No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In Dickens' novels, characters are cast in detailed and purposeful social situations, and an evaluated social world is created. Yet even those critics who agree roughly that this is so, and agree further on the stature of these novels, disagree markedly as to Dickens' own politics or view of society—disagree in fundamental respects, that is, on what disposition of mind lies behind and shapes these novels. Sometimes the disagreement has in part to do with personal conviction. G. K. Chesterton, a Catholic with mixed politics of his own, bolsters as he can Dickens' orthodoxy. T. A. Jackson, a naive Marxist with insufficient respect for brute fact, attempts to show that Dickens was a Communist in all but name, and “that the really fundamental incompatibility between Dickens and his wife lay in the complete antithesis of their convictions about contemporary society as a whole.”
1 Chesterton, Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (New York, 1906); Jackson, Charles Dickens: The Progress of a Radical (New York, 1938), p. 201.
2 Wilson, “Dickens: The Two Scrooges,” in The Wound and the Bow (New York, 1941), pp. 1–104; Orwell, “Charles Dickens,” in Dickens, Dali, & Others (New York, 1946), pp. 1–75.
3 William Aydelotte, “The England of Marx and Mills as Reflected in Fiction,” Jour, of Econ. Hist., Suppl. viii (1948), 42–58.
4 The two chief published collections of letters are The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch, 1938), 3 vols., and The Heart of Charles Dickens: As Revealed in His Letters to Angela Burdett-Coutts, ed. Edgar Johnson (New York, 1952). Hereafter these editions will be designated as Letters and Coutts Letters. Many unpublished letters are quoted or alluded to in Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph (New York, 1952), 2 vols, (designated in the notes as: Johnson).
5 These magazines are designated in the notes as HW, HN, A YR.
6 “Note,” AYR, x (26 Dec. 1863), 419.
7 In the Letters, there are 203 letters to Wills in the period 1850–70, when Dickens was conducting the magazines. This number gains proportion when we realize that by and large Dickens wrote to Wills only when one or the other of them was not in the London area, and they could not do business in person. In this same period of 20 years, there are only 39 letters to Macready, 76 to Bulwer Lytton, and, even to Forster, just 194.
Of course the significance of these figures is affected by the accidents governing which letters have survived and which have not, and may be changed when the new edition of Dickens' letters now being prepared is published. But a sampling of the letters to Wills in 1854—a critical year in my argument—shows something of the specific nature of Dickens' conductorship: 20 April: “I have gone very carefully over the whole No. … It is a very good one, I think, and I see no occasion to alter the course of the making-up, or to change any paper” (ii, 553). 14 July (from Boulogne): “The CP. by R.S. [probably an article on the Crystal Palace] is very well done, but I cannot make up my mind to lend my blow to the great Forge-bellows of puffery at work. I so heartily desire to have nothing to do with it, that I wish you would cancel this article altogether, and substitute something else. As to the guidebooks, I think they are a sufficiently flatulent botheration in themselves, without being discussed. A lurking desire is always upon me to put Mr. Laing's speech on accidents to the public, as Chairman of the Brighton Railway, against his pretensions as a champion of public Instructors and guardians. And I don't know but what I may come to it at some odd time. This strengthens me in my wish to avoid the bellows” (p. 568). 2 Aug. (from Boulogne): “Manage the proofs of H.W. so that I may not have to correct them on a Sunday. I am not going over to the Sabbatarians, but like the haystack (particularly) on a Sunday morning” (p. 574). 25 Sept. (p. 589, from Boulogne): He complains that an issue is too frivolous, and asks that something be pulled out of it to make room for his own “To Working Men” (a strong piece, discussed later in this article). In another letter from Boulogne he tells Wills to report on a meeting of manufacturers at Manchester “with a view to the prevention of Boiler accidents, and their consequent injuries to workpeople.” He wants this reported in fairness to the manufacturers, because he has been attacking them for their negligence in safety matters (pp. 592–593). 14 Oct. (from Boulogne): “I have taken out that passage about paper instantly rising 20 per cent if the Newspaper Stamp were taken off, for I think it a hazardous assumption to broach so very positively” (p. 597). He also objects to certain remarks offensive to the French in this issue. In other letters to Wills, quoted later in this article, there are similar illuminations of Dickens' editorial practice.
