The Art of Absence and Return in Martin Chuzzlewit Wayne Batten

Dickens Studies Annual: Essays on Victorian Fiction, Volume 48, 2017, pp. 79-93 (Article)

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[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] The Art of Absence and Return in Martin Chuzzlewit

Wayne Batten

Martin Chuzzlewit represents a departure, prior to Dombey and Son, from the episodic form, interpolated tales, and backstories of Dickens’s earlier works, as his preface implies. A key element would be careful attention to the implicit existence of characters when they are suspended: either off scene or not the object of direct narration. Seven distinct manifestations appear in the course of the narrative. The resurrection of a presumed-dead character is the most obvious and least common. A second category of suspension is deliberately and teasingly unexplained. For the third category, suspended characters are assumed to be doing their jobs or following known interests. In the fourth category are those characters whose return to scene requires explanation. The fifth category of suspension, the informational, allows characters to discover or withhold information. In the sixth category, suspension is deployed by a character in order to manipulate others. Unique in the last category, Mrs. Gamp’s absent friend, Mrs. Harris, exists only in suspension. While some instances may seem contrived or strained, they attest to the virtu- osity of Dickens’s response to the possibilities of developing characters and plot by means of suspension.

It is a truth seldom acknowledged that Dickens’s characters rarely express curiosity or concern about those who are absent, missing, or temporarily off scene. Mary Graham does inquire, just once, about the letters that young Martin was supposed

Dickens Studies Annual, Volume 48, Copyright © 2017 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved. 10.5325/dickstudannu.48.1.0079 79 80 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL to have sent by way of Tom Pinch (463; ch. 31).1 Another exception, Mr. Peggotty, in David Copperfield, knows too well what Little Em’ly is doing; he wants to find her and make her stop. However, characters, be they rounded, flat, or muscular, evoke continuous lives that persist even while they are no longer the object of direct narrative attention.2 In his preface to Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens claims that Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp have read and passed judgment on his depictions of them in the novel. The author implies that vitality for his “visionary friends,” as he calls them, depends upon our filling in the blanks; we wonder about these entities before, meanwhile, and after, seeking explanations for absence and return. Curiosity among the fictional characters themselves is strictly limited in order to avoid redundancy, when the reader’s interest could be weakened by any duplica- tion on the part of the fictional cast. An equivalent scenario would be the master’s concern with whatever the servants may be up to, while the servants are supposed to mind their own business. An episodic or picaresque plot minimizes the reader’s attention to the implicit lives of absent characters by the desensitizing effect of the form’s relative dis- continuity, and by the domineering effect of the paired principals: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Pickwick and Sam Weller, Nicholas and Smike. In Martin Chuzzlewit, Dickens has precluded this alternative, as his preface notes his effort “to resist the temptation of the Current Monthly number” (5). Consequently, the “inimitable” must subordinate each installment’s satisfaction to its role in the delayed gratification promised by the novel as a whole. In this discipline, characters mostly come and go according to a discernible protocol. They can summon or be summoned, dismiss or be dismissed, pursue or be pursued. The present action itself may shift from one subplot to another, as we catch up “back at the ranch.” Switching imaginary horses would prove to be a particularly steep learning curve, without a leg up from the elaborate interpolations or backstories that we find in such earlier novels as The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist.3 Moreover, Dickens compounds the difficulty in Chuzzlewit by deflating—some would say marginal- izing or bifurcating—his protagonist, and bringing Tom Pinch into prominence as the narrative progresses.4 Facing the need to achieve a coherent narrative by some innovative means, Dickens evidently began drawing up a plan “as early as the third number . . . and the difficulties he encountered in departing from other portions of his scheme were such as to render him, in his subsequent stories, more bent upon constructive care at the outset, and on adherence as far as might be to any design he had formed” (John Forster 207). Clearly, Dickens’s strategy in this novel went beyond the unifying theme of selfishness and served as an instructive, possibly pivotal, phase in the development of his narrative art.5 One solution for maintaining continuity over the course of the serial run, in this case, would be actually to exploit various methods for recognizing the implicit existence of characters when they are off scene or otherwise disengaged. This process may be termed suspension. The word calls to mind related aspects of plot, such as suspense, sustainment, and suspicion. Strictly speaking, suspension The Art of Absence and Return 81 is determined by the narrator; it is the discursive equivalent to being unavailable for immediate response, as if on hold.6 I will argue that this novel is distinguished by the varied and distinct devices by which the author suspends his characters. A key image of suspension can be observed in the chamber of Mrs. Gamp:

