dynasties, the Mosaic theory of
creation, the digamma and the
perpetual motion to their betters."33
The effect here may be strained, but the
general impression of reading through,
say, Household Words continuously is of
a maintained single voice. Elizabeth
Gaskell called it "Dickensy"34. The
various individual articles, all stamped
heavily with the mark of Charles
Dickens, act as pieces of the overall
mosaic, building up a distinctive
composite portrait of the times. This
portrait is typically optimistic, with a
fundamental faith in authority and a
tendency to introduce comic touches
into even the most grim subjects. An
example is the article written by
Dickens himself on the high infant
mortality rate and the need for
Children's Hospitals ('Drooping Buds',
3 April 185235). It is a potentially very
sentimental subject (with talk of "those
little graves two or three feet long,
which are so plentiful in our
graveyards"), but Dickens avoids this by
concentrating on factually reporting a
specific visit he made to the newly
founded Ormond Street Hospital.This
visit is embellished with comic observa
tions. The visitor gets lost on his way to
Ormond Street:
"Solitude in a crowd is acknowledged
by the poets to be extremely oppressive,
and we felt so much scared in Queen's
Square at finding ourselves all alone
there, that we had not enough presence
of mind to observe more than space
and houses, and (if our vague
impression be correct) a pump."
Material can usually be defined as
belonging to one of three categories.
Firstly, there was journalism of social
import, that sought to bring to light
wrongs and abuses in the system.
Secondly, there were informational
articles, on a wide range of topics.
Thirdly, there was what might be
termed entertainment. This last factor,
however, bled into the other two:
Educational articles sought to educate
in an entertaining way. Material of
social import strove for an entertaining
slant to their polemic. Often all three
categories applied to a single
contribution - Hard Times, for instance
was serialised in Household Words, and
could be argued to fill the office of all
three. Wills wrote to Dickens praising
him on exactly this aspect of the
journal: "it is universally acknowledged
that subjects of an uninviting nature
are treated - as a rule - in Household
Words in a more playful, ingenious and
readable manner than similar subjects
have been hitherto presented in other
periodicals..."36.
Louise James points out that "there are
two ways in which to read a periodical:
as a collection of individual parts, or as
an entity, issue by issue, in which each
element is modified by the whole"37. If
any journals deserve to be treated by
the latter criterion, it is the two late
productions of Charles Dickens.
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