Re: A Curious Thought

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Wed, 21 Jan 1998 10:36:34 -0100 

My dear Mr Holden,

  Make no mistake, when I was working at Warren's Blacking, many a
mysterious and enigmatic figure came to me, displaying tokens of my future
greatness.  I could not have endured it otherwise.  Though I suspect I was
far from unique, among children in dismal circumstances, in enjoying visions
of compensatory pleasures to come.
  No such figure, to be sure, bore a bank note with my image upon it.  Bank
notes at that period bore no representational images, only appropriate
inscriptions and abstract designs.  It was not a development I anticipated,
least of all one involving myself!  Nor would the smooth-faced boy I was
then have recognised the grizzled Methuselah I was to become.  It's a pretty
thought, but I think I would have had to tell your Ali Babato take his place
in the queue among the other prophets of success and fame.  Such are boys.

Faithfully yours,


Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
>     Dear Sir
>
>     A curious thought came into my head this lunch time.  I was standing
>     in a queue in a booksellers clutching in one hand a magazine and in
>     the other, a ten pond note and on that note I saw, of course, your
>     image.  What greater honour can there be bestowed upon a person than
>     that.   Your life was truly a 'rags to riches' story and as you
>     matured and became one of the greatest of all writers, you must have
>     become accustomed to seeing your name and image in print, but to have
>     your image there  alongside the monarch on the currency of the land?
>     How does that feel?
>
>     I would like to take this one step further and ask you to stir the
>     genius that is your imagination and put yourself back as that
>     bewildered , disenfranchised little boy, full of despair in that
>     Blacking Factory. How would that little,boy have felt if an enigmatic
>     and mysterious figure (like Ali Baba) had appeared to him holding one
>     of these notes and said: "Take courage little fellow.  Things will not
>     always be like this for you.  This is your destiny..."
>
>     Yours respectfully
>
>     Chris Holden
>
>

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