LAW AND LAWYERS OF DICKENS

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LAW AND LAWYERS OF DICKENS BY H. GERALD CHAPIN SO frequently have novelist and play attention, the dramatic power of the scene wright utilized the court room as a asserts itself. Without it, a more or less background for the most dramatic of their verbatim report from Howell's State Trials situations that its effect, one might think, will exercise a stronger appeal. But the should have been lost or blunted long ago. court scenes in Dickens stand alone, bor But so far from this proving true, the trial rowing no strength from the plot, though scene still remains the most effective of in venturing the opinion that as an author, climaxes. When one of the dramatis per- he occupies in this respect a plane apart, I sonae appears before a jury, a narrative of speak subject to correction and with due his further acts is destined to bear close reservation and exception in favor of Hoi resemblance to an epilogue. Unless the land's Sevenoakcs and Gray's Last Sentence. writer subsequently reaches a point where Each participant is a living, breathing per his previous effort is completely dwarfed, sonality, not a figure painted upon a back the work is apt to develop into a series of ground to lend color or a manikin stationed anti-climaxes. For which reason, novelists with others around a sentient figure. Startake notice, it is better to run no risk and leigh, Buzfuz, Skimpin, Snubbin, Phunky, prepare to write finis in as short a time as Perker, Dodson, Fogg and Pell are each may be after the verdict has been rendered — and singly alone. Judges, parties, witnesses unless as Dickens has done in his Tale of are distinct beings, even down to the third Two Cities and Pickwick Papers later on you usher who on the summoning of Elizabeth overshadow your earlier scenes. Cluppins "rushed in a breathless state into If we reflect upon the classics of English King Street and screamed for Elizabeth fiction, it will be found I think, that when a Muffins until he was hoarse." Another point worth noting is that al trial is pictured at any length, it furnishes the book's chief claim to recollection. though Dickens always strongly inclined Take as illustrative, Scott's Heart of Mid- towards sentimentalism, there is practically Lothian and Peveril of the Peak, Bulwer no evidence of this tendency when describ Lytton's Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram, ing court procedure. We are not told in George Eliot's Adam Bede and Samuel just so many words, how Amicus Curiae Esq. Warren's Ten Thousand a Year. Also sev arose and began his plea for the life of Foureyed Sam in a low and trembling voice, eral of the works of Charles Reade. Now to go a step further. Select any of gaining in strength as he proceeded; how the foregoing and institute a comparison the faces of the jury, at first indifferent, with what are probably the best of the began to show a dawning interest which many court room scenes in Dickens, namely increased to sympathy, until at the eloquent the trial of Charles Darnay and of Bardell v. reference to the prisoner's aged mother the Pickwick. On the one side, we have a his tears coursed down their seamed and tory of facts sufficiently interesting by itself, weather-beaten countenances; and so forth, but almost such a recital as might appear and so forth, and so on. It's the easiest thing in the columns of any newspaper of the in the world to reel off about five hundred better class. Without the interest which words of it. Sometimes this particular brand the author has already excited in his char of flapdoodle is inflicted because the writer is acters, the situation would fail. This in a layman and in these days of machine made terest being sufficient to sustain the reader's books, doesn't care to bother about equip