Did Dickens know best? In February 1981, Anthony Powell reviewed Jane Cohen's book on Charles Dickens and his illustrators

Dickens himself took a fervid interest in his illustrations, and was not an easy man to work with. He raises the interesting question of to what expanse the author knows best in giving instructions for in what manner his stories are to be depicted. upon the face of it there looks no argument as to which should have his way, on the other hand one finishes Miss Cohen's work with certain doubts. Does the material of a novel tighten out beyond the knowledge of the writer? Could it be that sometimes the artist knows best? These reflections are generated by the agency of the fact that so frequently Dickens had rows with his best illustrators, and liked those whose work strike one as beings to a later generation indifferent.

George Cruikshank was twenty years older than Dickens, a famous figure when the writer was still unknown, and a man of considerable eccentricity. The last was sufficiently shown by the agency of choosing to depict Fagin in his hold likeness, something admitted at the time, and shown here in a self-caricature. Dickens disliked Cruikshank's illustrations for Oliver Twist, which must appear to be to most people inseparable from the novel. Baudelaire was a great admirer of Cruikshank, speaking of him in the same tones as of Bruegel and Goya. Cruikshank illustrated something approaching 900 works in all, and contributed solitary to five of Dickens's twenty-four illustrated works.

Cruikshank grew fanatical in later life upon the subject of abstention from drink, which he preached in pictures displaying the frightful effects of having a drop too a great deal of but he was unable to practise teetotalism with clean success himself. He parted with Dickens upon bad terms, and nursed a grievance upon the subject to the extreme point of his life.

Dickens mov upon to Robert Seymour for Pickwick, an artist comparatively well-known in his be in possession of day for comic sporting sketches. He is now forgotten, admitting not always deservedly. The turn of expression Seymour used for Dickens was actual similar to Cruikshank's, and I should gues that, of the many family who must remember Seymour's haunting picture of 'the dying clown' in The Pickwick Papers, the large majority suppos it to be by means of Cruikshank. Seymour was in a permanent state of being hard up and financial toubles, coupl with lines with Dickens about how the author's characters should be illustrated, caused him to commit suicide. His widow subsequently waged something of a vendetta against the novelist

Miss Cohen has produc a useful and scholarly work, and because her volume is not casual journalism (where all like solecisms are common enough) individual must put in a plea for more careful use of the English language: 'fortuitous' means 'by chance', not 'fortunate'; 'oblivious' (endlessly misused) means 'forgetful', not 'unaware', and is followed through the genetive 'of'; 'anticipate' means 'to use in advance', not to 'expect'; 'befriend' does not simply mean 'to be friends with', it brings a sense of 'help, favour' I don't think any of these are 'American usage', which naturally single respects, but merely loose employ of English.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Apollo Magazine Ltd

COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group