Martin Chuzzlewit

Many years ago, when I wandered through the stacks of my local library, I would pass by the Dickens section and see a book with the name "Martin Chuzzlewit" on the spine. I was intrigued by that name. Yet I wouldn't read that book until this year, and after a taking a third of that year, I finally finished it.

Published in 1844, after being serialized the two years before, Martin Chuzzlewit is considered "minor Dickens" as Jeff Daniels' character in The Squid and the Whale would say. It is between much better works like Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield, and didn't sell very well. In fact, interested was so lagging during the serialization that Dickens sent two of his characters off to the United States, so he could get some digs in at that new land.

Many of Dickens' familiar themes are here. Ostensibly the book is about greed and hypocrisy. There are some nasty villains, and some true blue heroes. There is a mysterious benefactor, and not one but two characters are revealed to be evil. The book ends with, I think, four sets of characters getting married, but I may have miscounted.

There are two Martin Chuzzlewits. One of them is old, and he arrives in a town near Salisbury ailing, along with a young woman who takes care of him. Relatives from far branches of the family tree circle like buzzards. Foremost among these is Mr. Pecksniff, an architect, and one of the two villains of the book. He is a hypocrite, so much so that his name has entered the lexicon as a synonym for that word. He begins the book by being knocked flat on his back by his front door swinging shut from the wind, and he will end by being knocked flat by a character who can't stand the sight of him.

Old Man Chuzzlewit has a brother, Anthony, who has a son, Jonas, who is the other villain, but he's outwardly bad, almost as bad as Bill Sikes. When Anthony mysteriously dies, a man named Montague Tigg, who later changes his name to Tigg Montague, has some information about Jonas, who then murders him.

Meanwhile, there are many other subplots. Martin Chuzzlewit the younger is disinherited by his grandfather because he dares love Mary Graham, the old man's caretaker. He goes off to America with Mark Tapley, my favorite character in the book, who is eternally cheerful. Dickens does some friendly ribbing of the American psyche, and even for the 1840s, it's still correct: "It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars." He also encounters a character much like Davy Crockett. Martin and Mark end up in a frontier settlement called Eden, and nearly die of malaria.

Back in England a very good man named Tom Pinch is also in love with Mary Graham, but unrequitedly. He is apprenticed to Pecksniff, and believes him a good man, but is finally convinced of his treachery, and gets sacked. Pinch nobly saves his sister, a governess, from a bad situation, and tells off her employers.

There are many other characters, too many to keep track of. Many of them have trademark Dickensian names. Here are just a few: Mrs. Gamp, Mr. Spottletoe, Chevy Slyme, Mr. Sweedlepipe, Dr. Ginery Dunkle, General Choke, and Augustus Moddle. Pecksniff's daughters play a major part--one marries Jonas and is much abused, while the other haughtily marries another man, only to be let down in the cruelest way possible.

It doesn't make much sense to criticize Dickens for being Dickens, but this book is ungainly. I did love the old-timey chapter headings, such as WHEREIN CERTAIN PERSONS ARE PRESENTED TO THE READER, WITH WHOM HE MAY, IF HE PLEASE, BECOME BETTER ACQUAINTED, and the last, CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR GIVES THE AUTHOR GREAT CONCERN. FOR IT IS THE LAST IN THE BOOK. It is not the best place to start with Dickens, but if one has patience it has sporadic pleasures. Every once in a while is a passage that takes the breath away: "The glory of the departing sun was on his face. The music of the birds was in his ears. Sweet wild flowers bloomed about him. Thatched roofs of poor men's homes were in the distance; and an old grey spire, surmounted by a Cross, rose up between him and the coming night."