wandering Scot, for his attendant, ho left home for Edinburgh in June. Jeffrey had arranged a reception for him. Scotland was preoccupied with theological ‘ controversy and Whig versus Tory politics ; for the Disruption was but two years ahead, and Dr Chalmers was sj.il! at the zenith of his national fame and power. And so, when the Scots were in a fever of debate about Non-Intrusion and tbe Divine Headship in the Kirk as opposed to the human headship of the civil magistrate ; when the Calvinist had the Arminian by the throat about Predestination; when the Whig would not accept a dram or a pinch of snuff from a Tory, Dickens, young, handsome, gentle, winsome, the

wonder of the hour in letters, appeared like a golden moon in soft beauty, rebuking the menace of the clouds, among the Illuminati ■of the Scottish capital. A public banquet Avas organised in bis honour. Jeffrey, the chief promoter of the movement, fell sick, and was unable to preside at the banquet; his place was taken hy John Wilson, better known by his nom de guerre of ‘‘Christopher North.” The banquet was an unqualified success. Seventy people were unable to procure seats. Nobody of consequence stayed away, excepting certain smallsouled Whig partisans who, much to Dickens’s astonishment, suspected the Tories of the design to make party capital out of the event. Two hundred ladies of the Order of the Blue Stocking attended. A cloud darkened the sky. Just then the death of Sir John Wilkie was announced. Dickens charmed the Scots by his speech on Scottish literature, and by fhe melting pathos of bis tribute to tile memory of Wilkie. All Edinburgh worshipped the youthful hero. The Town Council, responsive to the popular excitement, bestowed upon Dickens the freedom of the city—an honour then rarely given to an Englishman. —“ Barnaby Rudge.” — On the occasion of that historical first visit. Dickens spent a month in Scotland, where at intervals he completed the writing of ‘‘Barnaby Rudge.” He made an extensive tour in the Highlands, and explored the weird wilds of Glencoe. In the Border country he stood with moist eyes by the grave of Scott in Dryburgh Abbey. Although an admirer of the poetry of Burns, he returned to London without visiting the ‘‘auld clay biggin” and ‘‘Ailoway’s auld haunted kirk” and the ‘‘auld brig o’ Doon”; or any part of Burns's romantic Westlands. Future years saw Dickens increasingly appreciated by r the Scots. He returned among them in 1847,. when he opened the Glasgow Athena-um, with an address of much eloquence and charm, in which he remarked: “>.e never tire of the friendships we form with books.” Just then he crossed to Edinburgh, renewed his intercourse with Jeffrey, and on seeing th© Stott Monument pronounced it a “failure.” “It is like the spire of a Gothic Church,” ho wrote, “taken off and stuck in the ground.” Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, all welcomed him when he arrived later Avith readings from his own books. In 1868 hi® profits from readings in Scotland amounted to £SOO after all expenses Avere paid. He received £6OO for three e\ r enings and one morning in Glasgow'. Dickens loved the Scots, albeit he blundered by estimating the people of Dundee as “in respect of taste and intelligence below' any' other of his Scottish audiences.” Longer acquaintance with Dundee would have conA'inced Dickens that George Gilfillan could not make all the people there windbags like himself, and that there are no such sharp wits, no such brilliant scholars, no such intelligent lovers of art, anywhere else in Scotland as may be found in the breezy estuary of the Tay. —The Triumph of Fiction. — Dickens enjoyed in Scotland that historical triumph of fiction which he helped to complete. Before the Waverley Nov'els appeared fiction was forbidden among the “high-fliers” who gave continuity to the Puritan tradition of the period when, according to the genial cynicism of Mr Lang, ‘‘Jehovah made a CoA'enant Avith Scotland.” Even after Scott had conquered, novels were banned by “the unco guid,” in the recurrent periods when Puritanism, in its panoply of prejudices against things human, came by a recrudescence in the wake of the re\ r iA’al of theology and of dev’otion to the Kirk. But no whirlwind of passing religious excitement could destroy or long hinder the healthy taste of the intelligent Scot for classic fiction. During the last century, in homes in which a rigorous Puritan discipline Avas enforced, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, were exempt from the prohibition against novels. The average Scot peroeiA'ed that the Song of Solomon, the Book of Job, “Paradise Lost,” and the “Pilgrim’s Progress” Avere not less novels than ‘‘The Heart of Midlothian” and “David Copperfield.” What Dickens soAvcd the “Kailyarders” reaped ; and from the Kirk of the “unco gu.a” came forth the successes in fiction of Barrie, Crockett, lan Maclaren, and their camp followers; who all shared the revulsion of feeling for fiction in Scotland which Avas completed when the majestic sun of SteA-enson’s genius appeared among the dissolving mists of lingering prejudice. —Great Appreciations.— Jeffrey and Carlyle were contrasted Scottish types. Both great men appreciated the genius of Dickens. “I never can bless and love you enough,” wrote Jeffrey' to Dickens ; and in another letter, “I want amazingly to see you rich.” CarIvle w'as the Puritan modified by culture, and his idealism was of Avider range than Dickens knew. Yet he t<x> loved “Boz,” whom he described at the death of the latter in 1870 as “the good, the gentle, the high-gifted, the ever-friendly, noble Dickens.” Jeffrey discovered the utilitarian element in the Scot which “keeps the Sabbath and anything else it can get its hands on,” and, without renouncing theology and the Kirk, holds the man to bp effectually called who discharges his duties with ability and success, while cultivating the pleasures of friendship, handing round the snuff or the dram, and passing with a smile or the sigh of Calvinist resignation from the wedding to the funeral. Both Jeffrey and Carlyle, also, agreed to glorify the genuis of Burns, who combined many' types in his amazing personality. Burns was the forerunner of Scott, and both prepared the way for that appreciation of Dickens everywhere between Berwick and Kirkdale which has made the man and woman of the English novelist hardly less familiar at the Scottish fireside than the man and Avoman of Burns.