having been advanced a considerable
sum of money by Chapman and Hall.
He needed to stay closer to his
audience. Forster tells us that Dickens
decided to take the hero of Martin
Chuzzlewit to America after the novel
had begun serialisation, in response to
flagging public interest: that is to say,
he was perfectly able to write fiction in
a journalistic way. Doris Alexander
points out that "with his great respect
for reality, Dickens usually created his
plots out of a mosaic of true stories"18.
Similarly social journalism - something
which figured large in Dickens' later
periodical writings19 - began not in
journals, but in his fiction. It could be
argued that Dickens' greatest triumph
in this regard belongs to Nicholas
Nicklehy and the róle that novel played
in bringing educational abuse to public
attention.
In the 1848 preface to Nickleby, he
recalled the educational system at the
time of his original writing, with a
discernable note of pride in his
reformatory powers. "There were, then,
a good many cheap Yorkshire schools
in existence. There are very few now."
Peter Ackroys comments that it was
"clear from the effect of The Chimes (not
to mention Nicholas Nicklebythat
Dickens could directly intervene in
social matters of the day"20, but
although Dickens was very concerned
to use his position as journalist and
editor to try and effect social reform21,
he was if anything more successful in it
with his novels than with his reportage.
Conversely, it could be noted, Dickens
approached the business of writing
journalism with a novelistic aesthetic.
In a speech to the Newspaper Press
Fund in 1865, he talked of the journalist
as an observer and a listener:
„this all-pervading presence, this
wonderful ubiquitous newspaper, with
every description of intelligence on
every subject of human interest,
collected with immense pains and
immense patience, often by the exercise
of a labouriously acquired faculty
united to a natural aptitude...[and] by
the constant overtasking of the two
most delicate senses, sight and hea
ring..."
"Sight and hearing" - this sounds more
like a critique of a Dickensian novel
than a description of a reporter's daily
grind. It seems clear that, for Dickens,
the distinction between journalism and
fiction was not one that could very
profitably be maintained. When he read
in the January 1850 edition of the
Examiner about a poor fourteen-year old
boy called George Ruby, who earned
his living as a crossing-sweeper and
seemed woefully ignorant of just about
everything, he had lighted upon the
prototype for Jo in Bleak House. But his
treatment of the Examiner article is
revealing - on the one hand he adapted
39
The first class in English spelling and philosophy
