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An Introduction to
Transport Phenomena in
Materials Engineering
This book elucidates the important role of conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer,
mass transport in solids and fluids, and internal and external fluid flow in the behavior of
materials processes. These phenomena are critical in materials engineering because of the
connection of transport to the evolution and distribution of microstructural properties during
processing. From making choices in the derivation of fundamental conservation equations, to
using scaling (order-of-magnitude) analysis showing relationships among different phenomena,
to giving examples of how to represent real systems by simple models, the book takes the
reader through the fundamentals of transport phenomena applied to materials processing. Fully
updated, this third edition of a classic textbook offers a significant shift from the previous
editions in the approach to this subject, representing an evolution incorporating the original
ideas and extending them to a more comprehensive approach to the topic.
FEATURES
• Introduces order-of-magnitude (scaling) analysis and uses it to quickly obtain
approximate solutions for complicated problems throughout the book
• Focuses on building models to solve practical problems
• Adds new sections on non-Newtonian flows, turbulence, and measurement of heat
transfer coefficients
• Offers expanded sections on thermal resistance networks, transient heat transfer,
two-phase diffusion mass transfer, and flow in porous media
• Features more homework problems, mostly on the analysis of practical problems, and
new examples from a much broader range of materials classes and processes, including
metals, ceramics, polymers, and electronic materials
• Includes homework problems for the review of the mathematics required for a
course based on this book and connects the theory represented by mathematics with
real-world problems
This book is aimed at advanced engineering undergraduates and students early in their
graduate studies, as well as practicing engineers interested in understanding the behavior
of heat and mass transfer and fluid flow during materials processing. While it is designed
primarily for materials engineering education, it is a good reference for practicing materials
engineers looking for insight into phenomena controlling their processes.
A solutions manual, lecture slides, and figure slides are available for qualifying adopting
professors.
An Introduction to
Transport Phenomena in
Materials Engineering
Third Edition
David R. Gaskell
Matthew John M. Krane
Designed cover image: Alicia Krane
Third edition published 2024
by CRC Press
2385 NW Executive Center Drive, Suite 320, Boca Raton FL 33431
and by CRC Press
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
© 2024 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
First edition published by Macmillan Publishing Company 1991
Second edition published by Momentum Press 2012
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information,
but the author and publisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of
all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers
have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this
publication and apologize to copyright holders if permission to publish in this form
has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been acknowledged please
write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be
reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gaskell, David R., 1940– author. | Krane, Matthew J. M., author.
Title: An introduction to transport phenomena in materials engineering / David R.
Gaskell and Matthew John M. Krane.
Description: Third edition. | Boca Raton, FL : CRC Press, 2024. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023025079 (print) | LCCN 2023025080 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367821074 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367611316 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003104278 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Materials—Fluid dynamics. | Mass transfer. | Heat—
Transmission.
Classification: LCC TA418.5 .G37 2024 (print) | LCC TA418.5 (ebook) | DDC
620.1/1296—dc23/eng/20230729
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023025079
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023025080
ISBN: 978-0-367-82107-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-61131-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-10427-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.1201/9781003104278
Typeset in Times
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Access the Support Material: www.routledge.com/9780367821074
This work is dedicated to my father,
Robert Joseph Krane, PhD
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord,
and may perpetual light shine upon him.
Contents
Preface to the Third Edition .................................................................................. xiii
Authors ...................................................................................................................xvii
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................xix
vii
viii Contents
His response to this challenge for an introductory class was to focus the first two
editions of the text on the development of the governing equations and the small set
of exact solutions. It is my view that he correctly eschewed a more handbook-style
approach that tends to center on a catalog of processes, with ad hoc descriptions of
associated transport phenomena included as needed, in favor of a more strictly fun-
damental approach, inspired by Bird, Stewart, and Lightfoot’s Transport Phenomena
(1960). The understanding of the origins and solutions of the governing equations is
vital to their application to materials processing, either in closed form or by numer-
ical analysis.
