IN DICKENS' NOVELS By

A STUDY OF THE BENEVOLENT GENTLEWŒN IN DICKENS' NOVELS by

Caroline Mary Riddel, M.A. (Edin.)

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of :h'Iaster of Arts.

Department of English McGill University Montreal August, 1966

@ Caroline l'..ary Riddel 1967 M.A.thesis

Authort Geroline Riddel

Short titlet A Stuq ot the Benevolent Gentlemen 1n Dickens • Novels CONTEK'l'S

Page

Introduction i

I. BACKGROUND, ORIGIN AND CHAR...4.CTERIS'J.1ICS OF BENEVOLENT GENTL"JMEN 1

II. THE EARLY BENEVOLENT GENTLEI\IfEN 26

I • THE BEI'MVOLENT GENTLEîflEN OF DICIŒNS 1 MIDDLE PERIOD 54

IV. THE LAST BENEVOLENT GENTLEr;IEN 76

Conclusion 100

:Sibliography 108 INCL'RODUCTION

Preaching in Viestm.inster Abbey on the third day s.fter Dicltens' dea th, the Bishop of Manchester said: LTiicken§? has been called in one notice an apostle of the people. I suppose it is meant that he had a mission, but in a style and fashion of his own; a gospel, a cheery, joyous, gladsome message, which the people understood, and by which they could hardly help being bettered; for it was the gospel of kindliness, of brotherly love, of sympathy in the widest sense of the word.l Dickens did indeed hold this firm belief in kindliness and benevolence v1hich he presented in many of his characters, particularly in the early novels. His philosophy, neither profound nor original, was the hope that all classes might live together in kinciness. ])irectly or indi:cectly, he was al ways sayir1g that if people would only treat each ether better the world would become a better place. His friend and biographer, John J!'orster, ;,.vrote: nHe was to try and convert society ••• by showing that its happiness rested on the same foundations as those the individual, which are mercy and charity not less than justice" (Forster, II, 14-6). Two aspects of Dickens' life are most germane to his concern with benevolence. First, his admiration for human decency and kindness, vvhich at times appears to be no more than moralising, was genuine end formed the essential basis of his work.

Although not a nreligious 11 writer in the ace ted sense of the word, he based his life on the Christian -- anet very Victorian

1 John .F'orster 'l1he Life of Charles Dickens, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1872-74), III~3:- Subsequent references will be to this edition (hereafter referred to as Forster). ii

ethic of love and concern for one•s fellow-man. No matter how varied the subject of his novels, the leitmotiv of kindness and goodness is always present. These are the qualities which Dickens admired most, and which he wished his readers to admire most. It was always his hope uthat his books might help to make people better 11 (Forster, III, 383). Secondly, Dickens himself knew what it was like to be underprivileged. Although he became successful and wealthy beyond his wildest expectations, he never forgot his early struggles with poverty. The poor always remained his 11 Clients 11 (Forster, II, 146), and were never forgotten in any of his books. To the end of his life, he was concerned with their plight in an age which made little provision for social welfare beyond the workhouse, and vvhere individual generosity often meant the difference between living or starving. As a writer, Dickens was unique in his experience of both sides of Victorian life; he knew first-hand what misery lay behind the facade• of stolid prosperity. His background, together with the interest he always had in money for its own sake, made philanthropy a fascinating subject. He expressed these philanthropical views in his novels by crea ting 11 benevolent gentlemen. 11 These characters are elderly men of private means whose principal function appears to be helping others out of financio~ or social difficulties. The help given is always voluntary and always appreciated. The benevolent gentlemen of the early novels seem to have been crea ted less as charac ters in their own right th8..L'1 as props for the sagging fortunes of ethers. In the later novels, iii however, there is a subtle change. The benevolent gentleman still exists, but circumstances render him less powerful. He wishes to help those around him, but now wants some guarantee that his efforts will be acknowledged. As Dickens himself matured, it was inevitable JGhat his conception of character should, too. This thesis will be confined to a study of the benevolent gentlemen in Dickens• novels, and will attempt to answe:c such questions as: Who were these men? Por what purpose did Dickens create them? What function do they serve in the novels? How great, or how· limi ted, is their scope of action? Did they provide Dickens with his ultimate answers to the problems of hurnan behaviour? Chapter I will discuss the background, origin and characteristics of the benevolent gentlemen. Chapter II will describe the benevolent gentlemen 2 of the early novels, Mr. Piclcwick (The Picl0Nick Papers, 1836-37), r~. Brownlow (Oliver Twist, 1837-39), the Cheeryble Brothers (Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39), Mr. Garland and the Single Gentleman (The Old Curiositl ShoE, 1840-41), and Scrooge (A Christmas Carol, 1843). Chapter III will be concerned with the benevolent gentlemen of Dickens• middle period, Mr. Jarndyce (Bleak House, 1852-53), Mr. Sleary (Hard Times, 1854), and !fœ. Meagles (Little Dorrit, 1855-57). Chapter IV will discuss Dickens' last two benevolent gentlemen, Abel Magwitch (Great

2 The dates given for the novels are those of their first publication in serial or book form. iv

Expectations, 1860-61), and Nicodemus (Noddy) Baffin (Our M:utual l!'riend, 1864-65). The conclusion will attempt to assess these benevolent gentlemen, their success and failure, and their relationship to Victorian society. CHAPTEH I THE BACKGROUND, OIUGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS OF BENEVOLENT GENTLEThlEN

It has been said of Dickens that he was: An individual to the core, with a well-founded distrust of all government and all gover:nmental enterprises, /Jihi/ placed his trust, his hope of amelioration exclusively in the impulse of privîte benevolence, the untutored common sanity of ordinary people.

Perhups the best way to begin a discussion of the benevolent gentleman is to examine this "well-founded distrust of all government and all gover:nmental enterprises 11 which led Dickens to place his trust 11 in the impulse of private benevolence. 11 Sometimes character can be seen more clearly in terms of what it is not, rather ·~han what it is, and the most striking negative characteristic of the benevolent gentleman is that he is non-political.

1'he reas on for this is tha t Dickens himself was funda- mentally not interested in organised politics. Forster said that 11Li5ickeny had not :made politics at any time a study 11

(Forste~ II, 147), and Dickens' own son, Henry Fielding Dickens, remarks that his father was "very intolerant of much that he 2 found in the body politic. 11 As a shorthand reporter, Dickens had seen enough of Parliament in his youth to acquire a lasting contempt for i t. Yllienever he wrote of Parliament in his novels,

1 Edward Wagenknecht, Cavalcade _o_f _t_h_e ;;;;;;E;;;,;;n.~oo~g.;;:;;l.;;:;;i;.;;..sh.;;:;; Novel (New York, 1943), p. 230. 2 Henry Fielding Die , Memories of !!fiL Father (London, 1929), p. 28. 2. it was to satirize and never to commend. always made the same judgement -- that to the governing classes of nineteenth- century England the people and their problerns were not important. Perhaps unconsciously, he stated his political views most clearly when he said:

I will now discharge my conscience of my political creed, which is contained in two articles, and has no reference to any party or persans. My faith in the people t,overning is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed is, on the whole, illimitable.3 Dickens was a radical. This does not mean that he was a revolutionary or, in any sense, disloyal to CrO\'ffi or Constitution; but was impatient with the established governrnent. His attacks upon its inefficiency and procrastination (the best example of which is the Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit) are deliberately subversive. If a radical one who es to the root (radix) of rnatters, then the very proof of Dickens' radicalism lies in his pre-occupation with the condition of men's hearts, and not, as has been often supposed, in his non- preoccupation with political concerns. He was profoundly anti- deterministic and never recognised any alternutive to individual :cesponsi bili ty in law and covernrnent, or in priva te life. As

Humphry House points out, 11 the noun 'radical' was still fairly new in his time, and perhaps by so often arrogating it to himself he helped to extend its application to cover almost

3 K.J. Fielding, ed., The Speeches of Charles Dickens (Oxford, 1960), p. 407. any person whose sympathies, whenever occasion offered, were 4 with the under-dog." But even if the root of the matter lay, as Dickens felt, within the valuable sentiment of human benevolence, there was still the problem of how this sentiment could be made effective in social and. national life. Dickens never resolved this ~uestion. The most obvious answer is a political one, but Dickens mistrusted Parliament. He had seen, almost from boyhood, that its shortcomings derived mainly from its mernbers, most of whorn were contarninated initially through the process 5 of election. Financial and soci~l influence, often corruptly exercised, counted for more than individual meri t; Diclcens had good reason to suspect the integrity and sincerity of some, though not , membei'S of Parliament. Knowing the poli ti cal activities of the Coodles, Doodles, and Foodles who formed Parliament, satirized in Chapter XII of Bleak House, he felt they had no real knowledge of needs of their constituents. Although JJickens such strong sentiments about how Parliament should not be run, he never entered it himself to demonstrate his theories. Forster was right about Dickens; "his old una1 tered wish to better v,rhat was bad in Eng1ish institutions, carried with it no desire to replace them by new

1 ones ' (I!,orster, III, 503). Many people, who mistook Dickens'

4 Hum~hry House, The Dickens World, 2nd ed. (London, 1942), p. 171. 5 An example of this is the election of Mr. Veneering to Par1iam.ent in Our I:.iutua1 Friend. 4. criticisme for genuine reformatory zeal, urged him to enter Parliament, but he always refused. The very wording of his refusals reveals his contemptuous attitude. At one time he wrote, "I believe no consideration would induce me to become a member of that extraordinary assembly" (Forster, III, 499): and again, urt appears to me that the House of Commons and Parliament altogether is become just the dreariest failure and nuisance that ever bothered this much-bothered worldu (Forster, III, 499). To Forster, he confessed a desire to

11make every man in England feel something of the contempt for the House of Commons that I have" (Forster, III, 497). Every mention of the gover~~ent in Dickens' novels is made in a tone of impatience or boredom; no government official is portrayed without satire. If the state intervened for people's welfare, he showed it to be mistaken or tyrruuùcal; but if it did not intervene, he accused it of indifference. It has been said that in all Dickens' work "there is a confusion of mind which reflects the perplexity of his time; equally ready to denounce on the grounds of humanity all who left things alone, and on 6 the ground of liberty all who tried to make them better." Dickens was not a man of great political understanding or tolerance, and part of his dislike of Parliament rested upon

6 G.M. Young, Early Victorian England, 2 vols. (London, 1923), II, 455-456. It must be made clear that this is true of the novels (with which this thesis is concerned), less true of Dickens' short stories, and hardly true at all of his occasional journalism and speeches. 7 a lack of understanding of its complex problems. The efforts of the few devoted individual members, who faced great difficulties in attempting to make enlightened provision for social welfare, were, for the most part, unacknowledged by him. He lived in the era of Peel, Gladstone, and Disraeli, a period of enlightenment rarely reached before in English political history, but his writing does not reflect any of the upheaval they caused. It is not, of course, necessarily the duty of a novelist either to show the political scene of his time, or to suggest social remedies, but in his novels, Dickens does not attempt to be fair. Unable to find the government he could approve, he refused to recognize in his fiction any of the social measures attempted in his day. He saw only vvhat he \Yante

7 This point is admirably illustrated by Forster in the follo\Ying anecdote: At the great Liverpool dinner after his country readings in 1869, over which Lor·d Du:fferin eloquently presided, LTiicken§7 replied to a remonstrance from Lord Houghton against his objection to entering public life, that when he took literature for his profession he intended it to be his sole profession; that at that time it did not appear to him to be so well understood in England, as in some other countries, that literature was a dignified profession by which any man might stand or fall; and he resolved that in his person at least it should stand "by itself, of itself and for itself;" a bargain which "no consideration on earth would now induce him to break." Here hovvever he probably failed to see the entire meaning of Lord Houghton's regret, which would seem to have been meant to say, in more polite form, that to have taken sorne part in public affairs might have shovm him the difficulty in a free state of providing remedies very swiftly for evils of long growth. (Forster, III, 500-501). 6.

Although Dickens had enough insight to appreciate the need for government measures in an increasingly indus- trialised society, he never once attempted to give any of his benevolent gentlemen a public office. He thus evades the problem of shovling how individual good-will and benevolence can be made adequate enough to face problems of administration. The benevolent gentleman has the povver to recognise and speak out against social evil, but, if this power were to be taken as far as Parliament, he would, Dickens implies, lose his contact 11i th tî:10se about him. As HUillphry House says, "LJ5ickensy good people are precluded from thought because if they once started thinking they might begin to become tendentious; their scope of action is narrow and domestic, because if it were wider they might be in danger of becom~ing 8 politiciens." If the benevolent gentleman is not political, what is he, and how does he fulfil a social r~e? The answer

11 he is morally good, tt which for Dickens was enough in i tself, and he fulfils a social r~le by helping others and setting an example of kindly behaviour. He is the man in 'the position of authority who can be trusted to behave well towards his dependents or inferiors; such a man was Dickens himself and such men he esteemed. In an essay on Dickens, George Orwell writes, "In the last resort there is nothing he admires e:x:cept 9 cormnon d.ecency. 11 Here is another reason why Dickens is not

8 Ho use, p. 51. 9 George Orwell, ncharles Dickensn in Dickens, Dali and Others (new York, 1946), p. 52. 7. concerned vvi th the poli ti cal scene; he is a moralist, and his interest; is in human nature rather than 11 society. 11 It is enough for him to portray the efforts of a few individuals to overcome the social evils in their daily lives without looking ahead for any final solutions to the problems of society. When Dickens attacks society, he confines himself to a moral attack, 11 pointing to a change of spirit rather than a change 10 of structure.u His benevolent gentleman has thus a heavy burden to bear. He has no definite policy to follow, yet he has to "do good" to those about him, to educate by example, and to manifest the spirit of kindliness lacking in government welfare. also has to be thy. Dickens lu1.ew tha t nei ther well- wishing nor advice alone could help people, and his benevolent gentleman needed to be a man of substance, as well as sentiment. He has been described as: That recurrent Dickens figure, the Good Hich Man, fYhiJ belongs especially to Dickens•s early optimistic period. He is usually a "merchantn (we are not necessarily told what merchandise he deals in), and he is always a superhumanly kind-hearted old gentleman who ntrots" to .and fro, raising his employees' wages, patting cûildren on the head, getting debtors out of jail and, in general, acting the fairy godmother.ll Dickens did not, however, invent the benevolent gentleman, nor was this fiGure entirely new to nineteenth-century literature. Its sources can be traced back to the good king or kindly wizard

10 Or\vell, p. 22. 11 Orwell, pp. 6-7. 8.

of fairy tale and legend. Its forerunners had been present, albeit in more rudimentary form, in the novels of the eighteenth century which Dickens so much admired; they, in turn, were influenced by the Shaftesburian idea of the morally good man. According to Jtnthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), man could pattern himself sympathetically upon the order of nature. The existence of love and undersJGanding between people depends upon the idea of total harmony in man, derived from the harmony and odness of nature. The virtuous persan consisted of a well-balanced personality, inwardly reflecting the order of the outside world. Shaftesbury had adapted and followed the doctrines of the seventeenth-century Platonists, who taught that man had an innate moral sense, and, to act rightly, had but to look within himself and follow the natural (i.e. moral) laws of his own heart. He felt that human nature, created in the imaGe of Divine Nature which is wholly good, is itself naturally sympathetic towards goodness and virtue, the foundations of all human happiness. Sin, which deviates from virtue and happiness, punishes itself. Shaftesbury also argues that if the Supreme Being, in whose image mruî has been made, is activated solely by love and good will towards man, then man himsel:t' will naturally act likewise towards his fellows. Another of Shaftesbury•s concepts is that just as nature is good, so man is essentially good, and naturally social. He is part of a frunily, which, in turn, is part of a larger social unit; this gives him a sense of fellowship which

breeds obligations to others. H.elying upon his inner 11 moral

sense, 11 man can recognize what actions are good, and virtue consists in a conscious desire to do what is right:

~he virtue of a rational creature consists in a 'rational affection' towards rit;ht: a 1 just sentiment 1 or 'proper disposition.' Thus a man beèins to be virtuous when he makes 1 the Conception of Vlorth and Honesty to be an Object of his Affection.' He is a 'good' man when the natural bent of his affections is towards the good of society.l2 Shaftesbury trieèi to show that self-love and social love are the same. He talks of the "natural affections" which tend towards the public good, and the "self-affections" which tend towards private good. In arder that love of self should not predominate over natural love, 1nan must be taught the pleasures of the natural affections -- the mental pleasure in doing good to others. For, as Shaftesbury says, "Thus the wisdom of what rules, and is First and Chief in Nature, has made it to be accordin€:, to the :Priva te Interest and Good of 13 every-one, to work tm1ards the General Good. Il It is impossible to know whether Dickens had read Shaftesbury's Characteristicks or not, but it is certain that he shared a similar outlook. He had also read and enjoyed the

12 Basil Willey, The Eighteenth Century Background (London, 1940), p. 70. - 13 Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, ttAn Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merittt, Characteristicks, 3 vols. (London, 1714), II, 175. I must confess myself' considerably indebted to Basil Viilley's The Eighteenth Century Background for a summary of Lord Shaftesbury's views upon virtue and merit. See Ch. IV, pp. 57-7 4. 10.

works of the eighteenth-century novelists, Fielding, Defoe, 14 Smollett and Goldsmith. Their debt to Shaftesbury is never

directly acknowledged, but the f'it:,'Ure of the good, or moral,

man emerges from their pages and undoubtedly influenced Uickens'

conception of the benevolent gentleman. Oliver Goldsmith's

novel, r.rhe Vic ar of Wakefield, con tains an example of the

morally good squire, whose purpose in life has been to help

those around him. Burchell (Sir Willirun Thornhill in disguise)

is discussing Sir Vlilliam's awnreness of the misfortunes of

others:

He loved all rnankind; i'or fortune prevented him from knowing there were rascals. Physicians tell us of a disorder, in which the whole body is so exquisitely sensible that the slightest touch gives pain: what seme have thus suffered in their persons, this gentleman felt in his mind: the slightest distress, whether real or fictitious, touched him to the quick, and his seul ~aboured under a sick1y sensibility of the miseries of others.15 Dependent though Dr. Primrose cornes to be upon Sir William's benevolence, he himself, even in poverty, was never known nto 16 turn the travel1er or the poor dependant out of doors." Dickens 1oved, and was inf1uenced by, this novel, and wrote

that it was "a book of which I thinl~ it is not too much to say that it has perhaps done more good in the wor1d, and instructed

14 For a description of Dickens 1 early reading, vvhich greatly influenced his writing, see Forster, I, 29. 15 Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of ~rlakefïeld (London 1946)' p. 15. --- -- ' 16 Goldsmith, p. 2. 11.

more kinds of people in virtue, than any other fiction ever 17 wri tt en. 11 Another of Dickens' favourite authors, Fielding, was a known admirer of good nature, "that aimiable quality, v1hich, like the sun, gilds over all our other virtues; that is, v:hich enables us to pass through all the offices and stations 18 of life with real merit." He created a man vlith "a benevolent 19 heart" in Squire Allworthy. The chief difference between Dickens' benevolent gentleman and his eishteenth-century counterpart is social. '.'/hen Fielding crea ted Squire Allworthy, he made him a "gentleman" both by birth and breeding; no other conception of such a character would have seemed possible to him. Dickens, 't'l'ri ting a century la ter, was the spokesman of a class in

rebellion against social 2~nd poli ti cal pri vilege -- the emergent middle class. He gave his readers rvTr. Pickwick, Wir. Brownlow, and the Cheeryble Brothers, all of whom are middle-class merchants, actively engaged in or retired from trade. The Cheeryble Brothers are actual employers of vwrkers in a business (to be distinguished from Squire Allworthy's upkeep of servants for the sake of his own comfort and property). Two of Dickens'

17 Charles C. Osborne, ed., Letters of Charles Dickens to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, lst ed. (London, 1931), p. 102. --- 18 Taken from an essay Fielding wrote in The Champion. Quoted by Howard Mumford Jones in his introduction to Joseph Andrews, (New York, 1939), p. xii. 19 Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones (New York, 1963)' p. 29. - - -- 12.

later benevolent gentlemen, Abel Ma~vitch and Nicodemus Boffin, originate from the working class; the former is a convict who

becomes rich, a1.1.d the latter a workman from John Harmon 1 s dust heaps, who benefits under the terms of an extraordinary will.

