LANGUAGE ON THE LOOSE 37cleverly attacked readers who resisted the portrait of Pecksniff: “as no man ever
yet recognized an imitation of himself, no man will admit the correctness of
a sketch in which his own character is delineated, however faithfully.” “But,”
he continues, “although Mr Pecksniff will by no means concede to me, that
Mr Pecksniff is natural; I am consoled by finding him keenly susceptible of
the truthfulness of Mrs Gamp.” Humankind cannot bear very much self-
knowledge, he suggests, but we might delight in a displaced version of follies
we are not likely to see in ourselves. Dickens is pointedly addressing himself to
his readers here, daring and defying them to criticize his portraiture as exag-
geration. Nevertheless the question of self-knowledge is at the center of his
concern, as it is throughout the novel. Does Dickens know himself in Pecksniff?
Yes, the way he imagines that “the real” Pecksniff recognizes the truth in Mrs.
Gamp’s flights of delusory but self-revealing language. What Dickens certainly
knows is that people project their weaknesses onto their pictures of others, and
that they disavow the parts of themselves they do not want to acknowledge.
Dickens is less concerned to unmask the hypocrite Pecksniff than to dra-
matize his power to endure. With the exception of Tom Pinch, most of the
other characters can see through him from the beginning, and the narrator
makes very sure that the reader is not taken in by inserting character critiques
reported as the opinions of Pecksniff ’s enemies. The so-called unmasking
performed by Old Martin Chuzzlewit at the end of the novel reveals nothing
except that Old Martin has had to disguise his motives and play the hypocrite
himself in order to get enough hard evidence to humiliate Pecksniff in pub-
lic. The time and energy Martin expends on this project is itself a testimony
to the power of language on the loose.
In an early scene old Anthony Chuzzlewit deflates Pecksniff ’s pieties in
public, calling Pecksniff a hypocrite. Pecksniff has his forgiveness charade at
the ready; he piously asks his daughter Charity to “remind me to be more
than usually particular in praying for Mr Anthony Chuzzlewit; who has
done me an injustice” (MC 4). When the two meet again, Anthony analyzes
the difference between Pecksniff and other hypocrites, including himself:
“you would deceive everybody, even those who practice the same art; and
have a way with you, as if you—he, he, he!—as if you really believed your-
self ” (MC 8). The repetition of the “as if,” punctuated by Anthony’s laugh-
ter, points to the question Dickens raises about Pecksniff: does he believe
himself? If so, is he a hypocrite or someone who takes himself in through his
own powers of rhetoric and impersonation?
Dickens’s most direct treatment of this question resides in his paragraph
on Dick Swiveller’s bed, in The Old Curiosity Shop. Dick’s bedstead (one of
many turn-up bedsteads in Dickens) looks like a bookcase by day, when it