8 “Red Tape,” HW, ii (15 Feb. 1851), 481–84; “The Royal Rotton Row Commission,” HW, i (15 June 1850), 274–276.
9 Letters, ii, 354, to Eeles, 22 Oct. Of course this is an ironic comment on Hansard's parliamentary reports.
10 Letters, ii, 585, to Forster, Sept. 1854.
11 “To Working Men,” HW, x (7 Oct. 1854), 169–170, This article was written by Dickens, and he defended it to a frightened friend by saying that the Government “will never do these things … until they are made election questions and the working-people unite to express their determination to have them, or to keep out of Parliament by every means in their power, every man who turns his back upon these first necessities” (Coutts Letters, p. 273, 26 Oct. 1854). Characteristically, it was health and sanitation on which Dickens was most likely to base his insistence on the need for change.
12 “That Other Public,” HW, xi (3 Feb.), 1–4.
13 Letters, ii, 622 (3 Feb.).
14 “The Great Baby,” xii (4 Aug.), 1–4 (ascribed to Dickens in F. G. Kitton, The Minor Writings of Dickens, London, 1900); “Our Commission,” xii (11 Aug.), 25–27.
15 Letters, ii, 693 (30 Sept. 1855). With “that great seventeenth-century time,” Dickens is most likely referring to Cromwell, his admiration for whom he testifies to in his Child's History of England. Cromwell represented for him a kind of virile republicanism in the most marked contrast to the weak subservience he felt in the social and political life of his own time.
16 “Law and Order,” HW, xiii (29 March 1856), 241–245. (This plea recurs twice in 1863: “Consolidate the Statutes!” AYR, ix [1 Aug. 1863], 543–549; “Patched Law,” A YR, ix [22 Aug. 1863], 606–609.) “Flowers of British Legislation,” HW, xiii (7 June 1856), 490–493.
17 Household Words sold as many as 40,000 copies a week, and its successor All the Year Round reached a circulation of 300,000 weekly (see Johnson, pp. 946–947) and for a time exceeded the circulation of the Times (Johnson, p. 995).
18 Letters, IT, 838 (to Sir Joseph Paxton, 1 March); ii, 839 (to the Reverend Charles de la Prynne, 14 March 1857).
19 Letters, ii, 844 (15 April 1857).
20 Utters, ii, 889, to Lady Burdett-Coutts, 4 Oct. 1857.
21 “The Humiliation of Fogmoor,” xvii (14 Aug.), 193–204.
22 Letters, ni, 232, to Henry Morley, 28 Aug. 1861. Earlier he had said: “I have never doubted Lord Palmerston to be (considering the age in which he lives) the emptiest impostor and the most dangerous delusion, ever known” (Coatis Letters, p. 326, 12 Aug. 1856).
23 Letters, in, 430 (to Bulwer Lytton, 6 July); in, 446 (to William de Cerjat, 30 Nov.).
24 Letters, in, 751, to J. H. Chamberlain, 17 Nov. 1869. This is nearly a classic statement. G. M. Trevelyan says of Robert Owen, e.g., that he, “despairing of the governors, turned to the governed.” British History in the Nineteenth Century and After, rev. ed. (London, 1937), p. 185. But beyond this, Owen's career is to Dickens' a study in difference or contrast.
25 Letters, in, 763, (14 Feb. 1870).
26 Carlyle he knew personally, admired, resembled and differed from, and had certainly read to some extent. For a consideration of their personal and intellectual relations, see Mildred G. Christian, “Carlyle's Influence Upon the Social Theory of Dickens,” The Trollopian, i, iv (March 1942), 27–35; ii, i (June 1947), 11–26.