If Dickens• benevolent gentlemen are ttgentlemen, 11 they are so because of their innate goodness and consideration for others, not because of social position. Without being a democrat politically, Dicke!ls attempts to teach the democratie lesson that goodness exists in all orders of society, and is not 20 necessarily, nor most often, corûined to its upper ranks. By making the benevolent gentlemen perfectly ordinary in their origins, if not in their actions, Dickens levels the barriers between them and those they help. The eighteenth- century benevolent squire had performed his deeds of alms-giving or kindness from his lofty position and the recipients, far beneath, responded to his goodness for the most part with loyalty and obedience, pa.rticularly if the relationship were that of master and servant. Dickens tered this by cha!lging the background of the benevolent gentleman, thereby increasing his sphere of action. A middle-class benevolent gentleman, particularly one who had worked his way up from the working class (the Cl1eeryble Brothers and Boffin) would obviously have a far greater rapport with those below him than his predecessor.

20 Writing about the Cheeryble Brothers, George Gissing says: nof course they are plebeians; Dickens glories in their defects of breeding, and more than hints that such defect is essential to the true philanthropist." The Immortal Dickens, lst ed. (London, 1925), p •. l06. 13.

He could fit in amongst his fellows and help them u:nobtrusively, and also extend patronage easily to those \Vhose ranks he had left. His position in the centre of the social scale even enabled him occasioruüly to help those whose educational back- 21 ground was superior to his own. Those benevolent gentlemen who had followed a trade or known hardship in youth had more opportuni ty for being generous t~1an the eighteenth-century squire. Where the squire's generosity was bomJ.ded almost exclusively by the needs of his villagers or dependents, that of Dickens' benevolent gentlemen extended to friends and even chance acquaintances. The nature of the help given by the benevolent gentlemen has been admirably described by Humphry House. He lists what he calls "the main symptoms of Dickens's benevolence" as follows: (1) Generosity, in money and in kindness that costs nothing. Both kinds of generosity are chiefly shown by the poor towards each other and by the benevolent well-to-do towards the poor. (2) An acute feeling for suffering in all forms, whether caused by poverty, sickness, cruelty (mental or physic<:d) or injustice. The :feeling becomes most acute when all these causes of suffering are combined in the sufferer, and there is somebody who has power to relieve them all. (3) Righteous, if ineffectual, indignation against all anomalies, abuses and inefficiency in social organisation or goverrunent which cause suffering of any kind. • • •

21 For example, the Cheeryble Brothers help Nicholas, and Boffin helps John Harmon; both these young men are, intellectually and educationally, superior to their benefactors. 14.

(4) An equable and benign temper in the benevolent person, which is on the whole immune from the changing moods which make human beings interesting in themselves.22 Religion has no place amongst these nsymptoms of benevolence,u yet the goodness of the benevolent gentleman, like that of the squire, is basically, if not specifically, Christian. Dickens was himself a professed Christian, although he never allied himself to Church or dogma. He did not give his benevolent gentlemen a 11 creedtt to follow, but baseü. their actions upon Christian teaching. When he spealŒ of justice, mercy, and goodness in men, he meant his readers to understand him in terrns of Christian ethics, v1hich he intertwined vaguely with Housseau's concept of the brotherhood of man. His benevolent gentlemen sometünes pray, but they never pause to examine the reasons for their good deeds. Their actions follow closely the simple religious precepts which Dickens set dovlll for his children: Never take a meru1 advantage of anyone in any trans action, and never be hard upon people who are in your power. Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better for you that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid dovlll by Our Saviour than that you should (Forster, III, 484). The benevolent gentleman, then, acts from Christian motives, which remain unacknuwledged; there is no policy of moral goodness, or overt religious directive. Sorne of Dickens• public felt that his good men should have paid more conscious attention to God. Dickens, however, seldom describes religious services, chapels or prayer-meetings without pointing the fïnger

22 House, p. 46. 15. of scorn. He felt tl1at goodness should speak for itself and remain independent of doctrine, or of any self-conscious idea of 11 doing good. 11 All the help kindness of his benevolent gentlemen proceed from pure good-nature which is unable to act otherwise. The benevolent gentleman helps a friend or dependent because he feels affection for him, and wishes to help him. n:rhe goodness of the leading Dickens moral characters, from Pickwick to Baffin, depends on • • • two things -- personal 23 affection and general philanthropy." In his lack of a concise moral code, Dickens directly opposes the Benthamite school of philosophy, which taught that man should act from a sense of duty in promoting happiness. Bentham himself had been sceptical of the value of human affections as a basis for helping others; he thought that any ideas of philanthropy, unaccompanied by a sense of duty, were dangerous because they depended upon human whim. Dickens could not bear the idea of duty entering human reléitionships; he felt that the promotion of happiness should spring solely from human kindness. In this, he unconsciously follows Shaftesbury, who thought that any act of kindness or charity which arase from an impulse of sympathy for a fellow creature was morally superior to one discharged as duty. Bath Shaftesbury and Dickens felt that virtue should be pursued disinterestedly, without any idea of reward for goodness or punishment for wickedness. The system of reward and punishment was not, they considered, a sound basis for moral action, and actions stemming from a sense of duty had

23 House, p. 39. 16. the effect of robbing goodness of its spontaneity. Shaftesbury thought of this when he wrote: Nei ther this :E'ear [Of punishmeng or Hope [Of rewary can possibly be of the kind call 1 d Good Affections, such as are acknowledg'd the Springs and Sources of all Actions truly good. Nor can this Fear or Hope, as above intimated, consist in reality with Virtue or Goodness; if it either stands as essential to any moral Performance, or as ~ considerable Motive to any Act, of which some better Affection ought, alone, to have been ~ sufficient Cause.24 "All kind things,n Dickens echoed, "must be done on their own account, and for their own sake, end without the least reference to any gratitude ••• One does a generous thin5 because it is right and pleasant, and not for any response it is to awaken in others" (Forster, III, 519). Virtue, thcn, brings its own rewards. To Shaftesbury, it brought the "mental pleasures 11 which there was no need to prove "to any-one of Humankind, who has ever known the Condi "Gion of the l\1ind und er a liv ely Affection of Love, Gratitude, Bounty, Generosity, Pity, Succour, 25 or whatever else is of a social and friendly sort." To

Dickens, virtuous ac tion Wf:tS ri gh t and pl easan t and brough t its own enjoyment. The symbol of the benevolent gentlemen's disinterested goodness is the Christmas spirit or v1hat Dickens himself called his n carol philosophy. 11 This is simply the ide a tha t charity and good-vvill, practised for that one day only, should persist throughout the rest of the year. In the Sketches ~ Boz, Dickens wrote:

24 Shaftesbury, II, 57-58. 25 tesbury, II, 101-102. 17.

There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas. Petty jealousies and discords are forgotten; social feelings are awakened in bosoms to which they have long been etrangers; father and son, or brother and sister, who have met and passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold recognition, for months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace, and bury their past animosities in their present happiness. Kindly hearts that have yearned towards each other, but have been withheld by false notions of pride and self-dignity, are again re united, and all is kindness and benevolencel Vlould that Christmas lasted the whole through (as it ought), and that the prejudices and passions which deform our better nature, were never called into action among those to whom they should ever be strangersz26 Christ1nas had very little religious significance for Dickens who saw it as a time of feasting, rejoicing, and family re-union. Of all writers, he is the arch-priest of Christmas cheer. No reader of The Pickwick Papers or The Christmas Books can forget the descriptions of turkey, stuffing, plum- 27 puddings, punch, mistletoe and Christmas parlour games. All this is for Dickens the true Christmas spirit -- the jollity, the kindness of everyone to everyone else, and the temporary breakdown of social and economie barriers. This is 28 the carol philosophy.

26 Charles Dickens, "Characters, 11 II, Sketches È.l. Boz (London, 1957), p. 221. The text of Dickens'works is that of The New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (1948-1958). All subsequent references will be to this edition. 27 So closely was Dickens identified with Christmas in his lifetime that on the day of his death, June 9th, 1870, nA ragged girl in Drury Lane 'ilas heard to exclaim, 'Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?'" Quoted from The Bookman - Special Number on Charles Dickens - (London, 191"4')," p. 120. 28 The carol philosophy still persists today. Evidence of this is seen in the extraordinary number of charitable enterprises to whicb our attention is drawn every Christmas. Sorne charities campaign for funds at Christmas time only. 18.

If it is taken just as a message to practise good will all the year around, Dickens' appeal sounds childish in a commercial, highly competitive society. But, as Humphry House points out, nit is impossible to understand v;hat L)5ickeny was trying to do if we concentrate only on what the Christmas attitude positively set out to teach: it is far more important 29 for wha t i t was meant ta cou.r.1.teract." Dickens was using i t as a criticism of the poor quality of relationship that exists between men throughout the rest of the year. In a sense, he was making a plea for man ta restore the balance between self- love and social, and to look to the needs of his fellow man in all bis dealir~s. was referring chiefly ta monetary interests and class exploitation. As materialism grew in the nineteenth century, sa did its attendant evils. In any acquisitive society, there is selfisl1ness, greed, a struggle ta obtain money and to protect what has been obtained. Money is synonymous with power; the capitaliste, who have it, exploit those who have not, and use their power to perpetuate their ovvn wealth. With the ever-increasing importance of industry, political economie clc.imed authority for a system of shameless promotion of private enterprise at the expense of the workers. Human labour was subject to the same laws as trade; employers bought in the cheapest market and sold in the dearest. There were no fixed wages; only those determined by competition and the availabili ty of workers. If the po or or incapaci ta ted \Vere

29 House, p. 67. 19. unable to live on the wages offered, they had two alternatives to starve in independence or to enter the workhouse: other labour was available in their stead. All human considerations were subordinate to the laws of supply and demand, and the bond betweer1 employer and employed was solely a monetary one. ]'or this reason, Dickens makes his early benevolent gentlemen middle and not upper class, and it explains the importance of the origin of the Cheerybles and Boffin. All three men came from the working class and progressed upwards; they were thoroughly familiar with the conditions they had left behind. Charles Cheeryble tells Nichola;;., he will always remember coming 30 to London barefoot. Their personal knowledge of difiiculties gives these men sympathy with the misfortunes of the labouring class. In their care for se they employ, they keep alive a spirit which was rapidly dying out of industry -- the relationship between master and apprentice. As machines replaced hand labour, and men were needed only to tend them and increase output, the old relationship between man. and rnaster was going

30 See Nicholas Nicklebl, Ch. XXXV. 20.

31 forever, and Dickens was trying to preserve the idea of it. The factory overseer of a hiDLdred labourers or more could hardly be expected to care much for the individual, but Dickens attempts to show that the employer in a small business like the Cheerybles could set an example by caring for his workers. By showing benevolence in his dealings with them, he could convince the political economists that there is, and should be, more in human dealings than the cash-nexus. His early benevolent gentlemen who followed a trade could temporarily put almost any situation right by raising everybody's wages. The other feature of nineteenth-century life which Dickens' ce.rol philosophy comlteracts was the harsh attitude taken towards the poor and unfortunate. Since the eighteenth century, the idea had been growing that man was responsible for his Oï'ffi economie condition and tha t poverty was the business

31 The most illuminating illustration of Dickens' concern in this matter appears in 11 Uo Thoroughfare," one of the Christmas stories, written in conjunction with Wilkie Collins. 'l'he wine merchant, 'il il ding, is consciously seeldng to restore old-fashioned, domestic business relationships and methods. He says: 'I want a thoroughly good housekeeper to undertake this dwelling-house of Vlilding and Co., \fine Merchan ts, Cripple Corner, so that I may restore in it some of the old relations betvlixt employer and employe dl So that I may live in i t on the spot where my moncy is made! So that I may daily sit at the head of the table at which the people in my employment eat together, and may eat of the same roast and boiled, and drink of the same beer! So that the people in my employment may lodge und er the same roof v1i th me!' Charles Dickens, Christmas Stories (London, 1956), p. 548. 21.

32 of the individual who suffered it. Requests for assistance were thought to indicate a need for personal reform. There was a conscious desire not just to help the poor, but to 11 improve 11 them, and help them help themselves. :Poverty was seen almost as a sin in a society vvhich had opportuni ties for grea ter production made possible by machinery, and a growing middle class to invest in the stocks of expanding industries. Puritanism also had contributed to the idea that godliness and prosperity were connected. .b'verybody appeareà. to be making money, and the possession of wealth was considered as evidence of hard work, thrift, and intelligence, while its lack was taken as evidence of the opposite. The man who not saved was loolced upon as immoral in some way. If people were po or,

32 Even such enlightened. humanitarians as Edward Denis on and Oc tavia Hill t;hough t in this way. Deni son vœo te: The people create their destitution and their disease. Probably t;here are hardly any of the most needy who, if they had been only moderately frugal and provident, could not have placed themselves in a position to tide over the occasional months of want of work or of sickness, v.rhich there always must be. Letters and Other \lritings of the Late Edward Denison, hl.:P. for Newark, edited by Sir Baldwyn Leighton, bart. (London, 1872)' p. 59. His ideas were followed by Octavia Hill: The street sellers and low class desultory workers usually remain what they are by choice. A little self-control \VOuld raise them into the ranks of those who are really wanted, and who have made their way from the brink of pauperism to a securer place, and one where they are under better influences. Our Comrnon Land and Other Short Essays (London, 1877), p. 54. 22.

it was thought they had refused to profit by the abundant conditions to improve their lot. The equating of poverty and idleness, which together produced the idea of the "undeservingn poor can be traced back to :Malthus, and, before him, Joseph Tovmsend. Townsend had written: There is an appetite, which is and should be urgent, but which if left to operate without restraint, would multiply the human species before provision could be made for their support. Sorne check, so1::.e bala.nce is therefore absolutely needful and hunger is the proper balance; hunger not as directly felt, or feared by the individual for himself, but as foreseen and feared for his immediate offspring. Viere it not for this the equilibriurn would not be preserved so near as it is at present in the '

passed by a man of greater influence, the Reverend T.H. I~>Ialthus,

who expressed similar theories in his Essay .Q.Q Population, written in 1798. Malthus' fear was that agriculture would not be able to support an expanding population, that the only hope was reliance upon the three great checks against increase famine, war, and pestilence, to which he later added that of moral restraint. The results of his thinking were long-lasting and far-reaching; the middle classes of the nineteenth century

33 Joseph Tovfnsend, A Dissertation upon the Poor Laws .!?.;i a Vle11-Wisher to Mankind "[London, 1786), republished 1817, p. 31. - 23. feared to be swamped by an enormously expanded cle.ss of poverty-stricken workers, who would vie with them in obtaining the necessities of life. As Humphry Bouse says:

Th~lthus hung over England like a cloud. It is difficult now to realize what it meant to thousands of good and sensible men that they believed his principle of population to be exactly true -- believed that as poverty was relieved and the standard of life raised, so surely there would be bred a new race hovering on the misery-line, on the edge of starvation. However they might wish it false, they feared it true: they gladly caught for temporary relief at Carlyle's scorn of such a notion; but when the shouting died and the effect of loud words wore off, the ghastly ratios crept back again to haunt them, attended by the ghastlier checks -- vice and misery. The only ray of hope was in the third check -- moral or pru dential restraint. Let the poor live hard lives, sober, celibate, and tulamused; let them eat the plainest food, pinch to save, and save ·t;o lower the ra tes -- then 1 civiliza ti on' might win through.34 The results of this doctrine were iniquitous. Fear of revolts, uprisiügs, epidemies, and workmen's organisations all contributed to the stringency with which the poor were treated. The helpless debtor was treated far worse than the criminal; the pauper, often thrown out of work through the vicissitudes of age, illness, or increasing industrial progress, 35 was treated more severely than either. The impoverished clerk or labourer, who struggled to find work in competition with thousands of others all offering similar skills, was paid a

34 House, p. 75. 35 In nA 'dalk in a Workhouse, 11 Dickens wrote: "We have come to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet and accommodat;ion, better p:tovided for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper.n The Uncomrnercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces (London, 1958), p:-539. 24.

pittance which scarcely kept him and his family from starvation. The workhouse, into which many were forced, was a place as grim and harsh as a jail, where families v1ere separa ted and conditions were deliberately made as unpleasant as possible to discourage people from coming on the rates at public expense. Dickens was writing in an age when the country was undergoing the double stress of plenty and poverty, of over-work and lack of work, of child slavery, Inass epidemies and starvation. The rich and the poor v;ere two different races -- the former unconscious of 36 the real needs of the latter. For the poor there was little comfort or hope, just the insistence that they better their own condition by practising prudence and restraint. Arrogance, injustice and fear all gave rise to further poverty and ignorance;

that was Dickens• judgement of his country 1 s economie system. It is only when these conditions are realized that Dickens' carol pailosophy can be understood. It is a plea for kindness in all human relationships; a plea for change, not so

36 Disraeli illustrates this in the following passage from Sybil: Said Egremont, slightly smiling, "but, say vvhat you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed. 11 "\.lhich nation?" asked the youneer stranger, "for she reigns over two.u The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly. "Yes, 11 resumed the younger stranger after a moment•s interval. 11 Two nations; between '.vhom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignor&nt of each other's habits, thought and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different mo..nners, and are not governed by the same laws. 11 "You speak of ---, 11 said Egremont, hesitatingly. 11 TH.E IUCH Al'JD THE POOlî." Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (London, 1845), pp. 76-77. much in the laws themselves, but in the human hearts which frame the laws. Dickens is asking men to practise social love and to consider the needs of their fellow-men: /The carol philosophi7 is a touchstone revealing and drawing forth the gold of generosity ordinarily crusted over with selfish habit, an earnest of the truth tnat our natures are not entirely and essentially devoted to competitive struggle. Dickens is certain that the enjoyment most men are able to feel in the happiness of others can play a larger part than it does in the tenor of their lives. The sense of brotherhood, he feels, can be broadened to a deeper and more active concern for the welfare of all mankind. It is in this light that Dickens sees the spirit of Christmas, and so understood ••• it becomes the very core of his philosophy.37 The benevolent gentlemen are created to put the carol philosophy into practice. Their function is to love and care for others, and to help them financially whenever there is need. The question of whether or not those they help are "deservingu is not raised (or not in the early novels). Part of the extravagant generosity of the benevolent gentlemen is pure wish-fulfilmen·t, in direct opposition to the dreary Malthusian doctrines of prudence and moral restraint. Dickens wanted to give the poor in fiction, if he could not in reality, some fairy godfathers who could charm their cares away, raise their wages, and make their grim world a kindlier place. How successful the benevlent gentlemen were in their moral influence and actions, and how long Dickens himself had faith in their powers of goodness, are questions which remain to be answered.

