Page:The Chimes.djvu/15

circumstances, and the story, detailing his conversion, became in effect an appeal to the prosperous people of England, begging them to extend help and sympathy to those less fortunate than themselves. Implicitly, to be sure, this appeal inheres also in The Chimes. Indeed, at the very end it becomes explicit, in the authors direct appeal to the “listener,” to “try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere—none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end—endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them.” But this is secondary. The principal character in The Chimes is the poverty-stricken ticket-porter, Toby Veck. He represents the poor themselves, not their oppressors, and it is as a symbol of the poor that he seems to Dickens to stand in need of conversion. Essentially the problem of The Chimes is a problem of faith—of the individual’s faith in himself and in his ability to adjust his life to the world. Whatever else happens, Dickens seems to be saying, the poor must on no account be allowed to stop believing in themselves. Beauty and faithfulness and love are not incompatible with poverty; glee and merriment may even, on occasion, join hands with it. But once destroy the poor man’s faith in himself and in the goodness of life, and there will be no hope left. Drunkenness, prostitution, arson, suicide, murder—they must follow as the night the day.

In order to show that I have not misread his purpose, and to provide a basis for what is to follow, I must transcribe the following long sketch of how Dickens originally planned to develop