Results 21 - 40 of 423 Article Index

Dickens probably wrote the following sections of 'The Old Lady in Threadneedle Street': the opening paragraph; from 'The music of golden thousands' to 'old rags' (p. 337); from 'They are like the caves' to 'shrewd suspicion!' (p. 340); from 'The descent' to 'surprise and consternation' (p. 341) ; from 'Here, standing in a great long building' to 'hay-stacks as are rotting here!' (p. 341).
Dickens may also have written or rewritten portions of the following passages: from 'This Old Lady' to 'that of touch' (p. 337); from 'The apartment' (p. 339) to 'into the streets' (p. 340).
The collaboration in this article is especially deft; Dickens seems to have had a hand in many additional passages. For a discussion of the Dickens-Wills attributions, see headnote to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office.'

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

For a discussion of Dickens's objection to conventionality in art and to the use of stereotyped models by contemporary painters, an objection frequently expressed in his novels, see L. Ormond, 'Dickens and Painting: Contemporary Art', The Dickensian, Vol. 80 (1984), pp. 12–16. He had already mocked this practice in Pictures from Italy (1846), when describing models waiting to be hired on the Spanish Steps in Rome: 

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The Detective Branch of the Police was established in 1842 with two detectives attached to each division of the force and two inspectors and six sergeants at headquarters in Scotland Yard. Their role was primarily to prevent crime happening rather than to detect criminals after the event, and their necessary contacts with the criminal world made them initially the object of much public suspicion. A series of successful cases of tracking down perpetrators of crime, culminating in the celebrated Manning murder case referred to here by Dickens (a case in which nearly all the officers he is entertaining were directly involved), led to a change in the public's attitude and this is reflected in the intensely admiring series of articles Dickens published in HW. The first of these, by Wills, entitled 'The Modern Science of Thief-taking', appeared on 13 July and compared the detective to a connoisseur of paintings â€“ he 'at once pounces upon the authors of the work of art under consideration, by the style of performance'. Wills also asserts that detectives are 'so thoroughly well acquainted' with the kind of criminals known as 'swell mobsmen' (clever confidence tricksters, superior pickpockets, etc.) that 'they frequently tell what they have been about by the expression of their eyes and their general manner' (HW, Vol. 1, pp. 369, 371). 

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Dickens probably wrote most of the following portions of 'A Paper-Mill': from the opening to 'I am rags' (p. 530); from 'Of my being made' (p. 531) to the conclusion.
Dickens seems also to have added touches to passages by Lemon. For example, he may have interpolated the 'tooth of time' sentence (probably echoed from Shakespeare), the Boiling Room figure of speech, and the Macbeth allusion (p. 530). In addition, he probably intensified some of the political asides; and he certainly dictated the strategy of the essay.
'A Paper-Mill' is a good example of a 'process' article (the term is Dickens'). Dickens felt that such pieces, while remaining faithful to ordinary reality - while recording, for example, the procedures followed in such mundane industrial processes as manufacturing paper, refining gold, or making glass - should at the same time transform those processes (and by extension the entire workaday world) into something rich and fanciful, a transformation that could help people survive in an iron age.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Related by Scotland Yard Police.

