to be able to view it with complete detachment, but they present a few samples. Besides Mrs. Wititterly, Harold Skimpole, and the ever illustrative Mr. Dorrit, Dickens is most successful with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, and Mrs. Chick.
When Mr. Micawber, stimulated by the prospect of something being about to turn up, presents poor Traddles, with great éclat and ceremony, his personal note for the exact amount of his indebtedness, David, a witness, reflects:[1]
"I am persuaded, not only that this was quite the same to
Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself
hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about
it."
Mrs. Chick, with true Dombian genius, having helped
to loosen her sister-in-law's slender hold upon life, now enjoys
the pathos of the situation:[2]
"What a satisfaction it was to Mrs. Chick—a commonplace
piece of folly enough, * * * to patronize and be tender to
the memory of that lady; in exact pursuance of her conduct
to her in her lifetime; and to thoroughly believe herself, and
take herself in, and make herself uncommonly comfortable on
the strength of her toleration! What a mighty pleasant virtue
toleration should be when we are right, to be so very pleasant
when we are wrong, and quite unable to demonstrate how we
came to be invested with the privilege of exercising it!"
In her capricious cruelty to Lucretia Tox, she pretends
to be scandalized at what she had fostered all along, and
taunts the dismayed woman for the very thing she had
been aiding and abetting:[3]