However, I believe that being restricted to this approach gives necessary, but not
sufficient, coverage of the subject in response to the needs of MSE students and prac-
ticing materials engineers, and that it can be improved in two ways. First, the previ-
ous approach gives little explicit motivation or demonstration for why this subject is
in the MSE curriculum. Students who have used this text at Purdue and elsewhere
have repeatedly made this point, so a case must be made for the allocation of scarce
time in the curriculum to this subject instead of others. New examples of processing
in the text and end-of-chapter problems are included to show the applicability of this
topic and help to justify its place in the plan of study. As part of this effort, exam-
ples are given from across the broad range of materials, including the processing of
metals, ceramics, polymers, and electronic materials. The second aspect addressed
in this edition is the need for more substantial discussion of the physical basis and
xiii
xiv Preface to the Third Edition
meaning of the derived balance equations, which are the bedrock of the previous
editions, and how to apply them to practical problems. These equations should be
viewed as balances of physical phenomena, and my teaching approach in many cases
has been to begin with scaling analysis to determine the order of magnitude of these
phenomena and their interrelationships before attempting mathematical or numer-
ical solutions. Further exploration is by approximating complex reality to one or
more simple problems, which can be solved and from which solutions we can draw
conclusions about the system’s behavior. This simple approach focuses the student
on fundamental physics and provides the rationale for model simplification during
application to practical problems. It helps the student connect the theory represented
by the mathematics to the real world. In fact, in industrial settings, the scaling of
a practical problem, perhaps followed by the approximate solution of a simplified
model, frequently provides sufficient information to make an engineering decision.
When not sufficient, the preliminary scaling and approximate analysis are still useful
to understand the problem, guide development of a numerical model, and to interpret
its results. I strongly believe that including practical examples and the practice of
problem-solving methods adds depth to the framework provided by Prof. Gaskell in
the previous editions and brings it more in line with a more materials processing–
focused teaching approach. Many former students who took the course on which this
text is based have reported the utility of this approach in exploring real situations in
an industrial context.
USE OF THIS TEXT
This text is aimed at junior/senior-level engineering undergraduates and students
early in their graduate studies, as well as practicing engineers interested in under-
standing the behavior of heat and mass transfer and fluid flow during materials
processing. It assumes familiarity with calculus, basic differential equations, and
introductory thermodynamics and mechanics. An introductory course in materials
science covering phase diagrams, time-temperature-transformation diagrams, and
basic microstructural forms is very useful for understanding many applications.
The course is a useful prerequisite to any materials processing lecture or lab course.
The text is designed primarily for materials engineering education but will also be a
good reference for anyone desiring a one-semester treatment of introductory fluids
and heat transfer or for the practicing materials engineer looking for insight into the
transport phenomena controlling her process. In all cases, the main purpose is to
understand the basic physics of transport phenomena and how to model and apply
them to materials processing.
Looking through many syllabi for courses at many universities that could use this
text, I discovered many different orders and choices of topics. Looking through a
variety of options, certain general restrictions became apparent:
One difficulty with any text is convincing students it is worth their time to read it.
To incentivize reading the book, I recently added daily reading quizzes to the course.
These short evaluations, usually just a few multiple choice or true/false questions, are
taken online and graded by the course management software used at Purdue. They
have been an effective tool to encourage reading before lecture and have improved
class participation and quiz scores.
As a last note on teaching, I will address the evaluation of the students in this
course, for which I have tried two different methods for testing. The first is to require
weekly homework assignments, three hour-long midterms, and a two-hour final
exam. This practice is common and does have the advantage of giving students direct
incentives to work problems, which is the best way to learn the material. However,
there are some difficulties. Many students tend to rely on others for their homework
and so do not pay serious attention to the class for the five weeks between exams, but
the material is too difficult to cram for exams three or four times a semester. In recent
years, we have still assigned homework problems, but we did not collect the work.
While it seems counterintuitive, the students have proven to be more likely to do their
own work because of another structural change: we replaced the few midterms with
biweekly, 25-minute quizzes. Having to perform as individuals on a much more fre-
quent basis seems to keep the students’ attention, and their overall performance has
improved (with no significant change in the types or total number of test questions).
