MARK TWAIN OVER CHARLES DICKENS.
In januari 1868 gaf Dickens een voordracht uit eigen werk in Washington (tijdens zijn tweede
Amerikaanse reis). Mark Twain was daarbij aanwezig en zond de onderstaande recensie naar de krant
"Alta California".
WASHINGTON, January 1 lth.
Charles Dickens.
I only heard him read once. It was in New York, last week. I had a seat about the middle of Steinway
Hall, and that was rather further away from the speaker than was pleasant or profitable.
Promptly at 8 P.M., unannounced, and without waiting for any stamping or clapping of hands to call him
out, a tall, "spry," (if I may say it,) thin-legged old gentleman, gotten up regardless of expense, especially
as to shirt-front and diamonds, with a bright red flower in his button-hole, gray beard and moustache, bald
head, and with side hair brushed fiercely and tempestuously forward, as if its owner were sweeping down
before a gale of wind, the very Dickens came! He did not emerge upon the stage that is rather too
deliberate a word he strode. He strode in the most English way and exhibiting the most English
general style and appearance straight across the broad stage, heedless of everything, unconscious of
everybody, turning neither to the right nor the left but striding eagerly straight ahead, as if he had seen a
girl he knew turn the next corner. He brought up handsomely in the centre and faced the opera glasses.
His pictures are hardly handsome, and he, like everybody else, is less handsome than his pictures. That
fashion he has of brushing his hair and goatee so resolutely forward gives him a comical Scotch-terrier
look about the face, which is rather heightened than otherwise by his portentous dignity and gravity. But
that queer old head took on a sort of beauty, bye and bye, and a fascinating interest, as I thought of the
wonderful mechanism within it, the complex but exquisitely adjusted machinery that could create men
and women, and put the breath of life into them and alter all their ways and actions, elevate them, degrade
them, murder them, marry them, conduct them through good and evil, through joy and sorrow, on their
long march from the cradle to the grave, and never lose its godship over them, never make a mistake! I
almost imagined I could see the wheels and pulleys work. This was Dickens Dickens. There was no
question about that, and yet it was not right easy to realize it. Somehow this puissant god seemed to be
only a man, after all. How the great do tumble from their high pedestals when we see them in common
human flesh, and know that they eat pork and cabbage and act like other men.
Mr. Dickens had a table to put his book on, and on it he had also a tumbler, a fancy decanter and a small
bouquet. Behind him he had a huge red screen a bulkhead a sounding-board, I took it to be and
overhead in front was suspended a long board with reflecting lights attached to it, which threw down a
glory upon the gentleman, after the fashion in use in the picture-galleries for bringing out the best effects
of great paintings. Style! There is style about Dickens, and style about all his surroundings.
He read David Copperfield. He is a bad reader, in one sense because he does not enunciate his words
sharply and distinctly he does not cut the syllables cleanly, and therefore many and many of them fell
dead before they reached our part of the house. [I say "our" because I am proud to observe that there was
a beautiful young lady with me a highly respectable young white woman.] I was a good deal
disappointed in Mr. Dickens' reading I will go further and say, a great deal disappointed. The Herald
and Tribune critics must have been carried away by their imaginations when they wrote their extravagant
praises of it. Mr. Dickens' reading is rather monotonous, as a general thing; his voice is husky; his pathos
is only the beautiful pathos of his language -- there is no heart, no feeling in it -- it is glittering frostwork;
his rich humor cannot fail to tickle an audience into ecstasies save when he reads to himself. And what a
bright, intelligent audience he had! He ought to have made them laugh, or cry, or shout, at his own good
will or pleasure but he did not. They were very much tamer than they should have been.
He pronounced Steerforth "St'yaw-futh." This will suggest to you that he is a little Englishy in his speech.
One does not notice it much, however. I took two or three notes on a card; by reference to them I find that
Pegotty's anger when he learned the circumstance of Little Emly's disappearance, was "excellent acting --
