SOURCE: "Dickens's Shadow Show," in The Dickensian, Vol. XXXIX, No. 268, Autumn, 1943, pp. 187-91.

[In the essay below, Harrison profiles the characters in Hard Times, each of whom is "the ghost of some greater creation," appearing in a "great book" which is "no less a piece of artistry than Copperfield."]

I

In the good old days of my Victorian childhood there were two forms of entertainment, forerunners of the cinema, which have dwelt in my memory.

The first was the "Penny Reading," when the Vicar read to a (more or less) enthralled audience some work of (also more or less) merit and interest. How this species of enjoyment was developed and transcended by Charles Dickens everyone knows.

The Shadow Show was the other diversion. The performers, themselves unseen, were behind a white sheet and between it and a powerful light, so that their shadows were cast upon the screen. Much skill was needed on the part of actors and producer. Well managed, an excellent and amusing performance resulted. It was possible to accomplish much on the transparent curtain that could not be done upon the actual stage itself. A swordsman could most effectively run his adversary through without in the least incommoding him, and an angry termagant could empty a basin of gluey tapioca pudding over her husband without the victim being in any way inconvenienced. As Dickens glorified the Penny Reading into a magnificent and thrilling feast of laughter and tears, so, though he suspected it not, he achieved one of the greatest of all Shadow-shows. For that great book, Hard Times, is a Pantomime of Phantoms.

That "great book"? Yes; for although I do not love it as I do the other novels, I consider it to be a great literary and artistic triumph. It is quite unnecessarily apologised for by some Dickensians who proclaim it "Dickens's one failure." It is a success! no less a piece of artistry than Copperfield.

Hard Times is a greater achievement than it would otherwise be, since not a single character in it is real, but is only the ghost of some greater creation. Some are the foreshadowings of full-blooded beings. Others are ghosts of earlier personalities. Their very voices are echoes of other and richer voices from the past, or speak in proleptic tones words of those whose forerunners they are.

Let us marshal them in ghostly array. Who first shall peer through the horse-collar? Who, indeed, but the hero and heroine.

That raises the question: Who is the hero, and who the heroine, of Hard Times? There are two pairs of claimants, yet neither pair with any very valid claims to the titles.

First, then, Stephen Blackpool and Rachael. Poor Stephen is only the very pallid ghost of Ham Peggoty; and while we admire his rugged honesty, and deplore his sorrows, his is so joyless an existence, unrelieved by any gleam of humour, that we do not warm to him as we do to the hearty, good-humoured, though equally tragic, Yarmouth fisherman.

I am going to be very immoral, though not in such fashion as to bring a blush to the cheek of the young person, even though she be so susceptible as Miss Podsnap. If only Stephen had actually broken into the bank, broken Bitzer's head for him, and stolen a hundred and fifty of the best—which old Bounderby could well have afforded to lose—I should have liked him better! Surely he could have escaped safely with his Rachael to some foreign land? There he could have saved the life of some millionaire who had no encumbrances such as relatives. Once in possession of the fortune of the grateful Croesus, whom Dickens could have caused to depart this life at a convenient season, Stephen could have returned the sum forcibly borrowed, together with a like sum in recognition of the accommodation! But he just fades out of the picture, without the glory with which Ham made his exit. He has the high character of Ham, however, and we are forced to admire him. Dickens's indictment of that old-time Divorce Law, which was so unequal for rich and poor, was justified, and without doubt, played its part in the changing of it.

Rachael is but a sorrowful Harriet Carker, minus Harriet's education and her Mr. Morfin. The two women have the same gentle patience, and believing as I do that "thoughts are things," I am sure that certain ideas utilised in the presentation of Harriet Carker, were still floating in the author's mind when he evolved Rachael. Hers is a stronger spirit than most, and even rather overshadows Harriet. Perhaps she is the most substantial, or, shall I say, the least unsubstantial, figure in Hard Times. She is heroic, and could have been made the outstanding personage of the book.

Who are our other candidates for the rôle? Who but Mr. and Mrs. Bounderby. They are the only legitimate lovebirds apart from Stephen and Rachael. And the love of the latter pair, though innocent, was illicit.

II

Enter, then, Josiah and Louisa. Like Mr. Dombey, whom he resembles in his commerciality and in his love of power but in little else, old Bounderby wanted a presentable wife to preside at his table and over his household. Like him, too, he sought to domineer when things went wrong, and, copying his predecessor, tried to humble his wife by the presence of a masterful and prideful housekeeper. This was a rather favourite device of Dickens. You will recall that Mr. Murdstone used his sister to browbeat poor little Mrs. Copperfield "as was" into obedience.

Josiah Bounderby still exists. He is at the moment a town councillor in a borough well known to some of us. He shows his superiority by being familiar and rude to everybody who doesn't suit him.

