“Heads, heads - take care of your heads!" cried the loquacious stranger, as they came out under the low archway, which in those days formed the entrance to the coach-yard. "Terrible place - dangerous work - other day - five children - mother - tall lady, eating sandwiches - forgot the arch - crash - knock - children look round - mother's head off - sandwich in her hand - no mouth to put it in - head of a family off - shocking, shocking!"

I suppose if one were to ask me what is so funny about that, I wouldn't know how to answer. That question never can be answered: once one has explained what is funny about something, it is no longer funny. Humour (and, being British, I insist upon spelling "humour" with a "u"!) is instinctive and subjective. One either laughs, or one doesn't. Of course, this has not prevented many learned theses on what humour is, and why we laugh: Sigmund Freud, for one, had analysed the matter to great depth. But then again, as British comic Ken Dodd once pointed out, Sigmund Freud never had to play Glasgow Pavilion on a Friday night.

The passage quoted above, from Pickwick Papers, is, perhaps, a fair representation of Dickensian humour. One notices that there is no punch line here. There is no real joke either, in the sense that, unlike, say, a good Groucho Marx gag, this is not something one can repeat to friends over a few drinks. Many may simply be puzzled by this, and wonder what is at all funny about it. For me, the humour (once again, with a "u") lies in the manner in which the story is told - that wonderful clipped delivery. And, though there is no punch line, I love that surreal image of a headless woman, still presumably sitting upright, holding a sandwich in her hand but not having a mouth to put it in. This could come straight out of one of the Terry Gilliam cartoons in Monty Python.

Of course, in our modern age, there is much cross-fertilization of ideas (the aforementioned Terry Gilliam, for instance, was actually American), but nonetheless, there does seem to me an essential difference between British and American humour. That American readers may laugh at Dickens and British readers laugh at Twain indicates, of course, that many of the differences may be bridged; but, one suspects that, despite the success in America of Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Monty Python, etc. (not to mention the somewhat less sophisticated humour of Benny Hill), there is a certain type of British humour that is unlikely to travel either across the Atlantic, or even, for that matter, across the English Channel. And Dickens' humour was very British. American humor (I think I am justified in dropping the "u" here) - the humor of, say, Mark Twain, Sid Perelman, Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, Woody Allen - tends to be fast and snappy, whereas British humour is often long-winded. The long-windedness is often the very point - the journey to the end mattering more than the end itself. Where American humor comes out with memorable one-liners, British humour, far from having punch lines, often doesn't even have a joke as such, but is an expression of a curious eccentricity, or of a grotesque or surreal image. Sometimes it is just plain silly. I sometimes wonder what American visitors to Britain must make of some of the British comedy programmes that they may see on their televisions in their hotel bedrooms. For every Charlie Chaplin or a Stan Laurel or a Monty Python that has crossed the borders, there has been a Tony Hancock or a Morecambe & Wise, a Spike Milligan or a Dad's Army that hasn't - that, indeed, couldn't. One can't help feeling that beyond a certain point, humour and humor are two quite separate things.

Dickens began his career as a humorist. (With characteristic inconsistency, the British drop the "u" when it comes to a word like "humorist".) His first novel, Pickwick Papers, is not strictly speaking a novel at all: it is really a series of sketches, only tenuously held together as a narrative. And the humour is often long-winded, periphrastic, very eccentric and often quite grotesque. And, although the tone does darken towards the end when Pickwick finds himself in prison, the mood is warm, convivial, joyous. This is the work of a young man (Dickens was only in his early 20s when he wrote this) with the world at his feet, who loved life, and who delighted in people and in human company.

In his next novel, Oliver Twist, Dickens, having succeeded in making people laugh, now tried to freeze their blood. Oliver Twist is, by modern standards, overly melodramatic and sentimental; but it is possibly also the finest evocation outside Grimms' fairy tales of childhood fears and nightmares, and also of childhood loneliness. Not much scope for humour here, obviously, but Dickens could not entirely restrain his genius for comedy even here: just read, for instance, the hilarious scene of the Artful Dodger's trial (Chapter 43).

In Nicholas Nickleby, his next novel, Dickens mixed it all together. He referred to this sort of novel as "streaky bacon": tension and terror, drama and melodrama, sentiment and sentimentality, and, of course, humour, all mixed in together. Like any work aimed primarily at a mass audience, much of it has dated badly: popular taste is notoriously fickle and transient. But what hasn't dated is the humour: it still makes one laugh. Personally, when I feel the need to cheer myself up, I often find myself turning to the chapters depicting the wonderful Vincent Crummles' theatrical company, featuring the Infant Phenomenon. But now, Dickens was beginning to find other uses of humour. The most famous chapters of Nicholas Nickleby depict Dotheboys Hall, a "school" - an establishment where various unwanted illegitimate children were sent and then forgotten, and where they underwent the most horrendous mental and physical abuse. Dickens was writing here about one of the great horrors of his time, and it must have required considerable courage to treat this subject in a comic mode. And yet, the comedy, far from softening the harsh outlines, draws out the sheer horror of Dotheboys Hall far more effectively and more memorably than any earnest depiction may have done. The Dotheboys Hall chapters are amongst Dickens' greatest triumphs. The publication of the novel led to Parliamentary laws outlawing such institutions; and in the longer run, the artistry and the sheer comic genius of the writing has ensured the novel - which, it must be admitted, is otherwise somewhat mediocre - a lasting place in the canon of English literature.

