Read-along – The Old Curiosity Shop (2 of 18)

Master Humphrey's Clock No.2 – and G. K. Chesterton

Dear Old Curiosity Shop readers,

We’ve read the second issue of Master Humphrey’s Clock! Please do share your thoughts below as a comment. Here are mine:

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Here are the details of the next instalment:

No.3 (18 April)

There were two items in the third issue of Master Humphrey’s Clock:

– ‘Master Humphrey, from his Clock-side in the Chimney-corner’

– ‘The Clock-Case. A Confession found in a Prison in the Time of Charles the Second.’

If you don’t have a physical copy of the book, you can read them here. (Stop before ‘Correspondence’.)

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If you share my slight disappointment with the second instalment, this piece by the writer and critic G. K. Chesterton might help . . .

Between 1907 and 1909, Gilbert Keith Chesterton – best known today for his Father Brown detective stories – was commissioned by J. M. Dent to write prefaces to Dickens’s complete works, to be published in the Everyman’s Library series.

He wrote twenty-four prefaces in total, covering all of Dickens’s novels, the short stories, travel writing and occasional pieces – and, of course, Master Humphrey’s Clock.

G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Chesterton introduces his discussion of Master Humphrey’s Clock by saying immediately that it is not one of Dickens’s triumphs, but ‘as a sample of Dickens,’ he says, ‘it happens to be of quite remarkable importance’:

The very fact that it is for the most part somewhat more level and even monotonous than most of his creations, makes us realise, as it were, against what level and monotony those creations commonly stand out. This book is the background of his mind. It is the basis and minimum of him which was always there. Alone, of all written things, this shows how he felt when he was not writing. Dickens might have written it in his sleep. That is to say, it is written by a sluggish Dickens, a half automatic Dickens, a dreaming and drifting Dickens; but still by the enduring Dickens.

But this truth can only be made evident by beginning nearer to the root of the matter. Nicholas Nickleby had just completed, or, to speak more strictly, confirmed, the popularity of the young author; wonderful as Pickwick was it might have been a nine days’ wonder; Oliver Twist had been powerful but painful; it was Nicholas Nickleby that proved the man to be a great productive force of which one could ask more, of which one could ask all things.

‘A Charming Fellow’ by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne)

His publishers, Chapman and Hall, seem to have taken at about this point that step which sooner or later most publishers do take with regard to a half successful man who is becoming wholly successful. Instead of asking him for something, they asked him for anything. They made him, so to speak, the editor of his own works. And indeed it is literally as the editor of his own works that he next appears; for the next thing to which he proposes to put his name is not a novel, but for all practical purposes a magazine. Yet although it is a magazine, it is a magazine entirely written by himself; the publishers, in point of fact, wanted to create a kind of Dickens Miscellany, in a much more literal sense than that in which we speak of a Bentley Miscellany.

Dickens was in no way disposed to dislike such a job; for the more miscellaneous he was the more he enjoyed himself. And indeed this early experiment of his bears a great deal of resemblance to those later experiences in which he was the editor of two popular periodicals. The editor of Master Humphrey’s Clock was a kind of type or precursor of the editor of Household Words and All the Year Round. There was the same sense of absolute ease in an atmosphere of infinite gossip. There was the same great advantage gained by a man of genius who wrote best scrappily and by episodes. The omnipotence of the editor helped the eccentricities of the author. He could excuse himself for all his own shortcomings. He could begin a novel, get tired of it, and turn it into a short story. He could begin a short story, get fond of it, and turn it into a novel.

You can read the whole of Chesterton’s preface here. I suspect we’ll discuss other excerpts in future weeks.

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The third number of Master Humphrey’s Clock returns to Master Humphrey’s circle of storytellers. I’m looking forward to it! We’ll discuss it next Friday 25th.

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Here are links to our previous Old Curiosity Shop posts:

• The Schedule (14 March 2025)

• Charles Dickens (28 March)

• 0. Forster’s Life of Dickens (4 April)

• 1. Master Humphrey's Clock No.1 – and Gog and Magog (11 April)

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