Did Dickens Exaggerate?

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 125, 14 November 1941, Page 5

Did Dickens Exaggerate?

N this series of talks I am trying to show how the English character — the soul of England-is reflected in English books. Now the witness of Dickens is still sometimes challenged on the ground that his characters are not real people but caricatures. No such people as Sam Weller and Mr. Turveydrop and Mr. Pardiggle and Mr. Dick and the rest of them, ever existed. On this matter Mr. Chesterton, in his admirable study of Dickens, seems to have said almost the last word: "If we begin again to behold the English people, it will be in the full vindication of Dickens. It will be proved that he is hardly a caricaturist; that he is really something very like a realist. Those comic monstrosities which the critics found incredible will be found in the immense majority of the citizens of this country. For the exaggerated notion of the exaggeration of Dickens is very largely due to our mixing only with one social class, whose conventions are very strict and to whose conventions we are accustomed. In cabmen, in cobblers, in charwomen, individuality is often pushed to the verge of insanity. . . . Democracy is really composed of Dickens characters."-(" The Soul of England,’ Professor Sinclaire, Canterbury College, 3YA, October 15.)