ONE of the things which dawned upon me in moving about England, and particularly as I was leaving it, was the reason for the inestimable charm of Dickens. I do not know that anywhere in London or England I encountered any characters which spoke¹ very forcefully of those he described. It is probable that they were all somewhat exaggerated. But of the charm of his setting there can be no doubt. He appeared at a time when the old order was giving way, and the new—the new as we have known it in the last sixty years—was manifesting itself very sharply. Railroads were just coming in and coaches being dispensed² with; the modern hotel was not yet even thought of, but it was impending³.

 

Dickens, born and raised in London, was among the first to perceive the wonder of the change and to contrast it graphically⁴ with what had been and still was. In such places as St. Alban’s, Marlowe, Canterbury, Oxford⁵, and others, I could see what the old life must have been like when the stage-coach ruled and made the principal highways lively with traffic. Here in Canterbury and elsewhere there were inns sacred to the characters of Dickens; and you could see how charming that world must have appeared to a man who felt that it was passing. He saw it in its heyday⁶, and he recorded it as it could not have been recorded before and can never be again. He saw also the charm of simple English life—the native love of cleanly pots and pans and ordered dooryards;199 and that, fortunately, has not changed. I cannot think of any one doing England as Dickens did it until there is something new to be done—the old spirit manifested in a new way. From Shakespeare to Dickens the cry is long; from Dickens to his successors it may be longer still.

 

I was a bit perturbed⁷ on leaving Canterbury to realize that on the morrow at this same time I should catch my first glimpse of Paris. The clerk at the station who kept my bags for me

分享到：