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Sho!""c. titlo:

A stuày of the Bcnevolent Gentlemen in Dickene u Novele , ! . !1

A STUDY OF THE BENEVOLE NT GENTLEl'/iElf IN DICKENS' NOVELS by Caroline Mary Riddel, lu.A. (Edin.)

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

Department of English McGill University Montreal August, 1966

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@ Caroline 14ary Riddel 1967 ------

CONTENTS

Page

Introduction i

1. THE BACKGROUND, ORIGIN AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BENEVOLENT GENTLEMEN l

II. THE EA.."RLY BENEVOLE NT GENTLEMEN 26

III. THE BENEVOLENT GENTLETvlEN OF DICKENS' MIDDLE PERIOD 54

IV. THE LAST BENEVOLENT GENTLErv'iEN 76

Conclusion 100

Bibliography 108

!, \ '- INTRODUCTION

Preaching in Westminster Abbey on the third day after Dickens' death, the Bishop of Manchester said:

LDicken~ has been called in one notice an apostle of the people. l 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 which he presented in many of his characters, particularly in the early novels. His philos0~hy, neither profound nor original, was the hope that aIl classes might live together in kindness. Directly or indirectly, he was always saying that if people would only treat each other better the world would become a better place. His friend and biographer, John Forster, wrote: "He was ta try and convert society ••• by showing that its happiness rested on the same foundations as those of the individual, which are mercy and charity not less than justice" (Forster, II, 146). Two aspects of Dickens' life are most germane to his concern with benevolence. First, his admiration for human decency and kindness, which at times appears to be no more than moralising, was genuine and formed the essential basis of his work.

Although not a IIreligiousll writer in the accepted ser..se of the word, he based his life on the Christian -- and very Victorian

l John Forster The Life of Charles Dickens, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1872-74), III, 383-.- Subsequent references will be to this edition(hereafter referred to as Forster). ii

f ethic of love and concern for onels 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 wmch he wished ms readers to admire most. It was always his hope IIthat his books might help to make people' better" (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 ~üth poverty. The poor

always remained his "clientsll (Forster, II, 146), and were

neve~ 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 where individual generosity often meant the difference between living or starving. As a writer, Dickens was unique in ms experience of both sides of Victorian life; he knew first-hand what misery lay behind the facade of stolid prosperity. His background, fl1) together vdth the interest he always had in money for its own sake, made philanthropy a fascinating subject. He expressed these philanthropical views in ms novels

by creating IIbenevolent gentlemen. fI These characters are elderly men of private means whose principal function appears to be helping others out of financial or social difficulties. The help given is always voluntary and always appreciated. The benevolent gentlemen of the early novels seem to have been created less as characters in their own right than as props ( for the sagging fortunes of others. 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 that 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 answer such questions as: VTho wer€; these men? For what purpose did Dickens create them? VThat function do they serve in the novels? How great, or how limited, is their scope of action? Did they provide Dickens with his ultimate answers to the problems of human behaviour? Chapter l will discuss the background, origin and characteristics of the benevolent gentlemen. Chapter II will describe the benevolent gentlemen 2 of the early novels, Mr. Pickwick (The Pickwick Papers, 1836-37), Mr. Brownlow (Oliver Twist, 1837-39), the Cheeryble Brothers (Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39), IvIr. Garland and the Single Gentleman (The Old Curiosity Shop, 1840-41), and Scrooge (! Christmas Carol, 1843). Chapter III will be concerned with the benevolent gentlemen of Dickens' middle period, Mr. Jarndyce (Bleak liouse, 1852-53), Mr. Sleary (Hard Times, 1854), and Mr.

Meagles (Little~Qrrit, 1855-57). Chapter IV will discuss nickens' last two benevolent gentlemen, Abel Magviitch (Great

2 The dates given for the novels are those of their first publication in serial or book forme ( \ iv

Expectations, 1860-61), and Nicodemus (Noddy) Boffin (Our Mutual Friend, 1864-65). The conclusion will attempt to assess these benevolent gentlemen, their success and failure, and their relationship to Victorian society.

( CH..'lPTER l THE BACKGROUND, ORIGIN AIiD CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BENEVOLENT GENTLEl'IOOT

It has been said of Dickens that he was: An individual to the core, with a well-founded distrust of aIl government and aIl governmental enterprises, LWhQ7 placed his trust, his hope of amelioration exclusively in the impulse of privîte benevolence, the untutored common sanity of ordinary people. Perhaps the best way to begin a discussion of the benevolent gentleman is to examine this "well-founded distrust of aIl government and aIl governmental enterprises" which led Dickens to place his trust "in the impulse of private benevolence." Sometimes character can be seen more clearly in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is, and the most striking nega­ tive characteristic of the benevolent gentleman is that he is non-political. The reason for this is that Dickens himself was funda- mentally not interested in organised politics. Forster said that "LDickeny had not made poli tics at any time a study"

(Forste~ II, 147), and Dickens' own son, Henry Fielding Dickens, remarks that his father was IIvery intolerant of much that he 2 found in the body politic." As a shorthand reporter, Dickens had seen enough of Parliament in his youth to acquire a lasting contempt for it. ~Vhenever he wrote of Parliament in his novels,

1 '. Edward Wagenknecht, Cavalcade of the English Novel (New York, 1943), p. 230. - -- 2 nenry Fielding Dickens, Memories of ~ Father (London, 1929), p. 28. - 2. it was to satirize and never to commende He always made the same judgement -- that to the governing classes of nineteenth- century England the people and their problems were not important. Perhaps unconsciously, he stated his political views most clearly when he said: l will now discharge my conscience of my political creed, which is contained in two articles, and has no reference to any party or persons. My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed is, on the whole, illimitableo3 Dickens was a radical. This does not mean that he was a revolutionary or, in any sense, disloyal to Crovm or Constitution; but he was impatient vii th the established government. 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 is one who goes to the root (radix) of matters, 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 alternative to individual responsibility in law and government, or in private life. As Humphry House points out, "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 coyer almost

3 K.J. Fielding, ed., The Speeches of Charles Dickens (Oxford, 1960), p. 407. any person whose sympathies, whenever occasion offered, \'Vere ( 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 hovY this sentiment could be made effective in social and national life. Dickens never resolved this Question. The most obvious answer is a political one, but Dickens mistrusted Parliarnent. He had seen, almost from boyhood, that its shortcomings derived mainly from its members, most of whom were contaminated initially through the process 5 of election. Financial and social influence, often corruptly exercised, counted for more than individual merit; Dickens had good reason to suspect the integrity and sincerity of some, though not aIl, members of Parliament. Knowing the political 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 the needs of their constituents. Although Dickens had such strong sentiments about how Parliament should not be run, he never entered it himself to

demonstrate his theorie~. Forster was right about Dickens: "his old unal tered wish to better vlhat was bad in English institutions, carried 'with it no desire to replace them by new ones" (Forster, III, 503). JI.1any people, who mistool-c Dickens'

4 Hum:phry House, The Dickens World, 2nd ed. (London, 1942), p. 171. 5 An example of this is the election of 1'1lr. Veneering "to Parliamen t in Our Mutual Friend~ 4.

criticisms for genuine reformatory zeal, urged him to enter ( Parliament, but he always refused. The very wording of his

refu~;als reveals his contemptuous atti tudra. At one time he wrote, "I be1ieve no consideration would induce me to become a member of that extraordinary assembly" (Forster, III, 499): and again, ltlt 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 world" (Forster, III, 499). To Forster, he confessed a desire to "make every man in England feel something of the contempt for the House of Commons that I have" (Forster, III, 497). Every mention of the government in Dickens' novels is made in atone of impatience or boredoIn; no government official is portrayed without satire. If the state intervened for people's welfare, he showed it to be mistaken or tyrannical; but if it did not intervene, he accused it of indifference. It has been said that in aIl Dickens' work "there is a confusion of mind which reflects the perplexity of hie time; equally ready to denounce on the grounds of humanity aIl who 1eft things alone, and on 6 the ground of liberty aIl 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, Barly 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. ~'he 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 bim. 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 dut Y 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 what he wanted to see, and, for him, the poor were the heroes, the politicians and political economists the villains.

7 This point is admirably illustrated by Forster in the follovving anecdote: At the great Liverpool dinner after his country readings in 1869, over which Lord Dufferin eloquently presided, LDicken.ê7 replied.to a remonstrance from Iord 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 ·iame i t did not appear to him to be so weIl understood in England, as in some other countries, that literature was a dignified profession by which any man might stand OT 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 however 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 forro, that to have taken some part in public affairs might have shown him the ( difficulty in a free state of providing remedies very swiftly for evils of long growth. (Forster, III, 500-501). 7 a lack of understanding' of its complex problemso 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 bim. He lived in the era of Peel, Gladstone, and Disraeli, a period of enlightenment rarely reached before in English political bistory, but bis writing does not reflect any of the upheaval the y caused. It is not, of course, necessarily the dut Y 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 what he wanted to see, and, for him, the poor were the heroes, the politicians and political economists the villains.

7 This point is admirably illustrated by Forster in the following anecdote: At the great Liverpool dinner after his country readings in 1869, over which Lord Dufferin eloquently presided, LDicken§7 replied to a remonstrance from Lord Houghton against bis objection to entering publie 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 wbich "no consideration on earth would now induce him to break." Here however he probably failed to see the entire meaning of Lord Houghton's regret, which would seem to have beeL meant to say, in more polite form, that to have taken some part in public affairs might have shown 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 publie office. He thus evades the problem of showing how individual good-will and benevolence

can be made adequa·~e enough to face problems of administration. The benevolent gentleman has the power 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 with those about him. As I-Iumphry House says, "LDickensy good people are precluded from thought because if they once started thinking they might begin to become

tendentious; their scope of action is narrow ru~d domestic, because if it were wider they might be in danger of becoming 8 politicianso lt If the benevolent gentleman is not political, what is he, and how does he fulfil a social r~e? The answer is; he is "mora1ly good,1I which for Dickens was enough in itself, and he fulfils a social r~le by helping others and setting an example of kindly beaaviour. He is the man in the position of authority who can be trusted to behave weIl towards his dependents or inferiors; such a man was Dickens himself and such men he esteemed. In an essay on Dickens, George Orwell vTri tes, "In the last resort there is nothing he admires except 9 common decency.1I Here is another reason why Dickens is not

8 ( nouse, p. 51. 9 George Orwell, "Charles Dickens ll in Dickens, Dali and Others (New York, 1946), p. 52. concerned with the political scene; he is a moralist, and his interest is in human nature rather than "society." 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 ~inal solutions to the problems of society. \1hen Dickens attacks society, he confines himself to a moral attack, "pointing to a change of spirit rather than a change 10 of structure." His benevolent gentleman has thus a heavy burden to bear. He l'las 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. He also has to be wealthy. Dickens knew that neither well­ wishing nor advice alone could help people, and his benevolent gentleman needed to be a man of substance, as \vell as sentiment. He l'las been described as: That recurrent Dickens figure, the Good Rich Man, !yhi! belongs especially to Diclcens' s early optimistic periode He is usually a "merchant" (vve are not necessarily told what merchandise he deals in), and he is always a superhumanly kind-hearted old gentleman who "trots" to .and fro, raising l'lis employees' wages, patting children 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 gooQ king or kindly wizard

10 OI'\vell, p. 22. Il Orwell, pp. 6-7. 8. of fairy tale and legend. Its forerunners had been present, albeit in more rudimentary forro, in the novels of the eighteenth century which Dickens so much admired; they, in turn, were inf'luenced by the Shaftesburian idea of the morally good man. According ta Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), man could pattern himself sympathetically upon the order of nature. The existence of love and understanding between-people depends upon the idea of total harmony in man, derived from the harmony and goodness 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 OVnl 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 aIl human happiness. Sin, which deviates from virtue and happiness, punishes itself. Shaftesbury also argues that if the Supreme Being, in whose image man has been made, is activated solely by love and good­ will towards man, then man himself vvill 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 family, which, in turn, is part of a 9. larger social unit; this gives him a sense of fellowship which breeds obligations to others. Relying upon his inner "mo:r:al sense," man can recognize what actions are good, and virtue consists in a conscious desire, to do what is right: The virtue of a rational creature consists in a 'rational affection' towards right: a 'just sentiment' or 'proper disposition.' Thus a man begins to be virtuous when he makes 'the Conception of Worth 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.12 Shaftesbury tried to show tha"t self-love and social love are the same. He talks of the "natural affections" which

tend towards Itb.~ public good, and the "self-affections" which tend towards private good. In order that love of self should not predominate over natural love, man 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 according to the Private Interest and Good of 13 every-one, to work tov/ards the General Good. 11 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, "An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or IVIerit" , Characteristicks, 3 vols. (London, 1714), II, 1750 l must confess myself considerably indebted to Basil Willey's The Eighteenth Century Background for a summary of Lord Shaftesbury 1 s views upon virtue aJ.1.d meri t. See Ch. IV, 1?p. 57-74. 9. larger social unit; this gives him a sense of fellowship which breeds obligations to others. Helying upon his inner "moral sense," man can recognize what actions are good, and virtue consists in a conscious desire to do Ylhat is right: • The virtue of a rational creature consists in a 'rational affection' towards right: a' just sentiment' or 'proper disposition.' Thus a man begins to be virtuous when he makes 'the Conception of Worth 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.12 Shaftesbury tried to show that self-love and social love are the same. He talks of the Ilnatural affectionsll which tend towards the public good, and the "self-affections ll which tend towards private good. In order that love of self should not predominate over natural love, man 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 according to the Private Interest and Go·od of 13 every-one, to work towards the General Good." 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, TIAn Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit", Characteristicks, 3 vols. (London, 1714), II, 175. l must confess myself considerably indebted to Basil Willey's The Eighteenth Century Background for a summary of Lord Shaftesbury's views upon virtue and merit. See Ch. IV, pp. 57-74. 10. works of the eighteenth-century novelists, Fielding, Defoe, 14 Smollett and Goldsmith. Their debt to Shaftesbury is never directly acknowledged, but the figure of the good, or moral, man emerges from their pages and undoubtedly influenced Dickens' conception of the benevolent gentleman. Oliver Goldsmith's novel, The Vicar of 1,'iakefield, contains an example of the morally good squire, whose purpose in life has been to help those around him. Burchell (Sir William Thornhill in disguise) is discussing Sir William's awareness of the misfortunes of others:

He loved all mankind; for fortune prevented him from knowing there were rascals. Physiciru~s tell us of a disorder, in which the whole body is so exquisitely sensible that the slightest touch gives pain: what some 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 soul laboured under a sickly sensibility of the miseries of others.1 5 Dependent though Dr. Primrose comes to be upon Sir William's benevolence, he himself, ev en in poverty, was never known "to 16 turn the traveller or the poor dependant out of doors." Dickens loved, and was influenced by, this novel, and wrote that it was lia book of which l think it is not too much to say that it has perhaps done more good in the world, and instructed

14 For a description of TIickens' early reading, which greatly influenced his writing, see Forster, 1, 29. 15 Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (London, 1946) , p. 15. 16 Goldsmi th, p. 2. Il. more kinds of people in virtue, than any other fiction ever 17 wri tten." .Another of Dickens' favourite authors, Fielding, \Vas a known admirer of good nature, l'that aimiable quality, vrhich, like the sun, gilds over aIl our other virtuesj that is, which enables us to pass through aIl the offices and stations 18 of life with real merit." He created a man with "a benevolent 19 heart" in Squire Allworthy. The chief difference between Dickens' benevolent gentleman and his eighteenth-century counterpart is social. When Fielding created Squire Al lworthy, he made him a "gentleman" both by birth and breedingj no other conception of such a character would have seemed possible to him. Dickens, writing a century later, was the spokesman of a class in rebellion against social and political privilege -- the emergent middle class. He gave his readers Mr. Picbvick, Mr. Brownlow, and the Cheeryble Brothers, aIl of whom are middle-class merchants, actively engaged in or retired from trade. The Cheeryble Brothers are actual employers of workers in a business (to be distinguished from Squire Allworthy's upkeep of servants for the sake of his ovrn comfort and property). Two of Dickens'

17 Charles C. Osborne, ed., Letters of Charles Dickens to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Ist 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 Na~7itch and Nicodemus Boffin, ( originate from the working class; the former is a convict who becomes rich, and the latter a workman from John Harmon's dust heaps, who benefits under the terms of an extraordinary will. If Dickens' benevolent gentlemen are "gentlemen,1I theyare so because of their innate goodness and consideration for others, not because of social position. Without being a democrat politically, Dickens attempts to teach the democratic lesson that goodness exists in aIl orders of society, and is not 20 necessarily, nor most often, confined to its upper ranks. By making the benevolent gentlemen perfectly ordinary

in their origins, if not in their actions, Dickens leve1s 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 10ya1ty and obedience, particularly if the relationship were that of master and servant. Dickens altered this by changing the background of the benevolent gentleman, thereby increasing his sphere of action. A middle-class benevolent gentleman, particular1y one v,<,ho had worked his way up from the working­ class (the Cheeryble Brothers and Boffin) would obvious1y have a far greater :rapport wi th those belovo/ him than his predecessor.

20 V/ri ting about the Cheeryble Brothers, George Gissing says: "Of course they are plebeians; Dickens glories intheir defects of breeding, and more than hints that such defect is essential to the true philanthropist. 1l The Immortal Dickens, lst ed. (London, 1925), p. 106. He could fit in amongst bis felloTIs and help them unobtrusively, and also extend patronage easily to those whose ranks he had left. His position in the centre of -the social scale even .enabled him occasionally to help thcse 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 opportunity for being generous t{lan the eighteenth-century squire. Where the squire's generosity was bounded 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 Rumphry House. He lists what he calls "the main symptoms of Dickens's benevolence" as folloyvs: (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 pooro (2) An acute feeling for suffering in aIl forms, whether caused by poverty, sickness, cruelty (mental or physical) or injustice. The feeling becomes most acute when aIl these causes of suffering are combined in the sufferer, and there is somebody who has power to relieve them aIl. (3) Righteous, if ineffectual, indignation against all anomalies, abuses and inefficiency in social organisation or government 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 ffi1d 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 tlsymptoms of benevolence,1I 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 "creed" to follow, but based their actions upon Christian teaching. When he speaks of justice, mercy, and goodness in men, he meant his readers to understand him in terms of Christian ethics, which he intertwined vaguely with Rousseau's concept of the brotherhood of man. His benevolent gentlemen sometimes pray, but they never pause to examine the reasons for their good deeds. Their actions follow closely the simple religious precepts which Dickens set down 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 1s much better for you that they should fail in Qbeying the greatest rule laid down by Our Saviour than that y6u should (Forster, III, 484). The benevolent gentleman, then, acts from Christian motives, which remain unacknowledged; there is no policy of moral goodness, or overt religious directive. Some of Dickens'

public felt that his good ~en should have paid more conscious attention to God. Dickens, however, seldom describes religious services, chapels or prayer-meetings without pointing the finger ( \ 22 House, p. 46. of scorn. He ·felt that goodness should speak for itself and ( remain independent of doctrine, or of any self-conscious idea

o.f "doing good. 1l All the help and 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 himo tlThe goodness of the leading Dickens moral characters, from

Pic~vick to Boffin, depends on • • 0 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 dut Y 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 dut Y entering human relationships; 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 arose from an impulse of sympathy for a fellow creature was morally superior to one discharged as duty. Both 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 Fear Lof punishmeng or Hope Lof rewar17 can possibly be of the kind call'd ~ Affections, such as are acknowledg'd the Springs and Sources of aIl Actions truly goodo Nor can this Fear or Hope, as above intimated, consist in reality with Virtue or Goodness; if it either stands as essential toany moraJ. Performance, or as .ê: considerable Motive to any Act, of which some better Affection ought, alone, to have been ~ sufficient Causeo 24 "AlI kind things,1I Dickens echoed,"must be done on their own account, and for their ovm sake, and without the least reference to any gratitude ••• One does a generous thing because it is right and pleasant, and not for any response it is to awaken in others" (Forster, III, 519). Virtue, then, brings its own rewards. To Shaftesbury, it brought the "mental pleasuresll which there was no need to prove "to any-one of Humankind, who has ever knOVfn the Condition of the l~nd under a lively Affection of Love, Gratitude, Bounty, Generosity, Pity, Succour, 25 or whatever else is of a social and friendly sort." To Dickens, virtuous action was right and p1easant and brought its own enjoyment. The symbol of the benevo1ent gentlemen's disinterested goodness is the Christmas spirit or what Dickens himself ca11ed hi.s "carol philosophy." This is simply the idea that

chari ty and go 0 d-Yvill , 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 . Shaftesbury, 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 strangers; 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, ru~d aIl is kindness and benevolence! Would that Christmas lasted the whole year 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 strangers!26 Christmas had very little religious significance for Dickens who saw it as a time of feasting, rejoicing, and family re-union. Of aIl writers, he is the arch-priest of Christmas cheero No reader of The Picbvick Papers or The Christmas Books can forget the descriptions of turkey, stuffing, plum- 27 puddings, punch, mistletoe and Christmas parlour games. AlI this is for Dickens the true Christmas spirit -- the jollity, the kindness of everyone to everyone else, and the temporary breakdo\Vll of social and economic barriers. This is 28 the carol philosophy.

26 Charles Dickens, "Characters," II, Sketches ~ Boz (London, 1957), p. 221. The text of Dickens'works is that of The New Oxford Illustrated Dickens (1948-1958). AlI subsequent references will be to this edition. 27 So closely was Dickens identified with Christmas in his lifetime that on the day of ms death, June 9th, 1870, liA ragged girl in Drury Lane was heard to exc1aim, 'Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die toO?'1I Quoted from The Bookman - Special Number on Charles Dickens - (London, 1914J; p. 120. 28 The carol philosophy still persists today. Evidence of this is seen in the extraordinary number of charitable enterprises to which our attention is drawn every Christmas. Some charities campaign for funds at Christmas time only. 180

If it is taken just as a message to practise good- will aIl the year around, Dickens' appeal sounds childish in a commercial, highly competitive society. But, as Humphry Rouse points out, nIt is impossible to understand what LDicken.ê7 was trying to do if vve concentra te only on wha t the Christmas attitude positively set out ta teach: it is far more important 29 for wha t i t was meant to counteract 0 Il Dickens ,"vas 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 to restore the balance between self­ love and social, and to look to the needs of his fellow man in aIl his dealings. He was referring chiefly to monetary interests and class exploitation. As materialism grew in the nineteenth century, so did its attendant evils. In any acquisitive society, there is selfishness, greed, a struggle to obtain money and to protect what has been obtained. Money is synonymous with power; the capitalists, who have it, exploit those who have not, and use their power to perpetuate their own wealth. \Vith the ever-increasing importance of industry, political ecanomists claimed 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 Vfere no fixed wages; only those determined· by competition and the availability of workers.. If the poor or incapacitated were

29 Rouse, p. 67. 19.

unable te 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 between employer and employed was solely a monetary one. For 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 Nicholas he will always remember corning 30 to London barefoot. Their personal krlOwledge of difficul ties gives these men sympathy with the misfortunes of the labouring class. In their care for thuse they employ, they keep alive a spirit which was rapidly dying out of industry -- the relationship between mas ter and apprentice. As machines replaced hand labour, and men were needed only to tend them and increase output, the old relationship between man and master was going

( 30 See Nicholas Nickleby, Ch. XXXV. 20.

31 forever, and Dickens was trying to preserve the idea of it. c The factory overseer of a hundred 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 bene­ volent 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' carol philosophy counteracts 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 own economic condition and that poverty was the business

31 The most illuminating illustration of Dickens' concern in this matter appears in "No Thoroughfare," one of the Christmas stories, vœi tten in conjunction wi th Wilkie Collins.. The mne merchant, Wilding, is consciously seeking to restore old-fashioned, domestic business relationships and methods. He says: 'I want a thorougbly good housekeeper to undertake this dwelling-house of Wilding and Co., Wine Merchants, Cripple Corner, so that l may restore in it some of the old relations betwixt employer and employed! So that l may live in it on the spot where my money is made! So that l 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 under the same roof with me!' Charles Dickens, Christmas Stories (London, 1956), p. 548. 210

32 of the individual who suffered it. Requests for assistance Viere thought to indicate a need for personal reforme There was a conscious desire not just to help the poor, but to "improvell them, and help them help themselves. Poverty was seen almost as a sin in a society which had opportunities for greater production made possible by machinery, and a growing middle­ class to invest in the stocks of expanding industries. Puritanisru also had contributed to the idea that godliness and prosperity were connected. Everybody appeared to be mrucing 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 had not saved was looked upon as immoral in some way. If people were poor,

32 Even such enlightened humanitarians as Edward Denisoll and Octavia Hill thought in this way. Denison wrote: The people create their destitution and their disease. Probably there 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 w'Ork or of sickness, which there always must be. Letters and Other Writings of the Late Edward Denison, M.P. for Newark, edited by Sir Baldv~n Leighton, bart. (London, 1872), p. 59.

H~s 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 would 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 Common 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 "undeserving" poor can be traced back to Malthus, and, before him, Joseph To",msend. Tovmsend had wri t'lien: 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. Some check, some balance is therefore absolutely needful and hunger is the proper baléo.nce; hunger not as directly felt, or feared by the individual for himself, but as foreseen and feared for ms immediate offspring. Vlere it not for this the equilibrium would not be preserved so near as it is at present in the world, between the numbers of people and the quantity of food. It seems to be a law of nature, that the poor should be to a certain degree improviden t, tha t there may aly.,rays be some to fulfill the most servile, the most sordid, ffild the most ignoble offices in the communitYo 33 Townsend advocated decreasing the funds for public relief by nine-tenths, to teach the poor habits of frugality and to force them to work even harder. In this harsh outlook, he was sur- passed by a man of greater influence, the Reverend T.R. Malthus, who expressed similar theories in his Essay 2Q Population, written in 1798. Malthus' fear was that agriculture would not

be able to support an expanding popu~ation, and 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 TOvVllsend, A Dissertation upon the Poor ~ (- l2z ~ Vlell-Yvisher to Mankind (London, 1786), republished 1817, p. 51. 23. feared to be swamped by an enormously expanded class of poverty-stricken workers, who would vie with them in obtaining the necessities of life. às Humphry House says: Malthus hung over Rngland 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 l':fe raised, so surely there \7ould be bred a new race hovbEing on the misery-line, on the edge of starvation. However they might vdsh 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 VlOre 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 unamused; let them eat the plainest food, pinch to save, and save to lower the rates -- then 'civilization' migh t win through.34 The results of this doctrtne were iniquitous. Fear of revolts, uprisings, epidemics, 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 Rouse, p. 75. 35 In "à Vialk in a Workhouse, Il Dickens vvrote: "We have come to this absurd, this dangerous, this monstrous pass, that the dishonest felon is, in respect of cleanliness, order, diet and accommodation, better provided for, and taken care of, than the honest pauper. 1I The Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces (London, 1958), p.-539. 240 pittance wbich scarcely kept bim and his family from starvation. The workhouse, into which many were forced, was a place as grim and harsh as a jail, where families were separated 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, mass epidemics and starvation. The rich and the poor were two different races -- the former unconscious of 36 the real needs of the lattero For the poor there was little

comfort or hope, ju~t 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's economic system. 1t is only when these conditions are realized that Dickens' carol philosophy 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 what you like, our Queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed." "Vlhich nation?" asked the younger stranger, "for she reigns over two." The stranger paused; Egremont was silent, but looked inquiringly. "Yes,tI resumed the younger stranger after a moment's interval. "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympatby; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thought and feelings, as if they Viere dwellers in different zones, or inhabi tants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws. 1I "You speak of ___ ,11 said Egremont, hesitatingly. "THE RICH lÙ'JD THE POOR." Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil (London, 1845), pp. 76-77. 25.

