The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

Suppose he wishes to portray a humble man. The writer can show someone engaging by his own choice—he is per­fectly free to refuse—in activities for which he has no talent whatsoever and at which, therefore, he is bound to fail and look ridiculous, and then show him as radiant with self- esteem in his failure as if he had triumphed. Here self- esteem in a situation which in real life would destroy it is an indirect sign for humility; but not a direct sign, for a success­ful man can be humble too.

Or again, suppose a writer wishes to portray an innocent man. No human being is innocent, but small children are not yet personally guilty. It is possible that they have some knowledge of good and evil, but it is certain they have no innate knowledge of what their parents and society call right and wrong, and apply alike to such diverse matters as toliet habits, social manners, stealing and cruelty.

Compared with a normal adult, a small child is lacking in a sense of honor and a sense of shame. One way, therefore, in which a writer can portray an innocent man is to show an adult behaving in a way which his society considers out- xageous without showing the slightest awareness of public opinion. A normal adult might wish to behave in the same way and even do so if he were certain that nobody else would get to hear of his behavior, but fear of social disap­proval will prevent him from behaving so in public. The lack of shame is an indirect sign of innocence but, once again, not a direct sign, because lunatics show the same lack of shame.

When the novel opens, Mr. Pickwick is middle-aged. In his farewell speech at the Adelphi, he says that nearly the whole of his previous life had been devoted to business and the pur­suit of wealth, but we can no more imagine what he did during those years than we can imagine what Don Quixote did before he went mad or what Falstaff was like as a young man. In our minds Mr. Pickwick is bom in middle age with inde­pendent means; his mental and physical powers are those of a middle-aged man, his experience of the world that of a newborn child. The society into which he is born is a com­mercial puritanical society in which wealth is honored, pov­erty despised, and any detected lapse from the strictest standards of propriety severely punished. In such a society, Mr. Pickwick's circumstances and nature make him a for­tunate individual. He is comfortably off and, aside from a tendency at times to overindulge in food and drink, without vices. Sex, for example, is no temptation to him. One cannot conceive of him either imagining himself romantically in love with a girl of the lower orders, like Don Quixote, or con­sorting with whores, like Falstaff. So far as his experience goes, this world is an Eden without evil or suffering.

His sitting-room was the first floor front, his bedroom the second floor front; and thus, whether he was sitting at his desk in his parlour or standing before the dressing- glass in his dormitory, he had an equal opportunity of contemplating human nature in all the numerous phases it exhibits, in that not more populous than pop­ular thoroughfare. His landlady, Mrs. Bardell—the relict and sole executrix of a deceased custom-house officer— was a comely woman of bustling manners and agree­able appearance, with a natural genius for cooking, improved by study and long practice, into an exquisite talent. There were no children, no servants, no fowls— cleanliness and quiet reigned throughout the house; and in it Mr. Pickwick's will was law.

His three young friends, Tupman, Snodgrass and Winkle, are equally innocent. Each has a ruling passion, Tupman for the fair sex, Snodgrass for poetry, and Winkle for sport, but their talents are not very formidable. We are not given any specimen of Snodgrass's poems, but we may presume that, at their best, they reach the poetic level of Mrs. Leo Hunter's "Ode to an Expiring Frog."

Say, with fiends in spare of boys With wild halloo and brutal noise Hunted thee from marshy joys With a dog, Expiring frog?

We are shown Winkle at a shoot and learn that the birds are in far less danger than the bystanders. Tupman's age and girth are hardly good qualifications for a Romeo or a Don Juan. Contact with the world cures them of their il­lusions without embittering them, Eros teaches the two young men that the favors of Apollo and Artemis are not what they desire—Snodgrass marries Emily and becomes a gentle­man farmer, Winkle marries Arabella Allen and goes into his father's business—and Tupman comes to acquiesce cheer­fully in the prospect of a celibate old age.