Every winter break, I read the most popular Charles Dickens novel that I haven't previously read. This year, that brings me to Dombey and Son, originally serialized in nineteen monthly parts from October 1846 to April 1848 under the title of Dealings with with the Firm Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. Last year, I experimented with reading Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) serially. Not across nineteen months(!), but rather alternating installments of the novel with parts of other books (or, in some cases, whole other books), and then writing up those installments as I went. I would say it was a successful experiment, in that instead of being forced to endure nothing but Martin Chuzzlewit for weeks, I got to alternate it with book that were actually good, so I decided to go for it again this year.
I should say, that going in, I literally knew
nothing at all about this book, beyond what I gleaned from the introduction to my Penguin Classics edition. I feel like I've never heard anyone ever mention it, even in passing. A totally forgotten (or forgettable) Dickens novel? It doesn't bode well, to be honest, beginning a book that's nine hundred pages long and not even worth complaining about, but I tried to be open-minded.
No. I (Chs. 1-4)
Some Dickens novels begin ominously, a mode that Dickens excels in. Think of A Tale of Two Cities (1859) or Great Expectations (1860-61). But it seems to me that earlier in his career, perhaps because his big success was still the hijinks of The Pickwick Papers (1836-37), Dickens was much more likely to begin comically, even when his topic was tragic. He takes a similar mode here to that of David Copperfield (1849-50), beginning with the birth of a child, largely under sad circumstances, but mostly focusing on making jokes about it all. The first line is so funny I stopped immediately to read it aloud to my wife: "Dombey sat in the corner of the darkened room in the great arm-chair by the bedside, and Son lay tucked up warm in a little basket bedstead, carefully disposed on a low settee immediately in front of the fire and close to it, as if his constitution were analogous to that of a muffin, and it was essential to toast him brown while he was very new" (11). And then the second line is also a joke: "Dombey was about eight-and-forty years of age. Son about eight-and-forty minutes. Dombey was rather bald, rather red, and though a handsome well-made man, too stern and pompous in appearance, to be prepossessing. Son was very bald, and very red, and though (of course) an undeniably fine infant, somewhat crushed and spotty in his general effect, as yet" (11).
What this all belies is that the opening of the book is quite sad! Dombey is the owner of the titular firm; he use to be the "Son" and now he is the "Dombey," but though he has been married ten years, he has only just got a "Son." He does have a daughter, aged six... who he doesn't care about at all, because a girl "was merely a piece of base coin that couldn’t be invested – a bad Boy – nothing more" (13). Dombey's lack of affection extends to his wife, who dies after giving birth to Son, and Dombey is more concerned about the logistical difficulties this will lead to in raising his Son. And though this bit is of course sad, Dickens also has a lot of jokes here, mostly from the dead Mrs. Dombey's sister-in-law, who keeps insisting she just needs to make an effort and she'll be fine: "It’s necessary for you to make an effort, and perhaps a very great and painful effort which you are not disposed to make; but this is a world of effort you know, Fanny, and we must never yield, when so much depends upon us. Come! Try! I must really scold you if you don’t!" (20-1)
I feel like Dickens pulls you in with the jokes in order to subsequently get you with the tragedy, but also the tragedy is perhaps a bit too muted, more abstractly understood than felt, but like I said, maybe the Dickens audience of 1846 didn't want tragedy, only comedy, so he had to understate it a bit. (This is after The Old Curiosity Shop and the death of Little Nell, though, so maybe I am overstating this point.)
After this, there's some comic hijinks as Dombey must engage a wet-nurse, excellent stuff, I really enjoyed it. So many great lines about the wet-nurse and her apple-faced family. But then Dickens is always very good at this sort of thing, and from here we move away from comedy a bit, as the wet-nurse (real name: Mrs Toodle, but called Mrs Richards when at work because it's more "ordinary" and "convenient") meets the daughter of Dombey for the first time, and realizes how isolated and alone and sad the poor girl is. After all this, I was fairly into the book; a much better opening installment than Martin Chuzzlewit, to be sure.