27 See, for an extreme example, Dickens' account to Forster of refusing to appear before Queen Victoria in costume between the acts of The Frozen Deep: Letters, ii, 859 (5 July 1857).
28 Letters, I, 588, to Forster, March 1844.
29 “A Free (and Easy) School,” iv (15 Nov. 1851), 169–173; “Gentlemen in History,” vii (25 June 1853), 394–396; “Fashion,” viii (29 Oct. 1853), 193–196; “Idiots Again,” ix (15 April 1854), 197–200.
30 “A Clause for the New Reform Bill,” HW, xviii (9 Oct. 1858), 385–387.
31 “Locked Out,” viii (10 Dec), 345–348. See Johnson, pp. 795–796; also, “On Strike,” HW, viii (11 Feb. 1854), 553–559.
32 Coutts Letters, p. 273 (26 Oct. 1854).
33 Letters, ii, 655 (27 April 1855).
34 Coutts Letters, pp. 298–299 (11 and 15 May 1855).
35 Letters, ii, 695 (4 Oct. 1855).
36 Letters, ii, 674 (27 June 1855).
37 “The Two Scrooges,” p. 26.
38 Letters, ii, 721 (6 Jan. 1856). The terms in which he insists on the changes—“represent myself,” “adopt the representation”—show why any opinion voiced in Household Words can be pretty much considered Dickens' own opinion.
39 “Strike!” xvii (6 Feb. 1858), 169–172.
40 “The Toady Tree,” xi (26 May 1855), 385–387; “Family Names,” xv (30 May 1857), 525–528.
41 Coutls Letters, p. 326 (13 Aug. 1856).
42 Letters, ii, 889 (4 Oct. 1857).
43 “Wanted, A Secretary,” HW, xvii (20 Feb. 1858), 224–227; A YR, v (17 Aug.), 489–492.
44 Letters, iii, 500, to Cerjat, 1 Jan. 1867.
45 Letters, i, 599–600, to J. V. Staples, 3 April 1844.
46 Coutts Letters, pp. 338–339 (9 April 1857).
47 This occurs in many places, but a good example is “Pinchback's Amusements,” A YR, vii (29 March 1862), 71–72.
48 Letters, i, 505 (1 Feb.).
49 Letters, i, 658 (11 Feb. 1845).
50 For a typical example, see “Poverty,” A YR, xiii (24 June 1865), 512–515.
51 “Plagues of London,” HW, xi (5 May 1855), 316–319; “Gibbet Street,” HW, xiii (15 March 1856), 193–196.
52 “Frost-Bitten Homes,” HW, xi (31 March 1855), 193–196, and “Pinchback's Cottage,” AYR, vii (22 March 1862), 31–34; “Wild Court Tamed,”HW, xii (25 Aug. 1855), 85–87; “The Point of the Needle,” AYR, x (5 Sept. 1863), 36–41; “The Belgian Lace-Makers,” HW, i (29 June 1850), 320–323.
53 Sir Edwin Chadwick, 1800–90, a sanitary reformer and protégé of Jeremy Bentham. He became an investigator on the royal commission on the poor laws in 1832, and with Nassau Senior drafted the Report of 1834 from which the New Poor Law grew. He broke with the actual administration of the law because he favored a more centralized system of administration, and blamed the failures of the law on local maladministration. It was Chadwick's belief in the efficacy of a bureaucracy with which Dickens differed.
54 Letters, 1,480, to Henry Austin, 25 Sept.
55 A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century (London, 1905), pp. 418–422. His differences with the Manchester School are perhaps most explicit in a letter to Wills of 25 Nov. 1862 (Letters, in, 321).
56 (London, 1910), Ch. i-iv.
57 The theories of Malthus are clear behind this. See Elie Halévy, The Liberal Awakening, trans. E. I. Watkin, rev. ed. (London, 1949), pp. 40–41.
58 Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, trans. F. K Wischnewetsky, rev. Eng. ed. (London, 1892), p. 292. For conditions of workhouses, see Trevelyan, p. 250; or Elie Halévy, The Triumph of Reform, trans. I. Watkin, rev. ed. (London, 1950), pp. 284–285.
