What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions,
is plain truth to another. That which is commonly
called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable
features and bearings non-existent to a short-sighted
person. I sometimes ask myself whether there may
occasionally be a difference of this kind between some
writers and some readers; whether it is always
the writer who colours highly, or whether it is now
and then the reader whose eye for colour is a little
dull?
On this head of exaggeration I have a positive experience,
more curious than the speculation I have just set
down. It is this: I have never touched a
character precisely from the life, but some counterpart
of that character has incredulously asked me:
“Now really, did I ever really, see one like
it?”
All the Pecksniff family upon earth are quite agreed,
I believe, that Mr Pecksniff is an exaggeration, and
that no such character ever existed. I will not
offer any plea on his behalf to so powerful and genteel
a body, but will make a remark on the character of
Jonas Chuzzlewit.
I conceive that the sordid coarseness and brutality
of Jonas would be unnatural, if there had been nothing
in his early education, and in the precept and example
always before him, to engender and develop the vices
that make him odious. But, so born and so bred,
admired for that which made him hateful, and justified
from his cradle in cunning, treachery, and avarice;
I claim him as the legitimate issue of the father upon
whom those vices are seen to recoil. And I submit
that their recoil upon that old man, in his unhonoured
age, is not a mere piece of poetical justice, but
is the extreme exposition of a direct truth.
I make this comment, and solicit the reader’s
attention to it in his or her consideration of this
tale, because nothing is more common in real life
than a want of profitable reflection on the causes
of many vices and crimes that awaken the general horror.
What is substantially true of families in this respect,
is true of a whole commonwealth. As we sow, we
reap. Let the reader go into the children’s
side of any prison in England, or, I grieve to add,
of many workhouses, and judge whether those are monsters
who disgrace our streets, people our hulks and penitentiaries,
and overcrowd our penal colonies, or are creatures
whom we have deliberately suffered to be bred for
misery and ruin.
The American portion of this story is in no other
respect a caricature than as it is an exhibition,
for the most part (Mr Bevan expected), of a ludicrous
side, only, of the American character—of
that side which was, four-and-twenty years ago, from
its nature, the most obtrusive, and the most likely
to be seen by such travellers as Young Martin and Mark
Tapley. As I had never, in writing fiction, had
any disposition to soften what is ridiculous or wrong
at home, so I then hoped that the good-humored people
of the United States would not be generally disposed
to quarrel with me for carrying the same usage abroad.
I am happy to believe that my confidence in that great
nation was not misplaced.