37 Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vols. (London, 1953), I, 483-484:-- 26.

CHAPPEH II THE EARLY BElŒVOLElfT GENTLE:&IEN

They are all good-natured, and seem to act as they do because they cannet act otherwise. Not one of them has a moral policy, or a considered opinion about why he does good. They seem to have no temptations, difficulties, or struggles: they are uniform, unruffled, and unreflecting.l How true this is of Dickens' early benevolent gentlemen:

~œ. Pickwick (The Picbvick Papers, 1836-37), li~. Brownlow (Oliver Twist, 1837-39), the Cheeryble Brothers (Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39), Ivir. Garland ané:_ the Single Gentleman (The Old Curiosity Shop, 1840-41), and Scrooge (A Christmas Carol, 1843). Althou6h their stories are very different, they them selves have much in common. All of them are actually described

as "benevolent, 11 in either appearance or character, and they act accordingly. They are happy in themselves and attempt to promote happiness in others, not because they feel they should, but because they cannet help it; they are already members of that improved moral order which Dickens wished them to bring about. Their optimistic 500dness may lead the reader to question their probability. If they, already good, need no improvement, and have "no temptations, difficulties, or struggles,n how are they to arouse interest and to appear realistic? This is a problem which any ether writer probably would have overcome by making the benevolent gentleman follow a definite policy of action (possibly political) that sets him apart from ethers, but this Dickens would not do. He attempts to make his benevolent

1 House, p. 39. 27. gentlemen interesting by exaggerating certain qualities about them or features of their dress, or peculiarities of manner, thereby giving each a 11 tag. 11 When the "tagll was repeated in a subsequent episode, the character for whom it had been invented would come to mind. :l?or example, in David Copperfield, the dropping of 11 h 1 s 11 and writhing of the body instantly summon up Uriah Heep. These 11 tags 11 are most successf'ul when used to denote evil or t:Srotesque charact;eristics; Carker' s white teeth forever smiling, Pecksniff's apologetic way of warming his hands at the fire, 0..1.: Llerdle clutching his wrist as though to take himself into custody. The "tags" are less successful when they denote goodness.

This is because strong vices or eccentricities are almost ntags 11 in themselves, whereas goodness, vvhich takes accepted forms of help given in money and services, is less interesting. Because the benevolent gentlemen are "good," their personalities are difficult to distort and the only qualities to stress are the somewhat mechanical quirks of dress or mruUler. Pickwick, for example, has a round head, round spectacles, eyes and mouth permanently rounded in an expression of amazement, and "those tights and gaiters, which, had they clothed an ordinary man, might have passed without observation, but which, when Pickwick 2 clothed them ••• inspired voluntary awe and respect." The Cheeryble Brothers constantly rub their hands together, or shake hands with each other; John Jarndyce, a benevolent gentleman

2 Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (London, 1948), p. 3. 28.

from Dickens' middle period, refers to the wind being "in the

East n v1hen is upset. Boffin, Dickens' last attempt at a

benevolent gentleman, 11 trotsH to and fro, nursing his walking stick as though it were a baby. These deviees may help the reader to remember the benevolent gentleman, but they can hardly be said to add interest to his portrait. They convey neither personality, nor dignity; Dickens mean't his benevolent gentlemen to be admired, but they are not more admirable for these peculiarities. goodness speaks for itself and takes certain well-established forms, it is more difficult to portray than evil, which takes many devious forms and provides its own fascinations. Dickens, however, adds to his difficulties by disassociating his benevolent gen·tlemen from poli tical or moral

theories, or from any ambition except that of 11 doing good. 11 It is this detaclliuent, together with their peculiarities of dress and manner, \Vhich them such "dreary, unctuous 3 monsters. 11 They are required to act as the deus~ machina for the fortunes of others, and this they do, mechanically and predictably, in all the early novels. ':Che help given is nearly always the same; only the 11 tags 11 differ. Dickens tried, and failed, to vitalize his early benevolent gentlemen by giving them slight faults of a "socially acceptable" nature. Mr. Pich"'Wick, for example, frequently imbibes too much cold punch, but his drunkenness is not the

3 Ho use , p • 51 • 29.

sodden alcoholism of Sikes or Mr. Dolls; it is, rather, an amusing "tipsyness," the most serious consequence being Mr. Pickwick's ignominious awakening in a wheel-barrow in the village pound. The Cheerybles are in reality a pair of shocking bullies, but, Dickens asks, is bullying not a "delightfulu fault when it insists on putting up Tim Linkinwater's wages, regardless of his wishes, and making him a partner in the business? "'If he won•t listen to reason, we must do it against his will, and show him that we are determined to exert 4 our authority. We must quarrel with him, brother Charles.'" Another common "fault" is a hasty temper, but Dickens carefully shows it taking the form of honest moral indignation against 5 suffering or abuse. It thus not only becomes acceptable to his readers, but offers them a catharsis. By participating in the benevolent gentlemen's indignation about social injustices, they share, too, in the feelings of relief at the solutions offered. Despite their common characteristics, differences in the personalities of the benevolent gentlemen do, of course, exist. Mr. Pickwick (~ Pickwick Papers, 1836-37), is the first of the benevolent gentlemen and the most fully characterized; he is, also, the most interesting because his character changes and develops as The Pickwick Papers progresses. The ether

4 Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nicklebl (London, 1950), p. 456. 5 See No. 3 of Humphry House's list of "the main symptoms of Dickens's benevolence 11 on p. 13 of this thesis. 30. benevolent gentlemen who follow him were created expressly for the purpose of being benevolent; their characters are formed when they first appear in the novels and thereafter remain static. l'.:i.r. Pickwick has benevolence thrust upon him; he was created first as a figure of fun; only as his character evolves, does Dickens' conception of the benevolent gentleman evolve with it. After The Pickwick Papers, Dickens perfected the benevolent gentleman, but • Pickwick fathered all the rest. The Pickwick Papers begins as a collection of sketches, but ends as a novel. ~he change occurs vvhen the episodes become more complicated and. link together· to form the main plot of • Pickwick's trial and imprisolliilent in the Fleet. As the situations become more serious, the character of • Pickwick develops correspondingly; he changes from the buffoon of the early sketches to a suitably dignified hero. At the begiruling of the book, the reader laughs at, not with, Mr. Pickvvick: unickens has caught, in a manner at once wild and convincing, this que er innocence of the afternoon of life. ~f.lhe round moon- like face, the round, moon-like spectacles of Sar.mel Pickwick move through the tale as emblems of a certain spherical 6 simplicity.n Even :M:r. Pickwick's generosity is not very convincing in the first part of novel, because it is impossible to imagine that any man so gullible and so ready to part with his money could ever have been successful enough to have amassed

6 G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens (New York, 1906), p. 92. 31.

it in the first place. As the novel progresses, however, Mr. Pickwick emerges as a figure to be admired rather than laughed at. The farcical, old buffoon gives way to an admirable, kind- 7 hearted old gentleman, "a monument to genial sanity." Dickens himself justifi the change in s preface: It has been observed of Mr. Pickv;ick, that there is a decided change in his character, as these pages proceed, and that he becomes more 500d and more sensible. I do not t~~nk this change will appear forced or unnatural to my readers, if they will reflect that in real life the peculiarities and oddities of a man who has anything whimsical about him, generally impress us first, and that it is not until we are better acquainted with him that we usually begin to look below these superficial traits, and to know the better part of him (Preface, p. xii). However ingenious Dickens makes this explanation appear, it is

not quite candid. The truth is that 11 the change was becoming 8 necessary for his own satisfaction." As the merry adventures gave way to the scenes in the Fleet, a different Nœ. Pickwick was required to sustain the increasingly sombre tone. Rather than submit to the judgement and pay the fine when the case for breach of promise goes against him, Mr. Pickwick chooses to go to prison. In this Quixotic gesture, he becomes "a pre posterous and noble victim of his ovr.n principles, suffering but adamant, opposing injustice and aiding the downtrodden, forgiving even those who have wronged him, and attended by his 9 worldly, sceptical, but devoteci. Sancho, Sam er. 11 All through The Pickwick Papers, 1ir. Pich'Yvick has be en

7 Chesterton, p. 92. 8 Forster, I, 126. 9 Monroe En~el, The J::Ia turi ty of Dickens (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959;, p.-el. 32.

shova1 as kind and benevolent on principle. Even his gullibility eventually reveals itself as an excess of goodness, making it difficult for him to suspect evil in others. By the time he

reaches the IHeet, his transformation into Dickens 1 first benevolent gentleman is almost complete the final touch comes within the Fleet. In many of the prison scenes, Dickens describes poverty, suffering, and injustice; the squalor and noise are such that Mr. Pickwick is utterly defeated. He tells

Sam, " 1ffJy head aches wi th the se sc enes, and my he art too.

Henceforth I will be a prisoner in my ovm room. 111 (p. 645). In these surroundings he meets again the two rascals, Jingle and Job 'l'rotter. This encorulter nreveals more powerfully than

any previous sc enes tne deepening humani ty wi th \V hi ch 10 11 /Mr. Piclmic.!Y' is conceived : 'Come here, sir,' said Mr. Pickwick, trying to look stern, with four large tears ruru1ing do\vn his waistcoat. 'Take that, sir.' Take what? In the ordinary acceptation of such lru1guage, it should have been a blow. As the world runs, it ought to have been a sound, hearty cuff; for Mr. Pickwick had been duped, deceived, and wronged by the destitute outcast who was now wholly in his power. Must we tell the truth? It was something from l'dr. Pickwick's waistcoat-pocket, which chinked as it was given into Job's hand, and the giving of which, somehow or other imparteà a sparkle to the eye, and a swelling to the heart, of our excellent old friend, as he hurried away (p. 598). Here Mr. Pickwick displays the practical benevolence which

becomes the heart of the book. l~ot only does he obtain dis charges for Jingle, Job Trotter, and Mrs. Bardell (who is taken to the :&,le et for the execution of her costs), but he helps many of the other prisoners. vlhen the time comes for him to leave,

10 Johnson, I, 171-172. 33. he looked about him, "and his eye lightened as he did so. In all the crowd of wan, emaciated faces, he saw not one which was not the happier for his sympathy and charity" (p. 666). He emerges from his trials as a noble figure of magnanimity, kind to all, and revered by Sam, to whom he is 11 an angel in tights and gaiters" (p. 642). l!..'ven with Mr. Pickwick's release, the gaiety of the novel never returns. Dickens has introduced a melancholy note which lingers. The former jolly Pickvvick vanishes into the later benevolent Pickwick, and the other major characters change or become more dignified. The remainder of the novel serves only to round off the story so that Mr. Pickwick can retire into a benevolent old age, surrounded by his friends. In the last chapter he appears like a gad, in the centre of the universe he has created, diffusing benevolence and receiving it from those he loves: And in the midst of all this, stood Mr. Pickwick, his countenance lighted up with smiles, which the heart of no man, woman, or child, could resist: himself the happiest of the group: shaking hands, over anà over again witl1 the same people, and when his own hands were not so employed, rubbing them with pleasure: turning round in a different direction at every fresh expression of gratification or curiosity, and inspiring every body v'ii th his looks of gladness and delic;ht (p. 799). Mr. Pickwick is, of course, imrnortal. He becomes "somewhat infirm" (p. 801), but he never dies. The reason for this, perhaps, lies in Dickens' refusal to make any of the benevolent gentlemen "God-conscious." Shaftesbury's moral man was modelled on the Divine Being, but Dickens' benevolent gentlemen are purely human, and their benevolence is contained within themselves; when they die, their c;oodness dies with them. 34.

If Mr. Pickwick were to die, his world would collapse and his friends be lost. He is the first of Dickens' characters to create a world of love for others to inhabit, and, of all the benevolent gentlemen, he does it most successfully. Dickens' next benevolent gentleman is Mr. Brownlow (Oliver Twist, 1837-39), the benefactor of Oliver. Although Mr. Brownlow is essential to the plot of the novel, his character is of little importance. He seems to exist only to befriend Oliver, to unmask Monks, and to prepare the way for the Maylie marriage by proving Rose's legitimacy. His main function is to help Oliver when he needs it most. Their first encounter takes place at random, in the street, where Oliver "lay on his back on the pavement, v1i th his shirt unbuttoned, and his temples bathed with water; his face a deadly white; 11 and a cold tremble convulsing his whole frame." In this pitiable state, Mr. BrowTùow finds him and takes him home. His intervention at this point of the story is crucial. It provides a breaking point in the novel's mounting tension and gives both Oliver and the reader a chance to feel that there is sorne light amidst the gloom. Another of Mr. Brownlow's functions is to stand as an example of private philanthropy, which Dickens intended as a self-evident contrast to the cruelty of public institutions. In making Oliver an orphan, born and brought up in a workhouse,

11 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist (London, 1949), p. 75. 35.

Dickens was able to show the misery which a child suffered 12 from the Poor Law system. Until Oliver encour.l.ters Mr. Brownlov.,r, has known nothing but privation, abuse and exhaustion. The reader feels as much pity for him as can be granted to one so slightly characterized, and • Brownlow' s appearru1ce is a welcome relief. Dickens succeeds in showing the power of private philanthropy because he has first prepared for it by showir~ the inhumanity of institutions. There would be fewer neglected, outcast children, he implies, if the Board of Guardians the workhouse consisted of benevolent gentlemen like IV.lr. Brownlow. Although Oliver Twist originally bore the sub-title of Tl1e Parish Bo;y's Progress, Oliver himself is not the most important and interesting character. He, Mr. Brovmlow, and the Maylies are all subordinated to Fagin and the thieves, who held greater interest for Dickens. His main purpose in writing the novel was: To draw a knot of such associates in crime as really did exist; to paint them in all their deformity, in all their wretchedness, in all the squalid misery of their lives; to show them as they really were, for ever skulking uneasily through the dirtiest paths of life, with the great black ghastly gallows closing up their prospect, turn them where they might ••• (Preface, p. xv).

Dickens fel t that to do this 11 would be a service to society" (Preface, p. xv), but despite these ideals, the plain truth was

12 Dickens had chosen a topical subject; the controversies of the 1834 Poor Law Report were still of current interest in 1837, and, through Oliver, the reader becomes acquainted with the smell of the workhouse, the taste of its food, and the bullying of its guardians. 36.

that the lives of the criminals fascinated him. The whole group of thieves and fences Fagin, Sikes, Nancy, Charley Bates and the Artful Dodger receive far more sympathetic treatment than Oliver and Mr. Brownlow; the novel undoubtedly belongs to the criminals in a way Dickens ncver envisaged when he wrote the preface. As their story develops, that of Oliver, Mr. Brownlow and the Maylies diminishes. This inequality would have mattered less had the two stories remained separate, but Dickens centres the criminals' activities upon Oliver, and in fusing the two stories, he apparently did not distribute his creative efforts fairly. His concentration upon the criminals inevitably lessens the stature of Mr. Brownlow. Rad he existed solely as Oliver's guardian, his position as a useful benevolent gentleman would have been assured, but Dickens also intended him to be a foil to the criminals. In this, he fails completely. As the shadows of Fagin and Sikes fall across Oliver's life, even when he is in retreat with the Maylies, all that Dickens can offer to oppose their monstrous evil is Mr. Brownlow•s goodness and benevolence; these are not enough, because his strength is never shawn to be equal to theirs. Vfhen Mr. Brownlow first cames ta Oliver's bedside, Dickens describes him: Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; but, he had no sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust his hands behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at Oliver, than his com1tenance underwent a very great variety of odd contortions ••• the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr. Brownlow's heart, being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane disposition, forced a supply of tears into his eyes, by some hydraulic process which we are not sufficiently philosophical to be in a condition ta explain (p. 80). 37.

How can the reader believe that such a pallid figure of goodness could possibly triumph over Fagin, Sikes and Monks? The very tone of the description, both pompous and coy, contributes to

the ineffectual characterization. In reality, ~~. Brownlow could never have brought the gang low through his own efforts; Dickens enables him to do so only through the intricacies of an elaborate and improbable plot, disclosed in the last pages of the novel. False wills, concealed identities, and destroyed evidence are made to take the place of real strength. The evil of Oliver Twist is terrifying and believable, but the goodness takes the form of a kindness and sweetness which is powerless against it without the machinery of the plot. Dickens has clearly permitted his conception of moral goodness and right to prevail over human probability. The main impression left by the novel is one of macabre horror, cruelty, oppression, evil, and darkness. Long after the forged wills, the identities and even some of the names have been forgotten, the thieves 1 den and the workhouse are remembered. The reader cannot believe in Mr. Brownlow's power to destroy such evil; nor did Dickens. As

Graham Greene says, 11 from L}.5ickensy inability to believe in 13 his own good characters springs the real tension of fthi.§Ï' novel." The Cheeryble Brothers (Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39) are Dickens' best-known pair of philanthropists. Unlike all the other benevolent gentlemen, these two were drawn from life.

13 Graham Greene, Introduction to Oliver Twist (London, 1950), reprinted in The Dickens Critics, ed. George H. Ford and Lauriat Lane, Jr:-{New York, 1961), pp. 244-252. 38.

In the preface Dickens wrote: Those who talee an interest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the BH.OTHERS CHEERYBLE live; their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations of the Author 1 s brain; but are prompting every day (and oftenest by stealth) sorne munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the pride and honour (Preface, p. xix).l4 Dickens both liked and adrnired these two gentlemen and transcribed their appearance and clothing exactly in his

novel. In an article on "The Cheeryble Brothers 11 in The Dickensian, F.R. Dean says: LTiickens'7 account of the charities of the Cheeryble Brothers is in no-way an exaggeration, for the various houses of the Grants were centres of philanthropy, and at the vvarehouse in ~i.ranchester, there \Vas a daily distribution of money by lVIr. William or rJr. Daniel Grant. By the time of their arrival, a number of poor people would he.ve gathered at the warehouse door, awaiting their coming. • William used to arrive at the warehouse from Springside about 10 or 11 o 1 clock, usually in his carriage, O.rawn by a fine pair of greys. '-Jhen the carriage drew up, the waiting people would forrn into two lines, for.ming an avenue from the coach to the door. If he did not distribute the alms himself, he would send out a clerk ("Tim Linkinwater? 11 ).15 1'he Cheeryble Brother·s cannat be numbered amongst

14 Dickens' friend, Harrison Ainsworth, had often told him about the two Gra,nt brothers, William and Daniel, who were merchants in his native town of Manchester. In addition to their benevolence, the brothers also possessed certain peculiarities of dress and manner which Ainsworth felt would render them excellent 11 characters 11 for Dickens to study, assimilate, and reproduce in one of his novels. As l'Jicholas Nickleby progressed, Dickens found it necessary to create sorne benefactors for Nicholas, and he decided to visi t r.Ianchester and see the two benevolent merchants about whom he had heard so much. He took his illustrator, 11 Phiz, 11 vdth him, and at a diru1er given in his honour, met his ovvn two Cheerybles for the first time. 15 "The Cheeryble Brothers,n The Dickensian, :XXVI (1930), 142-148. 39.