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 that 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 aIl mankindo 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 "deserving" is not raised (or not in the early novels). Part of the extravagant generosity of the benevolent gentlemen is pure wish-fulfilment, in direct opposition to the dreary Malthusian doctrines of prudence and moral restraint. Dickens wanted to give the po or 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 cf goodness, are questions which remain to be answered.

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

CHAPTER II THE BARLY BENEVOLENT GENTLEMEN

They are aIl good-natured, and seem to act as they do because the y cannot 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:

Mr. Pickwick (The Picb7ick Papers, 1836-37), r~. Brovvnlow (Oliver Twist, 1837-39), the Cheeryble Brothers (Nicholas Nickleby, 1838-39), Mr. Garland and the Single Gentleman (The Old Curiosity Shop, 1840-41), and Scrooge (A Christmas Carol, 1843). Although their stories are very different, they them- selves have much in common. AlI of them are actually described as "benevolent," 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 cannot help it; the y are already members of that improved moral order which Dickens wished them to bring about. Their optimistic goodness may lead the reader to question their probability. If they, already good, need no improvement, and have lino temptations, difficulties, or struggles,lI how are they to arouse interest and to appear realistic? This is a problem which any other writer probably would have overcome by making the benevolent gentleman follow a definite policy of action (possibly political) that sets him apart from others, but this Dickens would not do. He attempts to make his benevolent

l 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 "tag.1I When the IItag tl was repeated in a subsequent episode, the character for whom it had been invented V/ould come to mind. For example, in David Copperfield, the dropping of "h'sl! and writhing of the body instantly summon up Uriah Heep. These IItags ll are most successful when used to denote evil or grotesque characteristics; Carker's white teeth forever smiling, Pecksniff's apologetic way of warming his hands at the fire, or Merdle 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 "tagsll in themselves~ whereas goodness, which 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 manner. 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 ])ickens' middle period, refers to the wind being "in the

East l1 when he is upset. Boffin, ])ickens' last attempt at a

benevolent gentleman, "trotsll to and fro, nursing ms walking stick as though it were a baby. These devices may help the reader to remember the benevolent gentleman, but they can hardly be said to add interest to ms portrait. They convey neither personality, nor dignity; Dickens meant his benevolent gentlemen to be admired, but they are not more admirable for these peculiarities. Since 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 gentlemen from political or moral

theories, or from any ambition except that of "doing good. tI It is this detachment, together with their peculiarities of

dress and mal1ner, which makes them such Il dreary , unctuous :3 monsters." They are required to act as the deus ~ machina for the fortunes of others, and tms they do, mechanically and predictably, in all the early novels. The help given is nearly

always the same; only the Utags ll differ. Dickens tried, and failed, to vitalize his early benevolent gentlemen by giving them slight faults of a IIso cially acceptable ll nature. Mr. Pich-wick, for example, frequently imbibes too much cold punch, but his drunkenness is not the

3 ( House, p. 51. 29.

sodden alcoholism of Sikes or Mr. Dolls; it is, rather, an ( '- amusing IItipsyness,1I 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 "delightful" fault when it insists on putting up Tim Linkinwater's wages, regardless of his wishes, and making him a partner in the business? Il'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 authorityo We must quarrel with him, brother Charles. 'Il

Another common Ilfaultll 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 off ers 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,

existe Mr. Pickwick (~ Pickwick Papers, 1836-37), is the

~irst 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 other

4 Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (London, 1950), p. 456. 5 See No. 3 of Humphry House's list of IIthe main symptoms of Dickens's benevolencell on p. 13 of this thesiso 29.

(- sodden alcoholism of Sikes or Mr. Dolls; it is, rather, an ',- amusing "tipsyness,11 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 "delightful" fault when it insists on putting up Tim Linkinwater's wages, regardless of his wishes, and making him a partner in the business? IIIlf he won't listen to reason, we must do it against his will, and show him that we are determined to exert 4 our authorityo 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, existe Mr. Pickwick (The 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 other

4 Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby (London, 1950), p. 456. 5 See No. 3 of Humphry House's list of "the main symptoms of Dickens's benevolence" on p. 13 of this thesis. 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. Mr. Pich.-wick 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. liter The Pickvvick Papers, Dickens perfected the benevolent gentleman, but Mr. Pickwick fathered aIl the reste The Pickwick Papers begins as a collection of sketches, ". but ends as a novel. The change occurs when the episodes become more complicated and link t,:;gether' to form the main plot of m. Pickwick's trial and imprisonment in the Fleet. As the situations become more serious, the character of n~. Pickwick develops correspondingly; he changes from the buffoon of the early sketches to a suitably dignified hero. At the beginning of the book, the reader laughs at, not with, Wœ. Pickwick: "Dickens has caught, in a manner at once wild and convincing, this queer innocence of the afternoon of life. The round moon­ like face, the rOUlld, moon-like spectacles of Samuel Pickwick move through the tale as emblems of a certain spherical 6 simplicity." Even Wœ. Pickwick's generosity is not very con- vincing in the first part of the 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, m. Pickvvick 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, lia monument to genial sanity." Dickens himself justified the change in Iris preface: It has been observed of Mr. Pickwick, that there is a decided change in bis character, as these pages proceed, and that he becomes more good and more sensible. l do not think 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 anytbing 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 "the change was becoming 8 necessary for his O\'VU satisfaction. Il As the merry adventures gave way to the scenes in the Fleet, a different Mr. 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, MX. Pickwick chooses

to go to prison. In this Quixotic gesture, he becomes na pre­ posterous and noble victim of his ovm principles, suffering but adamant, opposing injustice and aiding the downtrodden, forgiving ev en those who have wronged him, and attended by his 9 worldly, sceptical, but devoted Sancho, Sam Weller. 1I All through The Pickwick Papers, 1tr. Picbvick has been

7 Chesterton, p. 92. 8 Forster, I, 126. 9 Monroe En~el, The Ida turi ty of Dickens (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959), p. 81. 32. shown 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 Fleet, his transformation into Dickens' 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 !l'1r. :J?ick\'Vick is utterly defea"lïed. He tells

Sam, '''My head aches with these scenes, and my heart too. Henceforth l "viII be a prisoner in my own room. '" (p. 645). In these surroundings he meets again the two rascals, Jingle and Job Trotter. This encounter "reveals more powerfully than any previous scenes the deepening humani ty wi th \'vhich 10 IMr. Pickwic~ is conceived": 'Come here, sir,' said Mr. Pickwick, trying to look stern, with four large tears running down his waistcoat. 'Take that, sir.' Take what? In the ordinary acceptation of such language, it should have been a blow. As the \'Vorld runs, it ought to have been a sound, hearty cuff; for MX. 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 m. Pich.-wick's waistcoat-pocket, which chinked as it was given into Job's hand, and the giving of which, somehow or other imparted a sparkle ta the eye, and a swelling ta the heart, of our excellent old friend, as he hurried away (p. 598). Here MX. Pickwick displays the practical benevolence which becomes the heart of the book. Not only does he obtain dis­ charges for Jingle, Job Trotter, and îdrs. Bardell (who is taken to the Fleet for the execution of her costs), but he helps many of the other prisoners. When the time comes for him ta leave,

10 Johnson, I, 171-172. 32. shown as kind and benevolent on principle. Even his gullibility

eventually reveals itsel~ as an excess o~ goodness, making it

di~ficult for him to suspect evil in otherso Ey the time he reaches the Fleet, his transformation into Dickens' ~irst benevolent gentleman is almost complete the final touch comes within the Fleeto In many of the prison scenes, Dickens describes poverty, suffering, and injustice; the squalor and noise are such that Iïlr. Pickwick is utterly defeated. He tells Sam, "'My head aches with these scenes, and my heart too. Henceforth l will be a prisoner in my own room.'" (p. 645). In these surroundings he meets again the two rascals, Jingle and Job Trotter. This encounter "reveals more powerfully than any previous scenes the deepening humani ty wi th yv-hich 10 !jJir. Pickv,ric~ is conceived": 'Come here, sir,' said Wœ. Pickwick, trying to look stern, with four large tears running down his waistcoat. 'Take that, sir.' Take what? In the ordinary acceptation of such language, it should have been a blow. As the world runs, it ought to have been a sound, he art y 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 Mr. Pickvvick's waistcoat-pocket, which chinked as it was given into Job' s hand, and the gi ving of which, somehow or oUter imparted a sparkle to the eye, and a swelling to the heart, of our excellent old friend, as he hurried away (p. 598). Here ]fœ. Picbvick displays the practical benevolence which becomes the heart of the book. Not only does he obtain dis­ charges for Jingle, Job Trotter, and Mrs. Bardell (yv-ho is taken to the Fleet for the execution of her costs), but he helps many of the other prisoners. When the time comes for him to leave,

10 Johnson, l, 171-172. 33.

he looked about him, tland 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 charityll (p. 666). He emerges from his trials as a noble figure of magnanimity, kind to all, and revered by Sam, to whom he is tian angel in

tights and gaitersll (p. 642)0 Even with MT. Pickvvick's release, the gaiety of the novel never returns. Dickens has introduced a melancholy note which lingers.. The former jolly Pi.::k;;ick vanishes into the later benevolent Pi ckvvick, and the otaer major characters change or become more dignified. The remainder of the novel

serves only to round off the story so that WlI'. Piclcwick can retire into a benevolent old -age, surrounded by his friends. In the last chapter he appears like a god, 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 1~. 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 and over again with 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 with his looks of gladness and delight (po 799). MT. Pickwick is, of course, immortal. 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 IlGod-conscious. 1l Shaftesbury's moral man was modelled on the Divine Being, but Dickens' benevolent gentlemen are purely human, and their benevolence is contained within ttamselves; when they die, their goodness dies with them. 34.

If Mr. Pickvvick 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. Brownlovl 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 Rosels 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 "layon his back on the pavement, with bis shirt unbuttoned, and bis temples bathed with water; his face a deadly white; 11 and a cold tremble convulsing his whole frame." In tbis pitiable state, Mr. Brownlow 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 some 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 encounters Mr.

BroWl~low, he has known nothing but privation, abuse and exhaustion. The reader feels as much pitY for him as can be granted to one so slightly characte~jzed, and ~IT. Brovmlow's appearance is a welcome·relief. Dickens succeeds in showing the power of private philanthropy because he has first prepared for it by showing the inhumanity of institutions. There would be fewer neglected, outcast children, he implies, if the Board of Guardians at the workhouse consisted of benevolent gentlemen like Mr. Brovmlow. Although Oliver Twist originally bore the sub-title of The Parish Boy's Progress, Oliver himself is not the most important and interesting character. He, Wœ. Bro\7nlow, and the Maylies are all subordinated to Fagin and the thieves, Yvho 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 l1would 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 worYJaouse, 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 MX. Brownlow; the novel undoubtedly belongs to the criminals in a way Dickens never 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 MX .. Brownlow. Had 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 MX. Brownlow's goodness and benevolence; these are not enough, because his strength is never shown to be equal to theirs. When Mr. Brownlow first comes to Oliver's bedside, Dickens describes bim: Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; but, he had no sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust bis hands behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at Oliver, than bis countenance underwent a very great variety of odd contortions. • • the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr. Brovmlow's heart, being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane disposition, forced a supply of tears into bis eyes, by some hydraulic process which we are not sufficiently philosopbical to be in a condition to explain

(p. 80) 0 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, Mr. Brownlow could never have brought the gang low through bis own efforts; TIickens 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, bu~ the goodness takes the form of a kindness and sweetness which is powerless against it without the macbinery of the plot. Dickens has clearly permitted bis 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 darknesso Long ~ter the forged wills, the identities and even some of the names have been forgotten, the tbieves' 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, "from L}5ickensy inability to believe in 13 bis own good characters springs the real tension of [t'hi.§?' 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 take an interest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the BROTHERS CHEERYBLE live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations of the Author's brain; but are prompting every day (and oftenest by stealth) some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the pride and honour (Preface, p. xix).14 Dickens both liked and admired these two gentlemen and transcribed their appearance and clothing exactly in his

novel. In an article on "The Cheeryble Brothersll 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 warehouse in manchester, there was a daily distribution of money by Mr. William or rLIr. Daniel Grant. By the time of their arrival, a number of poor people would have gathered at the warehouse door, awaiting their coming. Mr. William used to arrive at the warehouse from Springside about 10 or 11 o'clock, usually in his carriage, drawn by a fine pair of greys. When the carriage drew up, the waiting people would form into two lines, forming an avenue from the coach to the door. If he did not distribute the alms himself, he would send out a clerk ("Tim Linkinwater?").15

The Cheeryble Brothers cam~ot be numbered amongst

14 Dickens' friend, Harrison Ainsworth, had often told him about the two Grant 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 "charactersll for Dickens to study, assimilate, and reproduce in one of his novels. As Nicholas Nickleby progressed, Dickens found it necessary to create some benefactors for Nicholas, and he decided to visi t lvlanchester and see the two benevolent merchants about whom he had heard so much. He took his illustrator, nphiz,11 with him, and a"!; a dinner given in his ho no ur , met his ovv.u two Cheerybles for the first time. 15 "The Cheeryble Brothers," 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 aIl the

goodness of "Brother Charles" 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 Madeline Bray. The Cheerybles' goodness and kindness has little appeal because it is combined with constant unctuousness and senti- mentality. As weIl as dispensing money, the Cheerybles dispense words. When Trimmers, an empIoyee of their firm, comes to collect a subscription for the man, "Smashed, sir, by a cask of sugar" (p. 452), Charles Cheeryble gives him the money, talking aIl the time: 'MY 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't look ostentatious; put me down ten pound, and Tim Linkinwater ten pound. A cheque for twenty pound for Mx. Trimmers, Tim. God bless you, Trimmers and come and di ne with us sorne 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 collector of the subscription on the large amount of his

donationll (p. 452), but there is a sense of patronage in "'You're 40.

a good fellow, too, Trimmers.'" The worst aspect of the Cheerybles' generosity is its creation of dependency. Till LipJtinwater, clerk to the firm, is chained to the brothers and has been for fort y-four years; doubtless the many subscriptions given in his name by his employers foster his dependence. AlI 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 cannot counter a feeling that the Cheerybles, unlike any of Dickens' previous benevolent gentlemen, encourage a form of parasitisme Squeers'

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 rente Even children find the Cheerybles unacceptable and tiresome. Few cri tics have liked them, except George Gissing, 16 who admired their "faj.ry godmother" quali ty. Their

16 Gissing wrote: tlAll LPickensy heart is put into this delightful bit of idealism; he glows over the Cheeryble ( view of life, and makes the reader glow with him." p. 107.

