Yes, this world is of the streets; in which Dickens was bred and from which he drew the miseries and consolations of his boyhood. A world “full of folk,” but not, like Piers Plowman’s, a “field full of folk.” His understanding of England is in many ways as deep as Shakespeare’s; but it is all, or almost all, of the urban England which in his day had already begun to kill the rural. I ask you to consider any average drawing of Phiz’s; the number of figures crowded into a little room, the many absurd things all happening at once, and you will understand why Phiz was Dickens’ favourite illustrator. A crowded world: an urban world, largely a middle-class and lower-class London world—what else could we expect as outcome of a boyhood spent in poverty and in London? Of London his knowledge is indeed, like Sam Weller’s, “extensive and peculiar”: with a background or distance of the lower Thames, black wharves peopled by waterside loafers or sinister fishers in tides they watch for horrible traffic; rotting piles such as caught and held the corpse of Quilp. Some sentiment, indeed, up Twickenham-way: a handful of flowers, taken from the breast and dropped at the river’s brink, to be floated down, pale and unreal, in the moonlight; “and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas.” But before they reach the eternal seas they must pass Westminster Bridge whence an inspired dalesman saw the City wearing the beauty of dawn as a garment.
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples ... and Waterloo Bridge, Hood’s dark arch of tragedy; and London Bridge, hymned of old by Dunbar. Dickens’ bridge is the old Iron one by Hungerford, and under it the Thames runs down to ghastly flats, convict-haunted, below Woolwich.
Shakespeare knew his London, his Eastcheap, its taverns. But when you think of Shakespeare you think (I will challenge you) rather of rural England, of Avon, of Arden, of native wood-notes wild. I hold it doubtful that Falstaff on his death-bed babbled o’ green fields: but I will take oath that when he got down to Gloucestershire he smelt the air like a colt or a boy out of school. And Justice Shallow is there—always there!
Silence. This Sir John, cousin, that comes hither anon about soldiers?
Shallow. The same Sir John, the very same. I saw him break Skogan’s head at the court-gate, when a’ was a crack not thus high: and the very same day did I fight with one Sampson Stockfish, a fruiterer, behind Gray’s Inn. Jesu, Jesu, the mad days I have spent! and to see how many of my old acquaintance are dead!
Silence. We shall all follow, cousin.
Shallow. Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure: death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?
Silence. By my troth, I was not there.
Shallow. Death is certain. Is old Double of your town living yet?
Silence. Dead, sir.