The fourth chapter is some blather about a shopkeeper and his nephew Walter, though, so you can't win them all, though again it had a couple good jokes. But then I got to take a break and go read something else. One installment down... eighteen to go!
No. II (Chs. 5-7)
It's interesting that two of the three chapter titles here center Dombey's son Paul—"Paul's Progress and Christening" and "Paul's Second Deprivation"—because it seems to me that the clear emotional focus of the chapters is Dombey's neglected daughter, Florence. Yes, Paul's christening is the event on which these three chapters hinge, in that it's there that the characters make some key decisions that end up having major repercussions. (Mrs Richards decides to go visit her son at his new school, which results in her and a couple others losing their jobs working for the Dombeys.) But the person who goes through trauma here is Florence; on her way back from the visit, she gets separated from her caretakers, and she is taken advantage of by "Good Mrs Brown," who steals her clothes and cuts her hair off and claims she will murder Florence if Florence rats her out! Poor Florence goes through some awful stuff here.
Still, we feel a bit distanced from it all. The things we're told about are quite awful to read, but I don't feel like we're totally in Florence's interiority the way Dickens sometimes brings us, like he did a few years after this with Little Dorrit in Little Dorrit (1855-57).
I didn't expect the whole thing with Mrs Richards and the Dombeys to fall apart like that so quickly, though, so I am curious to see where this all goes in the next installment.
No. III (Chs. 8-10)
'Girls,' said Mr Dombey, 'have nothing to do with Dombey and Son.' (153)
Here we get one chapter about Paul and two about a character I haven't discussed much so far, Walter. Back in no. II, Walter helped rescue Florence after her ordeal at the hands of Good Mrs Brown; here, he comes calling to Mr Dombey to seek help paying off the debts of his uncle, a ship's instrument-maker who has no customers.
I am a bit worried that Walter may be the character about which my friend Christiana said, "I can think of one character who I expect you to like," because I find that so far his sections substantially slow the narrative down with a lot of unnecessary detail. I'm loathe to say Dickens could have done something in fewer words... but I really think "nobody is buying anything at my shop" doesn't need as many words as he gives it.
On the other hand, I found chapter 8 very interesting; we've jumped ahead a bit here, and now Paul Dombey is almost five, and we actually get some insight into his psychology. Poor kid! But I like best of all the simultaneously sympathetic and scathing way that Dickens describes Mr Dombey himself: "But he loved his son with all the love he had. If there were a warm place in his frosty heart, his son occupied it; if its very hard surface could receive the impression of any image, the image of that son was there; though not so much as an infant, or as a boy, but as a grown man – the 'Son' of the Firm. Therefore he was impatient to advance into the future, and to hurry over the intervening passages of his history" (109).
No. IV (Chs. 11-13)
She was dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead – stone dead – and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoule. (163)
We're settling into a pattern here, I think: two chapters about Paul Dombey, and then one going elsewhere. The Paul ones are about how at first he and Florence go to the seaside and spend time with a terrible governess (she's not called a governess, I don't think, but she's essentially so), and then Dombey decides Son needs an education, so he gets packed off to a nearby terrible school. What Victorian does horrible systems better than Dickens? Great stuff about the terrible, terrible education Paul is beginning to get; lots of good jokes on this and other topics. I am not loving this book yet (still a bit long-winded, we're still a bit distant from Paul and Florence, I think) but certainly I am enjoying it more than Martin Chuzzlewit or The Old Curiosity Shop; I don't know this one isn't better know. I guess Dickens has got 750 pages in which he can screw it up.
The other chapter is about the doings at the firm Dombey and Son, a place we previously haven't gone despite it being the title of the novel! Most of the characters here are thus new, but there's a bit more about Walter, who is being sent to the West Indies. I remain open-minded, I suppose, but I am not sure where this strand of the novel is going. The best part, though, is this zinger between two new characters who are estranged brothers:
'Haven’t you injured me enough already?'
'I have never injured you, James, wilfully.'
'You are my brother... That’s injury enough.' (200)
Dickens has a good line in insult comedy.
This is the first in a series of posts about Dombey and Son. The next covers installment no. v and beyond.
