Page:The Dial (Volume 74).djvu/25

THE DIAL

JANUARY 1923

O, there is no use in looking through books and biographies to find how much Charles Dickens was loved by his contemporaries. Love lives and breathes solely in the spoken word. One must have it told by word of mouth, preferably by an Englishman whose childhood reminiscences go back to the earliest successes, by one of those who cannot bring themselves even after fifty years to call the creator of Pickwick Charles Dickens, but invariably refer to him by his more intimate and confidential nickname, Boz. By the poignancy of such reminiscences one can gauge the enthusiasm of the thousands in those days; one can judge with what an enormous delight they received each month their blue-coloured instalment of a novel, pages which even to this day are yellowing on shelves and in cases, a rarissimum for bibliophiles. As one of these old Dickensians has told me, they could never restrain themselves to wait at home for the postman who was finally to bring the new blue pages of Boz in his sack. Would Copperfield marry Dora or Agnes? For a whole month they had hungered, waited, hoped, and argued. Or they had rejoiced that Micawber's affairs had reached another crisis, although they knew that he would live it down heroically with hot punch and good humour. And now would they have to wait until the mail-carrier arrived on his lazy wagon and settled all these agreeable problems? That was impossible; it simply could not be done. And on the proper day all of them, old as well as young, wandered year after year two miles out to meet the carrier, simply that they might have their book that much the