Library / Literature & Fiction
The Puzzle of Dickens's Last Plot
by Andrew Lang
- Pages
- about 54
- Category
- Literature & Fiction
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 59 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
FORSTER tells us that Dickens, in his later novels, from Bleak House
onwards (1853), “assiduously cultivated” construction, “this essential of
his art.” Some critics may think, that since so many of the best novels
in the world “have no outline, or, if they have an outline, it is a
demned outline,” elaborate construction is not absolutely “essential.”
Really essential are character, “atmosphere,” humour.
But as, in the natural changes of life, and under the strain of restless
and unsatisfied activity, his old buoyancy and unequalled high spirits
deserted Dickens, he certainly wrote no longer in what Scott, speaking of
himself, calls the manner of “hab nab at a venture.” He constructed
elaborate plots, rich in secrets and surprises. He emulated the manner
of Wilkie Collins, or even of Gaboriau, while he combined with some of
the elements of the detective novel, or roman policier, careful study
of character. Except Great Expectations, none of his later tales
rivals in merit his early picaresque stories of the road, such as
Pickwick and Nicholas Nickleby. “Youth will be served;” no sedulous
care could compensate for the exuberance of “the first sprightly
runnings.” In the early books the melodrama of the plot, the secrets of
Ralph Nickleby, of Monk, of Jonas Chuzzlewit, were the least of the
innumerable attractions. But Dickens was more and more drawn towards the
secret that excites curiosity, and to the game of hide and seek with the
reader who tried to anticipate the solution of the secret.
In April, 1869, Dickens, outworn by the strain of his American readings;
of that labour achieved under painful conditions of ominously bad
health—found himself, as Sir Thomas Watson reported, “on the brink of an
attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of apoplexy.” He
therefore abandoned a new series of Readings. We think of Scott’s
earlier seizures of a similar kind, after which Peveril, he said,
“smacked of the apoplexy.”
A short sample. Read the whole book
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