Dickens's Josiah, however, was no Dombey (in which Mrs. Chick would even him with Florence, I suppose!). Josiah Bounderby was like another Joey B., old Josh, that plain red herring with a hard roe, sir, J. Bagstock.

I do not despise or share the common contempt for the old Major, I must confess. I have come into fairly close touch with army men, from General to Bugler Boy, and I have found many of the Bagstock breed among them. Put them in a club after retirement on half-pay, or whatever it is, and they are blustering, bullying, bellicose, and all that's objectionable with a B or any other letter. Boastful braggarts; vain-glorious; gluttonous; self-seeking; how their fellow-clubmen often loathe them! Opinionated bores! But let us not dismiss the Bagstock breed so summarily.

Put them on the battlefield against your Hitlers, Mussolinis, Rommels, and they'll prove the Bagstock breed to be the true British bulldog type; fighting to the last drop of their blood; never conscious of defeat, so never beaten. And because they never speak of their real and often glorious achievements, but only boast and exaggerate almost imaginary exploits, we are apt to sneer at old Josh and his like. For the Bagstocks of to-day, as well as for men of finer calibre, let us be grateful! Hats off to those grand old officers who, unable because of age to rejoin at their old rank, are content to do humbler yet equally noble work.

The Bounderby breed we can well spare. Josiah had the same sort of pride as had the Major, and like him was always boosting and puffing J. B. But since he could not boast of his high connections, he bragged of his low ones. If you are a psychologist you will perfectly understand the reason. Some folk must have limelight. If they have no merit and no high connections they make a merit of their demerit and exalt themselves in their very degradation. To such, to be proven commonplace or mediocre, is humiliating. So in the failure of the much be-lauded "my friend Dombey, sir," Joey B. lost face. In the proving that he was respectable in origin and not disreputable, the other J. B. too, lost face. The Bounderbys of this world, though often good business men—not so much by reason of talent as of bounce—are insufferable bores and bounders. Josiah, like Mr. Gabriel Parsons (surely the least offensive of the clan) "mistook rudeness for honesty . . . Many besides Gabriel mistake bluntness for sincerity." Bounderby, however, didn't care a "demnition" whether he was thought sincere or not. He was just blunt and brutal, because he thought it signified power. He and the Major were supreme egoists and egotists.

Bounderby's wife doesn't move us to any emotion whatsoever. She just leaves us cold. We know she is only a puppet, made in the likeness of Lizzie Hexam, who is at least warm-blooded. Loo Bounderby was never intended to be a wife, and even after her freedom from J. B. Dickens has no future as wife and mother for her. She was never intended for sweetheart or wife. She was essentially a sister. The relationship of brother and sister is the one Dickens best understood, and he has given us notable examples in most of his works. Sometimes the twain are both bad, as witness the Murdstones, and Sampson and Sally Brass. We find examples of the good brother and good sister in Paul and Floy, the Pinches, Nicholas Nickleby and Kate. Good brother and bad sister Dickens practically declines to acknowledge, but in the reverse he excels. This latter state of affairs we find exemplified in Little Dorrit and Tip, Charlie Hexam and Lizzie, Tom and Loo Gradgrind.

In Tom and Louisa we see Charlie and Lizzie Hexam reflected. Like Lizzie, Louisa sacrifices herself nearly always to her brother's interests. Like Lizzie, Loo saw pictures in the fire. Unlike Lizzie, she did not realise that such sacrifice could become a form of selfishness, involving the sacrifice of others; also that it could be a curse instead of a blessing even to the object of her affection. Like a wise girl Lizzie refused to marry Bradley Headstone just to please her brother; but Loo married Mr. Bounderby simply to please her father and to make things easy for the "whelp." She really deserved to be miserable, sorry for her though we are.

This brother and sister affection is a reflection of Dickens's own family life, and is worthy of much closer examination than we have time to expend upon it at the moment. Few have equalled and none has surpassed Charles Dickens in depicting this tie.

III

What of the villain? That pallid study which afterwards developed into Henry Gowan, artist—James Harthouse (an anaemic James Steerforth, with a "whelp" instead of a "daisy" for hero-worshipper) is unworthy the dignity. Gowan did marry Pet, and that was worth living for, for Pet was really one of the few lovable Dickens girls. His description of her is in but a few words, yet how well the portrait is drawn. Harthouse, however, achieved nothing. He had all the indecision of Cousin Rick without his charm and amiability. Harthouse hadn't the gizzard to be a "willin."

