But it does not follow
that the coffee was good, nor does it follow that what he wrote was
good. The Comedie Humaine is all chicory.... I had wished for some
years to say this, I am glad _d'avoir debarrasse ma poitrine de ca_.
To have described divinely a Christmas party is something, but it is
not everything. The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, is
the only touchstone. If while that is being done we are soothed into
a trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelist
to be a supreme novelist. If we retain consciousness, he is not
supreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist....
Dickens disengages the erotic motive through two figures, Mr. Winkle,
a sportman, and Miss Arabella, "a young lady with fur-topped boots."
They go skating, he helps her over a stile. Can one not well see
her? She steps over the stile and her shin defines itself through her
balbriggan stocking. She is a knock-kneed girl, and she looks at Mr.
Winkle with that sensual regard that sometimes comes when the wind
is north-west. Yes, it is a north-west wind that is blowing over this
landscape that Hals or Winchoven might have painted--no, Winchoven
would have fumbled it with rose-madder, but Hals would have done it
well.
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