Walter Wilding planned an ideal relationship between employer and employed in No Thoroughfare. He advertised for a housekeeper so that he “might sit daily at the head of the table at which the people in my employment eat together, and may eat of the same roast and boiled, and drink of the same beer, and one and all form a kind of family.”
He planned, too, to train his employees to sing “Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, Mendelssohn, to make music a part of the bond between us. We will form a Choir in some quiet church near the Corner.”
He touched the true chord of community when Joey Ladle used the word “they.” Joey asked, when Mr. Wilding unfolded his plan:
“Is all to live in the house, Young Master Wilding? The two other cellarmen, the three porters, the two ’prentices, and the odd men?”
“Yes. I hope we shall all be a united family, Joey.”
“Ah!” said Joey. “I hope they may be.”
“They? Rather say we, Joey.”
Not many employers have reached the ideals of Dickens yet.