·i 41.

17 self-conscious generosity makes people feel uncomfortable. c Even in Dickens' ovm 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 Nickleby. A cri tic in Fraser'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 idiotstl as Ilthese 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 cri tic of the Cheeryble Brothers. He reacts violently, not only to them, but to all Dickens' benevolent gentlemen. His comments are extremely destructive. l 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 Tiro Linkinwater the bachelor and Mr. 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 writer who can tearfully adore these stout or cadaverous old babies, snugly ensconced in their mentw. and economic womb-substitutes and sucking, between false teeth, their thumbs, must have something seriously amiss with his emotional constitution. "The Old Curiosity Shop,11 from Vulgariti in Literature (London, 1930), pp. 54-59. Reprinted as "The Vu garity of Little Nell," in The Dickens Critics, pp. 153-157. - 18 "Charles Dickens and His Works" LNo authoy, Fraser's ( Magazine, XXI (April? 1840), p. 396. ---_.. _-_ .._ .. _- _.. - .----' ..•...•. _.... - ..._._---- .-. __ .•.__ .. ------_..... -- _..

42.

A blunderbuss and two swords hung above the chimney-piece, ~or ( the terror o~ 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 of~ensive weapons partook o~ the reigning influence, and became emblems of mercy and forbearance (p. 470).

What does Dickens mean? "Mercy:r and lI~orbearancerr are fine- sounding words, but the question must be asked, "Could mercy and forbearance have amassed the Cheeryble fortune?tI The answer is "No"; neither in nineteenth-century England, nor in the world Dickens created in Nicholas liJickleby. In a world where 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.O.J. Cockshut says of the Cheeryble Brothers: Their function seems to be to exorcise (most unconvincingly), the terrors of the crude and virile industrialism of the l830's. They represent business without balance sheets, without labour troubles, vdthout competition, without anxiety and therefore without any protective toughness. The evasion is 0bvious, and must soon have become obvious to Dickens himself.19 Later, the evasion did become obvious to Dickens, and the author of Nicholas Nickleby became the author of Hard Times. The Cheeryble Brothers, however, remain Dickens' 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 Shop, 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-I'aced old gentleman,1I who is introduced into the novel solely to be a beneI'actor to Kit Nubbles. The Garland l'amily stand in much the same relationship to Kit as the Cheerybles to Nicholas. The 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. '.7hen he first appears, he hardly seems like the rest oI' the benevolent gentlemen. "He was a bro\v.n-faced sunburnt man • • • a choleric fellow in some respects" (p. 265). He turns out to be l'Jell's great-uncle and would-be benefactor. The flight 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 volence and charity. At different times, they are helped by Codlin and Short, the Punch-and-Judy men, by THrs. 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 unchildlike devotion to her grandfather, give food and shelter. None of these benefactors is wealthy; J)ickens is showing the kindness of the poor to one another in distress. The wealthy Single Gentleman, who could have helped, fails completely through no fault of his own. Thwarted in the primary object of his generosity, he devotes the remainder of

20 Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (London, 1951), p. 108. 44.

bis life to helping those who had once helped Little Nell: ( For a long, long time, it was bis chief delight to travel in the steps of the old man and the cbild • • • to halt where 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 bis search. The sisters at the school -- they who were her friends, because themselves so friendless -- Mrs. 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 Gentleman perhaps has a general significance; although the benevolent gentlemen of the future might be just as willing, or even eager, to part with their money to help others, private philanthropy is no longer 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, bis life reflects man's need for kindness and benevolence; after it, he shows the carol pbilosophy in practice. Scrooge is the only one of Dickens' benevolent gentlemen who is not bene­ volent at the outset, but who becomes so. Before the Ghosts of Chris tmas vvork their miracle upon him, he is the epi tome of all that Dickens meant the Christmas spirit to counteract. Warmth, cheer, and human fellowship are unknown to him; he dismisses all sentiment as "humbug" and will not even wish ms nephew, Fred, a "Merry Christmas." He is "a personification 21 of economic man" whose sole purpose is to make money and to further bis own concerns, even at the expense of others. His

21 Johnson, l, 485. 45,.,

true nature is revealed in his conversation Yli th the Christmas ( subscription-raisers: 'At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, lit is more than usually desirable that we should make some 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 dovin the pen again. 'And the Union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?' 'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman, 'I wish l could say they were not.' 'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge. 'Both very busy, sir.' 'Oh! l was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'l'm very glad to hear it.' '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 some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is a time, of aIl others, when Vlant is keenly felt, and .Abundance rejoices. \fuat shall l put you down for?' 'No thing l , Scrooge replied. 'You wish to be anonymous?' '1 wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what l wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. l don't make merry myself at Christmas and l can't afford to make idle people merry. l help to support the establishments l have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.' 'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.' 'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population •••• '22 Scrooge here speaks 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 in their own affairs that they do not spare a thought for their fellow-man. AlI these need the moral example of the benevolent gentleman.

22 Charles Dickens, !. Christmas Carol (London, 1954), pp. 11-12. 46.

Like Scrooge, they are "the embodiment of aIl 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 comment describes the early Scrooge only, before the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet To Come have taught him the lessons of benevolence. Since Scrooge has lost all his generosity and humanity in the pursuit of wealth, he must learn to live again. The Ghost of Christmas Past shows Scrooge himself as a man who forsook aIl human contacts for "the master-passion, Gain" (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 clerk's family, 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 has not yet completed his humiliation. From the folds of its garments, it brings forth the two ragged, wolfish children, and shows them to Scrooge: 'Spirit! are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more. 'They are Man' s,' said the Spirit, looking dovm upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and aIl of their degree, but most of aIl beware this boy, for on his brow l see that vœitten which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny itl' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tel~ it ye! Admit it

23 JOhnson, l, 4890 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?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. 'Are there no workhouses?' (p. 57). ·There is still another lesson to be learned. The Spirit of Christmas Yet To Come shows Scrooge his own grave, where his name is written on the stone. The vrriting can be

erased only by his promise to IIhonour Christmasll in his heart and to I1try to keep it aIl the year" (p. 70). Scrooge reforms overnighto When 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 give a munificent donation to the subscription collector whom he had denied. Then he goes, unsure of his reception, to his nephew's house, to ask humbly for admittance to share the Christmas festivities. Overnight, he has learned 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: IITo Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a mas ter, and as good a man, as the good old city knew • •• " (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, after aIl, writing a 48.

24 serious novel, but liA Ghost Story of Christmas. 1I The two Ghosts, of Christmas Past and Christmas Yet To Come, are concerned ~yith Scrooge's OVin 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 economic and social con­ sequences will be drastic, Dickens warns. Scrooge's first conversation with the subscription collector shows the dangers of a callous state of mind; the two children, Ignorance and Want, show, figuratively, the results of it. Scrooge'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. ! 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 aIl 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 consulted and wish to help. Their purpose in all these early novels is to put themselves, personally and financially,

24 Dickens' sub-title to the book. 25 Johnson, 1, 489. For this little study of Scrooge, l am indebted, in point of view, to Johnson's chapter on IISelfishness and the Economie Man,1I pp. 483-489. 49.

at the disposaI 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

invol vemen t tha t they frequently weep: IVIr. Pickwick has "four large tears running down his waistcoat" (The Pickwick Papers, p. 598); Mr. Brovvnlow has "a supply of tears" (Oliver Twist, p. 80), and the Cheerybles have lia tear of regard for old Tim Linkinwater" (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 454)0 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. AlI those helped are reduced to a pulp of gratitude and dependence. Before Nicholas JIhad been closeted with the two brothers ten minutes, he could only wave his hand at every fresh expression of kindness and sympathy arid sob like a little childtl (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 454). Tim Linkinwater has been tlcloseted1t with the Cheerybles for so long that his personality has become a carbon copy of theirs and he has lost aIl thought of ever changing his position. Mx. 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 Pape~, and he sobs outright when he receives his

money. Dickens' O\VU public were not embarrassed by these mawkish sentiments, but for the most part, stood solidly behind him c 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. Rumphry Rouse 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 weIl 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. Without such a background Benevolent Sentimentality may justly be sneered at; and we 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. AlI those helped by the benevolent gentlemen are grateful and accept help thankfully. Nobody is ever rude; querulous or dissatisfied with the amount 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 WeIler and Kit Nubbles, are weIl rewarded for faithfulness. Dickens was too much a 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 aIl his early novels show the heroes and heroines helped and grateful with their lot,

( 26 Rouse, p. 63. 510

ready to "live happily ever after." 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 house, and settles dovin to raise a family. Kate and Frank Cheeryble live next door. He is said to become a "rich and prosperous merchant" (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 830) and Frank 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. Picbvick's loving satellites all live. within visiting distance and trouble him frequently with applications to become godfather to their ever-increasing families. Mr. Brovmlow and Oliver retire "within a mile" (Oliver Twist, p. 412) of the parsonage in which Rose and Harry Maylie 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 negus, the feather beds and warming pans,

. ; 520 the Christmas parties vdth charades and blind man's buff; but nothing ever happens, except the yearly childbirtho 27 These cosy domestic endings provide the best indirect comment uponthe 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." This limited sphere of action did not trouble Dickens or his readers. In these socially uncomplicated novels where there are just two classes, the ilhaves" and the "have-nots," Dickens is primarily interested in portraying what the former will do to help the latter. His 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 note Ali of them have sufficient means to give away large surns without compromising their own financial positions. Dickens' readers were not demanding that he should examine the sources of the wealth that bis 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 J)ickens rested upon IIgoodness. 1I fAn anonymous writer in the Edinburgh Review states best what Dickens was trying to do ttrrough the moral influence of his early benevolent gentlemen: "The tendency of his writing is to make us practically benevolent to excite our sympathy in behalf of the aggrieved and suffering in all classes, and especially in those who are most removed 29 from observation. Il

29 lIJ)ickens's Tales ll Edinburgh Review, LXVIII (October, 1838), p. 77. 54. c CHAPTER III THE BENEVOLENT GENTLEMEN OF DICKENS' MIDDLE PERIOD

The novels of Dickens' middle period reveal a new attitude tO\vards philanthropy and benevolence. The former patterD of benevolence -- having money and giving it away to the needy -- has gone, along with the simpler relationships of man-to-man goodness. Dickens is 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 of individual philanthropy. The older methods of straight­ for'yvard generosi ty cannot be made to work in a more complicated world where evil is seen no longer as a personal characteristic, but as an infection which spreads through society as a whole. In the l850'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 of even the best-intentioned individual amongst the disorders and distresses of society. Mr. Jarndyce (Bleak House, 1852-53), is a typical example of a benevolent gentleman of Dickens' middle periode When he first appears, in a coach with Ecither 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 the vdndow when she c declines them. His shyness, his abrupt manner, his almost pathological dislike of being thanked, and his reference to the wind being "in the East" when he is upset make the reader

think he vdll be just another of Dickens ' eccentric, kindly old bachelors. In appearance, too, he is of the Brownlow- Cheeryble type, with lia handsome, lively, quick face, full of

change and motionll and "iron-greyll hair; he is IInearer sixtY l than fifty,1I but is lIupright, 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 Carstonels many debts, although Richard is his ward.