Dickens' more successful characters. What may have been most admirable in real life is not convincingly reproduced in the Cheerybles. They do not have the same reality as Mrs. Nickleby, for instance, who was also drawn from life -- she was very like Dickens' mother. Perhaps his greatest mistake was to make the Cheerybles twins. It is often distasteful to find all the goodness of ttBrother Charlesn reduplicated in "Brother Ned," and the way the twins have of finishing each other's sentences, as though they shared a common brain, is irritating. They exist solely to become benevolent employers for Nicholas when he is destitute, and to provide him with a prosperous future by arranging his match with lliadeline Bray. The Cheerybles' goodness and kindness has little appeal because it is combined with constant unctuousness and sentimentality. As well as dispensing money, the Cheerybles dispense words. When Trimmers, an employee of their firm, cames to collect a subscription for the man, nsmashed, sir, by a cask of sugar" (p. 452), Charles Cheeryble gives him the money, talking all the time:

•r~ brother Ned is a good fellow, and you're a good fellow too, Trimmers,' said the old man, shaking him by both hands with trembling eagerness. 'Put me down for another twenty -- or - stop a minute, stop a minute! We mustn 1 t look ostentatious; put me down ten pound, and Tim Linkinwater ten pound. A cheque for twenty pound for r~. Trimmers, Tim. God bless you, Trimmers and come and dine with us some day this week; you'll always find a knife and fork, and we shall be delighted. Now, my dear sir -- cheque from Mr. Linkinwater, Tim. Smashed by a cask of sugar, and six poor children --oh dear, dear, dear!' (p. 452} The garrulity is meant "to prevent any remonstrances from the collecter of the subscription on the large amount of his donation" (p. 452), but there is a sense of patronage in "'You're 40.

a good fellow, too, Trimmers.•n The worst aspect of the Cheerybles' generosity is its creation of dependency. Tim Linkinwater, clerk to the firm, is chained to the brothers and has been for forty-four years; doubtless the many subscriptions given in his name by his employers foster his dependence. All the Nickleby family come within the range of the Cheeryble bounty, and the whole relationship is enmeshed hopelessly in gratitude. Even the constant hand-rubbing and shaking, the jollity, the winks and smiles cannet counter a feeling that the Cheerybles, unlike any of Dickens• previous

benevolent gentlemen, encourage a form of parasitism. Squeers 1

estimate of Nicholas• worth at ~5 per annum, plus his keep,

is far more realistic than that of the Cheerybles at ~120, together with a furnished cottage for his family at nominal rent. Even children find the Cheerybles unacceptable and tiresome. Few critics have liked them, except George Gissing, 16 who admired their nfairy godmother" quality. Their

16 Gissing wrote: "All Li5ickens.!.7 heart is put into this delightful bit of idealism; he glows over the Cheeryble view of life, and makes the reader glow with him.tt p. 107. 41.

17 self-conscious generosity makes people fee1 uncomfortab1e. Even in Dickens' own day some resented them. The chief grounds of complaint were that by complicated manoeuvres of the plot, the Cheerybles are permitted to expose the villain, Ralph Nick1eby. A critic in ;Fra.ser's Magazine thought it "quite as probable that Ralph Nickleby would have been foiled by Lord Verisopht or Smike, as by a couple of such unredeemed and irredeemable old idiots" as "these pot-bellied Sir Charles 18 Grandisons of the ledger and daybook." The Cheerybles themselves are not, perhaps, so much at fault as the atmosphere of unreality which hangs over them and their business premises. In describing these, Dickens says:

17 Aldous Huxley is the most outspoken critic of the Cheeryble Brothers. He reacts violently, not only to them, but to all Dickens' benevolent gentlemen. His comments are extremely destructive. I am relegating them to a footnote partly on this account and partly because he takes a psychological approach outside the scope of this thesis. He says of Dickens: He had an overflowing heart; but the trouble was that it over flowed with such curious and even rather repellant secretions. The creator of the later Pickwick and the Cheeryble Brothers, of Tim Linkinwater the bachelor and Nœ. Garland and so many other gruesome old Peter Pans was obviously a little abnormal in his emotional reactions. There was something rather wrong with a man who could take this lachrymose and tremulous pleasure in adult infantility. He would doubtless have justified his rather frightful emotional taste by a reference to the New Testament ••• A wri ter who can tearfull,y adore these stout or cadaverous old babies, snugly ensconced in their mental and economie womb-substitutes and sucking, between false teeth, their thumbs, must have something seriously amiss with his emotional constitution. nThe Old Curiosi ty Shop, n from Vulgari t! in Li te ra tur....2_ (London, 1930), PP• 54-59. Reprinted as "The Vu garity of Little Nell," in ~he Dil~ens Critics, pp. 153-157. "Charles Dickens and His Worksn ffio autho.y, Fraser' s Magazine, XXI (April, 1840), p. 396. 42.

A blunderbuss and two swords hung above the chimr1ey-piece, for the terror of evil-doers; but the blunderbuss was rusty and shattered, and the swords were broken and edgeless. Elsewhere, their open display in such a condition would have raised a smile; but, there, it seemed as though even violent and offensive weapons partook of the reigning influence, and became emblems of mercy and forbearance (p. 470). What does Dickens mean? 11 l\Iercytt and 11 forbearancen are fine- sounding words, but the question must be d, 11 Could mercy and forbearance have amassed the Cheeryble fortune?" The answer is nNo"; neither in nineteenth-century England, nor in the world Dickens created in Nicholas J:ückleby. In a world -vvhere a man like Squeers can succeed, how could the Cheeryble Brothers succeed and, still further, make so much money with so much good humour and innocence? A.ù.J. Cockshut says of the Cheeryble Brothers; function seems to be to exorcise (most unconvincingly), the terrors of the Cl~de and virile industrialism of the 1830's. They represent business without balance sheets, without labour troubles, without competition, without anxiety and therefore without any protective toughness. The evasion is obvious, and must soon have become obvious to Di himself.l9 Later, the evasion did become obvious to Dickens, and the author of Nicholas Nickleby became the author of Hard Times. The

Cheeryble Brothers, hovvever, remain Dickens 1 most lasting attempt to portray kindliness and benevolence at work within a commercial setting. Little can be said about Mr. Garland and the Single Gentleman (The Old Curiosity ShoE, 1840-41). They are the most slightly characterized of all Dickens' benevolent gentlemen and have but a small part to play in the novel. Mr. Garland is a

19 The Imagination of Charles Dickens (London, 1961), p. 88. 43.

20 "little fat placid-faced old gentlernan, 11 who is introduced into the novel sol ely to be a benefactor to Kit Nubbles. 'l1he Garland frunily stand in rouch the same relationship to Kit as the Cheerybles to Nicholas. Single Gentleman is more important to the story. Like Quilp and Little Nell's senile grandfather, he belongs to the elements of fairy tale found in The Old Curiosi ty Shop. '.lhen he first appears, he hardly seems like the rest of the benevolent gentlemen. "He was a brown-faced sunburnt man • • • a choleric fellow in some respects" (p. 265). He turrw out to be Nell's great-uncle and would-be benefactor. The flitht of Nell and her grandfather gives Dickens the opportunity to introduce many benefactors. There is no legal protection for the child or the irresponsible old man she leads; their only recourse is reliance upon individual bene valence and charity. At different times, they are helped by Codlin and Short, the Punch-and-Judy men, by l\Irs. Jarley, proprietress of a travelling wax-works display, a furnace tender and a kindly schoolmaster. Cottage-dwellers and inn-keepers, too, touched by Nell's ur1childlike devotion to her grandfather, give food and shelter. None of these benefactors is wealthy; Dickens is showing the kindness of the poor to one another in distress. '.êhe wealthy Single Gentleman, who could have helped, fails complet ely through no faul t of his own. ·J:hwarted in the primary abject of his generosity, he devotes the remainder of

20 Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (London, 1951), p. 108. 44. his life to helping those who had once helped Little Nell: For a long, long tim.e, it was his chief delic;ht to travel in the steps of the old ma.n and the child • • • to hal·b v1here they had halted, sympathise where they had suffered, and rejoice where they had been made glad. Those who had been kind to them, did not escape his search. îhe sisters at the school -- they who "Vve re her friends, because th ems elv es so friendless -- IErs. Jarley of the wax-work, Codlin, Short -- he found them all; and trust me, the man who fed the furnace fire was not forgotten (p. 553). Dickens was now approaching the end of his first phase of cheerful, hearty writing. The failure of the Single Gentlema.n perhaps has a general signifïcance; although the benevolent gentlemen of the future might be just as willing, or even eager, to part vfi th the ir mo ney to help o th ers, priva te phil an thropy is no lon0er enough to be the remedy of all human problems. Scrooge (A Christmas Carol, 1843) is the culmination of Dickens' benevolent gentlemen. Before Scrooge's conversion, his life reflects man's need for kindness and benevolence; after it, he shows the carol philosophy in practice. Scrooge is the only one of Dickens' benevolent gentlemen who is not benevolent at the outset, but who becomes so. Before the Ghosts of Christmas work their miracle upon him, he is the epitome of all tha·t Dickens mearü the Christmas spirit to counteract. V/armth, cheer, and human fellovvship are unknown to him; he

êiismisses all sentiment as 11 hwnbug 11 and will not even wish his nephew, .Pred, a 111Vlerry Christmas.u He is "a personification 21 o!' economie man 11 whose sole purpose is to make money and. to further his own concerns, even at the expense of others. His

21 Jol~son, I, 485. 45.

true nature is revealed in his conversation with the Christmas subscription-raisers: 'At this festive season of the year, wœ. Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 'it is more than usually desirable that we should make sorne slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.' 'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge. 'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. 'And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?' 'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, 'I wish I could say they were not.' 'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge. 'Both very busy, sir.' 'Ohl I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 1 I 1 m very glad to he ar i t. 1 'Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman, 'a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor sorne meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time be cause i t is a time, of all others, when rdant is keenly fel t, and Abundance rejoices. \/hat shall I put you down for?' 'Nothing!' Scrooge replied. 'You wish to be anon~nous?' 'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.' 'Many can't go there; and many vvould rather die.' 'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better doit, and decrease the surplus population •••• •22 Scrooge here speEks for himself, but Dickens means him to speak for all the selfish; the people who can give, but who do not; those who feel that the compulsory payment of taxes excuses charity, and those who are so wrapped up ill their own affairs that they do not spare a thought for their fellow-man. All these need the moral example of the benevolent gentleman.

22 Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (London, 1954), pp. ll-12. 46.

Like Scrooge, they are 11 the embodiment of all that concentration upon material power and callous indifference to the welfare of human beings that the economists had erected into a system, businessmen and industrialists pursued relentlessly, and society 23 taken for granted as inevitable and proper." This comwent describes the early Scrooge only, before the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come have taught him lessons of benevolence. Since Scrooge has lost all his generosity and humanity in the pursuit of wealth, he must learn to live again. rrhe Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge himself as a man who forsook all human contacts for

11 the master-passion, Gain11 (p. 34). The Ghost of Christmas Present takes him to see the Cratchit family at their Christmas dinner. In spite of himself, Scrooge is interested in his cl 1 s fam.ily, and asks the Ghost to tell him whether Tiny Tim will live. The Ghost answers him in the words of his own conversation, "If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population" (p. 47). Scrooge is ashamed, but the Ghost bas not yet completed his humiliation. From the folds of its gar.ments, it brings forth the two ragged, walfish children, and shows them to Scrooge: 'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more. 'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking dawn upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them bath, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it

23 Johnson, I, 489. 47. for your factious purposes, and. make it worse. And bide the end!' 'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge. 'Are there no prisons?' d the Spirit, turning on him for the last time vvi th his ovm vvords. 1 Are there no workhouses? 1 (p. 57). There is still anothe:r· lesson ta be learned. The Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge his own grave, Yvhere his name is written on the stone. The writing can be erased only by his promise to 11 honour Christmasn in his heart and to tttry to keep it all the year 11 (p. 70). Scrooge reforms overnight. Vihen he wakes next morning, he vows to live in the past, the present, and the future. His first action is to send anonymously an enormous turkey for the Cratchit family. His second display of benevolence is to eive a munificent donation to the subscriptim.1 collecter whom he had denied. 'l'hen he t;oes, unsure of his reception, to his nephew's house, to ask humbly for admittru1ce to share the Christmas tivities. OverniGht, he has lean1ed the lesson of Fred's words, that Christmas is a time for loving and open- heartedness. Even when Christmas Day is over, Scrooge maintains its spirit. He raises Bob Cratchit's salary, and becomes a genial employer and the most benevolent of benevolent gentlemen:

11 To Tiny ·:rim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a me.ster, and as good a man, as the good old city knew ••• 11 (p. 76). Although Scrooge's conversion is sudden, and based on a change of heart rather than any intellectual convictions, it is quite convincing. Dickens was not, ter all, writing a 48.

24 serious novel, but 11 A Ghost Story of Christmas. 11 The two Ghosts, of Christmas Past and Christmas Yet To Come, are concerned with Scrooge's own past and future, but the Ghost of Christmas Present is Dickens' message to mankind. If the poor are neglected, starved, oppressed, denied education and the means of subsistence, then the economie and social con- sequences will be drastic, Dickens warns. Scrooge's first

conversation vii th the subscription collee tor shows the dangers of a callous state of mind; the two children, Ignorance and

1ivant, show, fig-uratively, the results of it. Scrooge 1 s own misery reflects man's miserable attitude towards his fellows. His change of heart is intended as a serio-comic lesson on the Christmas message of benevolence and kindness. A Christmas Carol is really a long parable; "The conversion of Scrooge is an image of the conversion for which Dickens hopes among 25 mankind." The early benevolent gentlemen,then, have much in common when it comes to giving. They all seem to recognize that helping others is expected of them, and they show great willingness in meeting the demands made upon their purses or their good-will. No matter what the situation is, they expect

to be consulteà and wish to help. ~heir purpose in all these early novels is to put themselves, personally and financially,

24 Dickens' sub-title to the book. 25 Johnson, I, 489. For this little study of Scrooge, I am indebted, in point of view, to Johnson's chapter on 11 Selfishness and the Economie Man,n pp. 483-489. 49.

at the disposal of the heroes and heroines -- those who suffer and need their help. The help they give is invariably accompanied by sentimentality. They not only positively enjoy the act of giving, but are so overcome by their feelings of sympathetic involvement that they frequently weep: 11r. Pickwick has Ufour large tears running down his waistcoat" (The Pickwick Papers, p. 598); Mr. Brownlow has "a supply of tears" (Oliver Twist, p. 80), and the Cheerybles have "a tear of regard for old Tim Linkinwater" (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 454). This sentimentality is the most displeasing aspect of the person-to-person charity that Dickens was trying to portray. Another flaw is that the shadow of the giver hovers over the grateful recipient. All those helped are reduced to a pulp of gratitude and dependence. Before Nicholas "had been closeted with the two brothers ten minutes, he could only wave his hand at every fresh expression of kindness and sympathy and sob like a. little childtl (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 454). Tim Linkinwater has been "closeted" with the Cheerybles for so long that his personality has become a carbon copy of theirs and he has lost all thought of ever changing bis position. Mr. Pickwick's charity completely unmans Mr. Jingle, who loses the rakish gaiety which makes him a charming figure in the early part of The Pickwick Papers, and he sobs outright when he receives his money. Dickens' own public were not embarrassed by these mawkish sentiments, but for the most part, stood solidly behind him when he showed his benevolent gentlemen's generosity in action 50. and his heroes or heroines overcome with gratitude. Although taste and sentiment have undoubtedly changed since the nineteenth century, Dickens' conception of goodness and benevolence still has power to affect the reader. Humphry House says: One of the reasons why Dickens's benevolent sentiment still has power to bring tears to the eyes, when literary fashion and moral taste incline so heavily against it, is that it has been so well prepared for: he has built up so carefully and realistically scenes of poverty, depression, and unhappiness that the ultimate release -- the death, the ~5 note, the turkey, the job, the smile -- brings a break of tension also for the reader. \ii thout such a background Benevolent Sentimentali ty may justly be sneered at; and vve do not weep. The effect is largely got by giving a proper importance to money.26 Dickens also prepares the way for the benevolent gentlemen's charity by detaching them from the circumstances that make generosity difficult; namely, awkwardness or resistance on the part of the recipients. All those helped by the benevolent gentlemen are grateful and accept help th&nkfully. Nobody is ever rude, querulous or dissatisfied with the ar1ount of money or the act of kindness. Those, like Oliver or Nicholas, whose social status is superior, receive a fresh start in life and become a credit to their benefactors. Loyal servants, like

Sam \feller and. Kit Nubbles, are well rewarded for fai th:fulness. Dickens was too mucha believer in natural social inequalities to elevate servants from the condition to which he felt God had appointed them, but he makes them secure in their comfortable positions, friends to their masters, and without financial worry for the rest of their lives. The ends of all his early novels show the heroes and heroines helped and grateful v1ith their lot,

26 House, p. 63. 51.

ready to 11 live happily ever after. 11 The benevolent gentlemen's generosity does not encourage self-respect and initiative. Once the heroes have been suitably helped, they seem to have no desire left except to lead sheltered, effortless lives in the shadow of their benefactors. Nicholas acquires twelve thousand pounds through his marriage to Madeline Bray, which he invests in the firm of the Cheeryble Brothers; he then retires to the heart of Devon, buys his father's old bouse, and settles dawn to raise a family. Kate and Frank

Cheeryble live next door. He is said to become a 11 rich and prosperous merchant" (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 830) and }!'rank a partner in the Cheeryble firm, but how they conduct business efficiently in London, yet live in domestic bliss three hundred miles away remains a mystery. Mr. Pickwick's loving satellites all live vlithin visiting distance and trouble him frequently with applications to become godfather to their ever-increasing families. :r11r. Brownlow and Oliver retire "within a milen (Oliver Twist, p. 412) of the parsonage in which Rose and Harry 1\!aylie live, so that they may all enjoy one another's company. The whole atmosphere rests upon mutual interdependence. Orwell has said of the endings of Dickens' early novels: The ideal to be striven after, then, appears to be something like this: a hundred thousand pounds, a quaint old house with plenty of ivy on it, a sweetly womanly wife, a horde of children, and no work. Everything is safe, soft, peaceful and, above all, domestic. In the moss-grown churchyard down the road are the graves of the loved ones who passed away before the happy ending happened. The servants are comic and feudal, the children prattle round your feet, the old friends sit at your fireside, talking of past days, there is the endless succession of enormous meals, the cold punch and sherry neb~s, the ather beds and warming pans, 52. the Christmas parties with charades and blind man's buff; but nothing ever happens, except the yearly childbirth.27 These cosy domestic endings provide the best indirect comment upon the limited activities of the benevolent gentlemen. They intervene in, and make more happy, the lives of a few friends, or those destined to become friends. Not one of them, however, is public-minded or does anything for society as a whole. "Giving security and happiness to a few people for their lifetime is more important than providing a public endowment 28 that might last for generations. 11 This limited sphere of action did not trouble Dickens or his readers. In these socially uncomplicated novels where there are just two classes, the "haves" and the "have-nots,n Dickens is primarily interested in portraying what the former will do to help the latter. middle period of more complex social novels was still to come. His early benevolent gentlemen are generous and spontaneous in their giving. Money is available and is used to help people, whether their claims are fully justified or not. All of them have sufficient means to give away large sums without compromising their own financial positions. Dickens' readers were not demanding that he should examine the sources of the wealth that his benevolent gentlemen distributed so freely. It was enough for them that this young writer of brilliant promise showed genuine concern for the poor and afflicted. They felt that his good characters fulfilled an

27 Orwell, pp. 55-56. 28 House, p. 61. 53.

important and necessary social function and much of their praise for :Dickens rested upon 11 goodness. 11 An anonymous writer in the Edinburgh Eeview states best what Dickens was trying to do through the moral influence of his early benevolent gentlemen: "The tendency of his writing is to malce us practically benevolent to excite our sympathy in behalf of the aggrieved and ering in all classes, and ecially in those who are most removed 29 from observation. 11

29 "Dickens's Tales" Edinburgh Review, LXVIII(October, 18)8)' p. 77. 54.

