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Putting an End to Great Expectations^ Putting an End to Great Expectations^ From the Norton Critical Edition of [by Edgar Rosenberg] GREAT EXPECTATIONS Nothing in Great Expectations ha sgenerated more heat than Dickens's (New York, London 1999) decision to rewrite th econclusio nof th enovel, wit thh resule leftt tha hte critics with two ending sto figh tover A.s a neditorial cru anxd problea inm edited by Edgar Rosenberg "sincerity," the two ending so fGreat Expectations ar crudele y comparable with things like the moral rehabilitatio no Waltef r Gay slick th ,time-servine, g young fellow in Dombey and Son, who wa intendes tperisdo aht sea but was then kept in reserve to marr yth eyoung Miss Dombey o;r th insertioe ofn the American episodes i nMartin Chuzzlewit, quica fik x tboosto the flagging monthly sales of the novel ;o rDickens's decisio ntkilo l Little Nell th,e ad- olescent heroine o fThe Ol dCuriosity Shop, who iRuskin',n s famous phrase, "was simply kille dfor th emarket a,s abutche kill as rlamb." Th ' questioe n whether Pip and Estella wer effecein tmate fod r th emarke ha exercisets d Dickens scholars in th 12e 5years sinc the eoriginal endin firsg camt lightoe t in the third volume o fForster's biography. Blasphemou ass thsuggestioe n may sound ,jus t maybe thos eof us wh ohav writtee onn th subjece t have rather inflated its importance ha: dDickens writte onn endine only—eitheg r one—it wouldn't have occurre dto us totake issue wit ith. Had hstuce tok the unhappy ending ,w eshoul dal lhave bough tht unhappe y endin ang d thought no more abou tit; and had he al alonl g gon foe r th happe y ending, we might have been equally happy .But no wthat this double monste har s affronted a hundred operatives, clairvoyant afte factth reprophet, s ohindfs - sight, it would be cowardic teo rufron mit. The chronology leading up to th ecompositio nof th secone d endin mag y be briefly summarized here .T ojudg fro emhis not teo hi friends ol dth, e actor Charles Macready, Dicken sfinished th novee olWednesdayn , Jun11,e 1861—possibly the day before .H earrange tdospend par o tffollowin the g week with hi sfellow artist Bulwer-Lytto o nnBulwer's estate Knebworth in , Hertfordshire ,to submi tth proofe sof the fina chapterl oGreatsf Expectations to Bulwer, whose opinio nh egreatly valued an, d tdiscuso s Bulwer's seria A l Strange Story, which had bee nschedule d tsucceeo d Great Expectations on the front pages of All th eYear Round o nAugus 10t Dicken. has writted ton solicit a full-length contributio fron mBulwe asearlr aAugussy t 1860; throughout autumn and winte thrformae otf th store any d th businese s details were settled ,and by January 186 1Dicken was abls teexpreso hi delighss "itn t A mor efruga l versio nthiof spieec appeare ad"Lass t Word oGreatns Expectations: Brie TextuaA f l on the Six Endings," Dickens Studies Annual (1981) 9 : 87-115 Gratefu .acknowledgmenl is madt toe AMS Press, Inc. 1. "Fiction, Fai rand Foul "[1880] in; E. T Coo. ankd AWcddcrbnrn. John eds., oThe f,WorksRuskin, 37 vols. (London: George Allen, 1908 34) , 275 n. But thchange Waltein Gae yr had bee preceden d by serious second thoughts se; elette t orForster [Jul 5184'6y,, (P]L 4593), . [pp 492-93 contain photographs of original proofs showing two different endings] 491 494 PUTTING AN END TO GREAT EXPECTATIONS PUTTING AN END TO GREAT EXPECTATIONS 495 the proud thought of standing side by side with you before this great audi- ticized criminals as vehicles for attacks on judiciary and penal conditions.' In ence."2 From Saturday the 15th to Tuesday the 18th, then, Dickens and the Paul Clifford, Bulwer explicitly set himself the job of exposing a "vicious two ladies of Gad's Hill, Georgina and Mamie, spent a long weekend on Prison-discipline and a sanguinary Criminal Code"; its hero anticipates Oliver Bulwer's estate—a fantastic piece of Tudor architecture, with its battlements, Twist in being caught on a pickpocket charge of which he is innocent and turrets, domes, gargoyles, catacombs, and "heraldic monstrosities" set in the the hero of Robert Louis Stevenson's Weir ofHermiston (1896) in being sen- middle of the peaceful Hertfordshire pastures, the sort of place in which tenced to death by his own father. The novel concludes with John Wilkes's Wemmick might have felt at home if he had owned as much portable prop- famous axiom that "THE VERY WORST USE TO WHICH YOU CAN erty as the Earl of Lytton. PUT A MAN IS TO HANG HIM." Nowadays, the impact of the final sen- Even if by 1860 Dickens had long hobnobbed with all the best people, tence of Paul Clifford is lost