Tag: Charles Dickens

Just a Ghost Story? Dickens’s “To Be Read at Dusk”

“To Be Read at Dusk” is a ghost story by Charles Dickens. Or rather, it is emphatically not a ghost story at all – “I don’t talk of ghosts” one of the characters declares. Instead, it is a collection of different encounters with what we might term the inexplicable. We can just leave it there, but as with many other similar tales, we may find something beneath the surface that the characters have missed.

The story begins with our narrator, sitting out in the Swiss Alps, and eavesdropping on the conversation of five nearby couriers, men who have worked in private houses as personal servants. They are discussing their experiences of the supernatural. One, a German, tells three stories and a Genoese man tells another, the longest.

The German’s Stories

At least one of these encounters will be familiar to us. The German tells of an old Marchesa who during a dinner party declared in shock that her sister, far away in Spain, had died. And so it was. My grandmother likes to tell stories about her own talents for detecting the deaths of her relatives. And my own father, the night before he died, visited me in a dream. It is a mystery how such a thing can happen, but since I do not as a rule dream, it feels wrong to call such a thing a mere coincidence. I imagine you, too, reader, can find examples of this mysterious sense.

The German also mentions the time when his mind was suddenly filled with thoughts of an old friend of his, with everyone reminding him of him on the street, and then to his surprise actually meeting the man that day, though he had believed him elsewhere. It is a more innocent version of the story above, for death sits outside of this arrangement. Yet there is something here that does not quite add up – “what do you call that?” he asks.

At the end of “To Be Read at Dusk” the German tells a final story, this time from when he was in the service of an Englishman. Just before he departed on a long journey the man’s twin brother seemed to send him a message in a dream. Sure enough, word soon arrives that the twin is near death from illness. When the first brother arrives his dying twin only has time to declare before expiring: “James, you have seen me before, to-night – and you know it!”

These stories all focus on what we cannot seem to explain. After relating the experience of seeing his friend, another courier, a Neapolitan, compares such things to the blood of San Gennaro liquifying back in Naples. That is a miracle, but to the others it is inappropriate – one gets the impression they are talking about something more serious. “That!” Cried the German. “Well! I think I know a name for that.” Bollocks, in short.

But as with a lot of stories set in the 19th century, we have here a certain uneasy relation to the supernatural. We may disbelieve miracles, but not quite the everyday inexplicable. Though we may try. The Englishman, on receiving his twin’s message, goes to the German with the hope of putting his mind to rest through the latter’s more scientific vision:

“You come from a sensible country, where mysterious things are inquired into, and are not settled to have been weighed and measured – or to have been unweighable and unmeasurable – or in either case to have been completely disposed of, for all time – ever so many years ago. I have just now seen the phantom of my brother.”

But nothing can be done, and nothing can be explained. Each of these stories tells us precisely nothing, except that such things do happen. They remind us that our world is filled with things that cannot be explained, and that mystery is better accepted than denied. For a 19th-century reader perhaps these tales were enough to make one lose sleep, but they did nothing for me. Our eavesdropping narrator, however, feels a chill, because after hearing the stories he goes back to talking to the very American he had avoided by listening in to the couriers in the first place. This man, from his new and naïve country, tells a more prosaic tale about “one of the largest acquisitions of dollars ever made”. The narrator, clearly, prefers a world that can be explained, even if, by comparison with the previous stories, it is hardly an exciting one.

The Genoese’s Tale: The Obvious Reading

The three previous encounters with the supernatural take up about a third of the length of “To Be Read at Dusk”. They set us up to approach the central tale, told by the Genoese courier and sandwiched between the German’s stories, as being another example of things that cannot be explained. Yet somehow, this does not quite add up. Here the mystery seems, if anything, more complex and more worthy of our attention too.

The Genoese courier tells of his hiring by a young English gentleman to accompany him, and his soon-to-be wife, on a trip to a slightly forlorn palace on the coast between Genoa and Nice for a few months of rest and relaxation. “All we had was complete; we wanted for nothing. The marriage took place. They were happy. I was happy, seeing all so bright.” The newlywed couple, the courier, and another servant, the wife’s maid, head to the palace. On the way, however, the courier notices something amiss about his mistress. He sees her “sometimes brooding in a manner very strange; in a frightened manner; in an unhappy manner”. He is perplexed, but eventually manages to get from her maid the information that she “is haunted”.

A dream before her marriage, of a man wearing black, with black hair and a grey moustache. This is the image that haunts her. The characters fear that they might find such an image at the palace when they arrive, but there is no such likeness anywhere, even among the many paintings. At the same time, our narrator’s description of the palazzo makes us think of gothic tales, and we are on the lookout for any indication of our man, knowing that his presence in the story will probably be fatal.