CHAPTER III

BENEVOLENT GENTLEJ:iiEN OF DICKENS 1 lWIDDLE PERIOD

novels of :Dickens' middle period reveal a new attitude toï;o.rds phil an thropy and benevolence. The former pattern of benevolence -- having money and giving it av~y to the nee dy -- has gone, along •.fi th the simpler rel a tionships of man-to-man goodness. Dickens beginning to take a more searching look at society and its many conflicting forces. The benevolent gentlemen of this period are still generous and kind, but they lack the simplicity and vigour of the early benevolent gentlemen and their strength has diminished considerably. They are confronted by far greater social inequalities and injustices, whose remedies lie beyond the power individual philanthropy. older methods of straight- forvvard gene rosi ty cannot be made to '.York in a more complica ted world where evil is seen no longer as a personal characteristic, but as an infection v:hich spreads through society as a whole. In the 1850's, Dickens was less optimistic about social remedies than he had been in the l830's and '40's, and he had come to realize the helplessness even the best-intentioned individual amongst the disorders and distresses of society. r•,J:r. Jarndyce ( Bleak House, 1852-53), is a typical example of a benevolent gentleman of Dickens' middle period. Vlhen he first appears, in a coach with Esther Summerson, his ward, he seems to have much in common with the early benevolent gentlemen. He offers Esther a piece of plum-cake and a goose- 55. liver pie and promptly throws them out of 'Nindow when she declines them. His shyness, his abrupt manner, his almost pathological dislike of being thanked, and his reference to the vvind being "in the East" vvhen he is upset make the reader think he will be just another of Dickens 1 eccentric, kindly old bachelors. In appearance, tao, he is of the Brownlow- Cheeryble type, vvi th "a handsome, lively, quick face, full of change and motion 11 and "iron-grey" hair; he is "nearer sixty 1 than fifty," but is "upright, hearty and robust." He is, though, shrewder and less open-handed than any of the early benevolent gentlemen. He gives away money, but less freely than they did; never once does Dickens suggest that he pays any of

Richard Carstone 1 s many debts, although Richard his ward. Some aspects of Mr. Jarndyce's character will always remain a mystery. Dickens is usually careful to explain that the benevolent gentlemen have earned their money, even if they have retired before the story begins, but he never mentions Mr.

Jarndyce 1 s profession or reveals the source of his money. Mr. Jarndyce's adoption of the two wards in Chancery, Richard and Ada, his provision for Esther, and his restoration of Bleak House reveal him as a man of considerable means. Another mystery is his immunity from the great Chancery case, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has engulfed and ruined many of his relations, and ·:.rhich ul timately destroys Richard. He places no hopes on any benefi t arising from the suit, and vvarns Richard,

1 Charles Dickens, Bleak House (London, 1948), p. 63. 56.

"For the love of God, don't found a hope or expectation upon the family ourse! Vfuatever you do on this s the grave, never give one lingering glanee towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!" (p. 338). Mr. Jarndyce's motives for adopting Esther are also obscure. He agrees to a curious request, from a woman he does not knov;, to extend generosi ty and protection to a child he has never met, apparently on the grounds that he "felt concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life" (p. 237). Had he knovm then the identi ty of the v1oman who '\\TOte to him, that she was Lady Dedlock's sister and the former betrothed of his friend, La ..~.rrence Boythorne, 'Nould have had a positive motive for his action. Since he is not aware of her identity, his agreement to her terms appears less like considered benevolence and more like a whim. Later, in the chapter entitled "The Letter and the Ansvrer," Mr. Jarndyce proposes to Esther. Al though both Esther and the reader expect this development, it indicates that Mr. Jarndyce's affection is not totally disinterested. He soon guesses that Esther loves Woodcourt, and renounces her to him, but not before he tells her: 111 Whether, under different circumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sorne times dreamed vthen you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I need not ask rnyself. I did renew it ••• 111 (p. 857). From these few words, the proposal appears to be the culmination of a vrish :formed many years be fore; Mr. Jarndyce 1 s affection has come to involve his personal happiness. is the first 57. of Dickens' benevolent gentlemen to act upon a motive overtly related to his 01vn sires, and the only one ever to attempt a romantic relationship. One aspect of ttt. Jarndyce's generosity is as frank and unquestioning as that of the early benevolent gentlemen - his kinàness to Harold Skimpole, the witty, brilliant, heartless little man, 'Nho presumes upon his friendship. In Mr. Jarndyce' s estimation, Skimpole is a ttman of attainments and captivating manners 11 (p. 67), and, although Mr. Jarndyce does not recognise i t, an accompli shed parasite, vrho makes good use of his friend' s wealth. ri'Ir. Jarndyce eagerly pays his debts, helps his family, and excuses him from responsibility on the grounds that he is "a child" (p. 67) in v:orldly affairs. Mr. Jarndyce is unable to see in Skimpole what is obvious to Esther, because Skimpole's spurious good-nature is a distorted image of his own genuine goodness. Skimpole might almost be described as a benevolent gentleman in reverse; his i~~ocent patter appears artless and full of ood-will: 'l envy you fJ!I.r. JarndyciJ your power of doing vvhat you do. It is what I should revel in, myself. I don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to ~' for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I can tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a benefactor to you, by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities' (p. 71). His speech is calculated to succeed so well because of Mr. Jarndyce's dislike of gratitude and desire to help. Skimpole A is elever enough to make it seem as though their roles of giving and receiving were reversed, and Mr. Jarndyce is unable to see 58. that he is being presumed upon. This portrait of Skimpole is one of Dickens' most bitter and satirical. Skimpole has all the cant of generosity of an early benevolent gentleman, but it is false; the only liberality he shows is v;ith other people's money. Mr. Jarndyce's benevolence contrasts with other forms of philanthro in the novel, chiefly the "organized charity" of Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle. In Mrs. Jellyby, Dickens mercilessly satirizes the philanthropy which looks for causes abroad, while ienoring those at home. Rer house is dirty and badly run, and her children are neglected, v1hile she concentrates her efforts upon arranging "to have from a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating coffee and educating the natives of Borioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger 11 (p. 37). Dickens is very angry v'Ji th Mrs. Jellyby for her interest in natives abroad while those at home suffer, and at the end of the novel he punishes her severely by saying that Borioboola-Gha 11 turned out a failure in consequence of the King of Borioboola wanting to sell eve~Jbody -- who survived the climate -- for rum" (p. 878). The necessity for charity to begin at home is seen in the figure of Jo, the destitute crossing-sweeper, who sits, in all his misery and wretchedness: On the door-step of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and cives i t a brush '.l'hen he has fini d, as an acknovrledgment of the accom.rn.odation. He admires the size of the edifice, and v.ronders what it's all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacifie, or '<.hat i t cos ts to look up the precious souls among the cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit (p. 221). The satire is obvious. Jo knows nothing of the Society, nor of 59.

Christianity, because his ignorance is "the growth of 3nglish soil and climate" (p. 641); s thousands of miles away 2 are taught to grov: coffee, while he is neglected. J3ecause Dickens disapproves of Mrs. Jellyby's 3 "telescopic philanthropy, 11 he s her ridiculous and infers that her ljroject is ridiculous, too. He enjoys elaborating upon the condition of utter neglect in which the Jellyby children grow up, while their mother immerses herself in her voluminous correspondence. Richard, however, unconsciously shows the reader a:r;.other aspect of Mrs. Jellyby when he says her eyes "had a curious habit of seeming to look a long way off.

As if • • • they could see nothing nearer than Africa11 (p. 36).

2 To an anonymous correspondent, who objected to the satire, Dickens replied: There was a long time during which benevolent societies were spending immense sums on missions abroad, 'ahen there was no such thing as a ragged school in Eneland, or any kind of associated endeavour to penetrate to those horrible domestic depths in whicll such schools are novv to be found, and vvhere they -vve re, to my most certain knowledge, nei ther placed nor discovered by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. If you think the balance between the home mission and the foreign mission justly held in the present time, I do not. I abstain from dravdng the strange comparison that might be dra-vvn betv1een the sums even now expended in endeavours to remove the darkest ignorance and degradation from our very doors, because I have sorne respect for mistakes that may be founded in a sincere wish to do good. But I present a general stion of the still-existing anomaly (in such a paragraph as vvhich offends you), in the hope of inducing sorne people to reflect on this matter, and to adjust the balance more correctly. I am decidedly of opinion that the two works, the home and the foreign, are not conducted vii th an equal hand, and that the home claim is by far the stronger and the more pressing of the two. Th~ry Dickens and Georgina Hogartht eds., The Letters Charles Dickens, 3 vols. (London, 1879-81;, I, 323. 3 Ti tle of Chapter IV, in 'Nhich Mrs. J ellyby is introduced. 60.

She does not neglect her children and home wilfully; she simply does not notice them. Her mind is fixed upon her African vision, thousands of miles away. In her abstraction, she is striving for an object important not only to herself, but to the expanding interests of nineteenth-century colonization. Others besides 1\frs. Jellyby vvere trying to control the strife between colonist and tribesman, and, in ridiculing Thlrs. Jellyby, Dickens shows his negative attitude towards their efforts. Mrs. Jellyby is misguided in her approach to her project, but she is not necessarily misdirected in the project itself. She is at least practising a philanthropy 1vhich extends beyond the farnily circle; she is mistaken only in so far as she allows her charitable concerns to supplant her domestic duties. Regardless of her curious sense of priorities, she is undertaking a task which • Jarndyce, for all his goodness, would never think of doing -- directing her energies beyond the domestic sphere to distant projects, on which she could see no immediate return. Mr. Jarndyce, the central benevolent figure in the novel, might have been the perfect organizer for Mrs. Jellyby's work, but he cannot concede it any importance. He sees his o~n usefulness circumscribed by the limits of Bleak House and the needs of his wards. Mrs. Pardiggle is an example of another kind of philanthropy of which :Dickens disapproved; her "charity" starts at home, but is bound up in intrusive and officious committees. Di hated charity which smacked of priggishness or inter- ference. had already satirized it in his description of 61.

4 "The Ladies Societiesn in Sketches È.Y. Boz and does so more forcefully in Bleak House. Vmen Esther and Ada answer some of Itir. Jarndyce's correspondence, they are amazed ta find that: The great abject of the lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared ta be ta form themselves into committees for tting in and laying out money. The ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen • • • • They threvv themselves into commi ttees in the most impassioned manner, and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary. It appeared ••• that some of them must pass their v1hole lives in dealing out subscription cards ta the whole Post-office Directory -- shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They wanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money, they wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they wanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted V'lhatever Mr. Jarndyce had -- or had not. Their abjects were as various as their demands. They were going ta raise new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on old buildings • • • they vtere going to have the ir Secretary' s portrait painted ••• they were going to get up everything ••• from five hundred thousand tracts ta an annuityt and from a marbled monument to a silver teapot (pp. 99-100). Foremost among the subscription collectors is Mrs. Pardiggle. She is a "School lady, 11 a 11 Visiting lady,u a "Reading lady," and a "Distributing lady" (p. 102). She invites Esther and Ada ta accompany ber on her visit to the brickmaker's cottage,

4 The description of "The Ladies Societies" may be compared to the description in Bleak House. It runs as follows: Our Parish is very prolific in ladies' charitable institutions. In winter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the ladies' soup distribution society, the ladies' coal distribution society, and the ladies' blanket distribution society; in summer, when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies' dispensary, and the ladies' sick visitation committee; and all the year round we have the ladies' child's examination society, the ladies' bible and prayer-book circulat~on societyt and the ladies' childbed-linen monthly loan soc~ety (p. 34J. 62. where they are vdtnesses of her patronage. She brings the bri r no badly-needed material comforts, but pulls out a "good book" and takes the 'fthole family ttinto religious custody • • • as if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying them all off to a station house" (p. 107). The Brickmaker, not unnaturally, resents Mrs. Pardiggle's visit: 'I wants a end of these liberties took with my place. I wants a end of being drawed like a badger. Now you're a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom -- I know what you 1 re a-going to be up to. \Vell! You haven 1 t got no occasion to be up to it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? s, she is a-washin. Look at the water. Smell i t! That•s wot we drinks. How do you like it, and what do you think of gin, instead! An 1 t rrry place dirty? Y es, i t is dirty - it's nat'rally dirty, and it's nat•rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them, and for us besides. Have I read little book wot you left? No, I an't read little book wot you le ft. The re an 1 t no body he re as knows hmv to re ad it; if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable tome ••• How have I be en conducting of myself? 'ilhy, I 've been drunk for three days; and I 1 d a been drunk four, if I'd e. had the money. Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I don't never mean for to go to church. I shouldn 1 t be expected there, I did; the beadle's tao gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get that black eye? Yihy, I giv' it her; and if she says I didn't, she's 1 a Lie ! ( p. 10 7 ) • Not surprisingly, Esther and Ada feel 11 painfully sensible between ltheml and these people there was an iron barrier" (p. 108) Yvhich Mrs. Pardiggle's efforts do not remove. Dickens rneans his readers to dislike Mrs. Pardiggle, and her treatment of the brickmakers is unforgivably high-handed, but not all the brickmaker's anger is her fault. She is not responsible for his circumstances and she is trying to rectify a very serious problem. She uses a wrong approach; but whose approach would be right? Such a disreputable man would not be easy to help. This should be a situation for Ii1r. Jarndyce in his role" as a benevolent gentlenan, since he is intended as an example of wealth rightly used and charity vnsely given; but Dickens perhaps had doubts of Mr. Jarndyce's efficacy, because he never tests him by confronting him with the brick maker. Mr. Jarndyce never visits the cottage to offer help; he remains in his "Growlery 11 ·.-;i th the wind "in the East, 11 evading organised charity. \'lhen he helps people, he, like the early benevolent gentlemen, helps the humble and grateful. It is pleasant to be responsible for poor little rüss Fli te, to pay the kindly Mrs. 3linder arrears of rent for Neckett's children, or to provide ru~other Bleak House for Allan Woodcourt, because all these people are deserving and appreciative. It is not attractive to be responsible for welfare of drunken, bullying, rough-tongued brickmakers, who beat their wives. However much the reader may laugh at or dislike Mrs. Pardiggle, she at least shows a sense of cormnunity in her efforts to help the "undeservinglf poor, which riir. Jarndyce, for all his geniality, lacks completely. Esther helps the fa..'Tiily in a way which I·.Tr. Jarndyce approves. When the brickmaker's baby dies, she does what she can "to make the baby's rest the prettier and gentler; laid it on a shelf and covered it vàth Lheil own handkerchief" (p. 109). The intention of making the emaciated little corpse more seemly for burial is 'Northy, and Esther' s efforts are appreciated, but she does not come any nearer to solving the brickmaker's problems than Mrs. Pardiggle. She covers the baby, but the causes of its death -- the bad water, dirt, and unwholesomeness 64.

persist. The plight of the family clearly calls for government intervention, but in Bleak House, Dickens attacks the govern ment most vehemently. Instead of suggesting constructively how it could help its citizens, he concentrates his anger upon the soci2l blindness of the Dedlocks, Coodles and Foodles, and lays the blame for bad conditions upon the upper classes who 5 have resigned their God-given right and duty to govern. Dickens' attitude shows how unconstructive his criticism of society is. He cannot suggest a remedy for the brickmaker's problems by government means, and he shows also the failure of private philanthropy, personified in Mr. Jarndyce. 'ïVhen Esther tells her guardian of the events at the cottage, 11 the wind changed directly 11 (p. llO), and this is all that happens. Apart from providing "a few little comforts 11 (p. 100) for the

brickmakers and dissuading Richard from giving them a ~5 note because it vmuld "do no good" (p. lOO), Mr. Jarndyce does even less than Esther. Despite increased scope, his actions remain as limited and domestic as those of the early benevolent gentlemen.

5 In 1843, Forster wrote of Dickens: "I had noticed in him the habit of more gravely regarding many things before passed lightly enough; the hopelessness of any true solution of either political or social problems by the ordinary Downing Street methods had been startlingly impressed on him in Carlyle's writings ••• (II, 146). By the time Dickens wrote Bleak House, he had come unwillingly to accept the idea of State intervention as a necessity for people's welfare, but his attitude towards it was ambivalent. In Bleak House, he describes Jo perishing for lack of public assistance, and preaches a fierce sermon to the "lords and gentlemen, right reverends and wrong reverends of every order" (p. 649) who ought to have prevented his death. In Our 1'11utual Friend he shows Betty Higden flying from public assistance as from an avenging fury. Jo is another example of the failure of private philanthropy in Bleak House. He is the under-privileged drudge, a recurrent type in Dickens' work. Although young in years, he is old in his knowledge of misery. The only understanding he has is of death. Wben Charley tells him not to sleep at the brick kiln because poor people die there, he replies: "They dies everywheres • • • they dies more than they lives according to what I seett (p. 432). If ever a person needed help, Jo does, but he is forced to rely on the chance kindness of Captain Hawdon and I·.lr. Snagsby' s half-crowns, un til he is cared for, tao late, by Allan 'Noodcourt. Dickens makes no attempt to minimise Jo's unattractiveness: "Homely filth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in him, homely rags are on him ••• " (p. 641). He lives in Tom-All-Alone's, the ruined property from the Jarndyce case, "a black, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people" (p. 220). Dickens constantly asserts that the wealthy and powerful classes need not reject contact with or disclaim responsi bility for the less fortunate half of the vrorld, be cause they vüll be forced to take notice -- by crime, or communication of disease. The filth of Jo and of Tom-All-Alone's provides the link with the major characters. The filth engenders small pox, '•vhich Jo carries wi th him as he is "moved on" round the country. Esther and Charley catch it, and it is the cause of 66.

