Legacy Matters

A Solemn Pleasure

David Frum has a lovely small essay on Charles Dickens's novel,  The Old Curiousity Shop and its most famous scene, the death of Little Nell.

The death of Little Nell is supposed to have been inspired by the death of Charles Dickens' beloved sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth, at age 17 in Dickens' then home in Doughty Street. (Still standing by the way.) At that time, the death of the young was a harrowing but familiar experience. Of Dickens' own 10 children, one died before the age of 1, and another died aged 22. Dickens could expect many of his readers likewise to be touched by similar losses - and to share his intense need to absorb and understand their loss.
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For all the medical advances of the 20th century, death remains omnipresent and always will. We've all had losses, and we all struggle not only with the immediate grief but with the longer-term sadnesses and paradoxes of survivorship. Say what you will about Dickens - but have those feelings ever been described better than they were in this one passage from Chapter 17? Nell has entered a quite country graveyard and is studying the humble headstones of the poor people buried there:

I gong to pluck just a small portion  of the scene but for its full impact you should read it in its entirety.

Then growing garrulous upon a theme which was new to one listener though it were but a child, she told her how she had wept and moaned and prayed to die herself, when this happened; and how when she first came to that place, a young creature strong in love and grief, she had hoped that her heart was breaking as it seemed to be. But that time passed by, and although she continued to be sad when she came there, still she could bear to come, and so went on until it was pain no longer, but a solemn pleasure, and a duty she had learned to like