Some rusty gowns and other articles of that lady’s wardrobe depended from the posts; and these had so adapted themselves by long usage to her figure, that more than one impatient husband coming in precipitately, at about the time of twilight, had been for an instant stricken dumb by the supposed discovery that Mrs.Gamp had hanged herself. One gentleman, coming on the usual hasty errand, had said indeed, that they looked like guardian angels “watching of her in her sleep.” (700; ch. 49)

Men, distraught by female mysteries, construct panicked scenarios to account for the ghostly garments. The suspended gowns and bonnets loom over the figures of Betsey Prig and Mrs. Gamp in Browne’s illustration of the confrontation over a cold collation (706; ch. 49), during which Mrs. Harris is evidently murdered by Betsey, and to which we shall return. In question is the sustaining faith in persons not present, or in an imaginary friend. The “pippins” (carved wooden apples) that tumble occasionally from the bed tester hint at unpredictable but interesting goings-on that form a counterpoint to scheming self-promotion. We will now proceed to parse, in order of increasing complexity and ingenuity, the various kinds of suspension evident in this novel. By coincidence, these fall into seven categories, a mystical and lucky extent. First and most obvious among suspensions is that of the presumed-dead-but- resurrected. Though comic in the grave sense of overcoming death, celebrating rebirth and renewal, the resurrected character in a novel will edge the plot toward allegory, if only momentarily, and too many surprises of this kind would be ridic- ulous. On the other hand, resurrection can be brought off with no backstory to account for the missing time. No one seriously wonders what Jesus did for those three days, though theologians have speculated. The boy Bailey’s recovery and return in Chuzzlewit forms part of the rather crowded denouement, whereby the grief of Sweedlepipe is alleviated and the comic plot restored, despite murder, sui- cide, and repudiation.7 The good nurse-midwife inadvertently but appropriately compares the boy to Jonah: “‘He was born into a wale,’ said Mrs. Gamp, with philosophical coolness; ‘and he lived in a wale; and he must take the consequences of sech a sitiwation’” (703; ch. 49). Bailey’s reappearance after his apparent recovery from the coach-wreck, however, is more disoriented than miraculous, coming when any suspense over his fate has largely been overshadowed: “a something in top-boots, with its head bandaged up, staggered into the room, and began going round and round, apparently under the impression that it was walking straight forward” (759–60; ch. 52). The narrator’s odd diction—“something . . . it”—creates 82 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL detachment, as if to prevent Bailey’s transformation into a figure of redemption and deep pathos. He is almost a replacement boy, playing a grotesque game of blind man’s bluff. We move next to suspensions-without-explanation, in which an account for any absence may be teasingly withheld. In this case, the character’s unreported actions arouse curiosity which the novel leaves unsatisfied. Consequently, this species of suspension is almost as rare as resurrection. The prime instance here is John Westlock, who enters the narrative, stays just long enough to make us like him, then leaves for long stretches. John, the only character who has real sex appeal in this novel, is “a good-looking youth, newly arrived at man’s estate” (30; ch. 2). Westlock begins his role with the repudiation of Pecksniff that old Martin and Tom Pinch seem very slow to imitate. Possessed of independent means (of more than one kind), Westlock can afford to cut through pretenses and affirm his good nature. In contrast to the self-absorbed melodrama of other characters, his good cheer resembles Mark Tapley’s but stops short of excess, seeming ebullient rather than pretentious. Unlike Mark’s, John’s role does not fluctuate in and out of mere “service.” Not the least of Westlock’s pleasing attributes is his hospital- ity. He specializes in treating his friends to good food and drink. To celebrate his inheritance, John entertains at “the very first hotel in the town” (193; ch. 12). When Tom looks him up in London, Westlock avidly resumes the role of generous host, providing sustainment:

