"Christmas stories" by Charles Dickens

For this reason, we can talk about the realistic type of Christmas stories, close to Charles Dickens, - on the book of sketches of a great American writer, Washington Irving.

Firstly, however, it is important to note that the elucidating basis of Christmas ideology, the talk is not about the concept “Christmas of church”, but about the “religion of the heart”, the cult of home preached by Irving and Dickens, true, with sentimental philistine-religious elements, however, not composed integral element of his genre. K.J. Fielding - Speeches, London, 1960. pp.124-127

The book of Washington Irving was written, mainly, about England and became famous due to its London publication in 1820.

Five sketches were dedicated to Christmas theme in his book. Irving concerns to England, as many romanticist writers concerns to the past of their countries. That is why, we will not find the descriptions of cities and mode of life in the cities. That city romanticism, which brought up Dickens Charles and formed his character and manners as a writer, was not mentioned by Washington Irving. The city for Irving is a world of “business”, assemblage of businessmen, always busy, always hurrying to somewhere, completely indifferent to each other. We know that Charles Dickens in his urban landscape can find people from another mode of life, from different level of society. They are equally unusual, ekzotic, and more archaic than middle townsman. Irving acts in different way. He searches for archaism out of cities, for example, conservative romanticists in rural regions, in the villages.

Rural life appeals Washington Irving not only by its beautiful parks and gardens, by its ancient castles and picturesque churches and cottages, but also by that social advantage which villages could save despite to cities.

Here, in peaceful rural silence there is not that social contrast, yet, which is typical for big modern cities. From Irving's point of view, every inhabitant of the villages is satisfied with their place in society and treatment between various estates is built in harmony.

This conservative social-political tendency of Washington Irving we have to remember in analyzing of his Christmas stories.

Describing Christmas holiday in England, Irving shows happy rural life. Christmas, Irving considers, puts into people's hearts peace and love. Christmas is a time when everybody restores old relationships with family and friends, which is weakened with the course of time. Sons and daughters who left their homes return to their family to remember nostalgic memories of childhood, by the fire. Everyone become younger and loves each other at Christmas. This period of year gives great enjoyment, because of warm and comfortable family atmosphere at the fireplace. Short cloudy days, and dark nights, empty landscape covered with snow make people to gather tighter at homes and evaluate simple joys of family members much more than usually. Bright red flames illuminating room, - this is like the artificial sun, lit up faces and making them to smile to everybody who newly came. Christmas - is the time of hearty hospitality for everyone, it is time of secular games and entertainment. As if, all the doors and hearts are widely opened to the most sincere fun. At this universal holiday unity, says Irving, disappear all boundaries between different social levels, so peasant and peer approach to one another attacked by the similar joy.

The sweet noise of songs come from old nobiliary manors, tables are served, decorated with different meals, sweets, and so on. But peasant's cabin is also decorated with evergreen branches, they invite the passer-by to in their homes to warm themselves, and to shorten long winter nights, listening old legends and Christmas stories.

Washington Irving describes the ideal influence of Christmas holiday to the society. Charles Dickens wholly accepts this ideology of Christmas, changing it into complete world outlook in his Pickwick Papers. But here, the differences between them appear over again: Washington Irving, with the strict accuracy of ethnographer, shows the Christmas holiday in villages, pedantically restoring ancient patriarchal traditions, but Dickens finds his Christmas idyll in any place and in any family, he is not interested in the form of holiday and its historical meaning. Describing his freak, Washington Irving's mood changes, because his freak and his customs now in modern England - are occasional saved fragments of past, condemned to be forgotten, to die.

In the meaning of historical contradiction and in a concrete direction of his sympathies, Washington Irving is older than Dickens, Charles for one generation. Many things, here, have not lost its utopian elements of the XVIII century, and there is much influence of artificial archaic of conservative romanticism.

Typical that Irving describes old knights' armour in old house or under the vault of Westminster Abbey, in more natural atmosphere for it, but in Charles Dickens' creative activity we will find them already in the Old Curiosity Shop, where they are adapted to new form of life and turned from the objects of superior honor to the objects of the purchase and sale.

Both of these writers are connected by the moral-hedonistic aim of their creative activity. Washington Irving is not purposed to show the right way by the sermon, but just to entertain and cheer up. Moral value of his stories arises naturally. He ends his Christmas series with these words:

“Significantly more pleasant to be appreciated than to teach, to be in a role of the companion than to be a teacher… if I accidentally succeed to smooth just a wrinkle on somebody's anxious face and to make one's aggravated with sadness heart to forget all the evil and sufferings just for a time; if I can disseminate the hatred of people to each other, help them to look at the world and human nature with happy sight and to inspire people with more optimistic treatment to themselves and to their relatives and family, so, it means that I writings were not vain.”

Charles Dickens in his “Sketches by Boz”, he continues an idyll line of Christmas stories started by Washington Irving.

As like as Irving, in Charles Dickens' stories the theme is not about the religious ideology, but only specifics which found for itself special symbolics of social philosophy.

