'It is one of the main vices of this time,' Dickens wrote in 1852, 'to ride objects to Death through mud and mire...to neglect private duties associated with no particular excitement, for lifeless and soulless public hullabaloo with a great deal of excitement, and thus seriously to damage the objects taken up (often very good in themselves)...' (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 825). He had attacked this tendency in 'Whole Hogs' [...] and had, as he notes here, offended some HW readers thereby – he told Wills on 12 October that he believed a 500 drop in circulation 'had something to do with' Temperance subscribers (Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 519). The Bloomer campaign for female dress reform clearly seemed to him a particularly noteworthy example of 'Whole Hoggism'.
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