16
public never noticed that the world of Dickens was a madhousebut this became
clearer in the twentieth century thanks to psychology. The puppets of Busken Huet
and the living moralities of Frans Coenen have become madmen for Vestdijk.
Richard Carstone is a neurotic, Mr Dick a jovial infantile man, Harold Skimpole a
childish parasite. Yes, according to Vestdijk Dickens himself was a neuropath, and
not a 'normal' being. 1 think Vestdijk has got hold of the wrong end of the stick,
especially if he calls Mr Dick 'a completely unlikely case' and Skimpole 'obviously
invented'. They are drawn from life and are not one-dimensional as Vestdijk says,
but three-dimensional as Bomans puts it, characters you can walk around.
Mythical reality
In post World War II Dutch Dickens literature, Godfried Bomans(15) plays a
dominant role. The creation of the Prisma series with all the works of Dickens as its
first issues, the setting up of the Haarlem Branch of the Dickens Fellowship, articles
and television appearances on Dickens's behalf have greatly contributed to the
popularity of Charles Dickens in the Netherlands.
How realistic did Bomans think Dickens's characters are? We have seen that he
thought that the world created by Dickens was one of flesh and blood, so real that he
never tired of writing about the habit of the Fellowship to mount plaques on the
houses and places where Dickens's imaginary characters lived. This habit was the
ultimate proof of the reality of Dickens's characters. Bomans considered this task
one of the most important, perhaps even the most important duty of the Fellowship.
On Rochester, where the annual Fellowship conference was held in 1969, he writes:
'Innumerable characters from Dickens's books have walked here, lam or stood here,
and that demands the unveiling of so many plaques that the treasurer sent all thirty
of them in advance so that he would not be suspected of being a travelling
stonemason. '(16)
What better proof of the real existence of Mr Winkle and Dr Slammer than unveiling
a plaque at The Bull where they met and at the meadow where they almost fought a
duel? If the original houses had in the meantime been:
"torn down and replaced by flats and banks, then the solution is to mount a plaque at
the spot where the house once stood. This method results in an unusual spectacle,
where a plaque is cemented into the concrete wall of a factory for aeroplane parts,
with the remarkable message: 'This is where Sophy met her lover Thomas Traddies,
David Copperfield 1847'. The speaker, who performs the unveiling, never forgets to
ask the director of the factory (who is standing there bashfully) how he could
possibly have built a factory here to which he wisely returns no answer." 17)
The genius of Dickens is unsurpassed because he does not describe any
psychological developments in his characters, according to Bomans, who thus
differs completely from the view of Vestdijk:
"Dutch literature describes an atmosphere or indicates a psychological development.
The dramatis personae are only drawn in outline. Who can say what Hline Vere
looked like, or how Woutertje Pieterse should be painted? We know everything
about their inner worids, but nothing about their outward appearance. With Dickens
