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epidemics and fevers, restless dreams, executioners, escapes, rescues and redemptions. The
real Dickensian could give a name, and often more than one name, to every item on this
list. Blackmail, terror and torture, horrors real and imagined, ghosts, devils, saints, martyrs,
villains of both sexes, of all ages, covert and overt, cunning or stupid, successful or
unsuccessful, giants, dwarfs -- literally or figuratively -- all haunt and inhabit Dickens's
pages.
It is clear that in Dickens you can find the full Gothic works -- all the schemes
and devices, and all the tricks of Romantic Gothicism or Gothic Romanticism on a larger,
more credible and more terrifying scale than in any other novelist. And from such examples
you might suspect and suppose that Dickens is indeed a full-blown Gothic novelist. And
needless to say he also has his more tender, gentle and dreamlike, sentimental Romantic
side too, which we need not dwell on because we can take it for granted, and in most
respects it is not that side of his genius which we nowadays celebrate or enjoy so much.
Although some features of this particular Romantic colouring we will be returning to when
we consider Dickens as an anti-Romantic.
It is hardly necessary to quote examples of the dark Gothic side of Dickens's work
- one could cite passages from every novel he ever wrote. But for purely tactical reasons
let us remind ourselves of the opening pages of The Old Curiosity Shop:
Although I am an old man, night is generally my time for
walking. In the summer I often leave home early in the morning, and
roam about the fields and lanes all day, or even escape for days or
weeks together; but saving in the country, I seldom go out until after
dark, though, Heaven be thanked, I love its light and feel the
cheerfulness it sheds upon the earth, as much as any creature living.
I have fallen insensibly into this habit, both because it favours my
infirmity, and because it affords me greater opportunity of speculating
on the characters and occupations of those who fill the streets. The
glare and hurry of broad noon are not adapted to idle pursuits like
mine; a glimpse of passing faces caught by the light of a street-lamp,
or a shop-window, is often better for my purpose than their full
revelation in the daylight; and, if I must add the truth, night is kinder
in this respect than day, which too often destroys an air-built castle
at the moment of its completion without the least ceremony or remorse.
That constant pacing to and fro, that never-ending restlessness,
that incessant tread of feet wearing the rough stones smooth and
glossy - is it not a wonder how the dwellers in narrow ways can bear
to hear it? Think of a sick man, in such a place as Saint Martin's
Court, listening to the footsteps, and in the midst of pain and
weariness, obliged, despite himself (as though it were a task he must
perform) to detect the child's step from the man's, the slipshod beggar
from the booted exquisite, the lounging from the busy, the dull heel
of the sauntering outcast from the quick tread of an expectant
pleasure-seeker -- think of the hum and noise being always present
to his senses, and of the stream of life that will not stop, pouring
on, on, on, through all his restless dreams, as if he were condemned
to lie, dead but consious, in a noisy churchyard, and had no hope of
rest for centuries to come!.
There was no reason, however, why I should refrain from seeing
the person who had inconsiderately sent her to so great a distance by
night and alone; and, as it was not improbable that if she found herself
