﻿Hale: William De Morgan 



23 



''When I see my Daddy — when I see my Daddy. ..." 

 "Yes — darling! What?" 



"When I see my Daddy I shall call out. Toy-lot!' " 9l 

 This seems very close to the beautiful but simple statemenl 

 of death at Colonel Newcome's end. 9 ' 2 Here there is no rhythm, 

 as in Dickens' pathetic scenes, nor do we hear the doleful-comic 

 refrain that sounds when Little Nell has died, and we are waiting 

 for Dickens to bury her. Tho Joe Vance feels deeply, his reference 

 to his dead mother shows reticence and reserve: 



I walked home in the moonlight, and thought, as my latch-key turned 

 in the door that / should not wake my mother. 93 



At times Dickens expresses the feeling of love, also, with too 

 little restraint. David Copperfield writes thus of the way he 

 felt toward Steerforth: 



Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! 

 My sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the Judgment 

 throne; but my angry thoughts or my reproickes never will, I know. 94 



This is certainly too oratorical. Equally maudlin is the ex- 

 pression of his loA^e for Dora: 



If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over 

 head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. 

 Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to 

 drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, 

 and all over me, to pervade my entire existence. 95 



One would hardly write thus now-a-clays - - especially for 

 publication. In all of De Morgan's novels love is the central 

 theme, and yet nowhere do we find anj^thing like this. Sanity 

 and good taste characterize all of his love scenes. Prosy and 

 Sally's love-making is particularly well done. 96 



De Morgan's humor, in the main, follows that of the Early 

 Victorians. In general, it springs from his extraordinary percep- 

 tion of the humorous in commonplace people. In this he is closely 

 akin to Dickens and Thackeray, yet, close as he is to the former, 

 no one can charge him with caricature. But was Dickens really 

 a caricaturist? He may have made the mistake of emphasizing 

 his characters' humorous qualities too much, but when all has 

 b?en said, the fact remains that his characters live and we re- 



9i It Never Can Happen Again, p. 598. 

 92 Thackeray, The Neivcomes. 

 i{ Jose oh Vance, p. 225. 

 9i Da>:id Copperfield, chap, xxxii. 

 9 'Ibid.. chap, xxxiii. 



^Somehow Good. p. 41. Tn his Essays on yfoder?} Novelists, Professor Phelps 

 disagrees with this statement. 