Dickens wrote the following portion of 'Foreigners' Portraits of Englishmen': from 'In a pretty piece' (p. 601) to 'shadow of resemblance' (p. 602).
Dickens also made the following significant interpolations: from 'He must' to 'Isle of Wight' (p. 602); from 'We have some' to 'by sign-boards' (p. 602); from 'like a carriage-rug' to 'Field-Marshall' (p. 602); from 'an idiomatic place' to 'unable to report' (p. 602); from 'in which we think' to 'French vaudeville' (p. 603); from 'He was quite the Clown' to 'with his money' (p. 603); from 'Perhaps friendly' to 'absurdities' (p. 603); from 'Travelling Englishmen' to 'glad to improve' (p. 604); the concluding sentence.
Dickens' contributions to 'Foreigners' Portraits of Englishmen' have been determined from a proof in the Victoria and Albert Museum corrected in his hand. In addition to the contributions listed above, he made many less important emendations, additions, deletions, and corrections. These changes - the corrections he made on the original proof, the major passage he interpolated, and the further changes he seems to have made before the article was printed - may be studied in the two successive variorum versions given in Appendix A [of Harry Stone, ed., Uncollected Writings from Household Words 1850-1859, Vol 1, Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968].
Whether Dickens had a hand in the article before he corrected it is conjectural; but he almost certainly corrected a still later version of the article (probably a new proof incorporating the corrections he made in the Victoria and Albert galleys), for in the published article there are significant changes in some of his Victoria and Albert emendations, and he did not allow such tamperings with his own writings. The latter changes may be studied in the second of the variorum versions given in Appendix A.
The text [of the published article], when collated with those in Appendix A, demonstrates how Dickens' editing pervaded every aspect of his collaborators' work, and how, even in this article - one of those in which his contribution is a good deal smaller than usual - his care and his control are everywhere evident. The identifications and comparisons made possible by these versions also demonstrate how difficult it is, barring corrected proof or similar evidence, to determine the detailed changes he made in the work of his collaborators, though his own extended share in such joint articles is usually easily recognized.
For a similar study, though one based upon a different order of materials - the changes occurring between a manuscript in Dickens' hand and its final published version - see 'The Doom of English Wills' and Appendix B [of Stone, 1968].

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Dickens probably wrote or rewrote portions of the following section of 'Two Chapters on Bank Note Forgeries: Chapter II': from 'Some years ago -' (p. 619) to the conclusion.
Dickens may also have rewritten portions of the following passages: the opening paragraph; from 'This then, O gentlemen' (p. 618) to 'Bank of England:' (p. 619).
For a discussion of the Dickens-Wills attributions, see note to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office.'
Some of the material in this article is based upon the two-volume third edition of The History of the Bank of England (1848) by John Francis (1811-1882). A presentation copy of this work was in Dickens' library. Dickens seems to have consulted the author as well as the book. On 2 August 1850, he had written to Francis: 'I beg to thank you for the book you have so kindly lent me.... I think I know the pamphlet about Patch to which you refer.'
'Two Chapters on Bank Note Forgeries: Chapter I' by W. H. Wills had appeared in Household Words on 7 September 1850.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Dickens wrote the following portion of 'The Doom of English Wills': from the opening to 'concedes some obstructed search' (p. 2).
Dickens may also have written most, or perhaps all, of the remainder of the article. His hand seems especially apparent in the following passages: from 'Up a narrow stair' to 'from the rubbish' (p. 3); from 'But, other treasures' (p. 3) to 'papier mache' (p. 4); from 'Thus, then' (p. 4) to the conclusion.
The Huntington Library, San Marino, California, possesses a manuscript version in Dickens' hand of most of this article. The version which appeared in Household Words, with the exception of many minor changes and a few more substantial ones (see Appendix B [of Harry Stone, ed., Uncollected Writings from Household Words 1850-1859, Vol 1, Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968], is essentially the same as the manuscript up to the words 'concedes some obstructed search' (p. 2). After that, though the remainder contains some of the manuscript material, the two versions are quite different - the printed version being much longer. The details of Dickens' revisions and the strategy of the concluding elaboration may be studied in Appendix B.
Regarding this piece, Dickens wrote on 8 September 1850, to Wills:

I send you the beginning of our joint article on Cumming Bruce's theme. I have endeavoured to make it picturesque, and to leave the ground open for you ...
I don't like the name ['Ecclesiastical Registries'] I have given the subject. What do you think of The Fate of Wills, in England instead? Or something of that sort? If you will send the proof to me when you have done I will try to put a few lines at the end, so as to wind up with an effect. I think we shall make a great hit with the subject ...
Looking back to your letter, I observe that you speak of my letting you have 'the first article.' You understood, I suppose, that we agreed I should send you the opening of the first article for you to go on with?

