Lord Bonkers: "Something less terrible than the truth" (opens in new tab)

G\.K\. Chesterton was a brilliant literary critic and there's an observation of his on Dickens that I've quoted more than once in print: It seems almost as if these grisly figures, Mrs\. Chadband and Mrs\. Clennam, Miss Havisham, and Miss Flite, Nemo and Sally Brass, were keeping something back from the author as well as from the reader\. When the book closes we do not know their real secret\. They soothed the optimistic Dickens with something less terrible than the truth\. I have an uneasy f...