6 1 Lady Dedlock s death. In des cri bing "Tom' s revenge, tt Dickens shows how dirt and pestilence can become the destruction of the upper classes as well as the lower: fToE? has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream ••• of a Norman bouse, and his Grace shall not be able to say Nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution, through every order of society, up to the proudest of the proud, and to the highest of the high (p. 628). Jo and Tom-All-Alone's are striking examples of what happens if the government neglects the destitute outcast and fails to clear the filthy slum: the innocent suffer instead of the guilty. The illness of Esther and Charley is the symbol of guilt which really belongs to the Dedlocks, Coodles and Foodles. Even though Esther and Charley have been good to Jo, their innocence and desire to help cannot save them from the results of social injustice. Tom "goes to perdition head foremost 11 while waiting to be "reclaimed according to somebody's theory but nobody's practice 11 (p. 327). "Nobody's theory" is useless; "practice" is needed for the slum and Jo, but Dickens suggests nothing except the inadequate solution of personal kindliness the medical attentions of Allan Woodcourt, Esther's goodness,

6 The small-pox episode is the clearest proof in all Dickens' work of the influence upon him of Carlyle's Fast and Present. In this work, Carlyle describes the case of the poor Irish v-ddow who, herself infected vd th typhus, spreads the disease through an entire city by wandering from one agency to another seeking aid. 67. and • Jarndyce's benevolence. None of these help Jo any more the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, which he cannet understand. Jo and his surroundings constitute too serious a problem for benevolence. Mr. Jarndyce, regardless of his good intentions, is powerless to relieve the social distress epitomised by Jo; the problems confronting him are too great. In suggesting his benevolence could be a solution, Dickens, despite his brilliant social observation, reveals his inability to make constructive social comrnents. In spite of its uncompromising title, Hard Times

(1854), contains one benevolent gentleman -- !l'Ir. Sleary. He in only three chapters and important, not so much for himself, but for what he representa. He is the benevolent artist, or Bohemian, in an industrial society. Grim, manufac- turing Coketown, ruled by blustering Bounderby and Thomas 7 Gradgrind, tt the hard Fa~t fellow" a tovm where everything is "severely workful" (p. 22) and all is "fact" (p. 23). SlearJ's circus provides the imaginative contrast to Coketovm's ss; his performers "cared so little for plain Fact"

(p. 26) that they had "a remarkable gentleness and childishness • • • and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another • • • tl (p. 35). 8 M:r. Sleary's nloose eye" (p. 35), asthmatic lisp and lack of ready money distinguish him from any previous benevolent

7 Charles Dickens, Hard Times (London, 1955), p. 125. 8 The eye and the lisp cons ti tu te Mr. SlearJ' s tttag. 11 68.

gentlemen. He certainly has money, but his shabbiness makes him appear less of a wealthy man than Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Brownlow or M:r. Jarndyce. Unlike all the early benevolent gentlemen, except the Cheerybles, he is still vmrking, al though the re seems little connection between his income and his circus performances. He tells Mr. Gradgrind that he is easy enough to find because he always pays his way, and bears him no malice when he says, "'You're one of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a 9 prethiouth thight of money out of the houthe'" (p. 39). Sleary is in no way mercenary. Vfuen offered rewards for helping Mr. Gradgrind's son, Tom, all he asks for is "a collar for the dog, or a thet of bellth for the horthe" (p. 291), and "a little

thpread for the company • • • " (p. 291); he wants nothing for himself, as long as he can afford his supply of brandy and water. His easy generosity stands in sharp contrast to the Coketow:n notion tha t "wha t y ou couldn' t sta te in figures, or show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without

end, Amen tt (p. 23). Mr. Sleary is not well-bred and tipples, but he has a benevolent heart. When he offers to provide for Sissy

Jupe, he is completely honest: ttti don't pretend to be of the angel breed myself, and I don•t thay but what, when you mith'd your tip, you'd find me eut up rough, &~d thwear an oath or two at you. But ••• I never did a horthe a injury

9 Sleary means that Mr. Gradgrind and his fam.ily do not attend the circus. 69.

yet • • • and I don' t expect I thall begin othervvi the at my time of life, wi th a rider'" (p. 38). rough speech contrasts favourably with • Gradgrind's chilly offer: u'I am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you • • • it is understood that you coilliliunica no more vvi th any of your friends who are here present'" (p. 38). l':iir. Sleary repays Mr. Gradgrind for adopting Sissy by helping Tom evade the lavv. Not only is he vvilling to jeopardise himself a~d his company, but he gives more than assistance. He teaches • Gradgrind, who has stifled all affectionate impulses in his children, the simple lesson "'that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-interetht

1 after all • • • tl ( p • 29 3 ) • Mr. Sleary may not be much of an artist in the ring, but he is an artist in life. His final words are the moral of Hard 'rimes: "'Don' t be croth vii th uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can't be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can•t be alwayth a working, they an't made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; 10 not the wurtht!'" (p. 293). The message is the same as that of the es.rly benevolent gentlemen -- a plea for kindness, warmth and jollity in life. It sounds commonplace, but it is of the

10 The possible significance of Sleary's lisp is that it sounds childish, and makes his message appear simple and direct. By making Sleary talk in a child-like way, Dickens contrasts his intuitive understanding and sympathy with the cold emptiness of Mr. Gradgrind's learning, expressed always in :formal speech. 70.

greatest importance amidst the harsh realities of Dickens' • social novels. Mr. Meagles (Little Dorrit, 1855-57), is the last benevolent gentleman of Dickens' niddle period. He represents the old idea of generosity, but he is much more cautious than any of the early benevolent gentlemen and has not their freedom and scope. Little Dorrit is concerned with complicated finance and society fortunes -- a theme Dickens had not treated before -- and he stresses the connection bet·v'.'een Mr. Ii:Ieagles and his money. A retired banker, he reminds himself of his former occupation by keeping "a pair of brass scales for 11 weighing gold, and a scoop for shovelling out money" on his counter-desk at Twickenham. He confides to Arthur Clennam,

"'I have been poor enough in my time, I assure you' 11 (p. 20),

but now he has no need 11 to stick at a bank-desk" and goes "trotting about the worldn (p. 20). His travelling, his payment of Henry Gowan's debts, and, above all, his immunity from the Merdle crash, show he is a man whose financial cares are over. In the use of his money, though, Mr. M:eagles is nei ther completely successful nor happy. He, his vüfe, and his beloved only daughter, Pet, become the prey of Henrhis daughter's sake, but unvvillingly.

11 ,_ Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit (London, 1953), p. 193. 71.

Giving is not accompanied by friendliness or good-fellowship, and money does not bring happiness. A cosy, domestic ending not possible, be cause the Gowans and the r,Ieagles do not

1 each other. wroney is a useful cor::rrnodi ty he re, but i t brings neither love nor gratitude; the old pattern of easy giving and gracious acceptance is impossible in a complicated financial setting. Mr. Meagles constantly states that he is a "practical 11 man; his energy and co:mmon sense are the proof of this. Nevertheless, he differs from all the other benevolent in being the first vlith a grave fault -- snobbery. Vihen Henry Gowan tells him he is bringing one of the Barnacles home to dinner, he answers: 'A Barnacle is he? We know something of that family, eh, Dan? By George, they are at the to~) of the tree, though! Let me see. '.Vha t re la ti on vfill this ;young fellow be to Lord Decimus now? Lordship married, in seventeen ninety-seven, Lady Jemima Bilberry, who was the second daughter by the third marriage -- no! There I am wrongl That was Lady Seraphina Lady Jemima was the first daughter by the second marriage of the fifteenth Earl of Stiltstalking with the Honourable Clementina Toozellem ••• ' (pp. 203-204). This is an ordinary enough speech, unusual only for being uttered by a benevolent ~entleman. The person Mr. l:1Ieagles is addressing is Daniel Doyce, wi th vvhom he has allied himself against the indifference of the Circumlocution Office. knows the professional incompetence of the Barnacles, yet he cannot resist social adulation. nNo amount of Circumlocution experience" can subdue 1':.1r. Meagles' "weakness 11 (p. 204), and "in its presence, his fine, frank, genuine qualities paled; he was not so easy, he was not so natural, he was striving 72. after something that did not belong to him, he was not himself" (p. 208). The you.nger Dickens vvould have given the speech to 12 a social parasite, like Pyke or Pluck, but never to a benevolent gentleman. In this dark and pessimistic novel, however, even a benevolent gentleman cannot escape the current social infection. Uni'ortu.na tely, too, Mr. Meagles shows the reverse side of snobberJ -- patronage. His patronage of Daniel Doyce, nfou.nded, not so much on anything in Doyce's personal character, as on the mere fact of his being an originator and a man out of the beaten track of other men 11 (p. 194) makes Arthur Clennam wonder "whether there might be in the breast of this honest, affectionate, and cordial Mr. l!Ieagles, any microscopie portion of the ~ustard-seed that had spring up into the great tree of the Circumlocution Officen (p. 194). Nowhere does Mr. Meagles' patronage show to greater disadvantage than in his treatment of Tattycoram, the adopted foundling, who is daughter-servant to him and his wife, and sister-servant to the spoiled Pet. In giving her the condescending names nHattey," 11 Tatty, 11 {p. 18) and finally nTattycoram" (p. 19), in constantly referring to her as "Fet's little maid" (p. 19), and urging her to "count five-and-twenty" (p. 197) to control her temper, Mr. M:eagles makes her feel her inferior position. There is sorne truth in Miss Wade's bitter words: "swollen patronage and selfishness [ëalY themselves kindness, protection, benevolence and other

12 The hangers-on of Lord Verisopht in Nicholas Nickleby. 73. fine names" (p. 671). Just a little more emphasis by Dickens on I•11r. r,:eagles' patronage, and would seem as hateful to the reader as he recurrently does to Tattycoram. Mr. Meagles is smug &~d insular, even a little vulgar, Dickens shows Meagles' limitations as he had never revealed those of any previous benevolent character; Clennam and Doyce feel them, too, and they detract from the unadulterated affection and respect ,_,hich the benevolent gentlemen have hi therto inspired in those around them. Little Dorrit also contains one of Dickens' most astounding creations, "The Patriarch" -- a title given to Mr. Casby, vrho is a satire on all Dickens • previous benevolent gentlemen from Mr. Pickwick to Mr. Jarndyce. Mr. Casby lives only to squeeze money from his tenants in 3leeding Heart Yard, yet he has convinced the world by his looks and manner that he is the repository of all benevolence. manages to make "his polished head and forehe look largely benevolent in every knob" (p. 539) while he tells Pancks: "You must be sharper with the people • • • much sharper '.vi th the people, sir. You don't squeeze them • • • you are paid to squeeze, and you must squeeze to pay" (p. 797). Pancks has his revenge by cutting the Pa triarch 1 s flordng, silvery looks and the bread brim of his hat, in symbolic deprivation of his paternity. The punishn1ent fits the crime, but the surprise is that such a se.tire on benevolence should exist at all. !Y1r. Casby could never have occurred in the same novel as any of the early benevolent gentlemen, but he does belong to the pessimistic 74. atmosphere of Little Dorrit; an atmosphere of gloom and imprisonment, where neither benevolence nor money can make people happy. In these novels of Dickens' middle years, when he himself felt he had passed the peak of spontaneous creativity, there is great awareness of social complexities and problems which the benevolent gentlemen are incapable of solving. :i·Ir. Jarndyce cannat help the brickmakers or Jo. His particular form of domestic benevolence, so well suited to his wards' needs, fails in deeper problems because the complex social questions involved go beyond his power and insight. The plight of Jo and the brickmakers clearly calls for government intervention, but in Bleak House Dickens attacks the government violently. Instead of esting how it could help its citizens, he focusses his attack upon the shortcomings of the Dedlocks, Coodles Foodles, and tries to make Mr. Jarndyce bear a burden that belongs to the State. No matter hm·t hard :,:r. Jarndyce tries, he is bound to fail, because the problems of a brutalised proletariat cannat be left to the unpredictable remedy of private philanthropy. Mr. s is powerless in a society v,rhich he shares wi th rdle. cannat foil 11 the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows 11 (Little Dorrit, p. 710), any more than he can combat the money fever which lures Pancks and even the staid Arthur Clennam into ruinous speculation. ~œ. Sleary, even though he provides legitimate entertainment, to plead for its place in a society which has lost its sense of enjoy- 75. ment. The simple goodness and open-handedness of the early benevolen t gentlemen \VOuld have no place in Dickens' middle novels. The benevolent gentlemen of this period have their philanthropy curbed by circumstances beyond their control. However good their intentions, they cannot triumph over a society which, with its many evils and forlorn human components, has gained the upper hand over individual kindness. 76.

CHAPTER IV THE LAST BElrEVOLENT GENTLElVŒN

Money is a main theme of nearly every book that Dickens wrote: getting, keeping, spending, owing, bequeathing provide the intricacies of his plots; character after character is constructed round an attitude to money. Social status without it is subordinate. The Victorians were .:;reatly concerned vli th financial success and pros peri ty. To the middle class, Yvhich domina ted England, poverty was almost a form of sin. A world in possession of machines appeared to offer unlimited opportunity for material success to any man with the desire to succeed. The Iniddle and upper classes were investing in the stocks of expanding industries. As pros peri ty grevv more uni versal, i t alone was not enough. New social barriers were erected, and "respectability" became important. To be rich was not a sufficient guarantee of social position; money had to come from "acceptable" sources. Dickens' last two completed novels, Great Expectations ( 1860-61), and Our ;:,,Iutual Friend ( 1864-65), are more concerned with money and its effects on people than any of his earlier works except Dombey ~ Son (l846-48). He not only examines the uses of money, but the origins of fortunes. The two last benevolent gentlemen, Abel Magvii teh of Great Exuectations and Nicodemus (Noddy) Baffin of Our l.'Iutual ]'riend, play more signi- r~cant'" ro"1 es than any previous benevolent gentlemen since Mr. Pickvvick, be cause they show the power of money. Nei ther of them gives it away as the early benevolent gentlemen did:

1 House, p. 58. 77. they administer i t through an intermediary; IVIagwi teh relying upon the services of Jaggers, and Boffin upon those of his secretary, Rokesmith. Great Expectations is, perhaps, Dickens' clearest statement of the pow·er of money for good or evil. He shows how it can break dovm class barriers and become the social equalizer. Magwitch, provider of the fortune, is different from Dickens' ether benevolent gentlemen in that he demande a return for his money, thus reversing the earlier patterns of generosity. He is "a nightmare permutation of Mr. Brownlow and I'o'Ir. Jarndyce. He is the benevolent guardian, secretly manipulating the fortunes of the hero and protecting him, turned into a condemned felon who, like a horrible old dog, 2 gloats over his victim." The benefactor has become a master and the recipient a slave, a relationship which is more horrifying because neither is fully aware of it, nor that they are both subservient to money.

~mgwitch's position in society -- a convict and an outcast -- sets him apart. He is no genial, smiling old man who dispenses money openly, but "a fearful man, all in coarse 3 grey, with a great iron on his leg" who enriches Pip in secret. He is permanently grateful to the child who brings him food and a file when he escapes to the marshes. Pip, by this one act of charity, has unknowingly and inextricably

2 J. Hillis hiiller, Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959), p. 255. 3 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (London, 1953), p. 2. 78.

linked his o~n life to that of the convict, for years later Magwitch expresses his gratitude to him by assuming a secret, economie parenthood. With the money he makes in Australia, he pays for Pip 1 s education, 'Nishing to turn "his 11 boy in to a gentleman.

Unknovm to h~gvritch, his money has the reverse effect on p. It transforms him into a cad and a mean-spirited snob. He lives the life of a flaneur"' in London society by acquiring 4 the manners and outward appearance of a gentlema~, but he becomes idle, extravagant, ungrateful and ashamed of his origins. Worst of all, his "great expectationsn do not even make him happy. He constantly suffers from boredom, "a v1eariness in [fiiiJ spiritsn (p. 258) and "restlessness and disquiet of mind" (p. 258); he also suffers from a lack of compulsion which completely paralyzes his will. ~aagwitch is the first benevolent gentleman whose money has not helped, but corrupted, i ts recipient. This is not Magvvi teh' s faul t; he can in no way be blamed for Fip 1 s arrogance and snobbery. In the world of Great Expecta ti ons, money is harmless only ïihen i t is devoid of a..."ly false sense of digni ty and v.;orth; Dickens shows what it can do to those without the ability to use it wisely. 4 TIToney alone could not make a man a "gentleman"; other requirements were a suitable education and "polish. 11 Magwitch shovrs that he realizes this when he stipulates that Pip shall be removed froo the village and sent to London to learn to become a gentle:san. He feels that in the "right" atmosphere his rnoney can combine vd th education to raise Pip to a gentleman's status. In Our I':Iutual Friend, Boffin unconsciously parodies the importance of education. He thinks of it as desirable for somebody vii th money and promptly sets about to acquire vvhat was denied to him in his working-class background. Although illiterate, he employs his "literary gentleman, 11 Silas Wegg, to read aloud to him The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 79.

Magwitch cannet resist the temptation of returning to England, even at the risk of his life, to see "the gentleman wha t [fi§/' made 11 (p. 313). In the nocturnal meeting betvveen him and Pip, before the revelation, Dickens explores subtly the connections betvveen a gentleman, his money, and patronage. Magwi teh' s first act of gratitude to Pip had been to send him two pound notes, via a discharged convict: "Nothing less than two fat S'.vel tering one-pound notes that seemed ta have been on tenns of the warmest intimacy with all the cattle markets in the county" (p. 73). Pip, not knovdng Magwitch is his bene factor, tries to repe.y hin: 11 'Like you, I have done well since, and you must let me pay them back. You can put them to seme ether po or boy' s use'" (p. 303). He gi ves Magvvi teh "two one-pound notes" which are "clean and new" (p. 303). For him, the debt of the "fat, sweltering pound notes" is cancellled by the "clean and new" notes, which he thinks Miss Havisham has 5 provided. In his pathetic attempt to patronize and "pay off" Magvvi teh, Pip shO'vVS the phila..YJ.thropy of the rich; not giving, but repaying a fragment of what they have received. For a moment, the situation of the benevolent gentleman is ironically reversed, un til :Niagwi teh startles Pip by burning the money, and destroying vdth it Pip's delusions of the "clean11 source of his fortune. Pip has to learn that his leisured life has been paid

5 For the comparison of the money, I am indebted to Christopher Ricks' essay, nGreat Expectations," The Dickens Critics, pp. 199-211. 80. for by the suffering and forced labour of the convict: 'Yes, Pip, dear boy, I've made a gentleman on you! It's me wot has done it! I swore that time, sure as ever I earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. I swore arterwards, sure as ever I spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard that you should be above work. Vfuat odds, dear boy? Do I tell it fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. I tell it, fur you to rwnow as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so high that he could a gentleman -- and, Pip, you're him!' (p. 304). Magwitch would not only make Pip a gentleman, but would own him, and live vicariously through him. 'Nhen the blood horses of the colonists flung dust over him as he walked, comforted himself with the thou.ght: "If I ain't a gentleman, nor t ain' t got no learning, I 'm the ovm.er of such. All on you ovms stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentleman? 11 (p. 306). He wants to enjoy his sense of power and to patronize: u'I've come to the old country fur to see my gentleman spend his money like a gentleman. That'll be ~

• M,y pleasure 'ull be fur to see him doit'" (p. 313) • use of "benevolence" is selfish because it stems from a desire to possess, instead of giving freely. He keeps taking

Pip 1 s umvilling hands, surveying him "w'i th an air of admiring proprietorship" (p. 315).

