82 KNOWING DICKENS
memory of being whole-hearted—if wrong-headed—may have struck him
with particular force. The fantasy of a first wife (Dora) replaced by a wife
he had known all along (Agnes) may have held his imagination in thrall. The
occasion may have presented itself as an opportunity to convince Maria, once
and for all, how much gold she had squandered when she toyed thoughtlessly
with his young feelings. In the letters, as in David Copperfield, he was also
tapping into a cultural love affair with the idea of sustained memory as the
channel of continuity in the soul, which had manifested itself in such major
literary events as Wordsworth’s Prelude and Tennyson’s In Memoriam, both
published in the same year as Copperfield.
In this case Dickens’s nostalgic rhetoric set him up for yet another disap-
pointment from Maria. She seems to have replied by hinting that she sustained
feelings for Dickens as well, and suggested that they meet privately before
the date of their planned dinner with their spouses. Dickens responded with
another long outpouring of memory, accepting her invitation to establish “a
confidence between us which still once more, in perfect innocence and good
faith, may be between ourselves alone.” The “once more,” was added over a
caret, as if to emphasize a continuity of trust that had never existed, but was
still wishfully cherished. As for a private meeting—Dickens was suddenly
aware of the world he inhabited: “I am a dangerous man to be seen with, for
so many people know me” (7.544–45). They may have met once, perhaps
at her house, before the properly familial dinner took place on 27 February
1855.
Seeing Maria, middle-aged, fat, and silly, instantly cured Dickens of nos-
talgia. However ludicrous the collision between his epistolary fantasy and the
reality of her presence, it was probably a great moment for his art. Little Dorrit,
his next novel, is saturated in an anti-nostalgic view of memory. Set in 1825,
at the time of Dickens’s work at Warren’s, the novel is famously obsessed
with prisons the mind cannot leave behind. It is equally uncompromising in
its insistence that children inherit their parents’ pasts: both Arthur Clennam
and Amy Dorrit are damaged survivors of their family stories. The earlier
split between benevolent memory and isolated traumatic return disappears
in a newly introspective narrative; here memory is persistent, anxious, and
sad, creating depression rather than nostalgia or trauma. Arthur Clennam’s
return to his mother creates an unwelcome form of time travel; he’s back in
“the timid chill and reserve of his childhood” with “all the old dark horrors”
ready “to overshadow him” (LD 1.3). For Amy the prison and its people are
“all lasting realities that had never changed” (LD 2.3). Mr. Dorrit’s attempt
to erase his prison life after their release ends in psychic collapse, as does
Mrs. Clennam’s confession of long-suppressed events.