59 “A Walk in a Workhouse,” HW, i (25 May 1850), 204–207 (ascribed to Dickens in Kitton, Minor Writings); “A Day in a Pauper Palace,” i (13 July 1850), 361–364; “London Pauper Children,” i (31 Aug 1850), 549–552; “How to Kill Labourers,” vii (2 April 1853), 97–102 (the Household Narrative also reported on this subject; see the article on some workhouse inmates who died as a result of abusive treatment, i [1850], 224).
60 “A Nightly Scene in London,” HW, xiii (26 Jan. 1856), 25–27 (ascribed to Dickens in Kitton, Minor Writings); “Parish Poor in London,” xvii (5 June 1858), 577–578.
61 A YR, ii (18 Feb. 1860), 392–396; iv (8 Dec. 1860), 210–211.
62 A YR, iv (16 Feb. 1861), 446–449.
63 For adverse effects of the “Poor rate in aid of wages,” see Trevelyan, pp. 148–149. There is a general explanation and history of the Poor Rate in Elie Halévy, England in 1815, trans. E. I. Watkin and D. A. Barber, rev. ed. (London, 1949), pp. 377 ff.
64 A YR, v (6 April 1861), 44–45; “Union is Strength?” x (10 Oct. 1863), 156–162; “The Poor of Paris,” xii (22 Oct. 1864), 248–253; xiv (16 Sept. 1865), 176–179; “A New Humane Society,” xv (3 March 1866), 177–180.
65 A YR, xvi (22 Sept. 1866), 253–255; “In Praise of a Rotten Board,” xvi (20 Oct. 1866), 342–346; xvii (2 March 1867), 221–224; “A Workhouse Probe,” xviii (30 Nov. 1867), 541–545, and “Another Workhouse Probe,” xviii (7 Dec. 1867), 558–564; “A Country Workhouse,” xix (14 Dec. 1867), 16–20; “A Discreet Report,” xix (21 March 1868), 350–354.
66 Report of 1834, p. 263.
67 Here the evidence of the fiction is valid and sufficient, but there is also “ ‘I Have Done My Duty’,” A YR, xii (14 Jan. 1865), 543–546.
68 “Our Parish Poor Box,” iv (22 Nov. 1851), 204–207.
69 “The Little Sisters,” HW, iv (14 Feb. 1852), 493–494; “Little Blue Mantle,” v (24 July 1852), 429–431; “Drooping Buds,” v (3 April 1852), 45–48 (this is certainly the model for the children's hospital in Our Mutual Friend); “Between the Cradle and the Grave,” AYR, vi (1 Feb. 1862), 454–456; “One Other Hospital for Children,” HW, xviii (2 Oct. 1858), 379–380; “Received, A Blank Child,” HW, vii (19 March 1853), 49–53 (ascribed to Dickens and W. H. Wills in Kitton, Minor Writings).
70 HW, xiii (23 Feb. 1856), 121–126; “Day-Workers at Home,” HW, xiii (9 Feb. 1856), 77–78, and “Number Seven Brown's Lane,” A YR, xii (5 Nov. 1864), 304–308.
71 A rather maudlin story in HW tells how a working man rescues an army officer attempting suicide and rehabilitates him by giving him honest work to do. “Work! An Anecdote,” i (6 April 1850), 35–36.
72 Letters, ii, 652, to Layard, 10 April 1855; ii, 774, to T. Ross and John Kenny, 19 May 1856. See also the letter to Kenny written 2 days later.
73 See, e.g., “Our Eye-Witness at a Friendly Lead,” AYR, ii (10 March 1860), 472–476.
74 “Two Cures for a Pinch,” AYR, vi (8 Feb. 1862), 462–467; “Parish Charities,” ix (23 May 1863), 308–309; “My Account with Her Majesty,” xi (5 March 1864), 79–83; “Be Assured,” HW, x (2 Dec. 1854), 365–369; “Sick Railway Clerks,” HW, xiii (19 April 1856), 325.
