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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 04
Page 07
What, again, is one to make of Dickens, with his love of private theatricals, his florid waistcoats and watch-chains, his sentimental radicalism, his kindly, convivial, gregarious life? He, again, did his work in a rapture of solitary creation, and seemed to have no taste for discussing his ideas or methods. Then, too, Dickens's later desertion of his work in favour of public readings and money-making is curious to note. He was like Shakespeare in this, that the passion of his later life seemed to be to realise an ideal of bourgeois prosperity. Dickens seems to have regarded his art partly as a means of social reform, and partly as a method of making money. The latter aim is to a great extent accounted for by the miserable and humiliating circumstances of his early life, which bit very deep into him. Yet his art was hardly an end in itself, but something through which he made his way to other aims.
He who sat beside the driver, with his arms folded, and thoughtful, was a tall, well-formed young man, with light hair that curled into his neck, side whiskers, deep and intelligent blue eyes, a face that lighted up with a smile when he spoke, and which had been fair and handsome, but was now scorched and sun-burnt. His hands, too, were small, but hard and weather-burnt, indicating that he had been accustomed to use them at hard work. His dress was of blue petersham, looking neat and new, the short coat buttoning square across his breast; and a tall hat set oddly enough on a head evidently not accustomed to the fashion that dictated such a covering. A broad, white shirt collar, turned carelessly down, was tied with a black silk handkerchief, the long ends of which hung outside his coat.
Alcides cried like a child for some time. He and the others were ill with fever. Those men I had left in charge of my baggage at the camp in the forest had remained at that camp for seven days after my departure. Believing that I was never coming back, three of them had abandoned everything there, and even their companion Antonio, who was in a dying condition and was unable to walk. They had proceeded quickly to the Tapajoz, where they had found plenty to eat. Two or three days later Antonio had become better; he had shot some monkeys and birds, and had been able to keep alive. Had it not been for the kind-hearted _seringueiro_, Albuquerque, who had started out to rescue Antonio, the poor devil would have certainly died there, abandoned by everybody.
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