Books

Everybody has heard of Little Nell, but few people of our generation have actually read The Old Curiosity Shop. Published in serial form in 1840 – 1841, The Old Curiosity Shop enthralled readers with its combination of the grotesque and the sublime. Little Nell Trent is the quintessential Dickens heroine, “sensitive, frightened, and prematurely responsible,” in Paul Schlicke’s summation. Hers is the most celebrated deathbed scene in literary history. Conceived as a kind of allegory, the story follows Nell as she travels through a sinister world, pursued by the evil dwarf Quilp, one of Dickens’s most amazing creations, whose personality, by turns hilarious and sadistic, colors the landscape she is forced to inhabit. Nell’s only protector, her hapless grandfather, is ironically also the source of her troubles, for he is the victim of a terrible addiction that places her in constant jeopardy. Like many children of addictive parents, Nell is forced prematurely into adulthood. She leaves the shop full of strange “curiosities,” where she has been raised, and embarks on a journey where she encounters their living counterparts.

Like Alice in Wonderland, Nell dwells in a dream world. (She is constantly wondering if she is awake or asleep.) Besides the maniacal dwarf who pursues her, Nell meets puppeteers, clowns, magicians, and even works as the assistant in a waxwork exhibition. Each of these characters is drawn in intricate and often hilarious detail. As he always does, Dickens gives us subplots in plenty, with threats to the safety of the little girl growing as Quilp weaves a scheme to defraud her of a fortune she does not actually possess. In the process we have the pleasure to meet another great Dickens creation, Dick Swiveller, the drunken profligate who emerges as the unlikely hero of the tale. Besides having one of the funniest names in fiction, lazy, poetic Dick is a delight to know. I can’t think of the scene where he is forced to go to work (a “staggerer,” in his peculiar vocabulary) without laughing out loud. Mrs. Jarley, the entrepreneur extraordinaire who employs Nell at the waxworks, is another joy. Even Quilp, when he is not terrifying, is very funny. The loose narrative structure allows Dickens to introduce a veritable menagerie of wild characters in startling contrast to the steady, beautiful child. We see, through Nell’s eyes, the very human nature of a carnival world.

The Old Curiosity Shop became a cultural phenomenon comparable to our generation’s fascination with the miniseries Roots, or the musical Les Miserables. At its height 100,000 copies sold of each number in the series, as for over fifty weeks readers on both sides of the Atlantic worried over the fate of Little Nell. In December of 1841 readers began to sense a melancholy turn in the tone of the novel, and Dickens reported to his publishers that they “inundated him with imploring letters recommending poor little Nell to mercy.” Dickens was resolute, however, that Nell, as a symbol of purity in an evil world, must be released to a higher sphere. Summoning up the grief he had suffered three years earlier when his beloved sister-in-law Mary Hogarth died in his arms, Dickens composed the famous scene. This was a terrible experience for a man who called his characters his “children,” and who suffered more over their fates than over the fates of real people in his life. “I am,” he wrote to a friend, “for the time, nearly dead with work and grief for the loss of my child…I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I do not know what to do with myself.” When he finally finished the novel he mourned in a letter, “Nobody shall miss her like I shall.” In America, legend has it that thousands lined the docks in New York as the ship approached that carried the next issue of Nell’s saga, crying to those on board, “Is Little Nell dead?”