However, Dickens had the same gentle feelings to Christmas, as Irving, and similarly considering this holiday as source of spiritual reconciliation, have strength fighting to each other, and possibility of their conciliation in other conditions, in a condition of modern bourgeois society: transferring the contradictions seen by him to the real class circumstances, he orientates to the truly existing struggle and sympathizes forces that really takes forward. K.J. Fielding - A Critical Introduction, London, revised edition 1966, pp.78-86

True, real, democratic Dickensian views to life creates realistic and progressive basis of his creative activity even in his Christmas stories.

This clear social orientation of Christmas theme was absent in Dickens' early creative works.

It became possible in that stage of development of Dickens as a writer, when the realistic nuances of his creative activity began to prevail on the utopian ones.

Three Christmas stories in 1843, 1844 and 1845 (Christmas Carol in prose, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth) testifies of a mature mastership and quite determined views of an author to the bourgeois reality.

These sentimental stories about involving of all people to the world of fair and mutual support are the basic differentiating character of the poor man in a contrast with the rich man, as to the philosophy of Dickens.

Christmas evening - is the time when the unexpected miracle, changes, and reconciliations are possible in the world of social inequality and “steady” injustice. In this evening, relentless rules of class struggle and economic inequality suddenly stop operating with complete strength and its result - mutual hatred of people to each other - yield its place to love and brotherly feelings. This is evening (it can be not only Christmas evening, but also the New Year Evening as in “The Chimes”), when cruelty of the modern world get eliminated, and humanity for a moment becomes the happy society in Telem Abbey.

“From the childhood till present day, - says idyll nephew of the non-idyll uncle Scrooge, - Christmas holiday appears to me as the day of joy, forgiving, goodwill, enjoyment, - only one day on the calendar when I deeply believe that all people, men and women, as if hide the closed hearts of themselves and accept the people from lower society, and even only for a day became friends with them, walking across to the “grave”, but not another type of men who move opposite ways”. (“Christmas Carol in prose”)

These happy transformations, sure, can not happen as ordinary reality, because Charles Dickens is not so great realist. Dickens needs whole arsenal of fantastic tales, and many spirits come down from the skies to make miracles. Christmas utopia of Dickens wholly consists of fantastic, and reveals its fragility and shortness. Despite this sounds like paradox, the degree of the fantastic of his Christmas stories is criterion of realness of Dickens' outlook.

In the literature of XVIII century people changed, became better, sympathized and became noble as the result of mental influence of good example, confluence of circumstances.

As the example to such “happy” fortune, following hero in spite of his will and conscious, taking him to the condition of harmony, and despite to the apparent difficulty and obstacles, can be given as “Wilhelm Maister” by Goethe. But this moral regeneration of people in other novels of XVIII century is significantly simpler, not so high-principled and philosophical form.

Villains repent just for “happy” logics of the creative work, plot brings them eventually, to the optimistic climax, and for this purpose there is no need to other extraneous characters (“Tom Johns”).

The novel of the XVIII century aims to show that society is able to isolate, to neutralize the villain with the help of their own strength, depriving him from any opportunity to counteract against good even if he has not repented, or has not repented definitely.

Such satisfactory plot reflects deep belief of the writer to the positive, vital opportunity of bourgeois society, where despite of the existence of defects and injustice, he tries to find the power and humans, who would be able to take the depressed virtue under his protection.

The novel of Goldsmith “Wakefield priest” has similar theme. Even if the priest's family is poor, beginning from the prison and finishing by imaginary death of priest's lovely daughter Olivia, “revived” at the end of the novel, nevertheless, the happy-ending organically follows from the here expressed philosophy of life. Thus, author does not express his villain Tornguil as the originator of all misfortune of the family, quite repented. And, nevertheless, this goes right due to that among the oppressed people but also among the strong people, there are men who care for the “law and justice”. Uncle of villain, Sir William Tornquil, appears to be a kind personality, whose purpose is to make happy suffered man and to punish the criminal.

Similar cases are less and less in the novels of Charles Dickens. Villains as Kvilp, Riderhood, Rigo-Blandoir, Uri Gip or Ralph Nickleby need to be punished cruelly, relentlessly. They perish not being forgiven by the author, who does not believe that they can radically change to the better in the frame of reality. Only Scrooge can change because it happens to him in the Christmas night. Christmas stories of Charles Dickens about good villains - are the most fantastic fantasies about the impossibility, realized exactly as impossibility. These sensibleness inventions, impossible in reality, are rather significant. And not without reason, common joy and vitality of their color constantly are accompanied by the shade of sentimental sadness, concerning to that this is only a tale. To the order with the funny inventions, author constantly shows also unfunny inventions, which always exist in the world, contrary to one fantastic night composed by the writer himself, which he himself half believe.