Authors
David R. Gaskell (1940–2013) was Professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue
University from 1982 to 2013. Dr. Gaskell was born in Glasgow, Scotland, and at-
tended the Royal College of Science and Technology, receiving First Class Honors
in metallurgy and technical chemistry for a BSc in 1962. He moved to Hamilton,
Canada, to pursue graduate studies at McMaster University and then immigrated
to the United States, teaching first at the University of Pennsylvania and then at
Purdue. During his career, he served as a visiting professor at the NRC Atlantic Re-
gional Laboratory, Canada, and at the G. C. Williams Cooperative Research Centre
for Extraction Metallurgy in the Department of Chemical Engineering, University
of Melbourne, Australia. Professor Gaskell was dedicated to teaching and was the
recipient of the Reinhardt Schumann Jr. Best Undergraduate Teacher Award in Mate-
rials Engineering several times over.
Matthew John M. Krane (1964– ) is Professor of Materials Engineering at Purdue
University and a member of the Purdue Center for Metal Casting Research and the
Purdue Heat Treatment Consortium. Using modeling and experiments, his research
focuses on the connection between macroscopic transport phenomena and defect
formation during materials processes, particularly the study of the solidification of
metal alloys. Professor Krane has been with Purdue’s School of Materials Engineer-
ing since 1996, but his education is in mechanical engineering (Cornell, BS, 1986;
Pennsylvania, MS, 1989; Purdue, PhD, 1996), with a concentration in heat transfer
and fluid flow. He has been a visiting researcher at the University of Birmingham
(UK), the University of Greenwich (UK), and the Université de Lorraine (Nancy,
France). In addition to consulting, research programs, and undergraduate projects
with the metals processing industry during his time at Purdue, he worked in indus-
try for three years on thermal issues in the design and manufacturing of electronic
packaging.
xvii
Acknowledgments
This edition was produced with the help of many people. First and foremost, my wife
Kathy has been a great friend and support throughout my adult life. Ever since we
met as freshmen at Cornell, she has been interested in my work and has always given
good counsel on matters personal and professional. My life would have been much
less interesting and happy without her in it. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
(our sons: Stash, Pat, Mick, and Bob) and our daughter, Mary Kate, have been a
real joy in our lives and have been very supportive in this endeavor. My father and
mother, Robert and Antoinette Krane, sacrificed much to provide all their children
with educational opportunities.
My father was my most influential teacher in technical and professional matters
through countless discussions over a few decades. Two science teachers in high
school, Gil Luttrell and George Wilson, took a special interest in developing my
scientific curiosity and helped turn my professional aspirations toward the technical;
I probably would not be an engineer now without them. At Cornell, Sidney Leibo-
vich, C. Thomas Avedesian, and Bart Conta gave me my first formal introductions
to fluid and thermal sciences, inspiring a real love for these subjects and providing
models on how to teach them. My thesis advisor at Penn, Benjamin Gebhart, one of
the pioneers in buoyancy-induced flows, introduced me to that very interesting field.
The very different teaching, research, and advising styles of Frank Incropera, Ray-
mond Viskanta, David DeWitt, and Satish Ramadhyani, all professors in the Purdue
Heat Transfer Laboratory during my doctoral work, were instrumental in forming
my thinking on how to study, apply, and teach the thermal sciences. Many other col-
leagues over the years helped form my ideas on practical application and the teach-
ing of transport phenomena, including Greg Gallagher (formerly Digital Equipment
Corporation), Chris Vreeman, Jay Rozzi, Frank Pfefferkorn, and Marcus Bianchi
(grad students with me in Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering) and Adam C.
Powell (now of Worcester Polytechnic Institute). Jon Dantzig, professor emeritus at
UIUC, has provided much encouragement and sound advice on how to write about,
teach, and model transport phenomena.