. . . in a state of great commotion, John was constantly running backwards and forwards to and from the closet, bringing out all sorts of things in pots, scooping extraordinary quantities of tea out of the caddy, dropping French rolls into his boots, pouring hot water over the butter, and making a variety of similar mistakes without disconcerting himself in the least. (533; ch. 36)

John’s festive enthusiasm leads him so far as to declare, “I wish I had an organ for you, Tom!” (535; ch. 36). In a later scene, John organizes in his lodgings an elaborate dinner for Tom and Ruth, which all three appear to enjoy. The successful heir and benevolent capitalist, John drops in to share his wealth, in contrast to the iron-handed parsimony of old Martin.8 When John finally stays around, he is carried off in bursts of sentimentality by the Pinches, the three planning to live together indefinitely. As the protagonist-who-could-have-been, Westlock enjoys the conventionally vigorous but attractive role that can overshadow young Martin, Mark Tapley, or bald Tom, the other contenders. If Dickens were indeed following a Carlylean model for his protagonist, Westlock remains a vestige of a rejected picaro or Tom Jones.9 When a correct man cannot be a sorrowful victim or a rake, an heroic outcast or a foppish pretender, he may be a virile blank. Suspensions-with-implied-explanation compose the third category, consisting of characters who are assumed to be involved with something predictable, usually The Art of Absence and Return 83 employment of some kind. They may be up to something or brewing trouble, but activities remain sketchy until the consequences are revealed through a confrontational scene. Of this type, naturally, are most minor figures, who can wait like servants backstage until the next turn of the plot requires them. Mrs. Todgers, in whose boarding house the Pecksniff family and other major characters cross paths, can be suspended with implied explanation, assumed to be running her establish- ment. Some, like Mrs. Lupin, emerge from their ancillary status at some point and become part of the major, on-scene cast, though we understand that she has been competently managing the Blue Dragon rather than pining for Mark Tapley. Major characters can be likewise unreported but busy. Pecksniff is conducting his architectural academy, Mary attending Old Martin, Jonas abusing Merry, Montague Tigg (or Tigg Montague) promoting the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Insurance Company. Bringing these characters out of suspension, however, can present difficulties, the temptation being to resort to coincidence, which Dickens does not entirely avoid. Pecksniff’s re-entry into young Martin’s life is an instance. In the port city where Martin and Mark arrive from America, Pecksniff is dedicating a public building that Martin actually designed when he was still Pecksniff’s pupil. The young men reflect on Peckniff’s fortuitous career:

“Compare that fellow’s situation, to-day, with ours!” said Martin, bitterly. “Lord bless you Sir!” cried Mark, “what’s the use! Some architects are clever at making foundations, and some architects are clever at building on ‘em when they’re made. But it’ll all come right in the end Sir; it’ll all come right!” “And in the mean time,” began Martin. “In the mean time, as you say Sir, we have a deal to do, and far to go.” (524; ch. 35)

Ostensibly, Mark Tapley is here inviting Martin to join the rank and file of humanity who make and build “in the mean time,” or without continual self-dramatizing, and without waiting for something or someone to turn out or turn up. While Martin and Mark have nearly perished on their American adventure, Pecksniff, during suspension, has been turning Martin’s apprentice work to his own advantage. Our fourth category of suspensions now emerges as those with explanation, of which we find two distinct orders. First, suspensions may be explained or reported conventionally by means of a backstory, which typically is recalled in exposition or summary (a form of analepsis). In Chuzzlewit, however, Dickens confines the device to the characters’ retrospection, which minimizes any drag on the forward thrust of the diegesis and sustains the illusion that the narrator does not willfully withhold or delay information. Principal among the suspended-explained characters is young Martin, who by this distinction gains a meager technical claim to the status of single protagonist. From the point of Martin’s first appearance, we are kept abreast of this ingénue’s vagaries and peregrinations. The difficulty of 84 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL which Dickens complained to his friend Forster may be glimpsed in the reflective summary, verging on free indirect discourse, deployed when Martin is brought out of a nine-chapter suspension. Martin’s much-lauded epiphany occurs in Eden while he is tending to Mark Tapley during his illness, which Mark possibly con- tracted while caring for Martin. While Dickens condenses the narration in order to return to English scenes as soon as possible, Martin’s emergence as a reformed man requires over a page of text, culminating in a siege of abstractions:

It was long before he fixed the knowledge of himself so firmly in his mind that he could thoroughly discern the truth; but in the hideous solitude of that most hideous place, with Hope so far removed, Ambition quenched, and Death beside him rattling at the very door, reflection came, as in a plague- beleaguered town; and so he felt and knew the failing of his life, and saw distinctly what an ugly spot it was. (497; ch. 33)

During this report, young Martin, arguably, is not really off scene but rather in a state of suspended animation, a target of allegory and a subject of secular conversion that harks back to the religious reversals in earlier fiction.10 In other instances, reported suspensions can serve as patches, after-thought solutions to loose ends or exigencies of plot. A conventionally reported suspension of this kind is that of Mr. Bevan, whose reemergence (in response to young Martin’s letter) and good intentions require explanation:

“So far from claiming to have done you any service,” returned [Mr. Bevan], “I reproach myself with having been, unwittingly, the original cause of your misfortunes. I no more supposed you would go to Eden on such representa- tions as you received; or, indeed, that you would do anything but be dispos- sessed, by the readiest means, of your idea that fortunes were so easily made here; than I thought of going to Eden myself.” (514; ch. 34)

Prevarication is evident in the long syntactical suspension, the four subordinate clauses, between more and than in the last sentence. However, Martin and Mark’s return to England requires the loan, and Mr. Bevan (sounds like Eden) requires a restored integrity, tinged by sarcasm. This kind of self-serving confession, if too often deployed, can arouse suspicion, but Dickens manages to curb the effect, with one major exception, which we will see later. A second order of suspensions-with-explanation, more subtle and mimetically satisfactory even than retrospection, is achieved by dramatic or scenic means, without recourse to exposition or summary. Ruth’s termination as a governess is a good example. While we may not be permitted to ask why Mary Graham stays with old Martin, we need some explanation for the alacrity with which Ruth The Art of Absence and Return 85 leaves Camberwell and a secure job in order to set up house with her penurious brother. In the scene of her departure, the altercation between her employer and Tom efficiently sketches Ruth’s history of attempting to teach spoiled children of arrogant parents. Tom delivers one of his diatribes:

“Respect! I believe young people are quick enough to observe and imitate; and why or how should they respect whom no one else respects, and every- body slights? And very partial they must grow: oh, very partial to their studies, when they see to what a pass proficiency in those same tasks has brought their governess! Respect! Put anything the most deserving of respect before your daughters in the light in which you place her, and you will bring it down as low, no matter what it is!” (541; ch. 36)

Meanwhile, the scene in progress, with Sophia sobbing and accusing Ruth of failing to command respect, unfolds like a familiar parent-teacher conference from hell. After this point, Ruth is largely unsuspended. Once a suspended character reënters with explanation, she or he tends to remain explained, gaining importance with visibility. Among these are Merry Chuzzlewit, who retreats to Mrs. Todgers’s to avoid her abusive husband, and Augustus Moddle, who emerges from a long suspension to become Cherry’s fiancé. His return to the narrative seems designed to punish Cherry when he decamps to Tasmania in order to escape marital doom. Differing from suspensions-with-explanation are those conducted with some data-driven motive on the part of the suspended character. These we may term informational suspensions. In this category are any characters whose disappear- ances, physical or mental, are part of some design to discover or withhold vital knowledge. Three major instances indicate that this type of suspension figures significantly in Dickens’s plotting: Lewsome, Chuffey, and Nadgett. All three, notably, are bound up in the machinations of Jonas Chuzzlewit. Introduced as a patient of Betsey Prig and Sairey Gamp in chapter 29, Lewsome is too weak and uncertain to reveal his terrible secret, even to John Westlock, who makes a brief appearance to check on him. At last, Lewsome gets well enough to return to the scene in chapter 48, when his account of obtaining poison for Jonas is finally rendered, though the accusation of Jonas is further delayed, or suspended, until chapter 51. Thus, Lewsome’s annoying reticence builds suspense and suspicion. If his motive for withholding explanation is not entirely con- vincing, Chuffey’s, though melodramatic, is. Chuffey has kept silent because of a promise he made to Jonas’s father, not to reveal the murder plans. So smothering has been this conflict of duty in the old man that he can emerge from suspension only gradually, during the course of the confrontational scene with Jonas. Ironically, the repetition of Lewsome’s story provokes Chuffey to set the record straight. 86 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL

“No, no, no! you’re wrong; you’re wrong—all wrong together! Have patience, for the truth is only known to me!” . . . He put his hands up to his head, as if it throbbed or pained him. After looking about him in a wandering and vacant manner for some moments, his eyes rested upon Jonas, when they kindled up with sudden recollection and intelligence. (732; ch. 51)

Having temporarily absolved Jonas of actual parricide, Chuffey quickly returns to suspension: “he retreated to the corner where he usually concealed his sorrows; and was silent” (734; ch. 51). Jonas, however, will soon be re-indicted by another instance of the informational suspension, the deus-ex-machina-like testimony of Nadgett, who has been serving as a sleuth for Tigg Montague. Briefly glimpsed as the evasive landlord to Tom and Ruth Pinch, Nadgett has been shadowing Jonas without impeding his crime. Nadgett’s shambled notes have provided Montague a covert and exclusive narrative with which to manipulate and ruin not only Jonas but ultimately Pecksniff. Now Nadgett is described as undergoing a transformation, almost a pseudo-resurrection: “This man, of all men in the world, a spy upon [Jonas]; this man, changing his identity: casting off his shrinking, purblind, unobservant character, and springing up into a watchful enemy! The dead man might have come out of his grave, and not confounded and appalled him so” (737; ch. 51). Here, the compressed energy of the parallel participles—changing, casting, shrinking, springing—may backfire if the tonal effect feels overdone. Do we detect self-congratulation on the part of the author for some particularly deft stage management? Nadgett’s surveillance during suspension remains morally neutral, at best. The creepy effect is magnified by the discovery that this dodgy character has been privy to scenes, such as Jonas’s movements on the night of the murder, that the reader thought were observed only by the narrator. The element of deceptive observation in Chuffey’s and Nadgett’s roles leads to our penultimate category of suspensions, the active-or-interfering suspension, where the character’s return entails the revelation that the suspension itself has been manipulative. The motive, now, is not merely to observe or conceal, but to alter behavior in what could be termed a passive-aggressive manner. The crucial instance is old Martin Chuzzlewit, whose spell as Pecksniff’s house-guest is difficult to explain by any device other than the power conferred by the old man’s self-imposed vacancy and passivity. While the entire plot of this novel may not be snugly orchestrated by old Martin’s stratagem, it does retroactively impose a degree of symmetry.11 Remarkably, old Martin manages to keep himself in suspension even while in scene. While the prodigal Martin makes an impassioned plea for understanding, the patriarch allows Pecksniff to ventriloquise as the “Chorus,” seeming to have cast an evil spell over him. While Martin is ignoring Pecksniff as if he were not present, old Martin is actually pretending that he himself is not present. The Art of Absence and Return 87

Still Martin looked steadily and mildly at his grandfather. “Will you give me no answer,” he said, at length, “not a word?” “You hear what has been said,” replied the old man, without averting his eyes from the face of Mr. Pecksniff: who nodded encouragingly. “I have not heard your voice. I have not heard your spirit,” returned Martin. “Tell him again,” said the old man, still gazing up in Mr. Pecksniff’s face. (629; ch. 43)

This degree of manipulation, however, may strike some readers as excessive, prolonged, possibly even cruel. The distress and uncertainty inflicted on young Martin, Mary, and other characters may seem disproportionate to the supposed provocation—the quarrel with Pecksniff in chapter 3—or the expressed benefit of exposing selfishness. Upon his surprise appearance at Tom’s place of mys- terious employment, old Martin explains: “I have had [Pecksniff’s] base soul bare before me, day by day, and have not betrayed myself once. I never could have undergone such torture but for looking forward to this time” (723; ch. 50). Following old Martin’s revivification, the denunciation and caning of Pecksniff, evidently designed to be the triumph of truth and virtue, may instead elicit ambivalence, especially as the rascal holds up well under pressure. Speaking at last to his grandson, old Martin implies that his own pride and self-delusion were factors in the sustained charade: “I hoped to bring you back, Martin, pen- itent and humbled. I hoped to distress you into coming back to me. Much as I loved you, I had that to acknowledge which I could not reconcile it to myself to avow, then, unless you made submission to me, first. Thus it was I lost you” (754; ch. 52). The contorted phrasing here replicates contorted, disingenuous thinking. The vague pronouns that, which, it attest to the old man’s straining for exoneration. What is the knowledge that old Martin could not “avow” until young Martin “made submission” to him? The concocted excuse for having the youth dismissed from Pecksniff’s house may lie heavily on the grandfather’s conscience, but he cannot quite admit the subterfuge. However, the least appeal- ing of the codger’s pronouncements is his reproof of Mrs. Gamp, to which he evidently feels entitled because of his successful infiltration of several other lives, or perhaps his success in avoiding responsibility for his own actions, or rather inaction:

“Mr. Sweedlepipe, take as much care of your lady-lodger as you can, and give her a word or two of good advice now and then. Such,” said old Martin, looking gravely at the astonished Mrs. Gamp, “as hinting at the expediency of a little less liquor, and a little more humanity, and a little less regard for herself, and a little more regard for her patients, and perhaps a trifle of additional honesty.” (761; ch. 52) 88 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL

The elegance of Dickens’s style—the parallelism of “now and then,” “a little less” and “a little more”—may disguise the pretentious stance of the speaker. We may suspect that the advice reflects a moral imperative to bring Mrs. Gamp to book, not only as a bibulous, unreliable nurse, but also as a character whose charm and distinction, by diverting the reader with guilty pleasures, threaten to dominate the novel. She must be put in her place. To her, we now return, and to our last and most compelling category of suspension. With Mrs. Harris, Dickens achieves the Platonic ideal of suspended character: one who exists only in suspension, but who looms over the novel as a major contender with Mrs. Gamp and Pecksniff, characters who transcend the fictional world in which we glimpse them, who exist vividly both off and beyond scene. In her absolute suspension, Mrs. Harris is not simply an alter ego or imaginary friend for Mrs. Gamp, whose advantages and resources are meager, but a means by which Mrs. Gamp presents and affirms her own identity. Through her recol- lections of Mrs. Harris, Mrs. Gamp conceives herself to be the kind of person she would like to be: important, respected, related.12 Consequently, Betsey Prig’s tactless puncturing of the illusion can be both comical and horrifying, as the narrator indicates. The well-named Prig has just been requested not to avail herself too often of the wine-filled teapot:

Mrs. Gamp resumed: “Mrs. Harris, Betsey—” “Bother Mrs. Harris!” said Betsey Prig. Mrs. Gamp looked at her with amazement, incredulity, and indignation; when Mrs. Prig, shutting her eye still closer, and folding her arms still tighter, uttered these memorable and tremendous words: “I don’t believe there’s no sich a person!” (708; ch. 49)

Readers will note the irony of the double negative in Betsey Prig’s killing phrase. For indeed, one wants to believe that there is such a person, who is continually “there” for us, to use the modern phrase. Amazingly, to deny that Mrs. Harris exists is more shocking than to point out, tiresomely, that none of the characters in the novel really exist, or that they exist only in our imagination. Philosophically, Betsey delivers a blow for British empiricism of the kind associated with David Hume: no sense impression, no reality.13 Mrs. Gamp’s Platonic conception, on the other hand, takes such a hit that an alcoholic nurse is transformed into a figure of pathos, if not of tragedy. Mrs. Harris, however, still having important work to complete, can be surren- dered only by degrees. The dazed Mrs. Gamp actually attempts to bring her friend out of suspension in order to replace Betsey Prig. When called upon for practi- cal assistance, however, the illusion refuses to lend a hand. In need of someone The Art of Absence and Return 89 equally unreliable to assist Mrs. Gamp in watching Chuffey, Jonas, playing the straight man, presses her for details:

“What is her name?” asked Jonas. Mrs. Gamp looked at him in an odd way without returning any answer, but appeared to understand the question too. “What is her name?” repeated Jonas. “Her name,” said Mrs. Gamp, “is Harris.” It was extraordinary how much effort it cost Mrs. Gamp to pronounce the name she was commonly so ready with. She made some three or four gasps before she could get it out; and, when she had uttered it, pressed her hand upon her side, and turned up her eyes, as if she were going to faint away. (728–29; ch. 51)

