So..., it's by Charles Dickens (1812-70); and it was published in 1840. But what is it...?

It's a curiosity... At this point, Dickens (not even 30, remember) already had three successful novels under his belt (The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, and Nicholas Nickleby). And he wanted -- don't we all? -- a change.

In a 1839 letter to John Forster, who later became his biographer, he explained:

"I should be willing to commence on the thirty-first of March, 1840, a new publication, consisting entirely of original matter, of which one number, price threepence, should be published every week, and of which a certain amount of numbers should form a volume, to be published at regular intervals. The best general idea of the plan of the work might be given, perhaps, by reference to the Spectator, the Tatler, and Goldsmith's Bee; but it would be far more popular both in the subjects of which it treats and its mode of treating them.

"I should propose to start, as the Spectator does, with some pleasant fiction relative to the origin of the publication; to introduce a little club or knot of characters and to carry their personal histories and proceedings through the work; to introduce fresh characters constantly; to reintroduce Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, the latter of whom might furnish an occasional communication with great effect; to write amusing essays on the various foibles of the day as they arise; to take advantage of all passing events; and to vary the form of the papers by throwing them into sketches, essays, tales, adventures, letters from imaginary correspondents, and so forth, so as to diversify the contents as much as possible..."

Now, if this sounds like a something-and-nothing kind of idea (the sort of thing you dream up when you crave variety, and want a portmanteau into which to stuff disparate bits of work), that's because it was...


The original cover

It's not that Master Humphrey isn't a charming figure. Solitary, "misshapen", and shy, but kindly and home-loving, he runs a kind of writing club, where select attendees (when we begin there are just four of them) can read out their manuscripts (stored in the interim in the casing of his beloved old clock): "We are men of secluded habits, with something of a cloud upon our early fortunes, whose enthusiasm, nevertheless, has not cooled with age, whose spirit of romance is not yet quenched, who are content to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again to its harsh realities." You can't not like them, really...

Master Humphrey's London dwelling is also highly atmospheric: "It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes, that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down." The haunted quality recurs (and foreshadows some of Dickens's later writing, including A Christmas Carol).

It's a matryoshka doll, this book. Master Humphrey's coterie provide the base framework narrative, while the individual contributions also often have frames of their own. The subject matter is, as Dickens promised, varied in the extreme. We're offered stories from various eras, spoof "letters to the editor", and accounts of the doings of Pickwick, Weller et al.

G.K. Chesterton's 1911 assessment of the whole endeavour is this: "His publishers, Chapman and Hall, seem to have taken at about this point that step which sooner or later most publishers do take with regard to a half successful man who is becoming wholly successful. Instead of asking him for something, they asked him for anything. They made him, so to speak, the editor of his own works. And indeed it is literally as the editor of his own works that he next appears; for the next thing to which he proposes to put his name is not a novel, but for all practical purposes a magazine."

And it soon turned out that it wasn't really what the public wanted... Orders for the first issue amounted to 70,000, but they began to tail off when readers realized that Master Humprhey's Clock wasn't, in fact, another novel... Even the reintroduction of popular figures like Pickwick and Weller wasn't doing the trick.

But luckily, one of the story-lines was taking off in Dickens's imagination: The fourth issue introduces us to The Old Curiosity Shop, and though we're then left agog until the seventh issue, the story that eventually gave the crowds the novel they craved occupies more and more space from that point onwards. In fact, from the twelfth issue, it takes over entirely. As another Dickens biographer, Frank T. Marzials, puts it, The Old Curiosity Shop "very soon acted the cuckoo's part of thrusting Master Humphrey and all that belonged to him out of the nest".


Master Humphrey and the "deaf gentleman", another member of the club

And this interloper is, in fact, the reason I was reading Master Humphrey's Clock in the first place. Henry Eliot had the excellent idea of reading the story of Little Nell and her associates in tandem with its Master Humphrey framework, keeping pace with the publication schedule of the original. We're now about half-way through The Old Curiosity Shop (it's due to finish in February), but as there was very little Master Humphrey left, and it's all contained in my Gutenberg edition, this seemed like a good point to sign off on him.

For the record (and it took me a while to figure this out), once The Old Curiosity Shop concludes, we get a further Clock session entitled: Master Humphrey From his Clock-Side in the Chimney-Corner. In this, the friends discuss the story that has just finished. And -- in a bit of a spoiler for my current reading of The Old Curiosity Shop -- we learn the identity of the mysterious "single gentleman" who has just this month popped up in that story.