And as the joyful flames of the fireplace seems to be brighter because of the darkness in the rooms, darkness in the streets, similar in the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens holiday night is fantastic and full of kindness, because only this night of the year is able to bring changes to better. And if the poor man celebrates a joyful holiday in this evening and if the rich men join to them, then in the future there will be many gloomy everyday life and severe tests, where this magic clocks of the human unification will disappear. This hopelessness of “merry Christmas”, its fictitiousness constantly felt in Charles Dickens' Christmas stories and add to them original melancholic color. Edgar Johnson - Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, 2 vol., Manchester, 1952. pp.39-42

Charles Dickens trying to save the idyll should limit its scale; leave the great social-philosophical questions, so idyll is powerless contrast to the bourgeois society. Dickens finds idyllic symbiosis of poor with the rich, about what he dreams in his sentimental stories, not in the world where openly happens class struggle, but in the “small world” of intimate family life. Idyll of Dickens, expelled from the sphere of big social laws, appears too correlated with the insignificant events of family life, getting meaning and sense by the subjective perception of the participants of this event. Miracles of this idyll - is the miracles of the “small world” with its dissolution about daily life cares and psychological microscopis Dickens such a realist that he describes that the manufacturer is not able to feel sorry for the working man's misfortune, when he acts as the businessman on official reason. And some operator, coming to the poor man's home for “personal reason”, and feeling atmosphere of love, mutual understanding and support dominating there, can suddenly be moved, and change even for a time, even for a night refuse his operational essence.

The author attributes to this “domestic” ideology special, all-conquering authority. He searches for the means among the oppressors of the modern capitalism, which could unite poor men with the rich man, serving as the bridge to them from the other, gloomy world.

Some characters of the human Dickens wanted to announce as common for all people, as the humanist of the last century. Dickens can not do this in the field of the wide social question, because in the XIX century it was already appeared and formed as class ideology. The questions of common outlook, life philosophy, conscience or honour of bourgeois or poor man will be defined completely differently in Dickens, and author will emphasize that differentiation. But some nuances of similarity, some of the opportunity of rapprochement he will try to find in all people. This is secondary for society, but nevertheless, Dickens uses it as the basis of his utopia of the human unification. This basis - is sentimental ideology of the family. Abstracted “family” feelings can be unifying power for all the people. Rich father can understand his poor father, because they both are fathers. The rich person in due time, probably was little badgered boy, and that is why he is able suddenly to be touched, when he meets as little badgered boy as he himself.

Characterizing avidity and callousness of English bourgeois, Engels wrote:

“Of course, these English bourgeois - are good husbands and fathers…”

In the ideology of Dickens and Haskell, “domesticity” (because it is understood as the abstract category, as the nobility of any “human generally”) is equivalent to the ability of exploitator to leave his class limits to the wide sphere human commonwealth. In the limited form XVIII century's ideology had great ideological influence.

In his three main Christmas stories Dickens produced not only the principles of “domestic”, “Christmas world outlook”, but also he set steady form to express it.

Christmas Carol in prose, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth are unified by their mood and similarity of the compositions.

They are related also by the unity of the narrative intonation. In all three stories, more and less, appear the figure of the story-teller sitting by the fireplace and addressing to his listeners also sitting there, too. He as if continues conversation, which then gradually develop to the related narration, and thus, by its presence emphasizes Christmas spirit.

“The cattle started the first. Do not object that Mrs. Pirinbingle thinks differently. I know better. Let her repeat endlessly that she can not tell who began the first; but I say the cattle. I guess I should know? For the Holland clocks standing at the corner, the cattle began five minutes earlier than the cricket started its song”.

The Cricket on the Hearth begins as this.

The Christmas Carol in prose begins with the establishment of the fact, that Marley was as dead as the door nail.

“Let me, - go on. - it does not mean that I certainly know that there is nothing more dead than the door nail” - etc., with the sound of the friendly conversation with the listeners.

The Chimes begins with description of the night wind, howling on the walls of an old empty church:

“Oh, Lord! Save us from it, - us, sitting around the fire. It has horrible sound, - of the midnight wind, howling in the church.

Oh! On the campanile! That is where he whistles and growls with the anger! - etc. “And so I am going to tell the story about such bells in such an old church”.

Gradually, the voice of the story-teller weakens and disappears, conceding its place to the narration, and, however, in order to appear in the end of the story. Thus, the impression of the story by the fire keep presenting till the end of the narration.

In many stories story teller reminds us about his presence, interfering into the story:

“As to my mind, I do not agree with Toby's opinion about the bells, so I do not doubt that he had much time to think deeply about it and also develop it. I will stand for Toby, but I doubt that he stood at the doors of the church any day or any week. The matter is that Toby was messenger, and he was waiting for the order.”

In The Cricket on the Hearth, when the talk begins about Tekleton, the story-teller appears again:

“Did I tell you that one eye of him is always widely opened and another almost closed; and the almost closed one was just more expressive? I suppose I did not”.

And not only story-teller's personality, but also fiction of the listener, whom he addresses, appears in the narration from time to time:

“But as to the stuffing tobacco, Dot was the master of it; how dexterously she fired the rolled scrap of the paper when he needed to light the grape stalk, - that was an art, sir, real art”.

However, the appearance of the fiction “story-teller on the fire” sometimes interrupted by the real story-teller, an author, Charles Dickens.

