27 December 2012
The reopening of his
house museum is an opportunity to evaluate Dickens’ highly idiosyncratic views
on Christmas.
Dickens didn’t invent the nineteenth century obsession with Christmas,
but this year, his two hundredth birthday, it is worth reflecting on how much
he popularised the event, and what it seems to have meant for him.
While he decorated yuletide with all the trimmings, and
these trimmings are what we continue to associate with this time of year, his
central interest was very different, and not at all Christian, though he might
have objected to this.
He perceived Christmas as a time of ghosts, both in the form
of subjects of scary stories and metaphorically as a time for remembering our
past life and perhaps changing our future approach based on this consideration.
The Christmas Carol accommodates both these aspects, and when haunted Scrooge
returns to the wonderment and imagination of his youth, the power of this
imagination rejuvenates him.
For Dickens, then, Christmas was principally a time when the
imagination could work on us, and although his Christmas stories have the
conventional happy ending, as with Scrooge, there is always the possibility
that its workings will have a negative effect, as when we think on deaths in
the family.
The Dickens house museum, located in one of his early London
residences, reopened in December just in time to capture those wishing to
celebrate both the man and his connection with Christmas.
The house was closed in order to extend the amenities, and
allow more people to experience the original house. Nonetheless over the
holiday period the house was extremely crowded, which limits the enjoyment.
It also suffers from the curse of all new museums – the
interactives don’t work, nor is the guidebook back from the printers yet. Oh
well, those wrinkles will be sorted out.
Otherwise, I had mixed feelings. Too much focuses on what is
referred to as Dickens’ sympathy with the poor, unparalleled in his time. Perhaps
Dickens felt sympathy with the poor, though it would be hard to tell from his
writing about them, always external to their situation, always sentimentalising
much as he did with everyone.
Moralist critics of Dickens, starting with his mentor Thomas
Carlyle, have always complained about his sentimentality. These critics may miss the
point, but they are at least accurate, unlike his moralist supporters, who
claim that he was a champion of the oppressed.
The upper floor of this house is dedicated to this vision of
Dickens, wildly wrong as would be observed by anyone simply reading how he
described his temporary confinement to a blacking factory as a child, the great
trauma of his life.
In these words, he shows no sympathy for his fellow workers,
most of whom were there for much longer than he. Rather, he is concerned that
nobody noticed he was destined for much better things, as indeed, he was.
He knew his genius; he followed it; and on the side, like
anyone with scruples, he expressed concern for the plight of the poor, though
it had nothing to do with his talent, nor was it something he focussed upon
unduly.
Dickens combined a vivid imagination (natively amoral, but
trained into a conventional strict morality) with a love of theatre, especially
comedy, and of conviviality combined with hard work. It is this mixture that
produces what is distinctively great about his writing, which has almost
nothing in common with that of any writer of his time.
Some of his strengths are reflected in the exhibits here. A
playbill from one of his private performances of a Wilkie Collins melodrama
(and notable, a farce afterwards). A dining room where we’re told he somehow
entertained 18 people, which must have been very cosy, and a feat worthy of his
Pickwick.
What a pity that here, as elsewhere, what is most important about Dickens, what makes him live, is buried amongst a focus on poverty that, if we seek for it in his works, does neither the author nor his current readers any credit.
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