75 “Friendly or Unfriendly?” xi (9 April 1864), 202–204; “Poor Men's Annuities,” xiii (1 April 1865), 225–229; “A Post-Office Friendly Society,” xv (14 April 1866), 328–329.
76 “Taxes,” xiv (6 Sept. 1856), 181–185.
77 Letters, iii, 381 (March 1864). The article appeared as “Working Men's Clubs,” A YR, xi (26 March 1864), 149–154.
78 “A Slight Depreciation of the Currency,” xii (3 Nov. 1855), 313–315; “Moneysworth,” xiii (31 May 1856), 461–464 (this seems closely related to Nassau Senior's view that value was a function of labor and abstinence).
79 “Twenty Shillings in the Pound,” HW, xvi (7 Nov. 1857), 444–46; “Bankruptcy in Six Easy Lessons,” HW, xvii (13 Feb. 1858), 210–212; “My Model Director,” HW, xix (26 Feb. 1859), 299–301; “Pay for Your Places,” A YR, iv (27 Oct. 1860), 67–69. See also “Money or Merit? AYR, in (21 April 1860), 30–32.
80 “A South Kensington Legend,” vii (3 May 1862), 175–176; “Great Meeting of Creditors,” i (11 June 1859), 153–156; “Accommodation,” xiii (8 April 1865), 260–264.
81 “Debt,” AYR, xi (25 June 1864), 463–466; “The Debtor's Best Friend,” HW, xvi (19 Sept. 1857), 279–282; “Debt,” HW, xvii (20 March 1858), 319–321.
82 See C. R. Fay, Great Britain from Adam Smith to the Present Day (New York, 1928), pp. 110–113,317.
83 Leland Hamilton Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York, 1927), pp. 234, 237–238. In 1864: there had been fewer companies, 975, but with a nominal capital of? 235,000,000. In 1866, after the panic, the number of companies had dropped to 754 with a nominal capital of ?74,000,000. Two years later there were only 448 companies, with a nominal capital of ?33,000,000. In 1865 these companies issued ?122,000,000; in 1866, the year of the panic, they issued only ?32,000,000.
84 “City Spectres,” HW, iv (14 Feb. 1852), 481–485; “Provisionally Registered,” vii (9 July 1853), 445–148, and “Completely Registered,” viii (14 Jan. 1854), 469–171; “Bulls and Bears,” HW, vii (28 Jan. 1854), 517–523, and “Phases of the Funds,” AYR, v (6 July 1861), 342–346; “On'Change in Paris,” HW, xiv (16 Aug. 1856), 102–108; HW, x (23 Dec. 1854), 437–441; and xvii (19 Dec. 1857), 1–1.
85 “The Great Chowsempoor Bank,” HW, v (29 May), 237–240.
86 Lombard Street (London, 1873). See the conclusion to the chapter entitled “The Joint Stock Banks.”
87 HW, xv (3 Jan. 1857), 8–12, and A YR, xx (27 June 1868), 57–60. Crédit Mobilier was, as its name implies, a scheme to centralize control and administration of a vast portion of a country's speculative capital. The size and dangers of the scheme are apparent, and it would likely be unmanageable even in a comparatively honest time, which this was not. See Jenks, pp. 240–255.
88 HW, xix (25 Dec. 1858), 80–84.
89 AYR, xi (12 March 1864), 110–115; xi (30 April 1864), 275–280.
90 For a summary of this Une of argument from John Stuart Mill and others, see Jenks, pp. 235–236.
91 “How We ‘Floated’ the Bank,” AYR, xii (31 Dec. 1864), 493–497; “How the Bank Came to Grief,” xiii (25 Feb. 1865), 102–106; “How the Bank was Wound Up,” xiii (15 April 1865), 276–282.
