And we see it in its most ludicrous form at Mrs. Todger's wonderful, convivial party : "Mr. Pecksniff straightened himself up by a surprising effort, as everyone turned hastily towards him; and standing on his feet, regarded the assembly with a look of ineffable wisdom. Gradually it gave place to a smile; a feeble, helpless, melancholy smile; bland almost to sickliness. 'Do not repine, my friends,' said Mr. Pecksniff tenderly. 'Do not weep for me; it is chronic.' And with these words, after making a futile attempt to pull off his shoes, he fell into the fireplace." Each of these two characters is a florescence of comic activity. Each fantasy that they indulge in is not added to the others as another detail in a portrait, but as a fresh spurt of a fountain. Pecksniff's "humour", in short, is simply a way of imposing upon the world, and the uncomfortable feeling with all these shark characters is that they are not liable to punishment, having always an escape into fantasy : they seem to be unassailable because they can never be convinced of their guilt. Thus Mrs. Gamp and the imaginary Mrs. Harris form a single portentous monster, as impervious to understanding as the public conscience which she should arouse. Hence both these creations leave us with a sense of uneasiness rather than indignation; but even so, they do not escape without an implied moral judgment, for Dickens invariably puts beside the particular case of vicious behaviour a telling human event. Mr. Pecksniff is directly responsible for his daughter's disastrous marriage and Mrs. Gamp's neglect of her patient speaks for itself. The human fact at least cannot be masqueraded away. If it be argued that such characters are not "life-like", the answer is that they are "like life" in a peculiar way; for the vital point is that Dickens exaggerates a real truth about ourselves and thereby isolates it for inspection and judgment. In the manner of Ben Jonson, he seizes upon a specific trait, say hypocrisy, calls it Pecksniff, and proceeds to blow him up until he bursts. It is as if he could only get at the most solemn emotions by the most grotesque means. T. S. Eliot's remarks on Jonson's characters are equally applicable here, for Dickens' fantastic characters certainly have a logic of their own and he certainly intended this logic to illuminate the actual world by giving us a new point of view from which to inspect it. B.H.H.
C.C.F. NOTES Although quite a number of promotions were made at Camp, the full list for the new school year was not published until just before the first parade. S.S.M. Netherwood was appointed the senior N.C.O. and so we have a C.S.M. in khaki once more. The new promotions and appointments necessitated considerable changes in the Sections with a pool of potential N.C.O.s being left in the Cadre 40
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