Some aspects of I~. 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 ne ver mentions Mr. Jarndyce'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 which ultimately destroys Richard. He places no hopes on any benefit arising from the suit, and warns Richard,

l Charles Dickens, Bleak House (London, 1948), p. 63. 560

"For the love of God, don't found a hope or expectation upon c the family curse! Vfuatever you do on this side the grave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom that has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!" (p. 338)0 Mr. Jarndyce's motives for adopting Esther are also obscure. He agrees to a curious request, from a woman he does not knOY1, 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 identity of the woman who wrote to him, that she Vias Lady Dedlock' s sis ter and the former betrothed of his friend, Lavœence Boythorne, he "yould 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 Ansvler," 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: "'Vlhether, under different circumstances, l might ever have renewed the old dream l some­ times dreamed v/hen you were very young, of making you my vvife one day, l need not ask myself. l did renew it •• • "' (p. 857). From these few words, the proposaI appears to be the culmination of a wish formed many years before; Mr. Jarndyce's affection has come to involve his personal happiness. He is the first 57.

of Dickens' benevolent gentlemen te act upon a motive overtly

related to his ovm desires, and the only one ever to attempt

a rom&~tic relationship. One aspect of Mr. Jarndyce's generosity is as frank and unquestioning as that of the early benevolent gentlemen -­ his kindness to Harold Skimpole, the wittY , brilliant, heartless little man, who presumes upon his friendship. In Mr. Jarndyce's estimation, Skimpole is a liman of attainments and captivating manners" (p. 67), and, although MT. Jarndyce does not recognise it, an accomplished parasite, who makes good use of his friend's wealth. Mr. Jarndyce eagerly pays his debts, helps his family, and excuses him from responsibility on the grounds that he is

lia childl1 (p. 67) in vvorldly 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 innocent patter appears artless and full of good-will:

'1 envy you Llfœ. Jamdyc~ your power of doing what you do. It is what l should revel in, mycelf. l don't feel any vulgar gratitude to you. l almost feel as if you ought to be grateful to ~, for giving you the opportunity of enjoying the luxury of generosity. l know you like it. For anything l can tell, l may have come into the \Vorld expressly for the purpose of increasing your stock of happiness. l may have been bom to be a benefactor to you, by sometimes giving yeu an opportunity of assisting me in my little perplexities' (p. 71). His speech is calculated to succeed so weIl because of Mr. Jarndyce's dislike of gratitude and desire to help. Skimpole 1\ is clever 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 aIl the cant of generosity of an early benevolent gentleman, but i t is false; the only liberali ty he shows is y,i th other people's money. Mr. Jarndyce's benevolence contrasts vlith other forms of philanthropy 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 ignoring those at home. Rer house is dirty and badly run, and her children are neglected, while she concen­ trates 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" (p. 37). Dickens is very angry with 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 lIturned out a failure in consequence of the King of Borioboola wanting to sell everybody -- 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 aIl his misery and wretchedness: On the door-step of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice, and wonders what it's aIl about. Re has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacifie, or vrhat it costs to look up the precious souls among the cocoa-nuts and bread-fruit (p. 221). C" The satire is obvious. Jo knows nothing of the Society, nor of 59.

Christianity, because his ignorance is "the growth of English soil and clirnate" (p. 641); negroes thousands of miles away 2 are taught to groVi coffee, while he is neglected.

Because Dickens disapproves of r~s. Jellyby's 3 "telescopic philanthropy," he makes her ridiculous and infers that her project 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 another 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 Africa" (p. 36).

2 To an anonymous correspondent, who objected to the satire, Dickens replied:

There ViaS a long time during which benevolent societies were spending immense suros on missions abroad, when there was no such thing as a ragged school in England, or any kind of associated endeavour to penetrate to those horrible domestic depths in which such schools are now to be found, and where they were, to my most certain knowledge, neither 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, l do note l abstain from drawing the strange comparison that might be drawn between the suros even now expended in endeavours to remove the darkest ignorance and degradation from our very doors, because l have some respect for mistakes that may be founded in a sincere wish to do good. But l present a general suggestion of the still-existing anornaly (in such a paragraph as that which offends you), in the hope of inducing sorne people to reflect on this matter, and to adjust the balance more correctly. l am decidedly of opinion that the two works, the home and the foreign~ are not conclucted with an equal hand, and that the home claim is by far the stronger and the more pressing of the two. Mary Dickens and Georgina Hogarth~ eds., The Letters of Charles Dickens, 3 vols. (London, 1879-81), l, 323. 3 Title of Chapter IV, in which Wtrs. Jellyby is introduced. 60.

She does not neglect her children and home valfully; 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 Mrs. Jellyby were trying to control the strife between colonist and tribesman, and, in ridiculing Mrs. 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 which extends beyond the family 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 ~ask which Mr. Jarndyce, for aIl 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 lIrs. Jellyby's work, but he cannot concede it any importance. He sees his own 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 II charity" starts at home, but is bound up in intrusive and officious committees. Dickens hatE:d charity which smacked of priggishness or inter­ ference. He had already satirized it in his description of 61.

4 "The Ladies Societies" in Sketches .2;y: :Boz and does so more forcefully in :Bleak Bouse. When Esther and Ada answer some

of IvIr. Jarndyce t s correspondence, they are amazed to find tha t: The great object of the lives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form themselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The ladies were as desperate as the gentlemen •••• They threw themselves into committees in the most impassioned manner, and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite extraordinary. It appeared ••• that some of them must pass their whole lives in dealing out subscription­ cards to the ""hole Post-office Directory -- shilling cards, half-crown cards, half-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everythingo 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 whatever Mr. Jarndyce had -- or had note Their objects were as various as their demands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to pay off debts on old buildings ••• they were going to have their Secretary's portrait painted ••• they were going to get up everything ••• from five hundred thousand tracts to an annuity~ 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," a "Visiting lady," a "Reading lady," and a "Distributing lady" (p. 102). She invites Esther and Ada to accompany her on her visit to the brickmaker's cottage,

4 The description of "The Ladies Societies" may be compared to the description in :Bleak Bouse. It runs as follows: Our Parish is very prolific in ladies' charitable institutions. In Y/inter, 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 circulation society~ and the ladies' childbed-linen monthly loan society (p. 34).

( 62.

where they are witnesses of her patronage. She brings the brickmaker no badly-needed rnaterial comforts, but pulls out a "good book" and takes the whole family "into religious

custody o • • as if she were an inexorable moral Policeman carrying themall 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-p~T and question according to custom -- I know what you're a-going to be up to. WellJ You haven't got no occasion to be up to it. l'Il save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes, she is a-washin. Look at the water. Smell itJ That's wot we drinks-.- How do you like it, and what do you think of gin, instead! .An't my place dirty-?--. .Yes, it is dirty -­ it's nat'rally dirty, and it's nat'ra1ly onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is aIl dead infants, and so much the better for them, and for Us besides. Have I read the 1ittle book wot you 1eft? No, I an't read the litt1e book \Vot you left. There an't nobody here as knows hoVi to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn't be suitable to me ••• How have I been conducting of myself? Why, l've been drwllic for three days; and l'd a been drunk four, if l'd a 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't be expected there, if I did; the beadle's.too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get that black eye? Why, I giv' it her; and if she says I didn't, she's a Lie!' (p. 107). Not surprising1y, Esther and Ada feel "painfully sensible that between Lthem7 and these people there was an iron barrier" (p. 108) which Mrs. Pardiggle's efforts do not remove. Dickens means his readers to dislike Mrs. Pardiggle, and her treatment of the brickmakers is unforgivab1y high-handed, but not aIl 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 vITong approach; but whose approach would be right? Such a disreputable man would not be easy to help. This should be a situation for Mr. Jarndyce in A his role as a benevolent gentleman, since he is intended as ',- - an example of wealth rightly used and charity vrisely given; but Dickens perhaps had doubts of Mr. Jarndyce's efficacy, because he never tests him by confronting him "vi th the brick­ makero Mr. Jarndyûe never visits the cottage to offer help; he remains in his "Growlery" va th the \rind !lin the East," evading organised charity. \7.hen he helps people, he, like the early benevolent gentlemen, helps the humble and grateful. It is pleasant to be responsible for poor little Miss Flite, to pay the kindly Mrs. Blinder arrears __ of rent for Neckett's children, or to provide another Bleak Bouse for Allan Woodcourt, because aIl these people are deserving and appreciative. It is not attractive to be responsible for the 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 community in her efforts to help the "undeservingll poor, which Mr. Jarndyce, for aIl his geniality, lacks completely. Esther helps the family in a way which mr. 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 with (fieiJ own handkerchief" (p. 109). The intention of making the emaciated little corpse more seemly for burial is v.'Orthy, 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.

persiste 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 social 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 1 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 Thœ. Jarndyce. Vmen Esther tells her guardian of the events at the cottage, lIthe wind changed directlyll (p. 110), and this is aIl that happens. Apart from providing lia few little comforts" (p. 100) for the

brickmakers and dissuading Richard from giving them a ~5 note because it would lido no good ll (p. 100), 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). B.y the time Dickens \vrote Bleak House, he had come unvàllingly 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 IIlords and gentlemen, right reverends and wrong reverends of every orderll (p. 649) who ought ta have prevented his death. In Our Mutual Friend he shows Betty Higden flying from public assistance as from an avenging fury. 65.

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. When 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 1. see" (p. 432). If ever a person needed

help, Jo does, but he is force~ to rely on the chance kindness of Captain Hawdon and Mr. Snagsby's half-crowns, until he is cared for, tao late, by Allan 71oodcourt. 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-AII-Alone's, the ruined property from the Jarndyce case, lia black, dilapidated street, avoided by aIl decent people" (p. 220). Dickens constantly asserts that the wealthy and powerful classes need not reject contact \ùth or disclaim responsibility for the less fortunate half of the world, because they will be forced ta take notice -- by crime, or communication of disease. The filth of Jo and of Tom-AII-Alone's provides the link with the major characters. The filth engenders small­ pox, vvhich Jo carries with him as he is "moved on" round the country. Esther and Charley catch it, and it is the cause of

( ------

66.

6 Lady Dedlockts death~ In describing "Tomts revenge," Dickens shows how dirt and pestilence can become the destruction of the upper classes as well as the lower:

LTo~ has his revenge. Even the vnnds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darknesso There is not a drop of Tomts corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhereo lt shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream. 0 • of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say Nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tomts 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 vdckedness, 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) 0 Jo and Tom-All-Alonets are striking examples of what happens if the government neglects the destitute outcast and fails to clear the filthy sIum: 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" while waiting to be "reclaimed according to somebodyts theory but nobodyt s practice" (p. 327). "Nobody's theory" is useless; "practice" is needed for the sIum and Jo, but Dickens suggests nothing except the inadequate solution of personal kindliness the medical attentions of Allan Woodcourt, Estherts goodness,

6 The small-pox episode is the clearest proof in all Dickens' work of the influence upon him of Carlylets Past and Present. In this work, Carlyle describes the case of the poor Irish widow who, herself infected 'l'li th typhus, spreads the disease through an entire city by wandering from one agency to another seeking aide 67. and Mr. Jarndyce's benevolence. None of these help Jo any more than the repetition of the Lord's Prayer, which he cannot understand. Jo and his surroundings constitute too serious a problem for benevolence. ~œ. 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 ta make constructive social comments. In spite of its uncompromising title, Hard Times (1854), contains one benevolent gentleman -- :Mr. Sleary. He appears in only three chapters and is important, not so much for himself, but for what he r~presents. He is the benevolent artist, or Bohemian, in an industrial society. Grim, manufac- turing Coketown, ruled by blustering Bounderby and Thomas 7 Gradgrind, "the hard Fact fellow" is a tovm where everything is "severely workful" (p. 22) and all is "fact" (p. 23). Sleary's circus provides the imaginative contrast to Coketovm's dreariness; his performers "cared sa little for plain Fact" (p. 26) that they hRd "a remarkable gentleness and childishness . . . and an untiring readiness to help and pitY one another • . .Il (p. 35). 8 Mr. Sleary's "loose eye" (po 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 constitute :Mr. Sleary's "tag." 68. gentlemen. He certainly has money, but his shabbiness makes him appear less of a wealthy man than Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Brownlow or Mr. Jarndyce. Unlike aIl the early benevolent gentlemen, except the Cheerybles, he is still vlorking, al though there seems little connection between his incorne and his circus

performances 0 He tells Mr. Gradgrind that he is easy enough to fïnd beeause 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 rnercenary. 1.vhen offered rewards for helping Mr. Gradgrind's son, Tom, aIl he asks for is "a collar for the dog,

or a thet of bellth for the horthe ll (p. 291), and lia little thpread for the company ." (p"." 291); he wants nothing for himself, as long as he ean afford his supply of brandy and water. His easy generosity stands in sharp contrast to the Coketown notion that "what you eouldn't state 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" ( po 23). Mr. Sleary is not well-bred and he tipples, but he has a benevolent heart. \7hen he offers to provide for Sissy Jupe, he is eompletely honest: "'I don't pretend to be of the ange' breed myself, and l don't thay but what, when you mith'd your tip, you'd find me eut up rough, and thwear an oath or two at you. But... l never did a horthe a injury

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

yet 0 • • and l don' t expect l thall begin othervli the at my time of life, 'vvith a rider'" (p. 38). His rough speech

contrasts favourably with 1~. Gradgrindls chilly offer: "'1 am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you • it is understood that you communicate no more vvith any of your friends who are here present'" (p. 38). Mr. Sleary repays IvIr. Gradgrind for adopting Sissy by helping Tom evade the law. Not only is he vvilling to jeopardise himself and his company, but he gives more than assistance. He teaches IvIr. 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 after all • 0 • '" (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 Times: '''Don' t be croth vd 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 early 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' middle periode He represents the old ide a 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 between Mr. Meagles and his money. A retired banker, he reminds himself of his former occupation by keeping lia pair of brass scales for Il weighing gold, and a scoop for shovelling out money" on his counter-desk at Twickenham. He confides to Arthur Clennam,

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

but noV'! he has no need IIto stick at a bank-desk" and goes

"trotting about the worldll (p. 20). His travelling, his payment of Henry Gowan's debts, and, above aIl, his immunity from the Merdle crash, show he is a man whose financial cares are over. In the use of his money, though, Mr. Meagles is neither completely successful nor happy. He, his wife, and his beloved only daughter, Pet, become the prey of Henry Gowan, a worthless but well-connected young man. Once Pet and Henry are married, Mr. Meagles is virtually obliged to support them.

