One of the best things about Dickens is his imagery, especially the way he uses imagery for characterisation.
Sometimes it’s just an amusing image:
“… the room door opened, and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in.” (ch.25)
Or:
“I found Mr Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say his aunt.
Mrs Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost.” (ibid.)
But sometimes, with some imagery, Dickens conveys everything you need to know about a character, like this sketch of Miss Murdstone, for example:
“She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.” (ch.4)
Miss Rosa Dartle:
“She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.” (ch.20)
Mr Waterbrook:
“I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner in which Mr Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’, every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.” (ch.25)
Is there a better way to convey the hardness of Miss Murdstone, the gaunt look of Miss Dartle, or the self-satisfaction of Mr Waterbrook?
You don’t find passages like this in, say, Henry Fielding:
“They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.” (ch.41)
Those are the Misses Spenlow, Dora’s aunts.
“… these little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.” (ibid.)
Especially good is the creation of Uriah Heep. Even the name is brilliant. Heep. Rhymes with creep. Dust heap. Cheap. Uriah Heep has a striking presence from the start, his face described a few times as “cadaverous”, his hands “skeleton hands”.
“As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, and to rub his off.
It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory.” (ch.15)
What disgust! The narrator describes the hand again later:
“After shaking hands with me—his hand felt like a fish, in the dark—he opened the door into the street a very little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the house…” (ch.16)
He also compares Uriah Heep to a fish again later:
“… he cried; and gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish.” (ch.25)
The second half of David Copperfield is—I think most people would agree—less enjoyable because the adult David is lifeless and dull, and his love Dora Spenlow is one of the most insufferable characters on God’s green earth. But it is saved—again I think many would agree—by the brilliant characterisation of Uriah Heep, one of the most memorable characters in fiction, obsequious, dishonest, scheming, vile, and just repulsive.
“… Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters.” (ibid.)
The pair of Uriah and Mrs Heep together is even better—look at the imagery:
“Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.” (ch.17)
Dickens is wonderful.
(I am now back in London, having returned from the US).