The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit: With Appreciations and Criticisms By G. K. Chesterton Charles Dickens Author - new book

MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT CHARLES DICKENS BORN 181 2-DIED I 870 -- Editors Xor Martin Chuzzlewit was first ublished in its monthly numbers dunfig 1843 and 1844. Although w itten at a time of anxiety and disappointment, the aatlaors opini n of it was- l think Chuzzlewit in a hundred points immeasurably the best of my stories. - - --Net all of Dicke-SS admirers shared this opinion. Nevevtheless, the books rich humou a, nd also its satire of hy ocrisy, of the old type of hired nwsing, and of a base of the America character, give zls more familiar people like Mr. Pecksnif and Mrs. Ganzp and their sayilzgs than many others of the authors works. The presefit edition is printed from the one carefuLEy corrected by the Adhor ilz 1867 and 1868. THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT BY CHARLES DICKENS -- P R E F A C E WHAT is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings non-existent to a short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself whether there may occasionally be a difference of this kind between some writers and some readers whether it is always the writer who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for colour is a little dull On this head of exaggeration I have a positive experience, more curious than the speculation I have just set down. It is this-I have never touched a character precisely from the life, but some counterpart of that character has incredulously asked me Now really, did I ever really, see one like it All the Becksniff family upon earth are quite agreed, I believe, that Mr. Pecksniff is an exaggeration, and that nosuch character ever existed. I will not offer any plea on his behalf to so powerful and genteel a body, but will make a remark on the character of Jonas Chuezlewit. I conceive that the sordid coarseness and brutality of Jonas would be unnatural, if there had been nothing in his early education, and in the precept and example always before him, to engender and develope the vices that make him odious. But so born and so bred admired for that which made him hateful, and justified from his cradle in cunning, treachery, and avarice I claim him as the legitimate issue of the father upon whom those vices are seen to recoil. And I submit that their recoil upon that old man, in his unhonoured age, is not a mere piece of poetical justice, but is the extreme exposition of a direct truth. I make this comment and solicit the readers attention to it in his or her consideration of this tale, because nothing is more common in real life than a want of profitable reflection on the causes of many vices and crimes that awaken general horror. What is substantially true of families in this respect, is true of a whole commonwealth. As we sow, we reap. Let the reader go into the childrens side of any prison in England, or, I grieve to add, of many workhouses, and judge whether those are monsters who disgrace our streets, people our hulks and penitentiaries, and overcrowd our penal colonies, or are creatures whom we have deliberately suffered to be bred for misery and ruin. 7 Preface The American portion of this story is in no other respect a cari cature, than as it is an exhibition, for the most part, Mr. Bevan excepted of a ludicrous side, only, of the American character--of that side which was, four-and-twenty years ago, from its nature, the most obtrusive, and the most likely to be seen by such travellers as Young Martin and Mark Tapley. As I had never, in writing fiction, had any disposition to soften what is ridiculous or wrong at home, so I then hoped that the gobd-humoured people of the United States would not be generally disposed to quarrel with me for carrying the same usage abroad...