It does not take long for such a man to arrive, in the form of one Signor Dellombra, whom the Genoese describes as possibly an Austrian noble travelling incognito. When he is shown in for dinner the woman faints, but after her husband talks with her, she agrees to see him again. The couple have had no other guests in all the time they have been there. The husband insists he keep coming, so that his wife might master her fear of him, and this works, albeit incompletely. Eventually, the group go to Rome, where one day the wife disappears. Attempting to find her, the courier and her husband discover that she fled in the carriage of a man they recognise as Dellombra, but as he sent the horses of the station all in different directions, they are unable to give chase, and they never see the woman again.

On the face of it, this is another story about the presence of the supernatural. Like the Englishman in the German’s final story, the young husband here has a largely rationalist viewpoint, and sees himself as needing to go about “curing mistress of her fanciful terror.” Unfortunately, he was wrong in thinking he could fight fate in this manner. Signor Dellombra is a more mythic force, and he achieves what he must have been set on earth to do – to steal away the man’s wife from the bliss of their honeymoon. In this reading, the supernatural seems more hostile than it does in the other stories, but there does not appear to be a greater message here.

The Genoese’s Tale: Alternative Reading

Yet that is far from the case. There are clues in the text that support an alternative reading, things which our Genoese narrator may have missed but which, most likely, will not pass us by entirely unnoticed. We must, for this, consider not the grieving husband, nor the attentive but limited narrator, but rather the wife herself.

What do we learn of her? That she is “a fair young English lady, with a sufficient fortune.” Interestingly, immediately, we might notice that “He was enamoured of [her]”, not that the feeling was mutual. Our only indication, possibly, of that is that “they were going to be married.” As noted, they are married, and the narrator declares that “they were happy.” Perhaps they were, but then why is the woman immediately afterwards gloomy?

This gloom comes upon her when she is alone and appears to be dispelled when he comes and shows her affection. “By and by, she laughed, and then all went well again.” The dream, perhaps, is real, but there are other things that might make any of us unhappy. This is her life: “[she] would sing, and play the harp, and copy the old pictures, and stroll with master under the green trees and vines, all day.” That is her life. And she is happy – isn’t she? For master says so: ““Now Clara,” Master said, in a low voice, “you see that it is nothing? You are happy.”” The narrator says so too. “She was beautiful. He was happy.” But wait, have I not forgotten the “s” on the second sentence? No, we know that the woman is beautiful, but never that she is happy. Indeed, we read this exact sentence twice, with the second time near the end of the story, as if to nudge us towards questioning the sentiments the story contains.

The woman’s life is boring. When Dellombra appears, she is shocked to see the figure in her dream. Her husband, “almost angry”, at this, “and yet full of solicitude” – as I write this, I wonder whether the latter part of the sentence is the Genoese narrator quietly, like Stevens in The Remains of the Day, trying to excuse his master from something that is not quite right. Master forces mistress to see Dellombra again, though she says that the man terrifies her.

““Again? Why, surely, over and over again! Are you cold?” (She shivered)” In a single short speech the master has revealed a certain disregard for his wife and her feelings, which are indicated subtly by Dickens showing us her hidden reaction of horror at his words.

So, then, the woman may not be happy at all in her new relationship. She may need the affection of her husband to remind kindle in her any kind of joy. She has a mysterious dream, a horrific one shortly before her marriage which seems to presage not its end, but rather its lifelessness. When she actually sees Dellombra (and it is she who identifies him as the figure of her dream, while nobody else notices, suggesting that her description of the dream’s contents was perhaps even deliberately vague) and is forced to spend time with him, we read that “she would cast down her eyes and droop her head, before the Signor Dellombra, or would look at him with a terrified and fascinated glance, as if his presence had some evil influence or power upon her.” That rather sounds like a woman who is, at least partly, in love.

Her fainting and illness, her clinging to her husband’s influence, all read now like attempts to ward off this pernicious spirit which she feels as much within herself as within Dellombra – she knows that it will destroy the sacred bonds of her marriage. Yet it does not work. Somehow, in Rome, Dellombra finally gets to her, and they flee together. According to reports in the posthouse, Dellombra passed with “a frightened English lady crouching in one corner.” Yet are we to read her fear simply as that of a person trapped or may there also be a kind of liberated fear here too, which the Genoese narrator is unwilling to pass on to us as his listeners? It is impossible to say.

