﻿Indiana University Studies 



De Morgan also knows the secret of children's speech. His 

 baby talk is always genuine. The two Joeys in Joseph l ance, 

 Alice herself and Peggy's child in Alice-for-Short, Lizarann and 

 her little friend in It Never Can Happen Again, Miss Gwendolen 

 Arkwright in Somehow Good, and Professor Fraser's baby in 

 The Old Madhouse are very unartificial and remarkably true to 

 child life. 85 In all of De Morgan's novels nothing charms us more 

 than David and Dolly talking together in old Mrs. Pictur's 

 room. 86 



But, perhaps, the most realistic conversation in all of De 

 Morgan's works is that short one in Somehow Good that the Major 

 held with himself. At least it is the most heartfelt: 



"Oh, I pray God there is a hell", came audibly from as kind a heart as 

 ever beat. "How I pray God there is a hell!" 87 



De Morgan, like the Early Victorians, deals with the elemental 

 emotions. He does not follow the modern tendency toward the 

 refinements of feeling and the delicate shades of passion. Love 

 and joy and sorrow and sin and death fill his pages with the scope 

 and intensity characteristic of the Victorians. He agrees much 

 more, however, with modern feeling in the treatment of these 

 emotions. For example, he has a delicacy and reserve of state- 

 ment that Dickens never knew. The latter has been criticized a 

 great deal of recent years for his excessive display of the feelings, 

 one critic glibly expressing it, "He must have considerably raised 

 the price of pocket handkerchiefs in Britain." 88 It is well known 

 how the deaths of Little Nell 89 and Joe 90 affect us today. It 

 ought to be said for Dickens, however, that whatever may be the 

 effect of his treatment of the emotions upon us, since he appealed 

 to the people of his day, our lack of appreciation of him now must 

 be largely due to the change in popular taste since then. In 

 another generation we may be less heartless than it is the fashion 

 now to be. De Morgan has steered safely past the maudlin and 

 the sentimental. Lizarann's death, tho as pathetic as anything 

 in Dickens, he has depicted very simply and without any "gush": 



Miss Fawcett stopped to listen again. "I shall see my Daddy", is all 

 she hears. Yes — Lizarann shall see her Daddy — it's a promise! What 

 is that she's saying now? Be quiet and listen! 



8 5Pp. 136-137. 



™When Ghost Meets Ghost, pp. 839-841. 

 ^Somehow Good, p. 170. 

 S8 C. F. Home, The Technique of the Novel. 

 ™The Old Curiosity Shop. 



90 Great Expectations. Paul Dombey's death in Dombey and Son has been 

 criticized, but it seems natural enough and much superior to Little Nell's and Jo's. 