But Mrs. Sparsiti Ah, there I grant you we have a very pretty villainess. I adore Mrs. Sparsit (the wicked old marplot), though I'm glad she laddered her stockings and grazed her aristocratic conk through her nosey-parkering. But I love her because she was a Powler. My grandmother was a Powler. At least she was a de la Moth, and could never forget it—nor allow anybody else to forget it. She was a grand old snob, in a kindly way, and Mrs. Sparsit was a grand old snob in an unkindly way. I'm a snob, too. I'm proud that I'm a de la Moth, a de Port, a St. John and a Fortescue, and that I have the right—the right, mark you—to the title Esquire; also that I have the right, moreover, to place the picture of a bar of iron with knobs on on my carriage door (had I a carriage still), and to cause my coachman to wear a sort of black cauliflower, yclept a cockade, in his top hat. So as a de Regis (I'd forgotten him!) I willingly kowtow to Mrs. Sparsit for her merit in being a Powler. Nevertheless the old dear was a feline, and a feminine canine, and I'm glad she had to return to old Lady Scadgers—a fattened Lady Tippins. Of course Mrs. S. was just the ghost of Mrs. Pipchin minus her bombazeen and the Peruvian mines. She was also a lesser Mrs. General, and the shade of "The Old Soldier" (Mrs. Markleham).

The bride's parents next claim our attention. Thomas Gradgrind was a mere study for the great Mr. Podsnap. Podsnap was a man of Fact—the fact that Great Britain is not America. Gradgrind was a man of facts. Podsnap was the finished picture; Gradgrind the charcoal outline.

Mrs. Gradgrind is a weak after-image of Mrs. Nickleby. She is the one really comic character (the Powler apart) in Hard Times. Her admonition to her children to "run away and be something-ological, at once," is real Dickens, and comparable with Mrs. Nickleby's suggestion that some agreement be made with old Mr. Snawley that young Mr. Snawley (or Slammons, or Smike) should have "fish twice a week, and a pudding twice, or a dumpling, or something of that sort."

Her death-bed, had Dickens not hurried over it (Hard Times alone, of all his novels, shows signs of impatience), would have been a little like that of old John Willett, and we should have expected her to "Go to the Ologies" as old John went to the "Salwanners." But the author was weary of her. Her colourlessness bored him. So, though he gives us just a touch of the grisly passing of Mrs. Skewton, he doesn't follow it up.

The bridegroom's widowed mother must be noticed. Mrs. Pegler was only good Mrs. Brown washed and brushed up and spoiled in the process. Mrs. Brown had an undutiful daughter; Mrs. Pegler an undutiful son. One mother was mercenary, the other self-sacrificing, but they are unfinished sketch and completed etching respectively.

IV

Of the lesser lights, Sissy Jupe is Esther Summerson's Charley. She is the only attractive girl in the book. Kidderminster and "the revolving Bailey" are one. E. W. B. Childers's conversational style—toward Mr. Bounderby anyway—is that of Rogue Riderhood toward his daughter. Mr. Jupe has no more real being, so far as the story is concerned, than has Mrs. Harris. We strongly suspect "there ain't no sich a person."

Slackbridge, though his oratorical style is that of Chadband, is a Roger Riderhood in his sneaking, underhand ways; his betrayal of Stephen is akin to Riderhood's denunciation of "Gaffer."

Miss Peecher's pet pupil finds her opposite number in the model Bitzer. The same model must have sat for certain characteristics of both "the lightest of porters," and the eminently respectable Mr. Littimer. M'Choakumchild is of the Bradley Headstone type of pedagogue; a type which the new science of psychology has caused largely to die out. He was practical, but not so practical as Mr. Squeers, who, having extracted from a student a definition of a horse scarcely equal to that of Bitzer, sends him to gain a further knowledge of that friend of man by grooming him. Mr. M'C. did not teach; he crammed. Squeers did teach, and was the better educationalist of the two!

Mr. Sleary was one of Dickens's charming asthmatics. Though in this respect of the Omer clan, he is really Vincent Crummies, half-resuscitated. Sleary was grandfather to a male Infant Phenomenon. Crummies was the father of the female LP.

In Mrs. Blackpool we are not at all interested. She was what poor Nancy might have became, but without Nancy's excuses. Emma Gordon and Josephine Sleary might have been anybody or nobody and have their counterparts as walkers-on in various other tales.

V

A great novel? Yes. A picture of sordid places and stodgy people whose loves and hates and commonplace lives do not thrill us over-much, but a picture true to life. It is a book that makes us think, and makes us realise that life can be very commonplace and yet abound in tragedy and misery. A lesson that we ought to be—must be—interested in the unattractive dull people whom we meet, as well as in those who are attractive and brilliant.

The picture of a factory can be a great work of art, and we only expect blacks, greys, and dingy browns. Only a fool would complain that there are not seen gorgeous sunset and palms, and camels.

"What is terewth, my friends?" If I should read a book of facts, factories and fools, and should say, "Lo, it is not a good book; it hath no crystal fountains, no champagne and oysters, would that be terewth?" And echoes answer, it would be dem'd foolishness.

Hard Times is a great book, the greater for being enacted entirely by phantoms. It is Charles Dickens's Shadow Show.