I owe a great debt to my colleagues in the School of Materials Engineering at
Purdue, who took in a young mechanical engineer ignorant of materials and turned
him into a passable metallurgist. Prominent in this effort were David Johnson, Keith
Bowman, and Mysore Dayananda. Some of my polymers colleagues (Kendra Erk,
Chelsea Davis, and John Howarter) helped with the inclusion of more soft materials
topics in the book. Special mention goes to Kevin Trumble, who is a passionate
evangelist for the field of materials engineering and has always been a generous
mentor and guide through my second field of study. His enthusiasm for materials
engineering is infectious, and much of my success over the years is due directly to
his knowledge, advice, and encouragement.
I thank Allison Shatkin and Hannah Warfel, my editor and editorial assistant at
CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, for help producing this book and the Gaskell family
for giving me the opportunity to work on it. I hope this new edition lives up to their
xix
xx Acknowledgments
DOI: 10.1201/9781003104278-1 1
2 An Introduction to Transport Phenomena in Materials Engineering
FIGURE 1.1 The “MSE triangle,” a representation of the primary, interconnected aspects
of materials science and engineering.
In this text, we will follow Ashby’s lead with the goal of understanding and esti-
mating the behavior of transport phenomena in materials processing.
The simplest way to arrange our thinking about many models of transport phe-
nomena is in terms of a control volume, a fixed portion of space through and in which
we observe the motion of some quantity. Figure 1.2 shows a schematic of transport in
a control volume, which leads to a very general balance:
Mass, momentum, heat, and species each have their own possible mechanisms
of transport across a control volume boundary and generation (or destruction) in the
volume, and these mechanisms and how to model them are the subject of much of
this text. The sum of these three phenomena is not necessarily zero, but is the amount
accumulated in (or depleted from) the control volume. For example, momentum can
be added to a control volume through pressure gradients, buoyancy, or friction, all of
which can drive a fluid’s acceleration (storing momentum) or transport through the
volume. Heat might be generated by a chemical reaction and transported across the
boundary by thermal radiation. Most of the models of transport here will be derived
starting from the simple balance in Eq. (1.1).
Introduction to Transport Phenomena in Materials Processing 3
FIGURE 1.3 Atomizing a steel stream draining from a holding furnace. The water jet frac-
tures the steel into a range of small droplet sizes.
4 An Introduction to Transport Phenomena in Materials Engineering
One of the cheapest and fastest methods for making plastic parts is to form a
polymer into the desired shape by injection molding. This process uses pressure
to force a liquid polymer into the mold cavity, where it is quickly solidified and
ejected. In Figure 1.4, we see the melt filling the mold. The process finishes when
the mold is filled and perhaps some polymer has pushed into an air vent (which pre-
vents air from building up a back pressure in the last-filled region of the mold). The
front is propelled through the mold by the upstream inlet pressure and is resisted
by the friction at the mold wall, the latter increasing as the filled region lengthens.
For a constant fill rate, the pressure must therefore increase with time; alterna-
tively, the flow rate can be allowed to slow while maintaining a constant pressure,
although this option will slow the process and increase cycle time. Because the
mold is colder than the injected melt, the polymer loses heat, increasing the melt
viscosity and resistance to flow, and must fill the mold before that resistance grows
enough to prevent complete filling. Models of this process in simple geometries,
including the dependence of resistance to flow on the fluid deformation rate, are
found in Chapter 8.
The continuous casting of steel involves the introduction of liquid metal through
a water-chilled copper mold (the primary cooling region), in which a strand is solid-
ified to a small depth from its surface by the time it exits the bottom of the mold [7].
There the steel moves down from the mold and the strand’s direction is altered from
vertical to horizontal by guide rolls (Figure 1.6). In this secondary cooling section,
solidification is completed by heat extraction by forced convection to the water jets
impinging on the steel surface and by conduction losses to the rolls. The convection
FIGURE 1.5 Side view of tempering process, with glass moved by rollers and cooled by
air jets.
FIGURE 1.6 Schematic of steel continuous casting after the mold as the solidification of the
strand is completed (not to scale).