Conclusion

Sandwiched between tales of funny coincidences, this tale could just be another mysterious inexplicable tale, albeit one with added horror elements. Ironically, however, this tale embodies that classic fantastical trope – that there is always more to things than we may think. Instead of being merely a story about a fatal encounter, we can read this tale as telling us, unwillingly perhaps, about a relationship that merely appears to be perfect, and then only to one member of it. Through the two narrative layers – the Genoese, and the narrator himself – we are limited in what we can glean. But that just leaves an enduring mystery, albeit a much more prosaic one. How can a situation like this arise? How is it that in such a story its main victim is so deprived of her own voice? What was she really thinking?

Alas, we cannot know. But it makes “To Be Read at Dusk” a much more curious little collection of stories than it first appears. Some mysteries, certainly, cannot be explained. Yet some tragedies, equally certainly, can be avoided. Could this one have?

Leaving an Impression: My First Dickens – Bleak House

Well, that took a while. A month and a half, pretty much exactly. Bleak House, which I read because I had heard it was the best Dickens, was also my first Dickens – the first I finished anyway. I think I started Great Expectations about ten years ago. And how do I feel? Overwhelmed, that’s for sure. This wasn’t the life-changing event that some other books are, but it was awe-inspiring in its own way. I know about Dickens, of course – how can you avoid him? That he is larger than life, that his characters and books and everything else are all massive – well, yes, I was half-ready for it. But still, faced with such a whirlwind, no amount of preparedness will let you stay anchored to the ground. Readers, I was blown into the air by this mad book, and only now am I beginning to sink back down to earth.

Bleak House has a hugely intricate, complicated plot, filled with more characters than I and my extended family have fingers and toes to count on. It is a state-of-the-nation novel, one that aims to contain everything and everyone, every idea, and every thought, every word, and every punctuation mark. And so, it does, so far as I can tell. We deal with a murder mystery, our narrator’s mysterious parentage, and many other bits and pieces as Dickens accumulates and articulates everything he wants to say about the world. Much as with War and Peace, which I read and couldn’t write about here, I struggle to know where or how to begin. But as this is my first Dickens, perhaps there’s some value in thinking about that most distinctive of Dickensian elements – his characters.

Character

I think it was James Wood who said of Dickens’ characters that they are real, far more real than real people, not because of their depth, but precisely because of their flatness. Most of the people here can be reduced to a single trait or mood or thought or image. Mrs Jellyby is surrounded by papers, so obsessed with bringing civilization to the Niger delta that she neglects to bring it to her own family, who live in squalor. Mr Chadband sweats oil whenever he speaks. Mr Turveydrop is extremely proud of his deportment, to the detriment of everything else. Volumnia Dedlock is as airy as her name. I could go on. Give me one of the silly names and the character returns, here bent over like Mr Smallweed, there standing tall like the ex-soldier George.

In the preface to my edition, Terry Eagleton suggests that Dickens’ broad-brushstroke method of characterisation reflects the urbanising environment in which the novels were written. When we see people for only a brief moment, on a street corner say, then they will inevitably be reduced in our minds to their simplest and most striking characteristics. I quite like the idea, save that the characters really do not have any depth, for the most part. They are who their name literally says they are, mostly incapable of change, mostly without any complexity going on behind the scenes.

And yet they are real. The more I read and live, the more I appreciate that character is the hardest thing for a writer to make. A simulacrum of a human being, this can be done – “a man enters the room”. But the realification of the image within an author’s mind is a sacred mystery. Plots, by comparison, are easy. Intelligence alone and a bit of time will allow the majority of us to weave some interesting interconnection(s), to build a network of symbols and thoughts and motives. But a network is dull and empty without life, without character.

Who are the characters that I remember? Dostoevsky’s mostly, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Dostoevsky simply adored Dickens, and there are even legendary if false stories of their having met in London. Dostoevsky’s characters – the ones we remember – burn with passion for ideas. This fact simplifies them just as Dickens’ characters are simplified. But Dostoevsky understood that to take an idea into your soul and to live by it is to transform yourself utterly so that no interaction is left unaltered. This is inspiring, which is why we want to be, especially when we are young, like his characters. With the exception of those whose lives end in suicide, nobody can accuse Dostoevsky’s people of being empty. Repulsive at times, doubting-stricken, but always filled.

Dickens’ characters are not like this. They are startling because of their lack of interiority – it does not matter if their souls are filled because they do not seem much concerned with them, to begin with. Very few of them seem capable of reflection or thought, only our occasional narrator Esther and a few of her friends. The rest float through life in an uncomprehending daze.