Sentiment vs. Sentimentality

Little Nell’s famous demise brings us to the sharpest criticism leveled against this novel, and against Dickens in general, namely, his sentimentality. G.K. Chesterton said of Dickens, “His humor was inspiration, but his pathos was ambition.” By this he meant that Dickens could not help creating wonderful, comic characters, but created sentimental ones in order to sell books. His long, maudlin death scenes are legendary, and critics from his day to ours accuse him of emotional manipulation. Oscar Wilde famously quipped that “one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.” Aldous Huxley wrote: “One of Dickens’s most striking peculiarities is that, whenever in his writing he becomes emotional, he ceases instantly to use his intelligence. The overflowing of his heart drowns his head and even dims his eyes; for whenever he is in the melting mood, Dickens ceases to be able and probably ceases even to wish to see reality. His one and only desire on these occasions is just to overflow, nothing else.” (Vulgarity in Literature, 1930)

Is Dickens too sentimental? You’ll have to see what you think when you read the book. My own opinion is a firm yes…and no. Yes, I sometimes feel that Dickens loses hold of his genius when he is presenting scenes so perfect, so heavenly, that we cease to believe in the humanity of the characters. And no, I would not trade these deeply sentimental moments in Dickens for the cynical, faithless fare that is dealt us by those who seek emotional honesty at the cost of belief. Dickens was writing to people who faced death often. One third of the children born in Victorian society died before they were grown. That meant that nearly every family who gathered by a fireside to read the latest installment of his novels had buried, or would bury, a child. Dickens, himself no stranger to death, wanted to do something through his writing to help people deal with the loss of loved ones. He wrote, “I resolved to try and do something which might be read by people about whom Death had been, – with a softened feeling, and with consolation.” My beloved teacher, Arthur Henry King, who as a young boy lost both his father and younger brother, movingly described Dickens’s importance in his emotional life:

“I met death in Dickens. It made more of an impression on me than anything else in Dickens. There was the death of Little Nell, the death of Paul Dombey, the death of Barkis in David Copperfield, the death (above all) of Dora. I remember reading about that in the autumn of 1918. It was October; it was a rainy day; and it was late afternoon when I read that chapter. I read it by the light of the fire. I can still remember all that. I can still remember my grief, and I can still remember that it took me several months to overcome that grief about a fictive character in a book – not that I have ever really recovered. That experience at the age of eight prepared me to find value in the passing of loved ones. It helped me to endure and properly experience the real deaths that followed it… We need to prepare our children for death. It is one of the things that they need and have a right to learn, and it is from literature that they can best learn it.

Dickens’s novels have been a part of my own emotional landscape. I cannot separate certain experiences of my life from the books I was reading while they happened, and often these books have been his. I read The Old Curiosity Shop for the first time when I was very ill, shortly before the birth of our last child. One morning I received word that one of my dearest friends had died suddenly, leaving several young children motherless. That was a very difficult morning, with my grief compounded by my own fears for my unborn child. I remembered a passage in the novel and turned to it. Here a little boy has died, and his schoolmaster, overcome with grief, tries to teach Nell not to consider his loss a pure tragedy. I read this passage over and over, and finally memorized it. It brought me great comfort.

“There is nothing,’ cried her friend, no, nothing innocent or good, that dies, and is forgotten. Let us hold to that faith, or none. An infant, a prattling child, dying in its cradle, will live again in the better thoughts of those who loved it; and play its part, through them, in the redeeming actions of the world, though its body be burnt to ashes or drowned in the deepest sea. There is not an angel added to the Host of heaven but does its blessed work on earth in those that loved it here. Forgotten! Oh, if the good deeds of human creatures could be traced to their source, how beautifully would even death appear; for how much charity, mercy, and purified affection, would be seen to have their growth in dusty graves!” (503)

The world changes very little, really. People are born, they live, they love, and they die. Through literature we have an opportunity both to rehearse and to relive some of life’s most difficult and tremendous moments. Literature can help us come to terms with life and death, lay down our burden of bitterness and receive wisdom in its stead. The Old Curiosity Shop will make you laugh and cry, and both will be (to use my father’s expression) “good for what ails you.” Enjoy, and write your thoughts to be shared with all of us who love to read.

The Old Curiosity Shop is the September selection for the Best Books Club, a gathering place for those who love classic literature. Our selection for October will be Delta Wedding, by Eudora Welty. For a complete reading list and to share in the discussion, log on to our website at www.thebestbooksclub.com.