6 An Introduction to Transport Phenomena in Materials Engineering
is similar to that in glass tempering, but is much more effective because of boil-
ing of the water on the very hot surface (see Chapter 10). The liquid-vapor phase
change significantly enhances the heat transfer rate from the steel, required due to
the high speed of the strand (~1 m/s); gas or single-phase liquid convection would
be insufficient. The heat transfer from the steel to boil the water drives the other
phase change in the system, the steel solidification (see Chapter 3). The thermal
energy removed in only a few seconds is supplied by the drop in steel temperature
and by the liquid-solid phase change. The secondary cooling finishes solidification
but leaves a steep temperature gradient through the strand’s thickness; the leveling of
that gradient and/or the further cooling of the steel is due to many other downstream
convection and radiation processes.
A third heat transfer example is found in Figure 1.7, which shows a green, or
unfired, ceramic part in a furnace. A ceramic green body is made of small particles,
formed while wet into a desired shape and then dried, producing a friable (easily
crumbled) solid. Firing the body sinters the structure, growing the connections among
the powder particles, increasing part density, and perhaps initiating solid-solid phase
changes. One way to provide the heat for firing is to expose the body to high temper-
ature–resistant heating elements or to a gas flame. In either case, heat is transferred
from the source to the part by radiation (see Section 1.3.2 and Chapter 12), which is
an electromagnetic phenomenon with wavelengths between ~0.1 μm and ~100 μm
(depending on the source temperature). At these high temperatures, radiation is the
dominant mechanism of heat addition to the part, but conduction controls how fast
FIGURE 1.7 A ceramic part being fired in a furnace with high-temperature interior walls.
Introduction to Transport Phenomena in Materials Processing 7
FIGURE 1.8 Dopant diffusing into unprotected Si, with dashed lines indicating constant
concentration profiles. Most diffusion is normal to surface, but some dopant travels laterally,
undercutting the SiO2 layers.
the body distributes the heat internally. Ceramics tend not to conduct heat quickly, so
large temperature gradients may develop. These gradients cause a spatial distribution
of thermal expansion, leading to high internal stresses and possible cracking.
FIGURE 1.9 Chemical vapor deposition vessel, where a solid reaction product coats the
wafers.
with a reaction temperature around 750 oC [8]. The wafers are kept at the reaction
temperature while the vessel walls are heated to levels outside the range in which the
reaction occurs (so the reaction is only on the wafers), but always high enough so
that there is no gas condensation. The solid coating, Si3N4, can be applied to mask
areas of a wafer, preventing oxidation of the underlying silicon layer during process-
ing and acting as a resistance to diffusion from the atmosphere to the silicon. The
effectiveness of the coating is partially a function of its uniformity over the wafers,
which is a strong function of how the carrier gas and reactants are moved from the
gas stream to the surface.
Language: English
By
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, M.A.
Fellow of Jesus College
King Edward VII Professor of English Literature
in the University of Cambridge
The
Knickerbocke
r
Press
New York
I
IF anything on this planet be great, great things have happened in
Westminster Hall: which is open for anyone, turning aside from
London’s traffic, to wander in and admire. Some property in the oak
of its roof forbids the spider to spin there, and now that architects
have defeated the worm in beam and rafter it stands gaunt and clean
as when William Rufus built it: and I dare to say that no four walls
and a roof have ever enclosed such a succession of historical
memories as do these, as no pavement—not even that lost one of
the Roman Forum—has been comparably trodden by the feet of
grave men moving towards grave decisions, grand events.
The somewhat cold interior lays its chill on the imagination. A
romantic mind can, like the spider, spin its cobwebs far more easily
in the neighbouring Abbey, over the actual dust to which great men
come—
But in the Abbey is finis rerum, and our contemplation there the
common contemplation of mortality which, smoothing out place
along with titles, degrees and even deeds, levels the pyramids with
the low mounds of a country churchyard and writes the same moral
over Socrates as over our Unknown Soldier—Vale, vale, nos te in
ordine quo natura permittet sequamur. In Westminster Hall (I am
stressing this with a purpose) we walk heirs of events in actual play,
shaping our destiny as citizens of no mean country: in this covered
rood of ground have been compacted from time to time in set conflict
the high passions by which men are exalted to make history. Here a
king has been brought to trial, heard and condemned to die; under
these rafters have pleaded in turn Bacon, Algernon Sidney, Burke,
Sheridan. Here the destinies of India were, after conflict, decided for
two centuries. Through that great door broke the shout, taken up,
reverberated by gun after gun down the river, announcing the
acquittal of the Seven Bishops.