in its legendary opening words, which are syn- including the prime minister and the richest woman in England, the "thought dicated in thousands of American and European dailies—though its (canine) of standing side by side" with Bulwer may well have gratified Dickens's never author rather cheats by giving you only the first seven words of a sentence wholly subdued sense of his own arrivisme. Though Bulwer was not knighted that goes on for another packed fifty-two.6 Since the (aborted) beginning has until 1838 and raised to the peerage until 1866, the Bulwers traced their inspired at least one American college to sponsor a Bulwer-Lytton contest, in lineage to the eleventh century; Dickens's lineage more nearly approximated which the creator of the worst opening sentence collects an award for his Noah Claypole's in Oliver Twist, of whom he notes with the unconscious pains, it needs no Mark Twain to document the literary offenses of Bulwer- snobbishness of those who are one step ahead in the game that he "could Lytton; and it is only fair to note that Paul Clifford has been singled out for trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents."' Dickens and Bulwer its awful prose: Bulwer's grandson (and official biographer) himself laughs at first met in the late thirties; their friendship dated from 1850, Bulwer playing Grandfather's idiocies in calling a bedroom a "somnambular accommoda- host to Dickens and his amateur theatrical troupe at Knebworth and collab- tion" and beer a "nectarean beverage," in describing the acts of lighting a orating with Dickens in establishing a Guild of Literature and Art designed pipe as "applying the Promethean spark to his tube," and of amusing some- to help impoverished writers and artists. Bulwer had burst on the literary scene body as "exciting his risible muscles."7 Incidentally, Paul Clifford did not have in 1828 with a sardonic novel about a Regency dandy, Pelham; though the to wait for Snoopy to give it class: its first edition, the largest printing of any book was written largely as a dig at its hero's foppishness and the whole modern novel until then, sold out the first day. frippery associated with George IV, the physical—notably the sartorial—pres- Bulwer's genius for cutting his clothes to the latest literary fashion has been entation far overshadowed the intended critique; the French, who might have conceded by his most sympathetic commentators, and once the flush days of been expected to plume themselves on their own chic, hailed it as "le manuel the Newgate Novel were starting to fade, Bulwer (to get his most widely read du dandysme le plus pur el le plus parfait," a guidebook, as the Revue des books down and out) turned his attention to the uses of ancient and medieval Deux Mondes described it, "to English society in all the salons, cafes, and history and to the one novel whose title alone still rings a just-audible bell clubs of Paris"; Pushkin started a novel with the working title Pelymov or among people who have otherwise never heard of him—and that still enjoys Russkiy Pelam in which the denizens of Piccadilly and the Faubourg Saint- a fugitive and cloistered favor among specialists—The Last Days of Pompeii Germain act out their boredom on the shores of the Neva; and 170 years (1834), a meticulously researched romance, which, as one Bulwer scholar after Pelham's appearance the Western world remains the plaything of Bul- submits, "offered Bulwer the chance to comment on the decadence of the wer's playboy, who, after centuries of plum-colored clothes, was the first to late Regency Englishmen while seeming to portray only that of early imperial introduce black evening wear, and black it has been ever since.4 Today, Pel- Romans."8 One hundred and twenty years later the novel might have been ham is scarcely readable, and hence no longer read. written to order for Hollywood, and it was in fact made into a feature film By the time the two writers met, Bulwer had published seventeen novels, precisely a hundred years ago and into at least eight more movies in the including among his earliest books after Pelham two—Paul Clifford (1830) hundred years since. Today its filmic qualities, apart from the spectacular and Eugene Aram (1832)—in which Bulwer to all intents invented the short- stuff, are transparent in the sort of gimmick by which the audience is alerted lived genre of the "Newgate Novel" and set the vogue for presenting roman- to the foreignness of the product by the wackiest and showiest lingo. If the opening sentence of Paul Clifford makes for good newspaper copy, the open- 2.
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