He pays Govvan t s de bts for his daughter' s sake, but unwillinglyo

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

Giving is not accompanied by friendliness or good-fellowship, ( and money do es not bring happiness. A cosy, domestic ending

is not possible, because the Gowans and the ~,Teagles do not like each other. Money is a useful commodity here, but it brings neither love nor gratitude; the old pattern of easy giving and gracious acceptance is impossible in a complicated financial setting.

Mro Meagles constantly states that he is a "practicalll man; his energy and common sense are the proof of this. Nevertheless, he differs from aIl the other benevolent gentlemen in being the first v'lith a grave fault -- snobbery. When Henry Gowan tells hill he is bringing one of the Barnacles home to dinner, he answers: lA Barnacle is he? We know something of that family, eh, Dan? By George, they are at the top of the tree, though! Let me see. Vlhat relation will this young fellow be to Lord Decimus nov~ His Lordship married, in seventeen ninety-seven, Lady Jemima BilberrJ' who was the second daughter by the third marriage -- no! There l am wrong! 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 • •• 1 (pp. 203-204). This is an ordinary enough speech, unusual only for being uttered by a benevolent gentleman. The person lIIT. IvIeagles is addressing is Daniel Doyce, with whom he has allied himself against the indifference of the Circumlocution Office. He knows the professional incompetence of the Barnacles, yet he cannot resist social adulation. liNo amount of Circumlocution

experience" can subdue Mr. Meagles l "weakness" (p. 204), and "in its presence, his fine, frank, genuine qualities paled; c he was not so easy, he was not so natural, he was striving 720

, after something that did not 1elong to him, he was not himself" ('.---- (p. 208). The younger Dickens would have given the speech to 12 a social parasite, like Pyke or Pluck, but never to a bene- volent gentleman. In this dark and pessimistic novel, however, even a benevolent gentleman cannot escape the current social infection. Unfortunately, too, Mr. Meagles shows the reverse side of snobbery -- patronage. His patronage of Daniel Doyce, lIfounded, 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" (p. 194) makes Arthur Clennam wonder "whether there might be in the breast of this honest, ·affectionate, and cordial Mr. Meagles, any microscopie portion of the mustard-seed that had spring up into the great tree of

the Circumlocution Officell (p. 194). Nowhere does T:lIr. Meagles' patronage show to greater disadvantage than in his treatment

of Tattycoram, the adopted f01 mdling, who is daughter-servant to him and his wife, and sister-servant to the spoiled Pet. In giving her the condescending names "Hattey," tlTatty,tI (p. 18) and finally tlTattycoram" (p. 19), in constantly referring to her as "Pet's little maid" (p. 19), and urging her to "count five-and-twenty" (p. 197) to control her temper, Mr. Meagles makes her feel her inferior position. There is some truth in Miss liJade' s bitter words: "swollen patronage and selfishness Lëal17 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 Mr. Meagles' patronage, and he would seem as hateful to the reader as he recurrently does to Tattycoram. Mr. lVIeagles is smug and insular, even a little vulgar, and Dickens shows Meagles' limitations as he had never revealed those of any previous benevolent character; Clennam and Doyce feel them,

too, a~d they detract from the unadulterated affection and respect which the benevolent gentlemen have hitherto inspired in those arovnd them. Little Dorrit also contains one of Dickens' most astounding creations, "The Patriarch" -- a title given to Mr. Casby, who is a satire on aIl Dickens' previous benevolent gentlemen from Mr. Pickwick to Mr. Jarndyce. Mr. Casby lives only to squeeze money from his tenants in Bleeding Heart Yard, yet he has convinced the world by his looks and manner that he is the repository of aIl benevolence. He manages to make "his polished head and forehead look largely benevolent in every knob" (p. 539) while he tells Pancks: "You must be sharper with the people ••• much sharper with the people, sir. You don't squeeze them ••• you are paid to squeeze, and you must squeeze to pay,l (p. 797). Pancks has his revenge by cutting the Patriarch's flovdng, silvery locks and the broad brim of his hat, in symbolic deprivation of his paternity. The punishment fi.ts the crime, but the surprise is that such a satire on benevolence should exist at aIl. Tlar. 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, v'lhen he himself felt he had passed the peak of spontaneous creativity, there is great ay.,rareness of social complexi ties and problems which the benevolent gentlemen are incapable of solving. :Mr. Jarndyce cannot 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 J31eak House Dickens attacks the government violently. Instead of suggesting how it could help its citizens, he focusses his attack upon the shortcomings of the Dedlocks, Coodles and Foodles, and tries to make ThIr. Jarndyce bear a burden that rightly belongs to the State. No matter hm"! hard J\Ir. Jarndyce tries, he is bound to fail, because the problems of a brutalised proletariat cannot be left to the unpredictable remedy of private philanthropy. Mr. Meagles is powerless in a society which he shares with Merdle. He cannot foil "the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows" (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. Mro Sleary, even though he provides legitimate entertainment, has 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 benevolent gentlemen vlOuld have no place in Dickens' middle nQvels. 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.

CHAJ?TER IV THE LAST BENEVOLENT GENTLEMEN

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 ~dthout it is subordinate. The Victorians were greatly concerned with financial success and prosperity. To the IDiddle class, which dominated England, poverty was almost a forro of sin. A world in possession of machines appeared to offer unliIDited opportunity for material success to any man \tith the desire to succeed. The middle and upper classes were investing in the stocks of expanding industries. As prosperity grew more universal, it alone was not enough. New social barriers were erected, and "respectability" became important. To be rich vms 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 Mutual Friend (1864-65), are more concerned with money and its effects on people than any of his earlier works except Dombey and Son (1846-48). He not only examines the uses of money, but the origins of fortunes. The two last benevolent gentlemen, Abel Magwitch of Great Expectations and Nicodemus (Noddy) Boffin of Our Mutual Friend, play more signi- 1\ ficant roles than any previous benevolent gentlemen since Wœ. J?ickvvick, because they show the power of money. Nei ther of them gives j.t away as the early benevolent gentlemen did:

l House, p. 580 77. they administer i t through an intermediary; rlJ.agwi tch relying upon the services of Jaggers, and Boffin upon those of his secretary, Rokesmith. Great Expectations is, perhaps, Dickens' clearest statement of the power of money ior good or evil. He shows hO'iV i t can break down class barriers and become the social equalizer. Magwitch, provider of the fortune, is different from Dickens' other benevolent gentlemen in that he demands a return for his money, thus reversing the earlier patterns of generosity. He is lia nightmare permutation of Mr. Brovmlow and nIT. Jarndyce. He is the benevolent guardian, secretly manipulating the fortunes of the hero and protecting him, turned into a condemned felon who, like a ~orrible old dog, 2 gloats over his victim. 1t 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. Magwitch'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, aIl 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 Miller, Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1959), p. 255. 3 Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (London, 1953), p. 2. ------

78.

linked his ovm life to that of the convict, for years later Magwitch expresses his gratitude to him by assuming a secret, economic parenthoodo 'l'li th the money he makes in Australia, he pays for PipIS education, wishing to turn "his" boy into a gentleman.

Unknovm to ~~gwitch, his money has the reverse effect on Pipe It transforms him into a cad and a mean-spirited snob. He lives the life of a flaneur1\ ln. London society by acquiring 4 the manners and outward appearance of a gentleman, but he becomes idle, extravagant, ungrateful and ashamed of his origins. Worst of aIl, his "great expectations" do not even make him happy. He constantly suffers from boredom, "a weariness in fjiigJ spirits" (p. 258) and "restlessness and disquiet of mind" (p. 258); he also suffers from a lack of compulsion which completely paralyzes his will. Magwitch is the first benevolent gentleman whose money has not helped, but corrupted, i ts recipient. This is not Magvvi tch' s faul t; he can in no way be blamed for PipIS arrogance and snobbery. In the vmrld of Great Expectations, money is harmless only vn1en it is devoid of any false sense of dignity and worth; Dickens shows what

i t can do to those wi thout the abili ty to use i t yàsely. 4 Money alone could not make a man a "gentleman"; other requirements vvere a suitable education and "polish. Il Magwi tch shows that he realizes this when he stipulates that Pip shall be removed from the village and sent to London to lea:rn to become a gentleman. He feels that in the "rightll atmospl1ere his money can combine vàth education to raise Pip to a gentleman's statuso In Our Mutual Friend, Boffin unconsciously parodies the importance of education. He thinks of it as desirable for .f somebody with money and promptly sets about to acquire what was denied to him in his working-class background. Although illiterate, he employs his "literary gentleman,1t Silas Vfegg, to read aloud to him The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ----~~------

79.

rilagwi tch cannot resist the temptation of returning , '--- to England, even at the risk of his life, to see "the gentleman what ffiil made ll (p. 313). In the nocturnal meeting between him and Pip, before the revelation, Dickens explores subtly the cOnIlections between a gentleman, his money, and patronage. Magvdtch's first act of gratitude to Pip had been to send him two pound notes, via a discharged connct: "Nothing less than two fat sweltering one-pound notes that seemed to have been

on terms of the warmest intimacy ~rith aIl the cattle markets in the county" (p. 73). Pip, not knovdng MagV'ritch is his benefactor, tries to repay him: "'Like you, l have Qone weIl since, and you must let me pay them back. You can put them to some other poor boy's use'tl (p. 303). He gives I:vIag\'fitch "two one-pound notes" which are tlclean 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" Magvdtch, Pip shows the philanthropy 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, until Magwitch startles Pip by burning the money, and destroying with it PipIS delusions of the "clean" source of his fortune. Pip has to learn that his leisured life has been paid

5 For the comparison of the money, l am indebted to Christopher Ricks' essay, "Great Expectations, " The Dickens Critics, pp. 199-211. 80. for by the suffering and forced labour of the convict: 'Yes, Pip, dear boy, l' ve made a ger..tleman on you! It' s me wot has done it! l swore that time, sure as ever l earned a guinea, that guinea should go to you. l swore arterwards, sure as ever l spec'lated and got rich, you should get rich. l lived rough, that you should live smooth; l worked hard that you should be above work. IVha t odds, dear boy? Do l tell i t fur you to feel a obligation? Not a bit. l tell it, fur you to know as that there hunted dunghill dog wot you kep life in, got his head so hi~h that he could make a gentleman -- and, Pip, you're him!' (p. 304).

~~gwitch would not only make Pip a gentleman, but would ovm him, and live vicariously through him. Vfuen the blood horses of the colonists flung dust over him as he walked, he comforted himself with the thought: "If l ain't a gentleman, nor yet ain't got no learning, l'm the ovmer of such. All on you ovms stock and land; which on you owns a brought-up London gentleman?" (p. 306). He wants to enjoy his sense of power and to patronize: '" l Iv-e come to the old country fur to see my gentleman spend his money like a gentleman. That'll be ~ pleasure. MI. pleasure full be fur to see him do it'" (p. 313). His use of "benevolence" is selfish because it stems from a desire to possess, instead of giving freely. He keeps taking Pip' s unwilling hands, surveying him ""vi th an air of admiring proprietorship" (p. 315). 1fugvvitch pays a high price 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 l held the man, the dread l had of him, the repugnance with which l shrank from him could not have been exceeded if he had been some terrible beast" (p. 304). By this disclosure MagVlitch has also shattered PipIS ability to consider himself 81.

a gentleman "by right." Pip, who once winced at Joe 1 s illiteracy, is forced to realize that his own education, v~.th its resultant fastidiousness, has been paid for by a convict "guilty of l knew not what crimes" (p. 308). He must realize, too, that his horror of Magvtitch is irrational. Magvdtch wants Pip to continue living on an unearned income, which Pip was quite content to do as long as he thought this income came from Miss Havisham. Pip refuses to accept any more money from lv1agwitch, a proper decision since he finds him repugnant, but his "noble renunciationll is really ironical, since he makes it on snobbish grounds. Because he is himself "respectable,ll he cannot 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. Magvtitch's solitary 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. 1I As Pip revalues the convict's gratitude and devotion, he learns to love him. By the time Magwitch is captured and dying, Pip can honestly say: "My repugnance to him had all melted away, and in the hunted '\vounded shackled creature who held my hand in his, l only saw a man who had meant to be my benefactor, and who had felt affectionately, gratefully and generously, towards me vii th great constancy through a series

6 Orwell, p. 35. 82.

of yearsll (p. 423). The IIdunghill dog," whose money almost destroyed Pip, has finally made a II gentleman" out of him. By evoking nobler feelings, by sharing the convict's guilt, suffering ~vith him, and appearing publicly at the trial, Pip has found his real self.