I~gwitch pays a high priee for this revelation because his money has created a class-consciousness in Pip which makes him repudiate their connection in horror: "The abhorrence in which I held the man, the dread I had of him, the repugnance wi th ~which I shrank from him could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast 11 (p. 304). By this disclosure has also shattered Pip's ability to consider himself • a gentleman "by right." Pip, vrho once winced at Joe' s illiteracy, is forced to realize that his ow.n education, \Vi th i ts re sul tant fastidiousness, has be en paid for by a convict "guilty of I knew not what crimes" (p. 308). He must realize, tao, that his harrar of Magwitch is irrational. Magwitch wants Pip ta continue living on an unearned income, which Pip was quite content ta do as long as he thought this income came from Miss Havisham. Pip refuses to accept any more 1:1oney from Magwi teh, a proper decision sin ce he finds him repugnant, but his "noble renunciation 11 is really ironical, since he s it on snobbish grounds. cause he is himself "respectable," he ca'W.ot take money from a criminal and he feels that Magwitch's money is tainted. Yet the money has been honestly earned by sheep farming and stock breeding and is not the product of any crime. 1\'Iagwi teh' s soli tary labour and suffering, his pride in Pip, and his desire to be accepted all make him one of those characters who, in Orwell's words, 6 "are more pathetic than the author intended." As Pip revalues the convict's gratitude and devotion, he learns to love him. By the tirne :Magwi teh is captured and dying, can honestly say: "My repugnance to him had all mel ted away, and in the hunted vmunded shackled crea ture who held lilY" ha.nd in his, I only saw a man who had mean t to be lilY" benefactor, Yvho had fel t affectionately, gratefully and generously, towards me vri th great constancy through a series

6 Orwell, p. 35. 82. of years" (p. 423). The 11 dunghill dog," whose money almost destroyed Pip, has finally made a "gentleman" out of him. By evoking nobler feelings, by sharing the convict•s guilt, suffering with him, and appearing publicly at the trial, Pip has found his real self. Now that Pip no longer despises Iviagwi teh, he could be a ·.rmrthy recipient of his money, but ironically, i t is forfeit to the State: the results of all Magwitch's toil and his intended benevolence are S\vept away to enrich the society vvhich cast him out. For Pip, the loss of his expectations is disastrous, for he has nothing to replace them. Y1ben Ralph Nickleby 1 s money is 11 swept into the coffers of the state" (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 830), Nicholas not concerned. He can afford to repudiate his uncle's wealth, because there is Cheeryble money available instead; but Pip loses everything. All that is salvaged from the vœeck of his fortunes is the partnership for Herbert Pocket, which Pip bought for him secretly v1hen he had money. This is his only act of true charity; 1\ standing in the role of a benevolent gentleman to Herbert, he also unconsciously prepares his own future as a clerk in 7 Clarriker's. Both Pip and Magvvitch have to learn the fundamental lesson of Great Expectations: "All the claims made by wealth,

7 At the end of Great Expectations, Pip emerges as an "embryonic" benevolent gentleman. This development reveals itself, firstly, in Pip's purchase of the partnership for Herbert, vmen he has money; and, secondly, in his loving concern for Magwitch, when he has none. social rank, and culture to endow the individual with true 8 selfhood are absolutely false. 11 M.agv;i teh wants to turn Pip into a gentleman by the use of money alone, and almost succeeds in destroying him; Pip finds himself only through his selfless devotion to the convict. Magwitch has to learn that benevolence must not have strings attached. He gives Pip a fortune partly from gratitude, but partly to reinstate himself in his ow.n self-esteem; his is not true benevolence because his ovvn interests have inspired it. is euilty of trying to possess and manipulate another human being, just as he himself was once possessed and manipulated by Compeyson. He has fashioned Pip, just as r.,Iiss Havisham fashioned Estella, to be the instrument of his vengeance upon society. By attaching conditions to his benevolence, he destroys the situation in vvhich money is acceptable. Both he and :Pip must learn that r:1oney cannet buy everything; they must move from their positions of stubborn pride and self-consideration, which money brings about, towards the goodness that lies in themselves. The society of Our I':Iutual Friend, even more than that of Great Exuectations, nis [.On-;} of monetary barbarism, devoid of culture, and emptier still of sincerity, generosity, integrity 9 and warmth of feeling." In this novel, money seldom brings happiness. Dickens shovvs instead how the desire to acquire it by any method, no matter how unscrupulous, distorts values

8 Miller, p. 271. 9 Johnson, II, 1024. 84. and cri})ples humane feel s. Not money itself, but ople's attitudes towards it, corrupt and destroy in a society enslaved by the idea of wealth. Against sombre background, Dickens sets his benevolent gentleman, Noddy Baffin. Coming after Magwitch, Ylho "turns the tables" on all the previous benevolent gentlemen, Baffin v10uld appear to be a miraculous return to the early benevolent gentlemen. He is simple, good-natured and generous; he even "trots" about like Idr. Pickwick and the Cheerybles. Above all, his niclmame, "the Golden Dustman," has a fairy-tale sound. Orwell says: 11 The good rich man cames back, in full glory, in the rson of Baffin. Baffin io a proletarian by origin and only rich by inheritance, but he is the usual deus ex machina, solving everybody's problems by 10 showering money in all directions." This uncomplicated vie\v' of Baffin is taken. However much he may resemble the early benevolent gentlemen superficially, his behaviour in fact very different from theirs. First, although Boffin's money never spoils him, he ma_kes concessions to his vïife' s craving for fa.shion which v1ould have been unthinkable to the Ghee~Jbles. He buys a large house, new furniture, and keeps servants; he also buys a carriage for going visiting and to the theatre. Secondly, his relationship th Silas lacks straightforwardness; as an employer he is not shrevld and has to resort to deception himself to find out that he is being deceived -- a policy that the Cheerybles

10 Or-vvell, p. 8. 85. vmuld never have considered in their treatment of employees. Thirdly, he is thwarted in his benevolent scheme for adopting Johnny and providing for Betty Higden; such disappointments did not befall earlier benevolent gentlemen. Lastly, the most important difference lies in the episode of the feigned miserhood. Any of the early benevolent gentlemen '>'lOUld have simply given Bella a cture on the perils of marrying for money, but Boffin feels the need for a very elaborate ruse to drive the lesson home. That he should have felt it necessary at all to resort to such measures is a clear indication of the strikine;ly different societies in which the early benevolent gentlemen and Boffin live. The early benevolent gentlemen exist in a simpler society, where good ~~d evil are clearly defined and money, though extremely useful, is subordinated. Our l\'lutual Friend portrays society at the peak of mid-Victorian prosperity when social distinctions are beginning to disintegrate and noney has become all-povverful. If any reader thinks that Boffin belongs in the atmosphere of the early benevolent gentlemen, let him try the experiment of mentally transposing him and his pretended miserhood to the pages of Nicholas Nicklebx. Boffin vvould be as much of a misfi t the re as the Cheer.rbles would be amongst the Veneerings and Podsnaps. The physical description of Boffin differs in tone from that of any of the previous benevolent gentlemen. They were often eccentric in appearance, but Boffin verges upon the grotesque: 86.

Bath as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but \vith bright, e er, childishly-inquiring grey eyes, under his ragged eye brows, and broad-brimmed hat. A very odd-looking old fellow altogether.ll It almost seems as though Dickens himself has not at qui te decided vvhat at ti tude to adopt to\'vards Baffin. He intends him to be generous and "good," but there is not the same open admiration his goodness as the re '.vas for tha t of the early benevolent gentlemen. Dickens seems to be detached, almost to point of disparagement, in his descriptions. Boffin's sentimentality is not glossed over, but ridiculed; his lack of education shows him greatly at a disadvantage in his con- , versations with Wrayburn and Lightwood, and his na'ivete makes him the prey of Wegg. The simplicity of the early benevolent gentlemen was never mocked; Dickens still respects it in Baffin, but also shows its limitations. He describes Mr. and Mrs.

11 Baffin in their "Bower : These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so far on in their journey of life, by a religious sense of duty and desire to do right. Ten thousand weaknesses and absurdities might have been detected in the breasts of bath; ten thousand vanities additional, possibly, in the breast of the woman (p. 101). The formula of goodness, ''a religious sense of duty and desire to do " is there as before, but the tone of reverence is missing, because Dickens had come to realize that goodness alone is not enough in a complex society. As the novel progresses, hovvever, he goes a long way towards erasing the t impression

11 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (London, 1952), p. 46. 87. given by Boffin. He shows him becoming shrewder as he groviS more accustomed to his vveal th. This development, from simplicity and trust to a greater worldly vdsdom, gives Boffin added interest and compensates for the earlier disparagement. Boffin's wealth, too, far surpasses that of any other benevolent gentleman. He is not just "comfortably off, tt but is verj rich indeed. Having been a dustman all his life, he comes into possession "of upwards of one hundred thousa.nd po~~dsn (p. 88) as the residuary legatee of John Harmon. The origin of the fortune, \vhich Boffin helped to build up, can be traced, not to b2..nking nor industry, but to "dust," a euphemism for refuse of all kinds: Rubbish, in the mid-nineteenth century, was removed by private contractors and piled in huge dunps in North London. These were enorrnously lucrative to their ovmers. Jewels, coins and other valuables v.:ere often found in them. Odorous and soggy, infested by rats and flies, these piles of soot, cinders, broken glass, bottles, crockery, worn-out pots and pans, old papers and rags, bones, garbage, human feces, and dead cats, were picked over sorted for sale to brickmakers, soap boilers, paper mm1t1.facturers, road makers, dealers in metal and glass, concrete rs. The soot was used as fertilizer, decayed animal snd vegetable matter as manure; even the dead cats were sold for their skins.l2

Bof'fin' s ovm mounds formed "a tract of suburban Sahara, where tiles and bricks were burnt, bones were boiled, carpets were beat, rubbish was shot, dogs ·were fought, and dust heaped by contractors" (p. 33). The dust heaps are filth, ordure, and excrement, but they represent money, and so are considered

12 Johnson, II, 1030. For a further discussion of the economie background of dust heaps, see William Miller and Vi. Laurence Gadd, "Dust Heaps, Then and Now," The Dickensian, XXXI (1935), 147-150. See also Humphry House, The Dickens World, p. 167. 88.

desirable by society. In using the image of filth to portray weal th, Dickens shoY>'S his contempt for the domina ting values 13 of money-greedy people. Society, represented by the Podsnaps, Veneerings and Lammles, sees the mounds in terms of capital accU<'nula ti on and opportunism, which have the place of honest vwrk in the ir world: Have no antecedents, no establisheù character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of ction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. Where does he come from? Shares. \Vhere is he going to? Shares. Vi11at are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares. ':h1at squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything! Sufficient answer to all; Sh~res. 0 mighty Shares! (p. 114). No sooner is it kno\vn that Boffin has inherited the mounds than society is at his feet: "Behold all manner of crawling, creeping, fluttering, and buzzing creatures, attracted by the gold dust of the Golden Dustman!" (p. 209). Society calls to leave cards, although it despises his humble origine; "trades man's books hunger, and tradesmen's rnouths water, for the gold

13 Dickens' ow.n attitude to money in this novel is undoubtedly ambivalent. He stresses its unsavoury origin in mounds, and rel a tes hovv i t ruined old Harmon, the miser. Yet reader is meant to be as delighted as Boffin when all the v:eal th is handed over to young John :tiarmon and Bella. The deduction to be drawn from this ending is that there is no objection to inheriting wealth viithout vmrking for it, and it only wrong for old Harmon to hc:we buil t up the mounds of th. This clec.:.rly absurd because Harmon was providing an honest service to the cornnunity. The deeper explanation lies in the attitude to the money. Old Harmon's attitude was miserly and the re fore wrong; his son' s attitude is vdse and generous, therefore he is a worthy heir to the fortune, regardless of its origins. The inference is that the money from the mounds becomes transformed somehovv by passing through the of Boffin, who uses it wisely because he }~ows its VD.lue, who gives i t away in the spirit of true benevolence. 89. dust of the Golden Dustmann (p. 210). Begging letters and appeals for charities arrive in hundreds, addressed to the man ·who has be come "a prey to :pros peri tyn (p. 178). Baffin remains unmoved in the midst of sycophancy, hypocrisy and blatant impudence. is safe because is not corrupted by wealth, and never entertained (even if he could have afforded to do so) the idea of Shares. To him, the mounds are the tangible proof of a lifetime's honest work, and his concern for them is personal, rather than financial. They vrere left to him and to îfirs. Baffin because old Harmon knew "these tvw faithful servants to be honest and true ••• and had perceived the powerlessness of all his vteal th to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt" (p. 101). Baffin, like Magviitch, lmmvs the value of money that has en earned, but he is ill-equipped to face the predatoriness of society. Apart from his rrife 's innocent enjoyment of the pleasures of vveal th, the rr:oney brings him more ·.vorry than happiness, and he can hardly vvai t to hand i t over to young John Har.rnon. 3offin's pretended rniserhood is, in some ways, a puzzl and not completely successful episode. To anyone convinced by it, all Boffin's benevolence appears negated; to the unconvinced the episode seems merely a clumsy contrivance.

In "Postscript, 11 Dickens explains that he had prepared for it carefully and kept it unsuspected by deliberately flaunting the impersonation of Harmon/Rokesmith. The drawback to this deviee is that the reader, having solved the problem of Harmon's identity, is apt to take Boffin's pretence at face value. This 90.

is not the first time that Dickens uses artifice to demonstrate Yiorth or to expose fraud. In I:Iartin Chuzzlewi t (1843), old Martin leads Pecksniff on to a full disclosure of his hypocrisy and self-interest by feigning to be his senile dupe. Dickens gives many hints that old ]:J:artin not the feeble tool he appears because wishes to share pretence and to antici-

pa te Fecksniff 1 s discomfi ture ';,'hen all revealed. The hints given during Boffin's miserhood sugGest that the apparent deterioration is genuine.

1 s pretence to Bella is worthier than old

Martin 1 s to Pecksniff, because he does it to save and not to destroy. The conversion of Bella from mercenariness to genuine love, by seeing her grasping attitude mirrored in her bene factor, is the central moral crisis of the novel. Boffin can

see tha t Bella 1 s v:orldliness is leading her to marry for money. With the connivance of Harmon/Rokesmith, who impersonates a poor man, Boffin acts out the cure for Bella's damaged moral values in showing her vvhere the love of money leads. Boffin is very thorough in his impersonation of miserliness; he frightens Bella, rather than guides her, into the right way.

Rer o~m mercenariness has always been shown as partly affectation. She tells her father: '"It's not that I care for money to keep as money, but I do care so :o.uch for v-.rhat i t will buy • • • I

1 AM so mercenary! " (p. 319). The secretar>J, who loves her, finds her "so insolent, so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary,

so careless, so hard to touch, so hard to turn! 11 (p. 208). Her regard for money is not that of the Veneerings and Podsnaps; 91. i t is based upon the dis tressin[; experience of not having enough, and then suddenly having too rouch. She is "the doubly spoil t girl: spoil t first by poverty, and then by weal th" (p. 308). Bella's desire for noney is still relatively innocent when Boffin decides to teach her a lesson. He shows her the di renee betvveen her ovm partially affected love of money and full-blovm miserliness. He roams the town wi th her searching for biographies of misers, and the more he buys them the more avaricious he becones. He talks to her about money in the same terms she herself has used: "'I think it's very creditable in you, at your age, to be so well up vlith the pace of the v'/Orld, and to know Y/hat to go in for. You are right. Go in for money, my love. Money' s the article • • • "' (p. 465). The more he urges her to put money first, the less she is inclined to do so. She tells herself: "No, I don't like it, and, though he is my liberal benefactor, I disparage him for it'' (p. 466). The impersonation reaches its climax in the scene betvreen :;:loffin a'tld Rokesmi th. Boffin' s progressive rudeness to Rokesmith makes Bella ashamed of the disdain with which she herself treated the secretary. She turns on Boffin after he tells Rokesmi th: "' I knor1 this young lady, and we all three know that it's money she makes a stand for-- money, money, money -- and that you and your affections and hearts are a Lie, sir!'" (p. 596). The lesson goes home. Bella begs to be made poor again, and pleads ,vith her benefactor: ti'Don't give me money, Boffin, I won't have money. Keep it away from me ••• '"(p. 596). She sees herself as 11 a worldly shallow 92. girl whose head was turned" (p. 598). Boffin's ruse has succeeded, for she is driven to marry the man who loves her and proves herself worthy to share his fortune. After Bella's departure, the deception thins. Boffin is next sho~TI paying off the Lammles and re-united with his wife. The unsatisfactory aspect of Boffin's miserhood is that it is too convincing. Dickens gives abundant details to produce realism, particularly in the repeated descriptions of Boffin 1 s face: "its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain craftiness that assimilated even his good humour to itself ••• 11 (p. 472), and "a dark cloud of suspicion, covetousness, and conceit Lëvershadoweij the once open face" (p. 465). l\'Irs. Baffin sheds tears at her husband's behaviour (although these are later explained). Even Rokesmith is genuinely astonished at some of Boffin's sayings. As A.O.J. Cockshut observes, "a very deep excitement spreads into the 14 writing" during the miser episode, to such an extent that it seems possible that Dickens really intended Boffin to become a miser and only changed his mind at the last moment. Certainly Boffin's earlier simplicity is incompatible with the extraordinary abili ty for acting vvhich he la ter displays. In a way, too, he is being logical when he is a miser. His money has broucht him little but begging letters and appeals and has shovm him the \vorst side of hurnan nature. He is unable to enjoy using his wealth; so it seems probable that he might

14 Cockshut, p. 181. 93.

come to value it for its ovm sake. The importance of the miser episode is that it shows the inherent possibility of money beine; able to corrupt even a genuine benevolent gentleman. During the unconvincing disclosure which follmvs the pretence, Boffin explains his simple idea. He wanted to prove

11 to Harmon: ' If L}3ell§}' 'Nas to stand up for you \Vhen you vvas slighted, she was to show herself of a generous mind v:hen you was oppressed, if she was to be truest to you when you was poo rest friendliest, and all this agains t her ovm seeming interest, hovv would that do?"' (p. 773). His action is v:ell- meant but complicated. No early benevolent gentleman could have conceived it, let alone have carried it through. He would undoubtedly have settled money on Bella in her ovm right, thus enabling her to marry a poor man if she wished. Boffin's explanation, hovvever, fits in with Eella's ov..n vievv of the necessity of her conversion; she calls Boffin "the dearest and kindest fingerpost 11 (p. 775), painting out "the road [Shy was taking and the end it led to 11 (p. 775), and showing her the right use of money. If Boffin's deception of Bella can be excused upon the grounds of his desire to se.ve her, the ception he prac- tises upon Wegg cannet. It is as poorly motivated and incredible as old Iiartin' s upon Pecksniff. Even be fore Baffin kno·,rys of Wegg's rapaciousness, his relationship towards him is uneasy; his early nalvete"" makes him a poor judge of character.