II
So, if this tragic comedy we call life be worth anything more than
a bitter smile: if patriotism mean anything to you, and strong opposite
wills out of whose conflict come great issues in victory or defeat, the
arrest, the temporary emptiness of Westminster Hall—a sense of
what it has seen and yet in process of time may see—will lay a
deeper solemnity on you than all the honoured dust in the Abbey.
But, as men’s minds are freakish, let me tell you of a solitary
figure I see in Westminster Hall more vividly even than the ghosts of
Charles I and Warren Hastings bayed around by their accusers: the
face and figure of a youth, not yet twenty-two, who has just bought a
copy of the Magazine containing his first appearance in print as an
author. “I walked down to Westminster Hall,” he has recorded, “and
turned into it for half an hour, because my eyes were so dimmed with
joy and pride that they could not bear the street and were not fit to be
seen there.”
Now the paper which opened the fount of these boyish tears
(here, if you will, is bathos) was entitled A Dinner at Poplar Walk.
You may find it to-day under another title, “Mr. Minns and his Cousin”
among Sketches by Boz: reading it, you may pronounce it no great
shakes; and anyhow you may ask why anyone’s imagination should
select this slight figure, to single it out among the crowd of ghosts.
Well, to this I might make simple and sufficient answer, saying that
the figure of unbefriended youth, with its promise, a new-comer
alone in the market-place, has ever been one of the most poignant in
life, and, because in life, therefore in literature. Dickens himself, who
had been this figure and remembered all too well the emotion that
choked its heart, has left us a wonderful portrait-gallery of these lads.
But indeed our literature—every literature, all legend, for that matter
—teems with them: with these youngest brothers of the fairy-tales,
these Oedipus’s, Jasons, these Dick Whittingtons, Sindbads,
Aladdins, Japhets in search of their Fathers; this Shakespeare
holding horses for a groat, that David comely from the sheepfold with
the basket of loaves and cheeses. You remember De Quincey and
the stony waste of Oxford Street? or the forlorn and invalid boy in
Charles Lamb’s paper on The Old Margate Hoy who “when we
asked him whether he had any friends where he was going,” replied,
“he had no friends.” Solitariness is ever the appeal of such a figure;
an unbefriendedness that “makes friends,” searching straight to our
common charity: this and the attraction of youth, knocking—so to
speak—on the house-door of our own lost or locked-away ambitions.
“Is there anybody there?” says this Traveller, and he, unlike the older
one (who is oneself), gets an answer. The mid-Victorian Dr. Smiles
saw him as an embryonic Lord Mayor dazed amid the traffic on
London Bridge but clutching at his one half-crown for fear of pick-
pockets. I myself met him once in a crowded third-class railway
carriage. He was fifteen and bound for the sea: and when we came
in sight of it he pushed past our knees to the carriage window and
broke into a high tuneless chant, all oblivious of us. Challenge was in
it and a sob of desire at sight of his predestined mistress and
adversary. For the sea is great, but the heart in any given boy may
be greater: and
You see, hinted in this extract from a journal, how our ancestors, in
1848 and the years roundabout, and in remote parts of England,
welcomed these great men as gods: albeit critically, being
themselves stout fellows. But above all these, from the publication of
Pickwick—or, to be precise, of its fifth number, in which (as Beatrice
would say) “there was a star danced” and under it Sam Weller was
born—down to June 14, 1870, and the funeral in Westminster
Abbey, Dickens stood exalted, in a rank apart. Nay, when he had
been laid in the grave upon which, left and right, face the
monuments of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dryden, and for days
after the grave was closed, the stream of unbidden mourners went
by. “All day long,” wrote Dean Stanley on the 17th, “there was a
constant pressure on the spot, and many flowers were strewn on it
by unknown hands, many tears shed from unknown eyes.”