A character’s reality lies in the little details, more even than the big ones. One of the first moments in Anna Karenina that had me on the verge of awestruck tears is when Levin, at a party, repeats the same joke twice. Few authors would consider writing something similar because it’s a waste of space and might convince an editor that they don’t actually proofread their own work. But it’s also a truth, a real truth, that some of us social incompetents really are socially incompetent. It is showing, rather than telling, at its very best. Thomas Mann got from Tolstoy the importance of such details for allowing for many characters within a relatively short book. Buddenbrooks, that supremely realist novel, features a number of minor characters who are distinctive only because every time they are mentioned we hear the same thing about them – whom they tailor, for example.

Dickens’ characters are their details, as I’ve said. Name, description, and speech with them are all possessing a certain unity. They create an overwhelming impression which means that within a few lines we know all we need to know and know enough to remember them even as a wave of other such characters crashes over us. I never remember what a character looks like – hair colour, eyes, and all those traditional bits and pieces – I cannot even picture most characters in my mind as I read the description. But Dickens does it, easy as that. In Bleak House, their simplicity, and their purpose, give them energy.

And I suppose that’s what makes them interesting, beyond the book. What does it say that these people are so powerful in our minds? I am no Dickens, but I have been alive. How many people do I know whom I could write about as Dickens does? Nobody, because people in real life are not so simplistic – I am being ridiculous to suggest that such a thing is possible. But I also think I can say, begrudgingly, that few people, even those close to me, leave such a vivid impression as these characters have. And is that not something to be regretted, even worried over?

Perhaps only if we are as anxiety-ridden as I am. We look at ourselves and find ourselves wanting. If only I could be so distinctive, as one of Dickens’ characters. I won’t change my name, but all the rest… – don’t I want to be remembered? For one thing, success in life is at least partly dependent upon standing out in people’s minds. We don’t just want to be an office drone, we want to be the guy who is selected for a promotion, or the girl whose work is remembered for a commendation. If we want an active social life we should message other people, but we should also be the person who comes first into someone’s head as they lie on their bed, aimlessly scrolling through their contacts looking for something to do.

All this raises the perennial question, what must we do? Must I focus on one distinctive facet of my character and ham it up to no end? As a ginger, ought I not perhaps exclusively dress in reds, so that the impression of being aflame is so overwhelming that people rush for a fire extinguisher every time I enter the room? There was a moment, after watching the anime Death Note as a young teen, when I started crouching on tables and making structures from match sticks – do I need an obnoxious hobby, perhaps, or an unattractive habit?

Almost certainly not, for the simple reason that memorability is not the only reason why we might succeed in life. We must marry it to being attractive – having those traits that make others think of us positively when we come into their minds. The last thing I want to be known as is that ginger with the dreadful dress sense. But it must be admitted also that the traits that are most attractive are also, for the most part, ones that are less memorable than their Dickensian counterparts. Esther Summerson, our narrator for part of Bleak House, is boringly good and kind. As Eagleton notes in his preface, Dickens was faced with the rather common problem of “how to make virtue artistically attractive”. Esther, whose defining trait is her radiating goodness, is ultimately memorable for being annoying.

Working hard, being clever, being kind – these are all things that leave a positive impression. But they are also to some extent incompatible with leaving a strong impression. If you work hard, you have no time for being distinctive in other ways, and being kind requires modesty to really leave a positive impression, or else it just annoys people. And modesty is quiet. Some things work for positive impressions and strong impressions, but I cannot think of many – things like wit and the ability to laugh easily and make people feel at ease.

Where, then, does Dickens come in? We are often told to be ourselves, and authenticity is almost always an attractive trait in a conforming world. Being an individual then, perhaps, is already enough to be distinctive. Mixed together with some good traits, we may not be as memorable as Mr Tulkinghorn or Detective Bucket, but we will still be pretty well-off compared to some. Have a hobby, read the odd book, go outside, think for yourself, and do your own thing. We cannot achieve a Dickensian personality, nor should we aim to. But there is plenty we can do to avoid being a forgettable a side character in everyone’s lives, even our own.

If there is something in Dickens that we must take note of for our own lives, besides the obvious social messages, it must be the importance of distinctiveness. When we meet many more people over the course of a week than we do even in the madness of Bleak House, we see just how important being a non-mushy part of someone’s experience of the world is. Sometimes this is impossible, for example because at work people may adopt a mercantile attitude towards others that only allows them to exist provided they bring a benefit, but for the most part it is not so. So, reader, let’s go and exist distinctively, so that we may become memorable for the right reasons, and fill the hearts of others with joy.

Anyway, these are some of the thoughts that my first full encounter with Dickens inspired in me.