Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin Read Free Book Online Page B

and middle-class members of parliament this made good sense, but not to all, and many expressed revulsion at what they saw as punishing the poor for being poor. The strongest speaker in the House against the harsh proposed amendments to the Poor Law was William Cobbett, who attacked them day after day, asking for an inquiry into the causes of the present conditions of the poor before any new bill should be passed, warning the legislators that ‘they were about to dissolve the bonds of society’ and that to pass their law would be ‘a violation of the contract upon which all the real property of the kingdom was held’. 2 He particularly objected to the separation of families, and to workhouse inmates being obliged to wear badges or distinctive clothing. Other MPs predicted that the workhouses would become ‘prisons for the purpose of terrifying applicants from seeking relief’. One simply called the bill ‘absurd’. A country landowner pointed out that there were petitions from all over the country against it, and pleaded especially that the aged poor should not be taken from their cottages and sent away to workhouses. 3 In the last debate Daniel O’Connell said that although, as an Irishman, he would not say much, he objected to the bill on the grounds that it ‘did away with personal feelings and connections’. This was a view to which Dickens would certainly have subscribed. As a parliamentary reporter he must have attended many of the debates, and taken away enough from them to give impetus to one of the themes of his second novel,
Oliver Twist.
The passing of the amended bill must also have made him doubt the effectiveness of parliament, where informed and intelligent voices lost the argument; the evil consequences they predicted were felt all over England for many decades. 4
    Through the recommendation of Tom Beard, Dickens was at last offered a permanent job by the
Morning Chronicle
in August, with a salary of five guineas a week, giving him financial security for the first time, and allowing him to begin to plan how best to put his life in order. The offices of the
Morning Chronicle
were on familiar territory in the Strand, at No. 332, and the editor, John Black, had a high opinion of the talents of his new employee. Black was a Scot, a friend of James Mill and follower of Jeremy Bentham, and he ran the
Chronicle
as a reforming paper, and set out to rival
The Times
, encouraged by a tough new owner, John Easthope, a Liberal politician who had made a fortune on the stock exchange. Dickens would be a key member of the team taking on
The Times.
Black was also delighted to publish more of his sketches of London life: Dickens called him ‘my first hearty out-and-out appreciator’. 5 From now on he signed his sketches ‘Boz’, and under that name, and with a wider readership, he began to attract more attention.
    For his first reporting job Black sent him to Edinburgh to cover a celebratory banquet for Earl Grey, who was being given the freedom of the city. It was work, but also a treat, and Beard went with him. The two reporters travelled up by steamboat and put in a good account of the bands, the flags and especially the dinner, where they made it clear that the guests fell so greedily on the lobsters, roast beef and other luxury foods provided that they had polished off almost everything on the tables before the Earl arrived.
    More sardonic amusement in October, when a fire burnt down the House of Commons. No life was lost, and Dickens observed that the cause was the belated burning of old wooden tallies used for accounting through the centuries until the 1820s, which he saw as symbolic of the disastrous consequences of English attachment to worn-out practices and traditions. In November the aged Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was asked to resign by the King, who invited the still older Wellington to take over; when Wellington sensibly refused, the King was obliged to summon the liberal Conservative Robert