Re: research

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Mon, 27 Jan 1997 16:12:56 -0100 

My dear Miss Smethurst,

  It is not entirely clear to me how I can oblige you.
You are particularly interested, you say, "in the details
of the underclass of England" that I demonstrate in "Oliver
Twist" and "Hard Times," and you await my reply "with eager
anticipation."  It is not easy to reply, when no question
has been asked, but I am guessing you would like me to tell
you more about the "underclass" of which I wrote.  However
speculatively, I am happy to do that.  The criminals about
whom I wrote in "Oliver Twist," I should say, might more
justly be described as an underclass, than the decent
working folk who are the subject of "Hard Times."
  Many of your twentieth-century sages misconceive my century,
and write of it as if it were characterised only by mass
poverty.  They forget, or never trouble to find out, that it
was a century of reform, improvement - what the political
economists call "rising real incomes."  From the dizzy
pinnacles of society almost to its lowest depths, people
became more prosperous and comfortable.  But alas at what
cost!  Progress was achieved at the expense of the
happiness of some, the insecurity of many.
  The Manchester working man and his family, housed in a
cellar, employed in dirty and dangerous conditions,
exposed to starvation when the demand for cotton fell, or the
supply of cotton to weave was insufficient, dying from
diseases that arise from inadequate sanitation and polluted
water - what was it to them that the pocket of the working
man had ever more coins jingling in it?  The beggars and
thieves of the London streets, unhoused, unshod, unilluminated
by the light of any useful or pleasurable knowledge - what
was it to them that more homes were being built, more schools
were being opened?
  Alas, as we made progress in the nineteenth-century, too
many victims dropped from our majestic conveyance,
thundering ever onward, and too few, comfortably seated aboard,
troubled themselves over it.  An adjustment of a few pence one
way or another in commodity prices, and thousands of honest
working men, their wives and children were plunged into
poverty.  Statesmen intoned, editorials thundered, but of real
help, all too often, there was none.  A poor boy or girl had
the misfortune to lose his or her place, and only luck kept
him or her from the streets, from the workhouse, from the gaol,
from the gallows.
  Does this, my dear Miss Smethurst, tell you what you want to
know?

Faithfully yours,



Charles Dickens


======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author