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works. At any rate, it is clear that he was doing something very new, if not quite unique,
my point being that the public had very little to compare him with. It was necessary for
Dickens, not just to do it better than everybody else, but to create his own admiring public
for an entirely novel kind of performance: a kind of performance, moreover, for all its
theatricality radically at odds with the Victorian theatrical tradition - austere, devoid of
gimmickry, scenery, costumes, props (except the paper-knife, lectern and book with which
Dickens worked wonders); devoid, most importantly of all, of a cast of actors - just Dickens
himself mimicking all the parts: in short, a profoundly non-naturalistic kind of theatre.
Of course, Puritan disapproval of the theatre as such helped to make the readings
acceptable, but it can't explain their astonishing success. And they were an astonishing
success. The soberest and most analytic reviews register the warmest possible approval.
This is from a review of a reading during the farewell tour, published in The Scotsman
a journal not given to blinkered excess:
Hear Dickens, and die; you will never live to hear anything
of its kind so good. There has been nothing so perfect, in their way,
as those readings ever offered to an English audience
He is a story-teller; a prose improvisatore\ he recites rather
than reads; he has given them conscientious culture; and he applies
them heartily and zealously to the due presentment of the creations
of his own matchless genius. It has been said that an author is
generally either greater or less than his works - that is, that in the
works we see the best of a man, or that in the man there is better
stuff than he is able to put into his works. In Mr Dickens, as a reader,
each is equal to the other. His works could have no more perfect
illustrator; and they are worthy of his best efforts as an artist.
It's just not just that in his readings Dickens had better material to put over than
he had in many of the plays he produced. The descriptions we have of both suggest to me,
perhaps falsely, that there was a rightness of touch about the readings often lacking in
the productions. For all their similarity of category, I put this down to an essential
difference between the two enterprises.
What I want to suggest to you is that Dickens's taste at its best, certainly so far
as his art is concerned, is characterised by an affection for the ingredients it selects, an
affection that can survive awareness of almost any deficiency, but an affection utterly
wedded to a simultaneous ironic arguing that, using a variety of degraded styles (pompous
journalese, pompous officialese), he all the same contrives an effect of stylistic brilliance.
Much the same can be said, I think, about Dickens's taste in other things. He will take
whatever has earned a place in his affections and enjoy it ironically. It's worth noting in
passing, that this gave him a considerable advantage as a novelist. Novelists are notoriously
bad at giving a sense of excellence in other arts within their fictional frameworks.
Contemplation of the second-rate, and worse, allows greater scope for the novelist's art.