Now that Pip no longer despises Mag~vi tch, he could be a worthy recipient of his money, but ironically, it is forfeit to the State: the results of aIl Magwitch's toil and his intended benevolence are.swept away to enrich the society which cast him out. For Pip, the loss of his expectations is disastrous, for he has nothing to replace them. Ylhen Ralph Nickleby's money is "swept into the coffers of the state" (Nicholas Nickleby, p. 830), Nicholas is not concerned. He can afford to repudiate his uncle's wealth, because there is Cheeryble money available instead; but Pip lèses everythingo AlI that is salvaged from the wreck of his fortunes is the partnership for Herbert Pocket, which Pip bought for him secretly when he had money. This is his only act of true charity; 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 Taagwitch have to learn the fundamental lesson of Great Expectations: "AlI 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 PipiS purchase of the partnership for Herbert, wh en he has money; and, se condly , in his loving concern for Magwitch, when he has none. -.-----_._-~------

social rank, and culture te endow the individual with true 8 selfhood are absolutely falseo ll 1mgwitch wants to turn Pip into a gentleman by the use of money alene, and almost succeeds in destroying him; Pip finds himself only through his selfless devotion to the convicto Magwitch has to learn that benevolence must not have strings attachedo He gives Pip a fortune partly from gratitude, but partly to reinstate himself in his own self-esteem; his is not true benevolence because his own interests have inspired it. He is guilty 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 Miss Havisham fashioned Estella, te be the instrument of his vengeance upon society. By attaching conditions to his benevolence, he destroys the situation in which money is acceptable. Both he and Pip must learn that money cannot buy

everything; they ~ust move from their positions of stubborn pride and self-consideration, which money brings about, towards the goodness tha.t lies in themselves. The society of Our l'Llutual Friend, even more than that of Great Expectations, "is Cony of monetary barbarism, devoid of culture, and emptier still of sincerity, generosity, integrity 9 and warmth of feeling." In this novel, money seldom brings happinesso Dickens shows 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 cripples humane feelings. Not money itself, but people's attitudes towards it, corrupt and destroy in a society enslaved by the idea of wealth. Against this sombre background, Dickens sets his last benevolent gentleman, Noddy Boffin. Coming after

M:agwi tch, v-rho I/turns the tables Il on aIl the previous benevolent gentlemen, Boffin would appear to be a miraculous return to the early benevolent gentlemen. He is simple, good-natured and generous; he even "trotsl/ about like Mr. Pickwick and the

Cheerybles. Above aIl, his niclmame, I/the Golden Dustman, Il has a fairy-tale sound. Orwell says: IIThe good rich man comes back, in fQl1 glory, in the person of Boffin. Boffin is a proletarian by origin and only rich by inheritance, but he is the usual deus ~ machina, solving everybody's problems by 10 showering money in aIl directions." This uncomplicated view of Boffin is mistaken. However much he may resemble the early benevolent gentlemen superficially, his behaviour is in fact very different from theirs. First, although Boffin's money never spoils him, he makes concessions to his vvife' s craving for fashion which would have been unthinkable to the Cheerybles. 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 wi th Silas Vlegg lacks straightforwardness; as an employer he is not shrewd and has to resort to deception himself to find out that he is being deceived -- a policy that the Cheerybles

10 Orwell, p. 8.

! . 85. would never have considered in their treatment of employeeso Thirdly, he is thwarted in his benevolent scheme for adopting Johnny and providing for Betty Higden; such àisappointments 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 would have simply given Bella a lecture on the perils of marrying for money, but Boffin feels the need for a very elaborate ruse ta drive the lesson home. That he should have felt it necessary at aIl to resort to such measures is a clear indication of the strikingly different societies in which the early benevolent gentlemen and Boffin live. The êarly benevolent gentlemen exist in a simpler society, where good and evil are clearly defined and money, though extremely useful, is subordinated. Our Mutual Friend portrays society at the peak of mid-Victorian prosperity when social distinctions are beginning to disintegrate and money has become all-powerful. If any reader thiru{s 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 Nickleby. Boffin would be as much of a misfit there as the Cheerybles V/ould be amongst the Veneerings and Podsnaps. The physical description of Boffin differs in tone from that of any of the previous benevolent gentlemen. They ''/Vere often eccentric in appearance, but Boffin verges upon the grotesque: ------

860

Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, vdth folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but vd th bright, eager, childishly-inquiring grey eyes, under his ragged eye­ brows, and broad-brimmed ha t. A very odd-looking old fellov'l' altogetheroll It almost seems as though Dickens himself has not at first quite decided what attitude to adopt towards Boffin. He intends him to be generous and "good," but there is not the same open admiration for his goodness as there was for that of the early benevolent gentlemen. Dickens seems to be detached, almost to the 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 vdth Wrayburn and Lightwood, and his naïvete makes him the prey of Wegg. The simplicity of the early benevolent gentlemen was never mocked; Dickens still respects it in Boffin, but also- shov'l's its limitations. He describes L'Ir. and Mrso Boffin in their "Bower": These tvvo 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 both; ten thousand vanities additional, possibly, in the breast of the woman (p. 101). The formula of goodness, lia religious sense of dutY and desire to do right" 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, however, he go es a long way towards erasing the first impression

11 Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend (London, 1952), p. 460 87. given by Boffin. He shows him becoming shrewder as he grows more accustomed to his wealth. This development, from sim­ plicity 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," but is very rich indeed. Having been a dustman aIl his life, he comes into possession "of upwards of one hundred thousanët pounds" (p. 88) as the residuary legatee of John Harmon. The origin of the fortune, which Boffin helped to build up, can be traced, not to banking nor industry, but to "dust," a euphemism for refuse of aIl kinds:

Rubbish, in the mid-nineteenth century, v~s removed by private contractors and piled in huge dumps in North London. These were enormously lucrative to their ovmers. Jewels, coins and other valuables Viere often found in them. Odorous and soggy, infested by rats and flies, these piles of soot, cinders, broken glass, bottles, crockery, wom-out pots and pans, old papers and rags, bones, garbage, human feces, and dead cats, were picked over and sorted for sale to brickmakers, soap boilers, paper manufacturers, road makers, dealers in metal and glass, concrete makers. The soot was used as fertilizer, decayed animal and vegetable matter as manure; even the de ad cats were sold for their skins.12

Boffin 1 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 economic background of dust heaps, see William Miller and W. 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 \ "- wealth s Dickens shows his contempt for the dominating values 13 of money-greedy people. Society, represented by the Podsnaps,

Veneerings ~~d Lammles, sees the mounds in terms of capital accumulation and opportunism, which have trucen the place of honest work in their world: Have no antecedents, no established character, no cultivation, no ideas, no manners; have Shares. Have Shares enough to be on Boards of Direction in capital letters, oscillate on mysterious business between London and Paris, and be great. iVhere does he come from? Shares. \'.Jhere is he going to? Shares. What are his tastes? Shares. Has he any principles? Shares. Ylliat squeezes him into Parliament? Shares. Perhaps he never of himself achieved success in anything, never originated anything, never produced anything! Sufficient answer to aIl; Shares. 0 mighty Shares! (p. 114). No sooner is it known that Boffin has inherited the mounds than society is at his feet: "Behold aIl manner of crawling, creeping, flut te ring , and buzzing creatures, attracted by the gold dust of the Golden Dustman!" (p. 209). Society calls to leave cards, although it despises his humble origins; "trades­ men's books hunger, and tradesmen's mouths water, for the gold

13 Dickens' own attitude to money in this nove~ ~s undoubtedly ambivalent. He stresses its unsavoury origin in the mounds, and relates how it ruined old Harmon, the miser. Yet the reader is meant to be as delighted as Boffin wh en aIl the wealth is handed over to young John Harmon and Bella. The deduction to be drawn from this ending is that there is no objection to inheriting wealth vdthout working for it, and it is only wrong for old Harmon to have built up the mounds of fil th. This is clearly absurd because Harmon was providing an honest service to the community. The deeper explanation lies in the attitude to the money. Old Harmon's attitude was miserly and therefore wrong; his sonls attitude is vvise 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 somehow by passing through the hands of Boffin, who uses it vdsely because he knows its value, and who gives it away in the spirit of true benevolence. 89. dust of the Golden Dustman" (p. 210). Begging letters and appeals for charities arrive in hundreds, addressed to the man who has become "a prey to prosperity" (p. 178). Boffin remains unmoved in the midst of sye 0 phancy, hypocrisy and blatant impudence 0 He is safe because he 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 were left to him and to Mrs. Boffin because old Harmon knew "these tv/o faithful servants to be honest and true • • • and had perceived the powerlessness of aIl his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt" (p. 101). Boffin, like Magvdtch, knows the value of money that has been earned, but he is ill-equipped to face the predatoriness of society. Apart from his vdfe's innocent enjoyment of the pleasures of wealth, the money brings him more worry than happiness, and he can hardly wait to hand it over to young John Harmon. Boffin's pretended miserhood.is, in some ways, a puzzling and not completely successful episode. To anyone convinced by it, aIl Boffin's benevolence appears negated; to the unconvinced the episode seems merely a clumsy contrivance. In the "Postscript," 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 device is that the reader, having solved the problem of Harmon's identity, is apt to take Boffin's pretence at face value. This ------_._._._._._-_._ .... _.. __._-- ... __ ._-- -' --_._.--- --'-' -- . - ----_.- --_._ .... --_._------

89. dust of the Golden Dustman" (p. 210). Begging letters and appeals for charities arrive in hundreds, addressed to the man - who has become "a prey to prosperity" (p. 178). Boffin remains unmoved in the midst of sycophancy, hypocrisy and blatant impudence. He is safe because he is not corrupted by wea1th, 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 were left to him and to Mrs. Boffin because old Harmon knew "these two faithful servants to be honest and true • • • and had perceived the powerlessness of all his wealth to buy them if he had addressed himself to the attempt" (p. 101). Boffin, like Magwi tch, Imows the value of money that has been earned, but he is ill-equipped to face the predatoriness of society. Apart from his wife's innocent enjoyment of the pleasures of vve al th, the money brings him more worry than happiness, and he can hardly wait to hand it over to young John Harmon. Boffin's pretended miserhood is, in sorne ways, a puzzling 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 the UPostscript," 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 device is that the reader, having solved the problem of Harmon's identity, is apt to take Boffin's pretence at face value. This

.. ------

900

is not the first time that Dickens uses artifice to demonstrate worth or to expose fraudo In Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), old

. i Martin leads Pecksniff on to a full disclosure of his hypocrisy l

and s~lf-interest by feigning to be his senile dupe. Dickens

gives many hints that old W~rtin is not the feeble tool he appears because he wishes to share the pretence and to antici- pate Pecksniff's discomfiture when all is revealedo The hints given during Boffin's miserhood suggest that the apparent deterioration is genuine. Boffin's pretence to Bella is worthier than old Martin'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 that Bella's worldliness is leading her to marry for moneyo With the connivance of Rarmon/Rokesmith, who impersonates a poor man, Boffin acts out the cure for Bella's damaged moral values in showing her where the love of money leads. Boffin is very thorough in his impersonation of miserliness; he

f~ightens Bella, rather than guides her, into the right way. Rer ovm mercenariness has always been shown as partly affectation. She tells her father: '"It's not that Icare for money to keep

as money, but l do care so much for vvhat i t vvill buy •• 0 l AM so mercenary!'" (p. 319). The secretary, who loves her,

finds her "so insolel1t~ so trivial, so capricious, so mercenary, so careless, so hard to touch, so hard to turn!" (p. 208). r Rer regard for money is not that of the Veneerings and Podsnaps; 910

it is based upon the distressing experience of not having enough, and th en suddenly having tao much. She is "the doubly

spoil t girl: spoil t first by poverty, a."YJ.d then by weal th Il (p. 308). Bella's desire for money is still relatively innocent when Boffin decides ta teach her a lesson. He shows her the difference between her ovm partially affected love of money and full-blovm miserliness. He roams the tmvn wi th her searching for biographies of misers, and the more he buys them the more avaricious he becomes. He talks to her about money

in the same terms she herself has used: "'1 think it's very creditable in you, at your age, to be so weIl up with the pace of the world, and to know what ta go in for. You are right.

Go in for money, my love. Money's the article ••• III (P. 465). The more he urges her to put money first, the less she is inclined to do so. She tells hers elf : liNo,· l don' t like i t, and, though he is my liberal benefactor, l disparage him for it" (p. 466). The impersonation reaches its climax in the scene

between Baffin and Rokesmith. Boffin's progressive rude~ess to Rokesmith makes Bella ashamed of the disdain with which she herself treated the secretary. She turns on Baffin after he tells Rokesmith: "'1 know this young lady, and we aIl 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, a."YJ.d pleads wi th her benefactor: "'Don' t give me money, Mr. Boffin, l won't have money. Keep it away from Î- me • 0 .'" (p. 596)0 She sees herself as "a worldly shallow 92.

tt ( 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 thinso Boffin is next shovm paying

off the Lammles and re-united "vi th his wife. The unsatisfactor,y aspect of Boffin's miserhood is that it is too convincingo Dickens gives abundant details to produce realism, particularly in the repeated descriptions of Boffin's face: "its old simplicity of expression got masked by a certain craftiness that assimilated even his good humour to itself ••• " (p. 472), and lia darkcloud of suspicion, covetousness, and conceit LovershadowesV the once open face" (p. 465). Mrs. Boffin 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, lia 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 vath the extraordinary ability for acting which he later displays. Ir- a way, too, he is being J.ogical when he is a miser. His money has brought him little but begging letters and appeals and has shown him the worst side of human nature. He is unable to enjoy using his wealth; so it seems probable that he might

14 r 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 being able to corrupt even a genuine benevolent gentleman. During the unconvincing disclosure which follows the pretence, Boffin explains his simple ideao He wanted to prove

to Harmon: " 'If .LBell§7 was to stand up for you when you 1fl8.S slighted, if she was to show herself of a generous mind wh en y01.,'. was oppressed, if she was to be truest to you when you was poorest and friendliest, and aIl this against her oVIn seeming interest, how would that dO?'1I (p. 773). His action is well­ 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 own right, thus enabling her to marry a poor man if she vrished. Boffin' s explanation, however, fits in with Bella's ovm view of the necessity of her conversion; she calls Boffin IIthe dearest and kindest fingerpost" (p. 775), pointing out "the road [Shi! was taking and the end it led toll (p. 775), and showing her the right use of money. '- If Boffin's deception of Bella can be éxcused upon the grounds of his desire to save her, the deception he prac­ tises upon Wegg cannot. It is as poorly motivated and incredible as old Martin's upon Pecksniff. Even before Boffin knows of Wegg's rapaciousness, his relationship towards him is uneasy; ,. his early nalvete makes him a po or judge of character. Friendship with a creature like Wegg would clearly be (--- \ impossible, but, as Humphry House observes, Boffin IIbehaves 94.

