Pecksniff or Poet?

THE SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY--Hugh Kingsmill--Morrow ($3).

DICKENS -- Andre Maurois -- Harper

($2).

Dickens is only a mild expletive to most moderns, but to some it is still a fighting word. In the ebbtide quarrel about whether Dickens was an overrated hypocrite or a great man who actually got his due, Author Kingsmill tries to stir up the dying ripples whereas Author Maurois does his tactful best to pour oil on them. U. S. readers, not because they have read Dickens' vituperative American Notes or Martin Chuzzlewit but because Kingsmill's attack is more convincing than Maurois' defense, will be inclined to agree that Dickens was not all his partisans have cracked him up to be.

Author Kingsmill does not believe that Dickens was "a simple and robust genius," thinks his "most constant and strongest emotion" was self-pity. A divided character all his life, says Kingsmill, Dickens was half-humorous, half-sentimental. Because he never succeeded in reconciling his two attitudes, he became "an incurable emotional hypochondriac, living in fear lest any breath of fresh air should penetrate into the hothouse of his inner life." Dickens' marriage was unhappy, but he did little to gain popular sympathy when, after separating from his wife, who had lived with him 22 years, borne him ten children, he published an announcement and defense of the separation. Kingsmill thinks he later took an actress as his mistress, admits there is no proof that he did.

Unmoved by Dickens' crocodile tears, Biographer Kingsmill applauds his comic vein to the echo, calls The Pickwick Papers "his greatest book and the finest example of comic impressionism in our literature." He sniffs at Dickens' "Bravery" in championing social reforms, says his dragons were papier-mache bugaboos: "He was one of those reformers who attack with public opinion behind them, and are rewarded with an increase in their wealth and popularity. He was not one of those reformers . . . who run counter to public opinion and are put in prison and ruined." Kingsmill states his whole case in one arresting comparison when he calls Charlie Chaplin "the Dickens of the 20th Century."

Andre Maurois, like a week-end guest who hopes to be asked again, is unfailingly gracious about England and the English. This half-loaf appreciation of Dickens is sliced thin, a L'Anglais, buttered on the right side. But U. S. readers who like whole-wheat will raise an eyebrow at the very first slice: "In every English-speaking country Dickens is still the great popular writer." Andre ' whole case for Dickens is an argumentum ad hominem. Perhaps Dickens had a streak of Pecksniff in his character but, asks Maurois, "Who hasn't?" He is sorry for Mrs. Dickens, believes that "to be a novelist's wife is truly dreadful," but thinks much should be left unsaid on both sides. As to Dickens' solacing himself with an actress, he thinks that affair "remained platonic and Dickensian--the love for the sylph." Maurois would prefer to draw more of a veil than even Dickens did over the whole business. "In any case, does it matter?"

Maurois admits that Dickens "fled from himself. He fled from the memory of a thwarted emotional life, the memory of a deep love slain in the dawn of youth, the memory of a hateful childhood." But Dickens the Victorian man, he implies, should not cast a shadow over Dickens the victorious writer: he is "above all, a great poet."

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