Somewhere around the mid 1840s or so, Dickens was beginning to develop greater artistic ambitions. Dombey and Son was possibly his first attempt to write a serious novel, and is, at best, a partial success. David Copperfield followed: the early chapters dealing with David's childhood are unforgettable, but the rest is, perhaps, somewhat patchy. It was with Bleak House in the early 1850s that Dickens reached his artistic maturity - one of the very greatest of novels in English - or, indeed, any other - literature. But Dickens never lost his genius for comedy. David Copperfield, for instance, contains a whole host of the memorable comic characters - Betsey Trotwood, Mr Micawber (and his wife, Mrs Micawber, is equally memorable), Uriah Heep, Mr Dick, and so on. And Dickens had done nothing funnier than the comic scenes in Bleak House featuring the Snagsbys, Chadband, and the Smallweeds. And yet, somehow, the earlier joviality seems missing: instead of the Pickwickian conviviality, or the exuberance and high spirits we had seen in Vincent Crummles' theatrical company, we have now a more sombre picture. The world is now a dark and cruel place, and the humor serves to confirm this, rather than, as might have been expected, to provide light relief. The laughter is there, but it seems to intensify rather than dispel the darkness.

And yet, Dickens' methods had not really changed: the author of the very dark Bleak House is recognizably the same author of the earlier novels. Take, for instance, the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. He is a quite charming man, a wonderfully elegant and eloquent conversationalist. But he does no work, neglects his family, and is happy merely to sponge off others, without any sense of responsibility. This character had appeared before as Alfred Mantalini in Nicholas Nickleby, but in the earlier novel, we had merely enjoyed his colourful company. In Bleak House, we enjoy Skimpole's company also, but now, Dickens is more censorious of human failings. Skimpole emerges after a while as what he really is - a highly reprehensible individual who causes suffering and misery to others; he is yet another manifestation of the human corruption that darkens this very sombre novel.

It may, indeed, be questioned whether a character such as Skimpole - or, for that matter, Chadband, Tulkinghorn, Smallweed, etc. from the same novel - may be regarded as comic. Many object to Dickens because, as they claim, he did not create real people, but only caricatures. But this is to miss the point. A caricature is not a failed attempt at portraiture: it requires its own very special skills. And Dickens was, without doubt, the finest of all literary caricaturists. Mr Jingle, Fagin, Wackford Squeers, Ebeneezer Scrooge, Sarah Gamp, Uriah Heep, Betsey Trotwood, Mr Micawber, Miss Havisham - a whole host of characters, firmly embedded in the consciousness even of those who haven't so much as read Dickens. But in his later works, these characters - or, if one prefers, caricatures - aren't merely there to make us laugh: they are part of the unique texture of these works, carefully considered for their artistic effect. Reading works such as Bleak House, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations or Our Mutual Friend is like seeing our own world in a distorting mirror: the distortions appear to heighten the reality. And no-one distorted with as much skill as Dickens. Although Harold Skimpole serves a more serious artistic purpose than did Alfred Mantalini, the nature of the distortion bears the same marks: the vision has deepened, but the comic genius remains recognizably the same.

And, contrary to claims made by detractors, Dickens could create real characters also: take Pip, for instance, or Louisa Gradgrind (Hard Times), or Bradley Headstone (Our Mutual Friend). There are many "realist" authors who would have given much to have been able to create characters of such depth. But generally, Dickens preferred to populate his novels with caricatures, and in this area, he remains in a class of his own. It may be argued, of course, that caricatures are essentially static - i.e. they cannot, by definition, be developed in a way that Tolstoy, say, developed his characters. This charge is largely true, although even here, Dickens occasionally defies such judgements: Miss Havisham, one of Dickens' most memorable caricatures, actually is developed through the course of the novel, and very convincingly too. But on the whole, the charge is true: caricatures cannot be developed. However, in a Dickens novel, this does not really matter. One should not judge a Dickens novel by Tolstoyan criteria: as Orwell once said, comparing Dickens and Tolstoy is a bit like comparing a rose to a sausage: their purposes barely intersect.

Even if Dickens had not been a great novelist, he would have been remembered as one of the greatest of humorists. And, despite a darkening of vision, that genius for comedy remained undimmed to the end. His last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, is among the greatest of English novels, and also among the funniest. Sadly, the nature of Dickens' humour (very much with a "u") is not such as to be adequately represented by passages quoted out of context; but there is no better starting place for any Dickensian novice or doubter than Chapter 11 of Our Mutual Friend, entitled "Podsnappery" - one of the most hilarious and devastating of satires. Even Swift would have been proud of this: but the glorious eccentricity of the humour remains triumphantly Dickensian.

Himadri Chatterjee currently works as an operational research analyst for an airline, and lives near London, UK, with his wife and two children. What spare time he has apart from his day job and family commitments, he likes to spend reading, and listening to classical music. He also loves the theatre, good conversation, and good whisky (he is a long-standing member of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society).
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