[26] Quoted from Thackeray’s “Four Georges.”
[27] Which made illegal any marriage contracted by a prince of the blood without the consent of King and Parliament.
[28] I am informed by a friend, Mr. Denman, a grandson of Caroline’s Counsel, that the words were not used in the speech, which was reported wrongly in the Annual Register.
LECTURE VI
Social Abuses as Exposed by Charles Dickens
Let us revel in the company of a writer who has been perhaps even more appreciated in America than in his own country: and will you allow me to express my opinion that the greatest proof of the magnanimity of your fathers was shown in the fact that they forgave “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and took its author to their heart? No little man, and for that matter little nation, can bear to be caricatured. Many even who possess true greatness cannot endure ridicule. It must remain to the eternal credit of your country that Charles Dickens was beloved by it. Nowhere did the creator of “our Elijah Pogram,” Hannibal Chollop, Mrs. Hominy, and Mr. Scadder find a warmer welcome than in the country where he discovered their prototypes; and his popularity in America is a testimony to the good humour and generosity of its people.
My object in this lecture is to endeavour to explain the England which Dickens described; and I will with your permission preface my remarks by pointing out some of the disadvantages of an old society, bearing in mind its advantages also. The England in which Dickens worked was in many respects simpler in life, yet more fertile in types of character, than it is at present. I cannot but think that people got more pleasure out of living than they do in our days. Yet if I may venture upon a paradox, the world of “Pickwick” was older, and not younger, than the one in which we are living.
Strictly speaking, modern England is not an “old” country, but a new one. Steam and electricity, the progress of science and the advance of democratic ideas have inaugurated a new age; and we, as well as you in America, live in days of experiment rather than of tradition. But the England of the thirties was an old country. It was changing rapidly, it is true; yet it is scarce an exaggeration to say that it bore a greater resemblance to the England of Queen Elizabeth than to that of the present day; but the institutions of the past, which had changed very little in character, had become more intolerable as civilisation advanced; and, consecrated by time, they pressed very heavily on the many to the great benefit of the few interested in their maintenance.
The main thesis I shall put before you to-day is that it is time that an edition of Dickens appeared with a good popular commentary; for much of it is not intelligible even to an English reader at the present day: and one thing which the volumes should have is a map of the London which he is so fond of describing. Most of the sites have become so changed as to be hardly recognisable; and the appearance of the streets is so altered that one can hardly reconstruct them even in imagination. It would be no difficult task to find plans and pictures to assist one in this direction, and the result would, I think, be most illuminating to the reader. The prisons, for example, of which we read so much, the Fleet, the Marshalsea, Newgate itself, have all disappeared, and few now know even where the two former actually stood. As to the notes and comments which might be written, I hope this lecture may indicate what I mean.
The first novel I shall take is “Oliver Twist” because it—despite the charm of the story—is almost unintelligible to the ordinary reader, where it deals with the conditions of the lives of the very poor and of the criminal classes. I need hardly remind you of the details. There is the poor little boy born and bred in the workhouse under Mr. Bumble the beadle, his being apprenticed, his escape to London, and his introduction to the thieves’ school kept by the Jew Fagin, the devilish plot to make him a criminal, his escape, and his restoration to his family. A character like Fagin’s would be impossible in London at the present day. There may be equally dangerous criminals; but he was protected by a system which is now happily entirely obsolete. His infamous trade was to train up criminals whom he finally handed over to the arm of the law.