Friendship r!i th a creature like Wegg 'Nould clearly be impossible, but, as Humphry House observes, Baffin "behaves 94. to ifiiy ra th er like mis tresses who leave half-crovms in corners 15 hoping the servants will steal them. 11 To test Wegg, Boffin deliberately tempts him by making him read aloud the sordid stories of the misers and the accounts of treasures buried in dung-heaps. He is at least partly responsible for leading Wegg on in his se arch of the mou...'1ds. The duplici ty is compounded by Boffin's pretended humility and submissiveness towards Wegg, deluding him "to the last possible moment, in order that ifiiy disappointment might be the heaviest possible disappointment" (p. 788). Wegg deserves to be punished, but in concocting this punishment, Doffin stoops alr:2ost as low as ~Negg himself. The re

~;vas no reason why he should not have dismissed him \Vi th as rouch dignity as he dismisses the Lammles. There is also the additional question: "Why should Baffin go to so much trouble to punish a rascal?n For the same reason that old Eartin puts himself to months of inconvenience merely to shame one petty hypocrite -- namely, to expose corrupt attitudes to money. The game hnrdly seems worth the candle, but Dickens always insists that the guil ty should have their deserts and ~,'.'egg ends up, appropriately enough, in a scavenger's cart. It is a sign of the many disorders of society in this novel that Dickens permits a benevolent gentleman to resort to such ungentlemanly methods of dispensing justice. In the chapters of Our li':utual Friend vvhich concern Betty Higden, Dickens again introduces the theme of charity

15 House, p. 169. 95.

and dependence. This theme not just a return to the it opens up a new discussion of one of society's great evils patronage. Old Betty Eigden, who has \'iOrked all her days, is proud and inde pendent. She has never accepted charity in all her eighty years: '"She paid scot she paid lot when she had money to pay; she worked when she could, and she starved when she must'" (p. 200). The Boffins wish to help r, but she refuses their aid and the offer to become housekeeper at the Bower. All she will accept is the loan of twenty shillings before she trudges away, her burial money sevm into her dress. Her sole aim to avoid the workhouse and to die independent. Humphry House argues that "it is hard to see any genuine tragedy in Betty Higden," and adds, "most modern readers are bored by her and dislike 16 her for her monotonous talk and apparently stupid wanderings." This criticism is unduly severe. Betty Higden stands for the many inde pendent poor of her day and since, vrho have vvi thstood 17 the idea of charity and patronage. Her obsessional 16 House, p. 103. 17 Henry i\'Iayhew recounts an intervieYi wi th a pure gatherer L:pure" \vas dog manure used in the tannery process for the refining of leathey: "I could never bear the thought of go into the 'great house' LWorkhousi!; I'm so used to the air, that I'd sooner die in the street, as many I know have done. I'v-e known several of our people, who have sat down in the street vd th their basket alongside them, and died. I knew one not long ago, '.vho toot: ill just as she was stooping dovm to r up the pure, and fell on her face; she was taken to t~e London Hospital, and died there in the moraing. I'd sooner die them than be deprived of my liberty, and be prevented from going about where I liked. l'Jo, I'll never go into the work..'~-wuse. • • 11 11 0f the I'ure-Finders, 11 London Labour and the London Poor, 2 vols. (London, 1851), I, 145. -- 96. determination to be beholden to no one is an important part of Dickens' sentation of poverty and working-class values. If she falls into the bands of the "Honourable Boards" (p. 200), she viill be accepting a help which she sees as degradation; to her they are "those Cruel Jacks • • • that dodge and drive, and ~;vorry and v·~eary, and scorn and sha...-ne, the decent poor" (p. 200). In fairness to the commissioners for the Poor-Law, they did not offer the vvorkhouse as a solution for Betty Higden and her kind, nor did they expect that public charity vvould ever obviate the need for alms-giving: "V.bere cases of real hardship occur, the remedy must be applied by indivi dual charity, a virtue for -r:1hich no system of compulsory 18 relief can or ought to be a substitute." Betty, however, will not accept the "individual charity" of Baffin. She tells Bella: "'Your lady and gentleman would set me up like a queen for the rest of my life, if so be we could make it ric;ht among us to have it so. But we can't make it rit;ht among us to have it so. I've never took charity yet, nor yet has anyone belonging tome'" (p. 383). To her, taking money from 3offin vvould mean turning him into patron, and she cannat accept him on these terms. She y;ill only take the loan as an offer of his friendship. Boffin is forced to agree with her; his own experience of the torments of wealth has taught him that patronage is distasteful:

18 Report from His Ma;iesty's Commissioners for Administration and Practical Operation of ~ Poor Laws (London, 1834),-p: 228. 97.

'I can't go anywhere without being Patronized. I don't want to be Patronized. If I buy a ticket for a Flower Show, or a M:Usic Show, or any sort of Show, and pay pretty heavy for it, why am I to be Patroned and Patronessed as if the Patrons and Patronesses treated me? If there's a good thing to be done, can't it be done on its o~n merits? If there's a bad thing to be done, can it ever be Patroned and Patronessed right?' (p. 390). Boffin respects Betty's independence. His greatest act of benevolence is giving up the satisfaction of helping her, and contenting himself with the trifling loan. His respect for

tty Higden's values is based upon his o~n working-class background. has worked all his life "and had brought Lfii§l simple faith and honour an out of dustheaps" (p. 384).

He feels i t is his duty to allow Betty to go her ovm \vay, though in doing so she thwarts his kindly schemes, just as she unintentionally th·,.varted his plan to adopt Johnny by keeping the child too long from hospital. Boffin's instincts about Betty are fine; he knows that the independence of the working class, their hopes for amelioration, depend solely upon their avoidance of charity and patronage, however good people's intentions may be. Boffin is, in many ways, Dickens' most successful and complex benevolent gentleman. He is straightforward, yet capable of artifice when he feels it is necessary; he is generous, yet shrewd in giving. He is likeable for himself and does not create dependence on the part of others. bridges the gap between indiscriminate giving and using money wisely. Above all, he represents the kind of nature in which Dickens was most interested because he expresses all the worth and potential of the working-class whom Dickens admired, as 98. opposed to soc ty's rulers and exploiters. Magwitch and Baffin are more con:plex than the early benevolent gentlemen because they are products of a more complicated society. Open-handed giving and receiving are not possible for them because money has become too important in their world. To the ee.rly benevolent gentlemen, money was simply a tool to promote happiness or relieve distress, but for both Magwitch and Baffin it bas dangerous powers to corrupt those about them, and they cannet dispense it so artlessly. Magwitch means to provide for Pip, but his benevolence is false because his action stems from a desire to compensate himself at the same time. After a life of deprivation, he wishes to be reinstated in society through Pip, and, at the same time, to have Pip's gratitude and friendship in recognition of what he has done. This is clearly impossible because his money has turned Pip into a snob who does not love him until too late. Neither Pip nor Magwitch enjoys the use of the fortune. Apart from the secret provision which Pip makes for Herbert ?ocket, he does not have the right attitude to money while his bene factor is unknovm to him, and when he finds out he owes all to a convict he refuses to accept any more. Giving and receiving are f'raught with diff'iculty. Pip 1 s dearly-bought "res ctability" prevents him fron receiving in the old, grateful way of Oliver or Nicholas, and I-Jagvvi teh only succeeds in "loading" Pip 'Ni th "his wretched gold and silver chains" (Great Expectations, p. 307) because he does not know how to give like a true benevolent gentleman. Baffin knows the 99. meaning of true benevolence as well as he knov1s the value of money, but giving is difficult for him, too. He is presumed upon by 1Hegg, and he sees money spoiling Bella, so he is forced to hide genuine benevolence in duplicity to teach both a lesson. Neither Magwitch nor :Baffin is a failure in himself, but the benevolent schemes of both fail to sorne extent. They show that hurnan relationships can no longer be straightforward in a society where money has caused the simpler social categories to break dawn. lOO.

CONCLUSION

1 "I am a Reformer heart and soul," Dickens wrote to Baroness 3urdett-Coutts. If this claim rested upon his novels only, it could not be justified; they were wTitten primarily 2 for entertainment and social reform is not their main theme. They all show, however, a hatred of tyranny and oppression, and compassion for the poor and dovm-trodden. They are concerned with the problems of wealth and poverty, philanthropy and social betterment, but they do little more than indicate the paths which social reform might take. Dickens' interest was always in administrative, rather than political, problems. He was intensely practical and thought in terms of ~oney and deeds, rather than theories. To put his philanthropy into practice, he created his benevolent gentlemen. The early benevolent e;entlemen belong to Dickens• most optimistic period of • In the l830's, he saw social deprivation as sornething from which people could, and should, be relieved. The fu...'1ction of the early benevolent gentlemen is to distribute :oone,y to needy and to show goodness of heart to everyone; they are the embodiment of Dicl::ens • philosophy of love and concern for one's fellow-man. the early benevolent gentlemen are seen simply as providers of money, they are successful in

1 Osborne, p. 149. 2 Dickens' letters and speeches, his articles in Household Words and All the Year Round, his interest in Public Health and his work with Baroness Burdett-Coutts, all reveal his passionate concern with social amelioration and better conditions for the poor far more clearly than his fiction does. 101. the limited sphere of their efforts. They can raise their employees' wages, or absolve the hero from further economie struggles. They are less successful in their function as

"good n characters, be cause Dickens often fails to shovv a satisfactory connection betv.reen the evil he describes and the remedy v.-hich the benevolent gentlemen help to provide. For example, Dotheboys Hall breaks up, not because the Chee~rbles are good but because Squeers forges a will. Fagin's gang is destroyed, not because 1v1r. Brownlovr is kind to Oliver, but becauss the n:urder of i:~ancy is discovered and Eonks confesses. Yet it is clear that Dickens intended his benevolent gentlemen to oppose the evil around them and his public t, with him, that the early benevolent gentlemen filled an important social function simply by being morally good. In all the early novels crime, cruelty and oppression are the great evils, and rsonal kindliness is the great good: both good and evil are seen largely in terms of people rather than society as a whole. Dickens was a reforrr.er vvi thout the tas te and patience for organized politics. s philosophy rested on no definitely formulated basis. Since he was unable to find the government or social pov;er he could approve, he never gave any of his benevolent gentlemen a public office. Their achievements, therefore, remain limited and domestic; of great importance to the friends but of no conseq_uence to society as a whole. The benevolent gentlemen of Dickens' middle period undergo a change. They still exist to be good and generous, but their power has diminished appreciably. Dickens still uses 102. them to social injustices, but he has begun to see that man ' s 'oas1c . ring lies beyond the power of money and individual goodness to relieve. The novels of the 'fifties reveal more complication of plot and character those of the 'thirties because Dickens was beginning to use them as a vehicle of more concentrated soc argument. r, he had been content to feel problems emotionally; now thought begins to take the place of emotion. Evil, too, seen as less of a personal attribute and more as an infection of society as a whole. Genial Mr. Jarndyce exists side by side with Chancery and Tom-All-Alone's, he can do nothing about either; he cannat even prevent Richard from catching the Law's contagion. f;Ir. r;~eagles maves in the same society as the Barnacles J:,'ïerdle, but he can nei ther make progress at the Circu.mlocution Office nor prevent his friends from being swindled. The early optimism gone a~d is replaced by a more pene examination of society. Dickens' vision of it is gradually changing from purely personal and domestic to an understanding of the complicated interaction of its rr.any forces.

~ickens' last benevolent gentlemen have undergone a considerable change. He has placed them in a much more complex society, where human relationships are no longer straightforward and simple, and good and evil no longer carefully defined. r.loney, alv:ays subordinate in the early novels, bas now become the dominant aspiration of society and opportunism has taken the place of honest labour. In tcese novels of the 'sixties, 103.

Dickens shovvs more clearly the pov:er of money for good and evil. Whereas the early benevolent gentlemen's money was always put to good use, that of the later benevolent gentlemen has the power to corrupt. Iviagwi teh' s money helps to make Pip a mean snob, and Boffin's money almost corrupts Bella and completely corrupts Ylegg. Magwi teh is not a true benevolent gentleman, although he gives his money to Pip. The money bas been honestly earned, but is dishonestly spent because Magwitch keeps his identity concealed fTom unworthy motives. He wants to live vicariously through Pip, so that he may enjoy the pleasures of a society ',vhich has cast him out. His "benevolence" is not true benevolence, because his own desires have, in part, inspired it. 3offin seems to offer a return to the earlier benevolent gentlemen, but it is only a partial return. Like them, he is simple, kind, and good but his actions cannat be as straight forward as theirs because he exists in a disordered, money greedy society which bas distorted human values. Boffin's ovm values are as true as those of the early benevolent gentlemen. He is uncorrupted by wealth because he knows the value of money, having worked all his life to help build up the fortune he inheri ts. Tho se around him, hovvever, notably Bella and Wegg, love money too much and need to be taught a lesson. Boffin's feigned miserhood teaches Bella the right value of money, but it also shows the uneasiness of his relationship to Wegg, whom he deliberately leads on to self-exposure. Loyal and satis fying relationships between employer and ernployed are shown to 104. be impossible in a society v;here money cornes first. Baffin feels it necessary to resort to an elaborate tence to convey a lesson which the earlier benevolent gentlemen would have put in to simple vvords. In spi te of this, ne in many ways Dickens' most successful benevolent gentleman because he shows a true sense of values and genuine goodness in a corrupt society. A development appears in the benevolent gentlemen if they are all considered together. The early benevolent gentlemen are the ~nost simple and "good" be cause they exist in an orderly society where they do not have to think about their goodness; they act spontaneously in fulfilling demands made upon them. The middle benevolent gentlemen are still good and willing to give away their money, but their goodness has less effect; they themselves are more aware of evil round them and their lack of povrer to remedy i t. The last benevolent gentlemen are more complex in character, and Dickens seems to have lost his relish for "goodness" in portraying them. Since soc ty itself is more cornplicated, they must be more complex to compete in it successfully. The development is seen most clearly if liir. Pickwick and Baffin are compared, for each is best example of the benevolent gentleman of his period. Mr. Pickwick's goodne ss openness accord well vvi th the simpler society of Dickens' early novels. Baffin' s duplici ty shovvs that he is the product of a more complicated society which Dickens is examining more seriously. Both men are good, but by the time Baffin is created, goodness alone is not enough for a benevolent gentleman. 105.

The chief criticism of the benevolent gentlemen is that their charitable enterprises tend to provide palliatives rather than cures. Dickens was a moralist, not a politician. His novels do not reflect the preoccupation of his era with "socialism." He offers no definite remedies or solutions; just the one idea of benevolence. Goodness and kindness are necessary ingredients for social amelioration, but they are not enough in themselves. State aid is necessary before wider views of responsibility can prevail, and in glorifying private charity, vvhich can only be practised on a small scale, Dickens closed his eyes, in the novels of the 'thirties, to the duty of the State as the proper guardian of the poor and oppressed. 3 The pressure of events and conditions in the 'forties led him finally to accept the idea of State intervention, but the novels of the 'fifties vacillate between accusations of tyranny, and angry agitation for extension of State po·,yers. Dickens never shO'i'ted any awareness that the basic structure of society could be changed. s benevolent gentlemen help the poor but never raise their position in society. Dickens is content that the poor should remain in their condition, with their poverty alleviated by the fleeting results of private philanthropy, which was not in itself a strong enough solution for the ills of his time. Carlyle's philosophy of work went

3 The events of the 'forties which affected Dickens' outlook most profoundly were the bread riots and hunger marches, Chartism, the repeal of the Corn Laws and the national cholera epidemie. The social conditions for which he felt State intervention was most necessary were sanitary reform and public health. 106. nearer to the root of the problem, because he made the repeated claim that the poor are entitled to their share of the '../Orld's goods. :Dickens accepts fully the idea of social inequality, with the result that his benevolent gentlemen appear often to be givinz benefits to inferiors, rather than justice to fellow-men. But Dickens was, after all, vœi ting novels, not expositions of social reform. He displays just the quality expected from a popular novelist -- an appeal to the emotions. His benevolent gentlemen did, on the whole, appeal to his contemporary readers because they were good. He was sincerely advocating through them what he thought coincided vvi th the desires éllld needs of decent men of his day. But goodness is relative to its age; its moods and qualities vary, and Dickens' benevolent gentlemen are selà.om popular viit!l nodern readers. Today, they seem unctuous and intolerably sentimental. This shows just hov,r far the twentieth century has changed from the nineteenth in the organization of charity. Fevr of the present day poor 'dOuld care to be handed money by a tearful Pickwick. The State 1ws taken over wi th collective welfare policies, and the day of the benevolent gentleman is over. It vvould not be fair to sneer at the benevolent gentlemen because their kind of goodness is not in accord with modern tastes. The entire concept of benevolence has changed historically. In the eighteenth century, benevolence had consisted mostly in the giving of alms to the poor b;:r the rich. In the nineteenth century, emphasis was laid less upon money, 107. and more upon service and social action perforrned by the middle classes for the poor. Dickens' benevolent gentlemen shovfed far grea ter sympathetic involvement wi th those around them than the eiEhteenth centUI'"IJ 11 morally good" man. They fulfilled a useful, if limited, function in his novels. Through them., he was trying to move towards a solution of the eternal problem of the rich and poor. He was not alone in trJing to nake the pri vileged classes responsi ble for the underprivileged; the social historian, Sir Charles E. Trevelyan follows his idea: Since the beginning of this century Lthe nineteenth7 the gulf between the rich and the poor has become fearfully wide. The rich have become richer and the poor poorer. The proposal is to close this gulf and to bring back the rich into such close relation with the poor as cannot fail to have a civilizing and healing influence, and to knit all classes together in the bonds of mutual help and good-will.4 Dickens was striving, in his fiction, to achieve the "healing influence" and the "bonds of mutual help and good-vvill." He found no complete answer in private philanthropy, as the differences in the benevolent gentlem.en testify, but he did see a partial cure in one individual's concern for another. The benevolent gentlemen remain the most outstanding examples in his novels of his faith that the soodness of individuals in society matters more than its foms and institutions.

4 Helen J3osanquet, Social Ylork in London, 1869 to 1912: A History of the Charity Organizat~SOëiety (London, 191~ p. 53. 108.

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