This is one of the not numerous examples:

“Bright light spread all over the room, and curtains in the Scrooge's room moved.

Curtains of his room, I say, were moved by the invisible hand. Not those curtains what was hung near his legs, and nor at his head, but the curtains before his face. The curtains of his bed were moved, and waking up Scrooge came to be face to face with the supernatural visitor, who moved the curtains: as close to him as I am close to you now, and me, near your elbow as the ghost!”

That person who told that the curtains were moved - is fiction author of the story, “story-teller by the fire”. The man who appears near the reader's elbow as the ghost is - Charles Dickens himself.

Both story-tellers do not bother one another and all these interlacing of intonations develop newer lyric-humorous shade.

However, that is not all. Fiction of the story-teller means also another thing: with the help of the fiction is emphasized that the told accidents are just a tale, not more. Despite of there area lot of sad and even horrible things, as the same the story is false, or the story with the happy-ending should not be taken so close to heart, too serious.

Because of that, story-teller before beginning to tell the story makes some joke that will not offend anybody.

This little domestic joke, yet little bit concerning to the context of the narration, gives people safety and presentiment about the happy-ending.

For example, in Christmas Carol it happens as follows:

Mention about the funeral of Marley makes me return back to the beginning of my story. There was no doubt that Marley is dead. It should be comprehended because there will be no extraordinary thing in the occasion which I am going to tell. If we doubted that Hamlet's father was dead until the raising of the curtains, then his night walks under the burst of the eastern wind would not amaze us such as appearing of any other gentleman in the dark empty place, - for example in the cemetery of St. Peter.

Or it can be said also about Toby in The Chimes, when author describes his inconveniences in his work as messenger, and poor Toby's struggle with the northern wind:

“The wind, especially northern, was striking him with frenzy from the corner, as if purposely came from nowhere to slap in his face… his cane was vainly taken by him to fight with the bad weather. Soon, his weak legs began horribly shake, he was turning to the right, then to the left, he shivered, he bent but nothing helped him. He was terribly exhausted, tormented, hackneyed, he hardly stood on his legs that fortunately was not taken up and thrown down by the wind hundred times like the frogs, snails or other ugly creatures.

The hero, who is described with jokes by the author, can not be tragic hero, and if only unhappiness follows him, it reminds us about the happy outcome of the story.

But not only the narrative intonation gives especially comfortable, “domestic” mood to the Charles Dickens' stories. The attitude to the phenomena of the world, to the life is full conformity with this intonation. Here it is described special form of the myth of the home, where the action and dead subordinated God's will of the “little world”. Chesterton G.K. - Charles Dickens, London, 1903, reprinted 1977. pp.76-85

All the accidents are valued by the listeners sitting around the fireplace. There is nothing worse to them than the cold winter night, sharp wind, the fog or the slush. Idyll of Christmas consists of idolized dot of the light in the darkness of the night. That is why the description of the city moving from one source of the light to the other: brightened shops, the windows of the houses, lantern. The reality is divided into two visual and sharply limited spheres - lightened and darkened, that some kind of treatment of the light settled down concordant to this principle. However, even “big nature” is lowered to the domestic environment by the corresponded methods.

The description of the fog in the streets of London is as follows:

“Watching these dark clouds, coming down and enveloping the surrounding everything with the deep darkness, it seems that the Nature is settled somewhere so near.”

Thus, Dickens creates a world of original artificial, idyll reality in his Christmas stories which attracts to its sphere only what is taken from the darkness of the “big world” and what can be brighten the family life with the reconciliatory fire.

In this “domestication” of any theme, even more horrible and serious, the main thing is Charles Dickens' humor. This is special holiday relation to the life, reducing all everyday disturbances to the absence of the fun and fried turkeys, and all happiness of the life - to their presence.

The special kind of “culinary” humor of Charles Dickens is created to soften, dissolve the comic, and “domesticate” any theme, even the horrible or traditionally severe theme.

The most horrible things in Dickens creative activity can seem very comfortable, “family” thanks to his humor. Edgar Johnson - The Heart of Charles Dickens, As Revealed in His Letters to Angela Burdett-Coutts, New York, 1952, reprinted 1976. pp.142-150

In “Master Humphrey's Clock”, in the introductory chapters, where we again meet the heroes of “Pickwick Papers” - with Mr. Pickwick and his servant described the story about middle-ages prosecutions, burning and drowning of the old women who were suspected in diablerie. This is typical sample for Dickens to outplay the history humorously and also characteristic example of his “culinary” aspect of humor at all.

That is what we read about the prosecution of the witches in this story:

“Windsor was very little town in that time, but it was possible to guess that this town also did not avoid the general infection, raged in all over the England. In the birthday of a king, Windsor people welded one witch in a boiler and sent one bottle of this broth to the king with the congratulation addressing. The king, little bit scared of this gift, submissively gave it to the archbishop of Canterbury and answered to the congratulation with the message, where he explained golden rules of catching the witches…” and so on.