For a moment, we may subversively want to see Mrs. Harris come to life, to appear in the doorway and give surprising credibility to the floundering Gamp. Perhaps Dickens toyed with the notion of actually making her appear in scene, thereby administering a comical shock to the reader but not to the expectant characters. Here the dramatic irony may confirm our tottering alliance with Mrs. Gamp. Thus, the absolute suspension provides a moment of suspense but is ultimately sustained. So vital is Mrs. Harris, and so consequential her fate, that Mrs. Gamp is given a few moments to deliver an appropriate eulogy, in which she approaches a cobbled kind of sublimity in tribute to her discredited friend. After Bailey’s resurrection, she feels overshadowed and seeks to regain attention from the assembled cast. Her recollection links Young Bailey with a stillborn infant suspended in a bottle, an unexpected and unwonted surprise:

“Which, Mr. Chuzzlewit,” she said, “is well beknown to Mrs. Harris as has one sweet infant (though she do not wish it known) in her own family by the mother’s side, kep in spirits in a bottle; and that sweet babe she see at Greenwich Fair, a travellin in company with the pink-eyed lady, Prooshan dwarf, and livin skelinton, which judge her feelins wen the barrel organ played, and she was showed her own dear sister’s child, the same not bein expected from the outside picter, where it was painted quite contrairy in a livin state, a many sizes larger, and performing beautiful upon the Arp, which never did that dear child know or do: since breathe it never did, to speak on, in this wale!” (760; ch. 52)

Here Mrs. Gamp, in a series of images too dense fully to unpack, has found an objective correlative for her grief over the fickleness of illusion. Between the 90 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL grotesque object, a pickled baby, and the falsified and distorted representation, or “the outside picter,” she identifies a dissonance analogous to her own vulnerabil- ity. Reiterating the inclusive relative pronoun with which she begins, she invites anyone “which judge her feelins” to enter this funny but potentially hazardous zone. If John Westlock’s suspension makes us want to know more of him, Mrs. Gamp delights us with knowledge of persons and things best known and pre- served in suspension. An overview of the various categories and orders of suspension in Martin Chuzzlewit reveals the extent of Dickens’s ambitious technical experimenta- tion in his intent “to keep a steadier eye upon the general purpose and design” (Preface 5). The results for this still-youthful work are mixed. The suspensions allow the narrative to proceed with diegetic vigor, ringing the changes on the device and achieving a virtuoso alternative to the intradiegetic and analeptic strategies found in his earlier work. Our first three categories of suspension may be considered conventional; but with the fourth, the retrospective and scenic replacements of backstory, Dickens breaks new ground. While the informational suspensions of Lewsome and Nadgett can appear contrived, the exper- iment opens possibilities that would be fully explored in detective fiction. The final two categories are so distinctively “novel” yet so disparate—one seeking to expose and change others, the last seeking to protect and present the self—as to demonstrate the versatility of this realized “purpose and design.” Consequently, the self-suspension of old Martin appears almost diabolical in light of the trag- icomic glamour of Mrs. Gamp and her purely suspended friend. Ultimately, Mrs. Harris, who alone rivals the outrageous dexterity of Pecksniff’s unctuous hypocrisy, is exemplary of those fictions that arouse, challenge, and extend our sense of humanity as well as of ourselves. We arrive by a different route at the acknowledgment that Dickens’s characters can be more compelling than his plots, but with the concession that this dichotomy itself is destabilized in the process of suspension. Curiously, Hablot Browne, in the image often printed as the frontispiece, depicts Tom Pinch playing his organ in the center of the novel’s many scenes and characters, as if he were improvising them into existence; but it is the reader who pumps the necessary wind.14 The reconstructed fiction thus emerges from and passes into a totality of suspension with each reading. Bidding farewell seems to have been especially difficult for the author in this case, as he hovers just out of view, much like the phantom Mrs. Harris awaiting her final summons to enter the room, before he turns the job of un-suspension over to us: “Like a troublesome guest who lingers in the Hall after he has taken leave, I cannot help loitering on the threshold of my book, though those two words, THE END: anticipated through twenty months, yet sorrowfully penned at last: stare at me, in capitals, from the printed page” (Preface 5). The Art of Absence and Return 91

