A Page from Charles Dickens

I was led to write this article by a piece in the Christian Science Monitor. That publication is on my news feeds. The editors like to feature lists of this or that. They are usually amusing.

A recent effort was a listing of the top 15 strange comments overheard in the library by librarians. One of them cracked me up:

• "Did Charles Dickens ever write anything fun?"

Well, Charlie was rather obsessed about poverty and classism in old Europe, particularly as they affected poor young boys growing up. Rather like his own upbringing when his father was thrown into debtor's prison. But he actually had the richest sense of humor. It is found in his characterizations of the characters who dominate all his books. Real people. Not heroes. Greedy, poor, unclean, brutal people sometimes. Snooty pretenders. Wizened old cranks.

You know. Like your neighbors.

Like the Senate.

And I smile to think that Dickens wrote his books in installments some 150 years ago. The installments were published in newspapers, and he was the rage of the time. He effectively blogged his novels.

Miss Havisham

The Book I will sottoize a page from is "Great Expectations", which is a story of our hero young "Pip", fatherless, motherless and living at the start of the book with his older sister and her husband Joe. Joe is a blacksmith, not the brightest iron in the furnace but good of heart and protective of young Pip. A mysterious benefactor arranges for Pip to go to London to clerk at a law firm for a gruff cheapskate lawyer named Mr. Jaggers. The separation from Joe is heartwrenching but it is best for Pip, a very bright boy. Joe knows he can show Pip no future.

Jaggers is an excellent lawyer, as we will see in a moment.

Pip falls in love with the mysterious and unpredictable Estella, a resident at the remarkable Miss Havisham's grand residence. Miss Havisham was jilted on her wedding day and remains frozen in time, hung up on the crash of love lost. Love's grip is a key theme of the novel, and Pip gets gripped by Estella.

But let's just take a moment to step back as Pip gets to know Mr. Jaggers, courtesy of a tour of the law firm by a law clerk at the firm named Wemmick.

Wemmick invites Pip to his house some time, an invitation which Pip accepts. Then Wemmick asks:

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"Have you dined with Mr. Jaggers yet?"

"Not yet."

"Well," said Wemmick. "he'll give you wine, and good wine. I'll give you punch, and not bad punch. And now I'll tell you something. When you go to dine with Mr. Jaggers, look at his housekeeper."

"Shall I see something very uncommon?"

"Well, said Wemmick, "you'll see a wild beast tamed. Not so very uncommon, you'll tell me. I reply, that depends on the original wildness of the beast, and the amount of taming. It won't lower your opinion of Mr. Jaggers's powers. Keep your eye on it."

I told him I would do so, with all the interest and curiosity that his preparation awakened. As I was taking my departure, he asked me if I would like to devote five minutes to seeing Mr. Jaggers "at it"?

JoeAm lookalike. Charles Dickens.

For several reasons, and not the least because I didn't clearly know what Mr. Jaggers would be found to be "at", I replied in the affirmative. We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police court, where a blood relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches was standing at the bar, uncomfortably chewing something; while my guardian had a woman under examination or cross-examination - I don't know which - and was striking her, and the bench, and everybody with awe. If anybody, of whatsoever degrees, said a word that he didn't approve of, he instantly required to have it "taken down." If anybody wouldn't make an admission, he said, "I'll have it out of you!" and if anybody made an admission, he said "Now I have got you!" The magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger. Thieves and thieftakers hung in dread rapture on his words, and shrank when a hair of his eyebrows turned in their direction. Which side he was on, I couldn't make out, for he seemed to me to be grinding the whole place in a mill; I only know that when I stole out on tiptoe, he was not on the side of the bench, for he was making the legs of the old gentleman who presided quite convulsive under the table by his denunciations of his conduct as the representative of British law and justice in that chair that day.

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So, did Charles Dickens ever write anything fun?

I don't know about you, but Dickens had me smiling all the way through this book. His people come alive, from the mention of their names to their quirks of their lives. The travails the characters face are made more intense by the vividness of the pictures in which they perform.

"He'll give you wine, and good wine. I'll give you punch, and not bad punch."

The line shows Wemmick to be a good man, a comparatively poor, underclass man, who knows his place in life, yet keeps it in healthy - indeed, tasteful - perspective.

What a cast of characters. Tell me the names aren't fun:

• Miss Havisham
• Abel Magwitch
• Joe Gargery
• Mr. Pumblechook
• Mr. Jaggers
• Mr. Wemmick
• Herbert Pocket

And the active writing style.

We dived into the City, and came up in a crowded police court, where a blood relation (in the murderous sense) of the deceased with the fanciful taste in brooches was standing at the bar, uncomfortably chewing something  . . .

We didn't just walk downtown and into the City court to watch the victim's relative testify.

The magistrates shivered under a single bite of his finger.

Brilliant, Dude. Gives me shivers, too. Dickens is my idol. Words are scalpels for him, or feathers to caress, or microscopes under which people look a lot like bugs.

• The book is a mystery, too. Who is Pip's benefactor?

• And a romance. Will the heart-smitten Pip marry the pretty and teasing Estella?

• And a bit scary. The creepy pale face in the window at Miss Havisham's dark, foreboding mansion. Or Pip's meetings with the unbalanced Miss Havisham, an old woman trapped for years in sorrow and anger.

But more than anything, the book is good for the mind and soul.

An easy read? No way. British language of 150 years ago was wretchedly twisted; strained through the imagination of the verbose Charles Dickens, it assumes entirely new shapes of grand contortion.

Is the climbing of a mountain easy? Afterwards, yes.

Is Dickens fun?

The best.