In the absolute grotesque-“culinary” aspect treated the theme of the suicide (here we can not talk about the serious treatment of the suicide, but about the anecdotic meaning in the history), told to Pickwick by Sam Weller. This story is about a gentleman, owner of the sausage factory, whose wife tormented him, and he ran into melancholy and throws himself into the sausage machine and was made to the sausages. His wife had no idea about this accident and though that he went away to America, for this reason she published newspaper advertisements addressing to his husband to make him come back and that she “forgave” him everything. But when suddenly one unfamiliar gentleman came to her and told that he found the button in the sausage and when she recognized that this is button of her husband's trousers, she understood the “frightening truth”.

And that time, the grotesque humor of Charles Dickens does not destroy plausibility of the happenings. Emphasized, naked fantastic of the Christmas stories (both humorous and pathetic) nevertheless, maintains in Dickens' visibility of realism.

§3. Critic views of the stories “Somebody's Luggage” and “Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings”.

The power of Dickens is shown even in the scraps of Dickens, just as the virtue of a saint is said to be shown in fragments of his property or rags from his robe. It is with such fragments that we are chiefly concerned in the Christmas stories. Many of them are fragments in the literal sense; Dickens began them and then allowed someone else to carry them on; they are almost rejected notes. In all the other cases we have been considering the books he wrote; here we have rather to consider the books that he might have written. And here we find the final evidence and the unconscious stamp of greatness, as we might find it in some broken bust or some rejected moulding in the studio of Michael Angelo.

These sketches or parts of sketches all belong to that period in his later life when he had undertaken the duties of an editor, the very heavy duties of a very popular editor. He was not by any means naturally fitted for that position. He was the best man in the world for founding papers; but many people wished that he could have been buried under the foundations, like the first builder in some pagan and prehistoric pile. He called the Daily News into existence, but when once he existed, he objected to him strongly. It is not easy, and perhaps it is not important, to state truly his cause of his incapacity. It was not in the least what is called the ordinary fault or weakness of the artist. It was not that he was careless; rather it was that he was too conscientious. It was not that he had the irresponsibility of genius; rather it was that he had the irritating the responsibility of genius; he wanted everybody to see things as he saw them. But in spite of all this he certainly ran two great popular periodicals - Household Words and All the Year Round - the enormous popular success. And he certainly so far succeeded in throwing himself into the communism of journalism, into the nameless brotherhood of a big paper, that many earnest Dickensians are still engaged in picking out pieces of Dickens from the anonymous pages of Household Words and All the Year Round, and those parts which have been already beyond the question picked out and proved are often fragmentary. The genuine writing of Dickens breaks off; I fancy that we know it. Frederic Kitton G. - Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, London, 1900. pp. 77-102

The singular thing that some of the best work that Dickens ever did, better than the works in his best novels can be found in these slight and composite scraps of journalism. For instance, the solemn and self-satisfied account of the duty and dignity of a waiter given in the opening chapter of Somebody's Luggage is quite as full and fine as anything done anywhere by its author in the same vein of sumptuous satire. It is as good as the account which Mr. Bumble gives of out-door relief, which “properly understood, is the parochial safeguard. The great thing is to give the paupers what they don't want, and then they never come again.” It is as good as Mr. Podsnap's description of the British Constitution, which was bestowed on him by Providence. None of these celebrated passages in more obviously Dickens at his best than this, the admirable description of “the true principles of waitering”, or the accounts of how the waiter's father came back to his mother in broad daylight, “in itself an act of madness on the part of a waiter,” and how he expired repeating continually “two and six is three and four is nine.” That waiter's explanatory soliloquy might easily have opened an excellent novel, as Martin Chuzzlewit is opened by the clever nonsense about the genealogy of the Chuzzlewit's or as Bleak House opened by a satiric account of the damp, dim life of a law court. Yet Dickens practically abandoned the scheme of Somebody's Luggage; he only wrote two sketches out of those obviously intended. He may almost be said to have only written a brilliant introduction to another man's book.