NOTES

A version of this article was given at the Dickens Universe Conference on August 4, 2015, at the University of California, Santa Cruz. 1 Tom quickly fobs off her concern with the adage that “no news is good news.” On Martin’s nonexistent letters, see MacKay 738–39. 2 For the rounded/flat locus classicus, see E. M. Forster 75. Chatman 119–32 develops the concept of “open character” in terms somewhat similar to mine. 3 John Forster, for example, records Dickens’s problem in suspending the British scenes in order to follow young Martin: “I have been at work all day; and, it being against the grain with me to go back to America when my interest is strong in the other parts of the tale, have got on but slowly” (221). Bowen 184 cites the “continuous and hyperbolic present tense” of this novel, in contrast to Dickens’s previous work. 4 On Dickens’s apparent rejection of precedents for his protagonist, see Christensen. Steig 183 makes the case for Tom Pinch as protagonist and finds young Martin to be “little more than a stock figure.” 5 Critical consensus singles out Dombey and Son for the distinction of being Dickens’s first systematically plotted novel, but this earlier work may be seen to have made this refinement possible, despite John Forster’s comment: “In construction and conduct of story Martin Chuzzlewit is defective, character and description constituting the chief part of its strength” (221). For an instance of the “tighter form” of Dombey and Son, see Bradbury 157. Bowen 215–16 likewise concedes formal refinement to the later novel. 6 In Genette’s terminology, suspension is determined by the conduct of the diegesis. In cases of extended interior monologues or steam-of-consciousness, like those in Mrs. Dalloway, suspensions are attributable to an implied, heterodiegetic narrator. If the point of view actually shifts, as in frame narratives and interpolations, so does the responsibility for suspension. Suspension is similar in some respects to Genette’s concept of paralipsis, action that is sidestepped in a kind of “lateral ellipsis” (52). 7 Bailey’s resurrection is more fully explicated by Polhemus 122–23. Pratt 194–95 makes a similar point. 8 Bowen 213 cites Marx’s reference to Pecksniff. Given the chronology, this novel may have been particularly influential on Marx, rather than vice-versa. 9 Compare Curran 62: “The manly John Westlock, faced early with so weighty a col- lection of heavies, quickly departs from our view until toward its close, leaving the forces of good almost totally in the hands of Tom Pinch, who is scarcely the archangel Michael.” 10 Welsh 66 observes: “The narrative carries young Martin as far as Eden, remember, and leaves him there for three full monthly installments (chapters 24–32) while attending to a good many other strains of action in England. Such a long absence of the hero from the pages of the novel signifies more than parody: the reader is inevitably made to imagine the effect of the passage of time upon Martin and Mark Tapley, even though the narrative eventually takes up again where it left off.” On free indirect discourse, see Bal 54–55. For an explication of Moll Flanders and conversion, see Bender 45–49. 92 DICKENS STUDIES ANNUAL

11 The importance of old Martin for plot has been noted by Geoffrey Thurley 82: “For the grandfather of the novel’s eponymous hero throughout the narrative is pretending to be what he is not: the events in the action are guaranteed from first to last by a concealed stratagem of old Martin Chuzzlewit. Everything in the book stems from this device.” Such indeed is the plan that John Forster records Dickens conceiving by the third installment (207). 12 On this point I am indebted to Robert Polhemus 100–101: “In Mrs. Harris’s verbal universe, Sairey Gamp is the most important and virtuous person. Mrs. Gamp’s creation of Mrs. Harris is a brilliant example of the human drive to project and objectify one’s desired identity and manufacture a flattering self-image.” The point is also developed by Richard Barickman 138–41. An early, sensitive recognition of Betsey’s perfidy is afforded by “Alain” 176–77. 13 For the relevant philosophical terms see Stumpf 55–59, 268–70. Inwagen focuses on Mrs. Gamp, who he finds exists as a “theoretical entity of criticism” (305). However, he accepts the Prigian fallacy that Mrs. Harris does not exist (308 note). I argue that suspended characters do exist as literary entities, whether or not they appear when summoned. 14 This illustration appears to have been used as a frontispiece in the 1844 volume edition. See Patricia Ingham’s note in the Penguin edition of the novel (xxxiii).

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