92 A YR, xiii (13 May), 378–382; (20 May), 404–408; (27 May 1865), 428–132.
93 Depredations (London, 1869), p. 47.
94 A YR, xiii (17 June 1863), 485–490; “Amateur Finance,” AYR, xiv (12 Aug.), 56–60; (19 Aug.), 87–91; (26 Aug. 1865), 110–115.
95 A YR, xiv (11 Nov.), 368–372; (18 Nov. 1865), 393–397. There had been a piece on an earlier era of railroad speculation also, “Ruined by Railways,” HW, xi (3 March 1855), 114–119, about a man who was on his way to making a fortune in a railroad speculation until Parliamentary investigation brought on a crash; he is ruined and eventually throws himself under a train. The early piece is considerably less bitter, however, than the later, perhaps because speculation did not then seem so utterly out of control.
96 The Dickens World (Oxford, 1941), p. 18; Orwell, “Charles Dickens,” p. 50.
97 Letters, i, 639, to Douglas Jerrold, 16 Nov. 1844; ii, 533, to Mrs. Richard Watson, 13 Jan. 1854; iii, 302 (25 Aug. 1862).
98 “Since This Old Cap Was New,” ii (19 Nov. 1859), 76–80; “The Bemoaned Past,” vii (24 May 1862), 257–261.
99 “Lancashire Witchcraft,” HW, vii (4 Feb. 1854), 549–551; “Our Sister,” ix (1 July 1854), 471–474; “The Manchester Strike,” xiii (2 Feb. 1856), 63–66.
100 “The Iron Seamstress,” viii (11 Feb. 1854), 575–576; “Men Made by Machinery,”-xv (31 Jan. 1857), 97–100.
101 Harriet Martineau wrote an attack on these articles which was published by the National Association of Manufacturers. HW replied: “Our Wicked Misstatements,” xiii (19 Jan. 1856), 13–19. See also Johnson, pp. 854–855.
102 Three other pieces should also be made of record: “Children of All Work,” A YR, v (8 June 1861), 254–258; and “Slavery in England,” A YR, xvii (15 June 1867), 585–589— both about child labor; also “The Rochdale Twenty-eight,” AYR, xix (29 Feb. 1868), 274–276—an account of the beginnings of the English Cooperative Movement.
103 “Nobody, Somebody, and Everybody,” HW, xiv (30 Aug. 1856), 145–147; “Murderous Extremes,” xv (3 Jan 1857), 1–2.
104 See “Whole Hogs,” HW, iii (23 Aug. 1851), 505–507—a general attack on extremism (ascribed to Dickens in Kitton, Minor Writings); “Kensington Worthies,” HW, viii (3 Dec. 1853), 325–330; and “Vestiges of Protection,” HW, xvii (2 Jan. 1858), 70–72, in which an extreme plea for free trade turns into a burlesque of the ideas it purports to support.
105 Letters, ii, 103, to D.M. Moir, 17 June 1848; Elie Halévy, Victorian Years, trans. E. I. Watkin, rev. ed. (London, 1951), p. 242.
106 Coutts Utters, p. 150 (30 Aug. 1849); HN, ii (1851), 73.
107 “The Noble Savage,” HW, vii (11 June 1853), 337–339 (ascribed to Dickens in Kit-ton, Minor Writings); “Rights and Wrongs of Women,” HW, ix (1 April 1854), 158–161.
108 Letters, ii, 203, to Miss Emmery Gotschalk, 1 Feb. 1850; ii, 712, to Captain Morgan, ca. Nov. 1855; ii, 770, to Georgina Hogarth, 5 May 1856.
109 Orwell calls Dickens subversive, but calls him also in the same sentence a radical and a rebel (“Charles Dickens,” p. 2), which is to bury the real applicability of the one term with the limited applicability of the others. Wilson makes the important point, when he says: “Of all the great Victorian writers, he was probably the most antagonistic to the Victorian Age itself” (“The Two Scrooges,” p. 29).
110 AYR, x (23 Jan. 1864), 517–519; xi (23 July 1864), 569–573.
111 “Richard Cobden's Grave,” A YR, xiii (6 May 1865), 342–345.