It seems likely that Dickens wrote the entire 'first article' after all - though Wills may have supplied some of the facts and several of the paragraphs that went into the expanded last section: Dickens' massive share in this piece may have made Wills feel that it would be improper to include it in Old Leaves (see note to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office'). In any case, 'The Doom of English Wills' (parts I and II) were the only full-fledged articles putatively by Dickens and Wills (as recorded in the Contributors' Book) that Wills did not republish.
For the second article on this theme, see 'The Doom of English Wills: Cathedral Number Two.'

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'The Doom of English Wills: Cathedral Number Two': from the opening to 'without twopence' (p. 27).
Dickens seems also to have added touches to the remainder of the piece.
Concerning this article, Dickens wrote to Wills from Broadstairs on Tuesday, 17 September 1850: 'I will be at the office [of Household Words], please God, at eleven on Friday Morning; and if we have, as I fear we must have, in default of anything else, the second Will article in the No. I will write the introduction then and there.' Whether Dickens wrote the introduction 'then and there' is uncertain, but that he wrote the introduction seems clear.
Some of the facts and ideas in the introduction (and a number of the phrases incorporated therein) are sketched briefly in the two canceled paragraphs that conclude 'Ecclesiastical Registries,' Dickens' early manuscript version of the first of 'The Doom of English Wills' articles. A variorum version of the manuscript is printed in Appendix B [of Stone, 1968].
For the first article in this series, see 'The Doom of English Wills.'

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

For the detailed background to this anticipation of the great Circumlocution Office satire in Little Dorrit, see N. Davenport, The United Kingdom Patent System: A Brief History with Bibliography (1979). On pp. 15–17 Davenport, who quotes Dickens, sets out the stages of obtaining a patent in 1850, together with the fees payable at each stage, and notes that 'it normally took six to eight weeks to obtain an English patent by this procedure' at a total cost of £94 17s 0d (= £94.85). This gave protection in England and Wales only; full patenting cost £310 and 'If, as likely, the inventor employed an agent to help him through the maze of procedures, the cost was considerably more.' The Patent Law Amendment Act of 1852 ameliorated the situation by establishing the Patent Office as a single office where all the procedures could be carried out under the control of the Commissioners of Patents. It also considerably reduced the costs (one patent now gave protection for the whole of the UK), though this was offset by the introduction of a new fee payable to keep the patent in force.

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The Aldermen of the Court of Common Council, the governing body of the City of London, had long been the butt of jokes in Punch and other satirical papers for their reactionary stupidity and complacency and their gormandising feasts (always involving turtle soup). Their strenuous opposition to the application to the City of the Public Health Act of 1848, and to the removal of Smithfield Meat market from the city centre, particularly angered Dickens. On 12 July he noticed a report in The Times (which was also campaigning for the removal of Smithfield) of 'a most intolerably asinine Speech about Smithfield, made in the Common Council by one Taylor' and asked Wills to get him further material about 'absurdities enunciated by this wiseacre' so that he could write up something about him for HW (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 129). Snoady's wonderful vision of Alderman Groggles as a 'lively turtle' is the result.

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On 29 September 1850 the Pope issued a formal declaration, commonly called a 'bull', restoring the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, creating Nicholas Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster (Wiseman was also made a cardinal the following day) and establishing twelve bishoprics. On 7 October Wiseman issued his first pastoral letter, 'from out of the Flaminian Gate', to the Catholic clergy of England, the triumphalist tone of which further inflamed Protestant antagonism to what became known as the 'Papal Aggression'. The result was a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria as 'the latent and historic prejudices of the English people rose to the surface' (Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1 [1966], p. 294). The Ritualist or Tractarian Movement in the Anglican Church, associated with Dr Pusey, was also fiercely assailed as having been a sort of fifth column within the Church of England consisting of clergymen who had, according to the Bishop of London, brought 'their flocks, step by step, to the very verge of the precipice' of Romanism.

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