Charles Dickens as a Reader | Page 9

the fluctuations of the character with the greatest care." And this, remember, has relation to one who was presumably about the most spontaneous and impulsive actor who ever flashed meteor-like across the boards of a theatre. Whoever has the soul of an artist grudges no labour given to his art, be he reader or actor, author or tragedian. Charles Dickens certainly spared none to his Readings in his conscientious endeavour to give his own imaginings visible and audible embodiment. The sincerity of his devotion to his task, when once it had been taken in hand, was in its way something remarkable.
Acting of all kinds has been pronounced by Mrs. Butler--herself in her own good day a rarely accomplished reader and a fine tragic actress--"a monstrous anomaly."{*}
* Fanny Kemble's Journal, Vol. II. p. 130.
As illustrative of her meaning in which phrase, she then adds, "John Kemble and Mrs. Siddons were always in earnest in what they were about; Miss O'Neil used to cry bitterly in all her tragic parts; whilst Garrick could be making faces and playing tricks in the middle of his finest points, and Kean would talk gibberish while the people were in an uproar of applause at his." Fanny Kemble further remarks: "In my own individual instance, I know that sometimes I could turn every word I am saying into burlesque,"--immediately observing here, in a reverential parenthesis "(never Shakspere, by-the-bye)--and at others my heart aches and I cry real, bitter, warm tears as earnestly as if I was in earnest." Reading which last sentence, one might very safely predicate that in the one instance, where she could turn her words into burlesque, she would be certain to act but indifferently, whereas in the other, with the hot, scalding tears running down her face, she could not by necessity do otherwise than act to admiration.
So thorough and consistent throughout his reading career was the sincerity of Dickens in his impersonations, that his words and looks, his thoughts and emotions were never mere make-believes, but always, so far as the most vigilant eye or the most sensitive ear could detect, had their full and original significance.
With all respect for Miss O'Neil's emotion, and for that candidly confessed to by Mrs. Butler, as having been occasionally evidenced by herself, the true art, we should have said, subsists in the indication and the repression, far rather than in the actual exhibition or manifestation of the emotions that are to be represented. Better by far than the familiar si vis me flere axiom of Horace, who there tells us, "If you would have me weep, you must first weep yourself," is the sagacious comment on it in the Tatler, where (No. 68) the essayist remarks, with subtle discrimination: "The true art seems to be when you would have the person you represent pitied, you must show him at once, in the highest grief, and struggling to bear it with decency and patience. In this case," adds the writer, "we sigh for him, and give him every groan he suppresses." As for the extravagant idea of any artist, however great, identifying himself for the time being with the part he is enacting, who is there that can wonder at the snort of indignation with which Doctor Johnson, talking one day about acting, asked Mr. Kemble, "Are you, sir, one of those enthusiasts who believe yourself transformed into the very character you represent?" Kemble answering, according to Boswell, that he had never himself felt so strong a persuasion--"To be sure not, sir," says Johnson, "the thing is impossible." Adding, with one of his dryly comical extravagances: "And if Garrick really believed himself to be that monster Richard the Third, he deserved to be hanged every time he performed it." What Dickens himself really thought of these wilder affectations of intensity among impersonators, is, with delicious humour, plainly enough indicated through that preposterous reminiscence of Mr. Crummies, "We had a first-tragedy man in our company once, who, when he played Othello, used to black himself all over! But that's feeling a part, and going into it as if you meant it; it isn't usual--more's the pity." Thoroughly giving himself up to the representation of whatever character he was endeavouring at the moment to portray, or rather to impersonate, Charles Dickens so completely held his judgment the while in equipoise, as master of his twofold craft--that is, both as creator and as elocutionist, as author and as reader--that, as an invariable rule, he betrayed neither of those signs of insincerity, by the inadvertent revelation of which all sense of illusion is utterly and instantly dissipated.
Whatever scenes he described, those scenes his hearers appeared to be actually witnessing themselves. He realised everything in his own mind so intensely, that listening to him we realised what he spoke of