Smollett was coarse; but Smollett was also cruel. Dickens was frequently horrible; he was never cruel. The art of Dickens was the most exquisite of arts: it was the art of enjoying everybody. Dickens, being a very human writer, had to be a very human being; he had his faults and sensibilities in a strong degree; and I do not for a moment maintain that he enjoyed everybody in his daily life. But he enjoyed everybody in his books: and everybody has enjoyed everybody in those books even till to-day. His books are full of baffled villains stalking out or cowardly bullies kicked downstairs. But the villains and the cowards are such delightful people that the reader always hopes the villain will put his head through a side window and make a last remark; or that the bully will say one thing more, even from the bottom of the stairs.
G. K. Chesterton, The Victorian Age in Literature, quoted by Kevin Belmonte in The Quotable Chesterton (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 62.
Ack! That's so lovely. Not only is everything he says absolutely spot-on, but it's written beautifully, as it must be, because it's G.K. Chesterton.
I love how he mentions the people kicked downstairs. Was there ever more than one baddie in Dickens kicked downstairs? The chap in Two Cities is all I can think of, but it's so very iconic that it has stuck in my mind, at least, as something that ought to happen to the majority of Dickens' baddies, even if it doesn't.
Posted by: Christy | January 21, 2011 at 05:24 PM
I can't think of any other baddie kicked downstairs. (And even Barsad was kicked at the top and fell down of his own accord. :D ) I suppose he must have meant it, as you suggest, in a metaphorical/iconic sense.
Posted by: Gina | January 24, 2011 at 07:20 PM
Ha! I have just come across a reference to kicking a man downstairs in an Agatha Christie Poirot book. Poirot and Hastings have reason to conduct some business with "an odious man," and Hastings "felt a positive tingling in the end of my boot, so keen was I to kick him down the stairs." ("Poirot Investigates," 1925)
I wonder if that was a distinct reference to Dickens and Two Cities, or if it was a common Britishism, and if it was a common Britishism, did it come about *because* of Dickens?
Posted by: Christy | January 26, 2011 at 12:27 PM