Dickens understood the possibility
of such work, but his tendency to melodrama on the one hand, and
his humour on the other, prevented him from thinking of it. An
instance, now. As I came along by Regent's Park half an hour ago
a man and a girl were walking close in front of me, love-making;
I passed them slowly and heard a good deal of their talk--it was
part of the situation that they should pay no heed to a
stranger's proximity. Now, such a love-scene as that has
absolutely never been written down; it was entirely decent, yet
vulgar to the nth power. Dickens would have made it ludicrous--a
gross injustice. Other men who deal with low-class life would
perhaps have preferred idealising it--an absurdity. For my own
part, I am going to reproduce it verbatim, without one single
impertinent suggestion of any point of view save that of honest
reporting. The result will be something unutterably tedious.
Precisely. That is the stamp of the ignobly decent life. If it
were anything but tedious it would be untrue. I speak, of course,
of its effect upon the ordinary reader.
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