to Lhi~ rather like ~stresses who leave half-crovms in corners 15 hoping the servant.~ will steal them. Il 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-heapso He is at least partly responsible for leading Wegg on in his search of the mounds. The duplicity is compounded by Boffin's pretended humility and submissiveness tovmrds Wegg, deluding him "to the last possible moment, in order that Lhii/ disappointment might be the heaviest possible disappointment" (p. 788). Wegg deserves to be punished, but in concocting this punishment, Boffin stoops almost as low as Wegg himself. There was no reason why he should not have dismissed him with as much dignity as he dismisses the Lammleso There is also the addi tional question: "Vlhy should Boffin go to so mu ch trouble to punish a rascal?" For the same reason that old Martin puts himself to months of inconvenience merely to shame one petty hypocrite -- namely, to expose corrupt attitudes to money. The game hardly seems worth the candle, but Dickens always insists that the guilty should have their deserts and Wegg 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 Ivlutual Friend which concern Betty Higden, Lickens again introduces the theme of charity

r-- 1 15 House, p. 169. 95.

and dependence. This theme is not just a return to the preoccupations of Oliver Twist; it opens ...tp a new discussion of one of society's great evils patronage. Old Betty Higden, who has worked all her days, is proud and independent. She has never accepted charity in all her eighty years: "'She paid scot and 3he 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 he: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 sewn into her dresse Her sole aim is to avoid the workhouse and to die independent. Humphry House argues that "it is hard to see any genuine tragedy in Betty Higden,1I and adds, IImost 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 independent poor of her day and since, who have withstood 17 the idea of charity and patronage. Her obsessional

16 House, p. 103. 17 Henry Mayhew recounts an intervieVI wi th a pure­ gatherer ["pure" was dog manure used in the tannery process for the refining of leatheii": "I could never bear the thought of going into the 'great house' LWorkhous§7; l'm so used to the air, that l'd sooner die in the street, as many I know have done. l've lmown several of our people, who have sat down in the street vdth their basket alongside them, and died. I knew one not long ago, who took ill just as she was stooping dovm to gather up the pure, and fell on her face; she was taken to the London Hospital, and died there in the morning. l'd sooner die like them than be deprived of my liberty, and be prevented from going about where I liked. No, l'll never go into the workhouse • •• " "Of the Pure-Finders," London Labour and the London Poor, 2 vols. (London, 1851), l, 145. - -- 96. de termina tian to be beholden to no one is an important part of Dickens' presentation of poverty and Vlorking-class values. If she falls into the hands of the "Honourable Boards" (p. 200)! she vâll be accepting a help which she sees as degradation; ta her they are "those Cruel Jacks • that dodge and drive, and vvorry and weary, and scorn and shame, the decent poorl! (p. 200). In fairness to the commissioners for the Poor-Law, they did not offer the workhouse as a solution for Betty Higden and her kind, nor did they expect that public charity vvould ever obviate the need for alms-giving: "~Vhere cases of real hardship occur, the remedy must be applied by individual charity, a virtue for which 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 yvould set me up like a queen for the rest of my life, if so be vve could make it rieht among us to have it so. But we can't make it right among us ta have it so. l've never took charity yet, nor yet has anyone belonging ta me'" (p. 383). To her, taking money from Boffin would mean turning him into her patron, and she cannot accept him on these terms. She vâll only take the loan as an offer of his friendship. Boffin is forced to agree vâth her; his own experience of the torments of wealth has taught him that patronage is distasteful:

18 Report from His Majesty's Commissioners for Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws (London, l834),-P: 228. 97.

'I can' t go anywhere vJi thout being Patronized. l don' t want to be Patronized. If l buy a ticket for a Flower Show, or a Music Show, or any sort of Show, and pay pretty heavy for it, why am l 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 ovm 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, ffild contenting himself with the trifling loano His respect for Betty Higden's values is based upon his own working-class background. He has worked aIl his life "and had brought LEi§! simple faith and honour clean out of dustheaps" (p. 384)0 He feels it is his dutY to allow Betty to go her own way, though in doing so she thwarts his kindly schemes, just as she unintentionally thwarted 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, and 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. He bridges the gap between indiscriminate giving end using money wisely. Above aIl, he represents the kind of nature in which

Dickens v~s most interested because he expresses aIl the worth and potential of the working-class whom Dickens admired, as 980 opposed to societyls rulers and exploiters. Magwi tch and Boffin are more complex 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 early benevolent gentlemen, money was simply a tool to promote happiness or relieve distress, but for both Magwitch and Boffin it has dangerous powers to corrupt those about them, and they cannot dispense it so artlesslyo 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 PipiS 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 lateo Neither Pip nor Magwitch enjoys the use of the fortune. Apart from the secret provision which Pip makes for Herbert Pocket, he does not have the right attitude to money while his bene­ factor is unknovm to him, and when he finds out he owes aIl to a convict he refuses to accept any more. Giving and receiving are fraught with difficulty. PipiS dearly-bought IIrespectability" prevents him from receiving in the old, grateful way of Oliver or Nicholas, and Magwitch only succeeds in "loading" Pip .vith "his wretched gold and silver chains" (Great Expectations, p. 307) because he does not know how to give like a true benevolent gentleman. Boffin knows the 990

, meaning of true benevolence as weIl as he knows the value of

money, but giving is difficult for him, tooo He is pre~umed upon by Vlegg, and he sees money spoiling Bella, so he is forced to hide genuine bens"rolence in duplici ty to teach both a lesson. Neither Magwitch nor Boffin is a failure in himself, but the benevolent schemes of both fa il to some extent. They show that human relationships can no longer be straightforward in a society where money has caused the simpler social categories to break down. 100.

CONCLUSION l "I am a Reformer heart and soul," Dickens wrote to Baroness Burdett-Coutts. If this claim rested upon his novels only, it could not be justified; they were written primarily 2 for entertainment and social reform is not their main themeo They aIl show, however, a hatred of tyranny and oppression, and compassion for the po or 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 alvvays in administrative, rather than political, problems. He was intensely practical and thought in terms of money and deeds, 'rather than theories. To put his philanthropy into practice, he created his benevolent gentlemen. The early benevolent gentlemen belong to Dickens' most optimistic period of writing. In the 1830's, he saw social deprivation as something from which people could, and should, be relieved. The function of the early benevolent gentlemen is to distribute money to the needy and to show goodness of he art to everyone; they are the embodiment of Dickens' philosophy of love and concern for one's fellow-man. If the early benevolent gentlemen are seen simply as providers of money, they are successful in

l Osborne, p. 149. 2 Dickens' letters and speeches, his articles in Household Words and AlI the Year Round, his interest in Public Health and his work with Baroness Burdett-Coutts, aIl reveal his passicnate concern \ùth social amelioration and better condi tions for the poor fa.r more clearly than his fiction does. -. - - ~~_._~ -_. _.- _._------_.- .------~- -- .. - -

lOI., the limited sphere of their efforts. They cau raise their employees' wages, or absolve the hero from further economic struggles. They are less successful in their function as "goodtl characters, because Dickens often fails to-show a satisfactory connection between the evil he describes and the remedy which the benevolent gentlemen help to provide. For example, Dotheboys Hall breaks up, not because the Cheerybles are good but because Squeers forges a will. Fagin's gang is destroyed, not because Mr. Bro\'I'lllow is kind to Oliver, but becaus8 the murder of Nancy is discovered and :Monks confesses. Yet it is clear that Dickens intended his benevolent gentlemen to oppose the evil around them and his public felt, with him, °that the early benevolent gentlemen filled an important social function simply by being morally good. In aIl the early novels crime, cruelty and oppression are the great evils, and personal 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 reformer vdthout the taste and patience for organized politics. His philosophy rested on no definitely formulated basis. Since he was unable to find the government or social power he could approve, he never gave any of his benevolent gentlemen a publie office. Their achievements, therefore, remain limited and domestic; of great importance to their friends but of no consequence 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 attack social injustices, but he has begun to see that ',', ~ man's basic suffering lies beyond the pov'ier of money and individual goodness to relieve. The novels of the 'fifties reveal more complication of plot and characte:c than those of the 'thirties because Dickens was beginning to use them as a vehicle of more concentrated social argument. Earlier, he had been content to feel problems emotionally; now thought begins to take the place of emotion. Evil, too, is 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-AII-Alone's, and he can do nothing about either; he cannot even prevent Richard from catching the Law's contagion. Mr. Wieagles moves in the same society as the Barnacles and Merdle, but he can neither make progress at the Circumlocution Office nor prevent his friends from being swindled. The early optimism has gone and is replaced by a more penetrating examination of society. Dickens' vision of it is gradually changing from the purely personal and domestic to an understanding of the complicated interaction of its many forces. Dickens' last benevolent gentlemen have underg'one 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.

Money, al~~ys subordinate in the early novels, has now become the dominant aspiration of society and opportunism has taken the place of honest labour. In these novels of the 'sixties, 103.

Dickens shows more clearly the pOVler of money for good and evil. \Vhereas the early benevolent gentlemen's money was always put to good use, that of the later benevolent gentlemen has the power to corrupt. Magvdtch's money helps to make Pip a mean snob, and Boffin's money almost corrupts Bella and completely corrupts Vlegg. Magwi tch is not a true benevolent gentleman, although he gives his money to Pipe The money has been honestly earned, but is dishonestly spent because Magwitch keeps his identity concealed from unworthy motives. He wants to live vicariously through Pip, so that he rnay enjoy the pleasures of a society which has cast him out. His tlbenevolence" is not true benevolence, because his own desires have, in part, inspired it. Boffin 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 cannot be as straight- forward as theirs because he exists in a disordered, money-

greedy society which has 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 vvorked aIl his life to help build up the fortune he inherits. Those around him, however, 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 employed are shown to

.1 1 1 104.

be impossible in a society where money comes first. Baffin feels it necessary to resort to an elaborate pretence to convey a lesson which the earlier benevolent gentlemen would have put into simple words. In spi te of this, he is 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 aIl considered together. The early benevolent gentlemen are the most simple and "good" because they exist in an orderly society vmere 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 avmy their money, but their goodness has less effect; they themselves are more aware of evil round them and their lack of power to remedy it. The last benevolent gentlemen are more complex in character, and Dickens seems to have lost his relish for "goodness" in portraying them. Since society itself is more complicated, they must be more complex to compete in it successfully. The development is seen most clearly if Mr. Pickwick and Boffin are compared, for each is the best example of the benevolent gentleman of his periode Mr. Pickwick's goodness and openness accord weIl with the simpler society of Dickens' early novels. Boffin's duplicity shows that he is the product of a more complicated society which Dickens is examining more seriously. Both men are good, but by the time Boffin 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 "socialismoll He offers no definite remedies or solutions; just the one ide a 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, which 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 powers. Dickens never showed any awareness that the oasic structure of society could be changed. His benevolent gentlemen help the pa or but never raise their position in society. Dickens is content that the poor should remain in their condition, \tith 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 epidemic. 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 prob1em, beC::'3.use he made the repeated , ',- c1aim that the poor are entit1ed to their share of the wor1d's goods. Dickens accepts ful1y the idea of social inequality, vii th the resul t that his benevolent gentlemen appear often to be giving benefits to inferiors, rather than justice to fellow-men. But Dickens vms, after aIl, writing novels, not expositions of social reforme He displays just the quality expected from a popular novelist -- an appeal to the emotions. His benevolent gentlemen did, on the vnl01e, appeal 'to his contemporary readers because they were good. He was sincerely advocating through them what he thought coincided vvi th the desires and needs of decent men of his day. But goodness is relative to its age; its moods and qualities vary, and Dickens' benevolent gentlemen are seldom popular with modern readers. Today, they seem unctuous and intolerably sentimental. This shows just how far the twentieth century has changed from the nineteenth in the organization of charity. Few of the present­ day po or would care to be handed money by a tearful Pickwick.

The State has taken over \Yith collective welfare polici~s, and the day of the benevolent·gentleman is over. It would 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 centu~j, benevolence had consisted mostly in the giving of alms to the poor by the rich. ,---. In the nineteenth century, emphasis was laid less upon money, 107. and more upon service and social action performed by the middle classes for the poor. Dickens' benevolent gentlemen showed far greater sympathetic involvement v-'lith those around them than the eighteenth centuI"J IImorally good" man. They fulfilled a useful, if limited, function in his novels. Through them, he was trying to movetowards a solution of the eternal problem of the rich and poor. He was not alone in trying to make the privileged classes responsible for the underprivileged; the social historian, Sir Charles E. Trevelyan follows his idea: Since the beginning of this century Lthe nineteenthl the gulf between the rich and the poor has become fearfully vdde. The rich have become richer and the poor poorer. The proposaI 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 aIl classes together in the bonds of mutual help and good-vdll. 4 Dickens was striving, in his fiction, to achieve the "healing influence Il and the "bonds of mutual help and good-will." He found no complete answer in private philanthropy, as the differences in the benevolent gentlemen 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 goodness of individuals in society matters more than its forros and institutions.

4 Helen Bosanquet, Social Work in London, 1869 to 1912: ! History of the Charity Organizat~SOëiety (London, 191~ p. 53. 108.

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