that leaves the least impression; where a
man may tumble into the broken ice, or
dive into the kitchen fire, and only be
the droller for the accident; where
babies may be knocked about and sat
upon, or choked with gravy spoons, in
the process of feeding, and yet no
Coroner be wanted, nor anybody made
uncomfortable; where workmen may fall
from the top of a house to the bottom,
or even from the bottom or a house to
the top, and sustain no injury to the
brain, need no hospital, leave no young
children; where every one, in short, is
so superior to all the accidents of life,
though encountering them at every turn,
that I suspect this to be the secret
(though many persons may not present it
to themselves) of the general enjoyment
which an audience of vulnerable
spectators, liable to pain and sorrow,
find in this class of entertainment It
always appears to me that the secret of
enjoyment lies in the temporary
superiority to the common hazards and
mischances of life; in seeing casualties,
attending when they really occur with
bodily and mental suffering, tears, and
poverty, happen through a very rough
sort of poetry without the least harm
being done to anyone - the pretence of
distress in a pantomime being so broadly
humorous as to be no pretence at all.
Much as in the comic fiction I can
understand the mother with a very
vulnerable baby at home, greatly
relishing the invulnerable baby on the
stage, so in the Cremorne reality I can
understand the mason who is always
liable to fall off a scaffold in his working
jacket and to be carried to the hospital,
having an infinite admiration of the
radiant personage in spangles who goes
into the clouds upon a bull, or upside
down, and who, he takes it for granted-
not reflecting upon the thing - has, by
uncommon skill and dexterity, conquered
such mischances as those to which he and
his acquaintance are continually
exposed.^)
The relevance of such a frankly
idealizing, escapist type of theatre to
Dickens's own artistry requires a moment's
thought, for his novels manifestly grapple
with urgent concerns of the real world.
Forster reported Dickens's "indifference to
any praise of his performances on the merely
literary side, compared with the higher
recognition of them as bits of actual
life"22), and the prefaces are insistent on
the factual basis of the spontaneous
combustion of Krook, of the benevolence of
the Cheeryble brothers, of the horrors of
the Yorkshire schools. As he wrote (in bold
capitals) in defense of Nancy's devotion to
Sikes, "IT IS TRUE".23) Clearly, the
authenticity of his art mattered intensely to
Dickens.
At the same time, however, verisimilitude
alone is inadequate, in Dickens's view, as a
basis for art - or for life. Hard Times in
particular serves warning against the
deadening effects of mere reliance on fact.
As he wrote to Forster,
It does not seem to me to be enough to
say of any description that it is the