Yet it is exactly in such broken outbreaks that his greatness appears. If a man has flung away bad ideas he has shown his sense, but he has flung away good ideas he has shown his genius. He has proved that he actually has that over-pressure of pure creativeness which we see in nature itself, “that of a hundred seeds, she often brings but one to bear.” Dickens had to be Malthusian about his spiritual children. Critics have called Keats and other who died young “the great Might-have-beens of literary history.” Dickens certainly was not merely a great Might-have-been. Dickens, to say the least of him, was a great Was. Yet this fails fully to express the richness of his talent; for the truth is that he was a great Was and also a great Might-have-been. He said what he had to say. Wild pictures, possible stories, tantalizing and attractive trains of thought, perspectives of adventure, crowded so continually upon his mind that at the end there was a vast mass of them left over, ideas that he literally had not the opportunity to develop, tales that he literally had not the time to tell. This is shown clearly in his private notes and letters, which are full of schemes singularly striking and suggestive, schemes which he never carried out. It is indicated even more clearly by these Christmas stories, collected out of a chaotic opulence of Household Words and All the Year Round. He wrote short stories actually because he had no time to write long story; many of his long stories, so to speak, broke off short. This is where he differs from most who are called the Might-have-beens of literature. Marlowe and Chatterton failed because of their weakness. Dickens failed because of his force. Examine for example this case of the waiter in Somebody's Luggage. Dickens obviously knew enough about that waiter to have made him a running spring to joy throughout a whole novel; as a beadle in Oliver Twist, or the undertaker in Martin Chuzzlewit. Every touch of him tingles with truth, from the vague gallantry with which he asks, “Would'st thou know, fair reader (if of the adorable female sex)” to the official severity with which he takes the chambermaid down, “as many pegs as is desirable for the future comfort to all parties.” If Dickens has developed this character at full length in a book he would have preserved for ever in literature a type of great humour and great value, and a type which may only too soon be disappearing from English history. He would have eternalized the English waiter. He still exists in some sounds old taverns and decent country inns, but there is no one left really capable of singing his praises. I know that Mr. Bernard Shaw has done something of the sort in the delightfully whimsical account of William in You Never Can Tell. But nothing will persuade me that Mr. Bernard Shaw can really understand the English waiter. He can never have ordered wine from his for instance. And though the English waiter is by the nature of things solemn about everything, he can never reach the true height and ecstasy of his solemnity except about wine. What the real English waiter would do or say if Mr. Shaw asked him for a vegetarian meal it can not be predicted. We can guess that for the first time in his life he would laugh - a horrible sight. Dickens' waiter is described by one who is not merely witty, truthful, and observant, like Mr. Bernard Shaw, but one who really knew the atmosphere of inns, one who knew and even liked the smell of beef, and beer, and brandy. Hence there is richness in Dickens' portrait which doesn't exist in Mr. Shaw's. Mr. Shaw's waiter is an opportunist in politics. Dickens' waiter is ready to stand up seriously for “the true principle of waitering,” just as Dickens was ready to stand up for the true principles pf Liberalism. Shaw's waiter is agnostic; his motto is “You never can tell.” Dickens' waiter is dogmatist; his motto is “You can tell; I will tell you.” And the true old-fashioned English waiter had really this grave and even moral attitude; he was the servant of the customers as the priest is the servant of the faithful, but scarcely in any less dignified sense. Surely it is not mere patriotic partially that makes one lament the disappearance of this careful and honorable figure crowded out by meaner men at meaner wages, by the German waiter who has learnt five languages in the course of running away from his own, or the Italian waiter who regards those he serves with a darkling contempt which must certainly be that either of a dynamiter or an exiled prince. The human and hospitable English waiter is vanishing. Dickens might perhaps have saved him, as he saved Christmas. ?hm?doglu B. - Carlz Dikkens, Kommunist, Bak?, 1962, 7 fevral

It is taken this case of waiter in Dickens and equally important counterpart in England as an example of the sincere and genial sketches scattered about these short stories. But there are many others, and one at least demands special mention; this is Mrs. Lirriper, the London landlady. Not only did Dickens never do anything better in a literary sense, but he never performed more perfectly his main moral function, that of insisting through laughter and flippancy upon the virtue of Christian charity. There has been much broad farce against the lodging-house keeper: he alone could have written broad farce in her favor. Ti is fashionable to represent the landlady as a tyrant; it is too much forgotten that if she is one if the oppressors she is at least as much one of the oppressed. If she is bad-tempered it is often for the same reasons that make all women bad-tempered; if she is grasping it is often because when a husband makes generosity a vice it is often necessary that a wife should make avarice a virtue. This entire Dickens suggested very soundly and in a few strokes in the more remote character Miss Wozenham. But in Mrs. Lirriper he went further and did not fare worse. In Mrs., Lirriper he suggested quite truly how huge a mass of real good humor, of grand unconscious patience, of unfailing courtesy and constant and difficult benevolence is concealed behind many a lodging-house door and compact in the red-faced person of many a preposterous landlady. Any one could easily excuse the ill-humor of the poor. But great masses of the poor have not even any ill-humor to be excused. Their cheeriness is startling enough to be the foundation of a miracle play; and certainly is startling enough to be foundation of a romance. Yet there is no any romance in which it is expressed except this one. “Mrs. Lirriper `s Lodgings” is one of the Christmas stories written by Charles Dickens. The main character of the story is Mrs. Lirriper, an old lady, gives the furnished rooms of her house for rent. She furnished her old house as good as she could to make it more comfortable for inhabitants and for herself. This is how he earns for living. Every person living in her house is kind to her because of her behavior with them. Story begins with the Mrs. Lirriper`s description of her daily life, her neighbors, her relatives and the lodgers. She talks about the persons one by one, tells of the good and bad sides of their characters. She calls Jamie her grand-son. But in reality he is not. His mother died of sickness and Jamie was left by his father too, and was grown up by Mrs. Lirriper having no idea that she is not his real grandmother. Here we recognize the inner goodness of this lady, her kind heart and nobility.