This section also includes a masterful description of the clock of St Paul's: "The fancy came upon me that this was London’s Heart, -- and that when it should cease to beat, the City would be no more. It is night. Calm and unmoved amidst the scenes that darkness favours, the great heart of London throbs in its Giant breast... Does not this Heart of London, that nothing moves, nor stops, nor quickens, -- that goes on the same let what will be done, does it not express the City’s character well?"

As the little group prepares for its next story -- which will be Barnaby Rudge -- they invite to join them the crew that has formed a parallel story-telling enterprise, entitled Mr Weller's Watch.

At the close of Barnaby Rudge (which I haven't read), we get the last contribution from our master of ceremonies, again entitled: Master Humphrey From his Clock-Side in the Chimney-Corner. His words are upbeat, but ominous: "Recollections of the past and visions of the present come to bear me company; the meanest man to whom I have ever given alms appears, to add his mite of peace and comfort to my stock; and whenever the fire within me shall grow cold, to light my path upon this earth no more, I pray that it may be at such an hour as this, and when I love the world as well as I do now."

And finally, we have a section headed: The Deaf Gentleman From his Own Apartment. He says of Master Humphrey: "Our dear friend laid down his pen at the end of the foregoing paragraph, to take it up no more... My task is done. The chamber in which we have whiled away so many hours, not, I hope, without some pleasure and some profit, is deserted; our happy hour of meeting strikes no more; the chimney-corner has grown cold; and Master Humphrey’s Clock has stopped for ever."

It's very affecting. Less sentimental than some of Dickens's death scenes, and all the more poignant for that... This analysis concludes: "Despite some flaws in Master Humphrey’s Clock, Dickens’s vision of the imaginary world of the mind and its power to give comfort and purpose at the point of Master Humphrey’s death is one of the most powerful aspects of the work."


There is no-one left...

***

So, Master Humphrey's Clock per se (as opposed to the novels it spawned) is a mixed bag. Chesterton again: "It is written by a sluggish Dickens, a half automatic Dickens, a dreaming and drifting Dickens; but still by the enduring Dickens..."

There's definitely lots that good.

We have, for example, A Confession Found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second. This is a very powerful tale of infanticide, and Edgar Allen Poe described it as "a paper of remarkable power, truly original in conception, and worked out with great ability". (Poe later met Dickens, and in January 1843, published The Tell-Tale Heart, which is directly inspired by this story.)

Another favourite of mine was a spoof letter from an unfortunate woman duped by the equivalent of today's romantic scammers (very funny, actually: "He had come, he said, to conquer or to die. He did not die. He wrested from me an avowal of my love, and let off the pistol out of a back window previous to partaking of a slight repast").

Pitched uncomfortably between farce and horror (for modern sensibilities, at least) is Mr Pickwick's story of the persecution of witches. The ironic ending is good, though.

I confess to not having read The Pickwick Papers, but it was apparently quite a phenomenon in its day, spawning merchandise such as a Sam Weller "'jest book' containing more than 1,000 jokes, puns, epigrams and jeux d’esprit". Certainly the arrival of these characters in the text is greeted as a Very Big Deal.


Mr Weller and his grandson

Despite these gems, and despite the warm fuzzies of Master Humphrey, it is inevitable, given the work's genesis, that it feels incomplete. Chesterton again: "If [Dickens] had made up tales to amuse himself when half-awake (as I have no doubt he did) they would be just such tales as these. They would have been ghostly legends of the nooks and holes of London, echoes of old love and laughter from the taverns or the Inns of Court. In a sense also one may say that these tales are the great might-have-beens of Dickens. They are chiefly designs which he fills up here slightly and unsatisfactorily, but which he might have filled up with his own brightest and most incredible colours. Nothing, for instance, could have been nearer to the heart of Dickens than his great Gargantuan conception of Gog and Magog telling London legends to each other all through the night. Those two giants might have stood on either side of some new great city of his invention, swarming with fanciful figures and noisy with new events. But as it is, the two giants stand alone in a wilderness, guarding either side of a gate that leads nowhere."


Gog and Magog

Still, to appreciate the origins of The Old Curosity Shop, this was a worthwhile exercise.