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might look at our modern mobs with satire, or with fury, but
he would love to look at them. He might lash our democracy,
but it would be because like a democrat, he asked much from
it. We will not have all his books bound up under 'the title
of „The Old Curiosity Shop". Rather we will have them all
bound up under the title of „Great Expextations"Wherever
humanity is he would have us face it and make something of
it, swallow it with a holy cannibalism, and assimilate it
with the digestion of a giant. We must take these trippers
as he would have taken them, and tear out of them there tra
gedy and there farce".
Tremendous Trifles (1909)
MARK TWAIN
In december 1867 heeft Mark Twain een „reading" van Dickens
bijgewoond. In zijn „Autobiography" beschrijft hij dit als volgt.
„Mr. Dickens read scenes' from his printed books. Prom my dis
tance he was a small and slender figure, rather fancifully
dressed, and striking and picturesque in appearance. He wore
a black velvet coat with a large and glaring_flower in the
buttonhole. He stood under a red upholstered shed behind
whose slant was a row of strong lights - just such an arran
gement as artists use to concentrate a strong light upon a
great picture. Dickens's audience sat in a pleasant twilight,
while he performed in the powerful light cast upon him from
the concealed lamps. He read with great force and a'nimation,
in the levely passages, and with stirring effect. It will be
understood, that he did not merely read but also acted. His
reading of the storm scene in which Steerforth lost his life
was so vivid and so full of energetic action that his house
carried of its feet, so to speak."