She hates Mrs.Wozenham who lives in the same street and who also gives for rent her furnished rooms. They have disliking to each other. But, in spite of that, Mrs. Lirriper helps her in Miss.Wozenham `s hard situation and discovers her real internal life, that she is not negative person at all and even shy for bad behavior of herself. In general, main hero of this story is not rude, bad-tempered. She is always ready to be useful at any moment to men even she can not agree with or she does not like them. For example, her late husband `s brother always make troubles, disturbs her, asks money, but despite all that, when he was caught by policemen Mrs. Lirriper was even crying and doing her best to make policemen to let him out. Or another example can prove what is said above, that Mrs. Lirriper met her neighbors, whom she completely disliked, with great hospitality when their house fired. They all were very grateful to Mrs. Lirriper for saving their lives and accepting them with kindness and pity.

Charles Dickens describing Mrs. Lirriper shows us the ideal picture of simple, pleasant, kind-hearted person. She always finds good characters in everyone whether she likes him or not. Her geniality takes her even out of borders, to France. Mrs. Lirriper goes there to recognize the dying person who is going to leave his heritage to her. But when she finds out that this man - at death - is little Jamie `s father, who left him, she forgives him seeing his regret in his mirrowlike eyes, and leaves him to be judged by God.

The entire story long, Charles Dickens opens all good nature of that woman - Mrs. Lirriper. The idea of the story “Mrs. Lirriper `s Lodgings” is kindness, goodness, nobility etc. It has very deep meaning in itself, and reading this story you can learn so much useful things for yourself. The story has one simple plot. It is told by Mrs. Lirriper `s own words, and the comprehendible speech makes the story more interesting and entertaining.

Of the landlady as the waiter it may be said that Dickens left in a slight sketch what might have developed through a long and strong novel. For Dickens had hold of one great truth, the neglect of which has , as it were, truncated and made meager the work of many brilliant modern novelists. Modern novelists try to make long novels out of subtle characters. But a subtle character soon comes to an end, because it works in and in to its own centre and dies there. But a simple character goes on for ever in a fresh interest and energy, because it works out and out into the infinite universe. Mr. George Moore in France is not by any means as interesting as Mrs. Lirriper in France; for she is trying to find France and he is only trying to find George Moore. Mrs. Lirriper is the female equivalent of Mr. Pickwick. Unlike Mrs. Bardell she was fully worthy to be Mrs. Pickwick. For in both cases the essential truth is the same; that original innocence which alone deserves adventures and because it alone can appreciate them. We have had Mr. Pickwick in England and we can imagine him in France. We have had Mrs. Lirriper in France and we can imagine her in Mesopotamia or in heaven. The subtle character in the modern novels we cannot really imagine anywhere except in the suburbs or in Limbo.Welsh Charles - Character Portraits from Dickens, London, 1908

 Conclusion

The vitality of Dickens' works is singularly great. They are all a-throb, as it were, with hot human blood. They are popular in the highest sense because their appeal is universal, to the as well as the educated. The humor is superb, and most of it, so far as one can judge, of no ephemeral kind. The pathos is more questionable, but that too, at its simplest and best; and especially when the humour is shot with it - is worthy of a better epithet than excellent. It is supremely touching. Imagination, fancy, wit, eloquence, the keenest observation, the most strenuous endeavor to reach the highest artistic excellence, the largest kindliness, - all these he brought to his life-work. And that work, as I think, will live, it can be prophecy for ever. Of course fashions change. Of course no writer of fiction, writing for his own little day, can permanently meet the needs of all after times. Some loss of immediate vital interest is inevitable. Nevertheless, in Dickens' case, all will not die. Half a century, a century hence, he will still be read; not perhaps as he was read when his words flashed upon the world in their first glory and freshness, nor as he is read now in the noon of his fame. But he will be read much more than we read the novelists of the last century - be read as much, shall I say, as we still read Walter Scott. And so long as he is read, there will be one gentle and humanizing influence the more at work among men. George R. Gissing abr. - Forster's Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman and Hall, 1943

Though Charles Dickens' novels continued to be read by large numbers of readers, his literary reputation was an eclipse. There was a tendency to see his novels as appropriate for children and young adults. Russian writers came into vogue and were generally regarded as superior to Dickens from 1880 through the early part of the twentieth century. This preference is ironic because the Russian novelists both admired Dickens and learned from him. Turgenev praised Dickens' work and even wrote for Dickens' magazine, Household Words, during the Crimean War. Tolstoy wrote of Dickens, “All his characters are my personal friends - I am constantly comparing them with living persons, and living persons with them, and what a spirit there was in all he wrote.” Dostoevsky was so impressed that he imitated the death of Little Nell, including the sentimentality, in describing the death of Nelli Valkovsky in The Insulted and the Injured (1862). Supposedly, during his exile in Siberia, he read only Pickwick Papers and David Copperfield. Even if this story is apocryphal, Dickens' influence on Uncle's Dream and The Friend of the Family (1859), written while Dostoevsky was in Siberia, is unmistakable. Ironically, English critics in the 1880s were puzzled by Dostoevsky's similarities to Dickens.