Without commenting on it for the moment, I want you to realise
this exaltation of Dickens in the popular mind, his countrymen’s and
countrywomen’s intimate, passionate pride in him; in the first place
because it is an historical fact, and a fact (I think) singular in our
literary history; but also because, as a phenomenon itself unique—
unique, at any rate, in its magnitude—it reacted singularly upon the
man and his work, and you must allow for this if you would
thoroughly understand either.
IV
To begin with, you must get it out of your minds that it resembled
any popularity known to us, in our day: the deserved popularity of Mr.
Kipling, for example. You must also (of this generation I may be
asking a hard thing, but it is necessary) get it out of your minds that
Dickens was, in any sense at all, a cheap artist playing to the gallery.
He was a writer of imperfect, or hazardous, literary education: but he
was also a man of iron will and an artist of the fiercest literary
conscience. Let me enforce this by quoting two critics whom you will
respect. “The faults of Dickens,” says William Ernest Henley,
V
I shall endeavour to appraise with you, by and by, the true worth
of this amazing popularity. For the moment I merely ask you to
consider the fact and the further fact that Dickens took it with the
seriousness it deserved and endeavoured more and more to make
himself adequate to it. He had—as how could he help having?—an
enormous consciousness of the power he wielded: a consciousness
which in action too often displayed itself as an irritable
conscientiousness. For instance, Pickwick is a landmark in our
literature: its originality can no more be disputed than the originality
(say) of the Divina Commedia. “I thought of Pickwick”—is his
classical phrase. He thought of Pickwick—and Pickwick was. But just
because the ill-fated illustrator, Seymour—who shot himself before
the great novel had found its stride—was acclaimed by some as its
inventor, Dickens must needs charge into the lists with the hottest,
angriest, most superfluous, denials. Even so, later on, when he finds
it intolerable to go on living with his wife, the world is, somehow or
other, made acquainted with this distressing domestic affair as
though by a papal encyclical. Or, even so, when he chooses (in
Bleak House) to destroy an alcoholised old man by “spontaneous
combustion”—quite unnecessarily—a solemn preface has to be
written to explain that such an end is scientifically possible. This
same conscientiousness made him (and here our young novelist of
to-day will start to blaspheme) extremely scrupulous about
scandalising his public—I use the term in its literal sense of laying a
stumbling-block, a cause of offence. For example, while engaged
upon Dombey and Son, he has an idea (and a very good idea too,
though he abandoned it) that instead of keeping young Walter the
unspoilt boyish lover that he is, he will portray the lad as gradually
yielding to moral declension, through hope deferred—a theme which,
as you will remember, he afterwards handled in Bleak House: and he
seriously writes thus about it to his friend Forster:
About the boy, who appears in the last chapter of the first
number—I think it would be a good thing to disappoint all the
expectations that chapter seems to raise of his happy
connection with the story and the heroine, and to show him
gradually and naturally trailing away, from that love of adventure
and boyish light-heartedness, into negligence, idleness,
dissipation, dishonesty and ruin. To show, in short, that common,
every day, miserable declension of which we know so much in
our ordinary life: to exhibit something of the philosophy of it, in
great temptations and an easy nature; and to show how the
good turns into the bad, by degrees. If I kept some notion of
Florence always at the bottom of it, I think it might be made very
powerful and very useful. What do you think? Do you think it
may be done without making people angry?
What! a great writer, with a great idea, to stay his hand until
he has made grave enquiry whether Messrs. Mudie’s
subscribers will approve it or not! The mere suggestion is
infuriating.... Look at Flaubert, for example. Can you imagine him
in such a sorry plight? Why, nothing would have pleased him
better than to know he was outraging public sentiment! In fact, it
is only when one does so that one’s work has a chance of being
good.