The Imaginarium of Mister Dickens

(Originally published here at The Sunday Guardian)

“The intense pursuit of any idea that takes complete possession of me is one of the qualities that make me different — sometimes for good; sometimes I dare say for evil — from other men.”

                                                --Letter from Charles Dickens to his wife, December 5, 1853

Charles Dickens, circa 1841, was certainly writing like a man possessed. After the raging success of the serialised novel Pickwick Papers (the last instalment of which appeared in 1837), the young writer now had a devoted readership. In the years 1837-1840, Dickens wrote both Nicholas Nickleby and the much-loved Oliver Twist, which was the first Victorian novel to have a child protagonist. In April 1840, the first instalment of his new book The Old Curiosity Shop came out in the short-lived weekly Master Humphrey’s Clock.

The characters in the novel soon became wildly popular, in particular the heroine Nell Trent, an angelic, virtuous orphan ‘of not quite fourteen’. As the story drew towards its end, a strange and wondrous thing began to be noticed, something which underlined the frenzied fan following enjoyed by Dickens. Impatient to find out the fate of their beloved Nell, his American fans would throng the New York dockyards, shouting out to incoming ships the one question which mattered to them- “Is Little Nell dead?”  

2012 marks the birth bicentenary of Charles Dickens- Two hundred years since he was born; a “very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy", in his own words. His books have never gone out of print, his star has never looked like dimming and his characters have become dictionary entries. A Tale of Two Cities has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling novel of all time, across genre, as writer David Mitchell observed in a 2010 article. Works such as A Christmas Carol, David Copperfield and Great Expectations have enthralled generation after generation of readers, and spawned scores of film, television and theatrical adaptations around the world.

What is it about Dickens that makes his legacy such an enduring one? Sudeep Chakravarti (author of the novel Tin Fish as well as non-fiction books like the acclaimed Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country) says, “I actually read Dickens translated into Bangla before reading him in English. I found his stories to be gripping, and I liked the fact that they weren’t preachy. I also liked that they travelled up and down the social and economic ladder, painting characters and situations unflinchingly. Reading Dickens as a child, I found some of these situations to be shocking—but they turned my head!”

Chakravarti was one of the five Indian writers who wrote essays for the British Council India blog earlier this year- A series called ‘What Would Dickens Write Today’, part of the Indian wing of Dickens 2012, their international celebration of his birth bicentenary. The British Council has been coordinating with 50 countries for various educational and cultural events. These included reading sessions with noted authors, screening of Dickens adaptations and also organising creative writing competitions for writers aged 16-21 who submitted pieces inspired by Dickens. The Indian leg of the festivities kicked off at the Kolkata Book Fair in January, where author Vikram Seth interacted with youngsters at the BC Reading Room.    

At the event, Seth was in his elements, waxing eloquent about Dickens, a writer he was frequently compared to after A Suitable Boy- His magnum opus which brought a very Dickensian social realism to an ensemble cast in newly-independent India. “Dickens was not allowed to have (writer’s) blocks”, Seth said. “He had a magazine, which he ran, where he had to produce a certain number of pages every week. Now, the interesting thing about this way of writing- a few pages at a time- is that the audience is waiting. It’s like a serial, say the Mahabharata or the Ramayana; you want to know what’s going to happen next week. People would be absolutely salivating…”   

Seth was echoing the sentiments of the anxious Americans who shouted at incoming ships, demanding to know Little Nell’s fate. However, another, contrasting aspect of Dickens (and every other truly great author) worth pondering upon is the repeat value of his books- If we read and re-read a work, it’s only because it offers enough by way of the familiar, which welcomes us back like an old friend; and the unfamiliar, which draws us inwards, riding on our intrigue, our bewilderment. Even the weakest of Dickens’ works have healthy doses of both. Author Anita Nair highlighted this duality thus- “One of the first Charles Dickens works I read as a child was A Christmas Carol, and I was fascinated by the food descriptions; the turkey, the Christmas feast and so on. Through these passages, food turned into something else”, she said, before adding, “Reading the book became a Christmas tradition for me.”

How do you pick your favourite Dickens character? Here was a writer who could conjure up memorable people (and I say people, not characters) with a few deft brushstrokes. Author Anjum Hasan says, “Dickens' characters have a great capacity for suffering and yet there is always something around the corner that's going to cheer them up. They suffer but they are not sorrowful, at least not his heroes and heroines. I loved that and identified with it when I first read his work.”  Is it Fagin the Jew, then, or Sidney Carton, the ultimate tragic hero? Miss Havisham perhaps or Mr. Bucket, that prince among pre-Sherlock sleuths? I found myself agreeing with Anita Nair when she opined, “Uriah Heep (from Great Expectations) is one of the finest characters in all of literature, along with Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert.”

Nabokov, incidentally, taught a course called Masters of European Fiction at Cornell for almost ten years, where he gave a series of memorable lectures on writers like Gogol, Flaubert, Jane Austen and yes, Dickens. To read his dazzling deconstruction of Dickens’ method is a sheer delight, and we shall turn to him, at last, to better understand this magician’s sleights-of-hand. “Despite certain faults in the telling of his story, Dickens remains, nevertheless, a great writer. Control over a considerable constellation of characters and themes, the technique of holding people and events bunched together, or of evoking absent characters through dialogue- In other words, the art of not only creating people but keeping created people alive within the reader’s mind throughout a long novel- this, of course, is the obvious sign of greatness.”

Charles Dickens did not always have a happy life. By all accounts, his childhood was far from merry. As an adult, he had a large family to support which kept him on his toes, writing feverishly. In middle age, he fell in love with an 18-year-old actress and subsequently separated from his wife, something which earned him considerable disrepute in conservative, Victorian England. But through all of this, he maintained a prolific output, producing one gem after another. As Karl Marx put it, Dickens "issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together". While the man himself might have made a drily funny remark or two about his misfortunes, for his countless readers across the planet, the first lines of A Tale of Two Cities sum up the Dickens era best: "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."