Dickens' literary standing was transformed in the 1940s and 1950s because of essays written by George Orwell and Edmund Wilson, who called him “the greatest writers of his time,” and full-length study by Humphrey House, The Dickens World. Critics discovered complexity, darkness, and even bitterness in his novels, and by the 1960s some critics felt that, like Shakespeare. Dickens could not be classified into existing literary categories. This view of Dickens as incomparable continues to the present day. Edgar Johnson expresses the prevailing modern view in his assessments of Dickens: “Far more than a great entertainer, a great comic writer, he looks into the abyss. He is one of the great poets of the novel, a genius of his art.” This is not to say that every critic or reader accepts Johnson's view; F.R. Leavis could not take Dickens so seriously: “The adult mind doesn't as a rule find in Dickens a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness.” In the resurgence of Dickens' reputation, his essays, sketches, and articles have received attention and praise. K.J. Fielding believes, “If he were not so well known as a novelist, he might have been recognized as a great essayist.” Rice, C. M. - The Story of Our Mutual Friend: Transcribed into Phonetic Notation from the Work of Charles Dickens/ Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1920. pp.152-158

Dickens as a modern novelist and all his books are modern novels. Dickens didn't know at what really point he became a novelist. The novel being a modern product is one of the few things to which we really can apply that disgusting method of thought - the method of evolution. His Christmas stories publishing in the Household Words and All the Year Round had great fame in his time, but it doesn't mean that it is forgotten nowadays. The Christmas theme always attracted people, and the warmth, loveliness, kindliness of these stories fills everybody's heart with joy and happiness. They are translated into many languages and are read present days and I hope they will be loved by the readers many centuries. There was painful moment (somewhere about the eighties) when we watched anxiously to see whether Dickens was fading form the modern world. We have watched a little longer, and with a great relief we begin to realize that it is the modern world that is fading.

Now Dickens must definitely be considered in the light of the changes which his soul foresaw. Dickens has done much; he belongs to Queen Victoria as much as Addison belongs to Queen Anne, and it is not only Queen Anne dead. But Dickens, in a dark prophetic kind of way, belongs to the developments. His name comes to the tongue when we are talking of Christian Socialists or Mr. Roosevelt or Country Council Steam Boats or Guilds of Play. Charles Dickens was a very great man, and there are many ways of testing and stating the fact. But one permissible way is to say this, that he was an ignorant man, ill-read in the past, and often confused about the present. Yet he remains great and true, and even essentially reliable, if we suppose him to have known not only all that went before his lifetime, but also all that was to come after.¹Henry Ward - The Real Dickens Land. London, 1954, pp.26-28

He was simple man; he loved ordinary people from lower classes. He did not evaluate them by their education, job or economic situation. That is why many of his heroes of his novels and especially of Christmas stories were poor, pity men who earned for living hardly but honestly. He believed in better future. This optimism is mentionable in most of his creative works. Capitalist society did not appeal him because he wanted people from lower classes to live less unhappy, less hungry, less insulted. Reading the Christmas stories of Charles Dickens we meet such problems, sentimental nuances. He was realistic writer and showed real picture of life with all of its good and bad sides, however, humor, high mood of these stories make us to believe in happy, joyful future.

“My trust in people, who rule, is insignificant. My trust in people, who are being ruled, is boundless.”

Charles Dickens

 Bibliography

The sources in Azerbaijan

1) ?hm?doglu B. - Carlz Dikkens. Kommunist q?z. Bak?, 1962, 7 fevral

2) “?d?biyyat v? inc?s?n?t” q?z. - Carlz Dikkens. Bak?, 1970, 10 fevral

The sources in Russian

1) À.À. Àíèêñò è Â.Â. Èâàøåâ - ×àðëüç Äèêêåíñ: Ñîáðàíèå ñî÷èíåíèé â 30-òè òîìàõ. Ò.12, Ìîñêâà, 1959

2) À.À. Àíèêñò - Äèêêåíñ ×àðëüç. Ò.1. Ìîñêâà, 1957

3) Êàòàðñêèé Èãîðü Ìàêñèìèëèàíîâè÷ - Äèêêåíñ â Ðîññèè: Ñåðåäèíà XIX âåêà. Ìîñêâà, 1966

4) Ìàäçèãîí Ì.Â. - Ðåàëèçì ðàííåãî òâîð÷åñòâà ×àðëüçà Äèêêåíñà. Òáèëèñè, 1962

5) Ñêóðàòîâñêàÿ Ë. - Òâîð÷åñòâî Äèêêåíñà. Ìîñêâà, 1969

6) Óèëñîí Ýíãóñ - Ìèð ×àðëüçà Äèêêåíñà. Ìîñêâà, 1975

7) Óðíîâ Ì.Â. - Íåïîäðàæàåìûé ×àðëüç Äèêêåíñ. Ìîñêâà, 1990. ñòð. 204-257

The sources in English

1) Ackroyd, Peter - Dickens. London, 1990