Dickens, Ireland, and the Irish, Part I Litvack, L. (2003). Dickens, Ireland, and the Irish, Part I. The Dickensian, 99(1), 34-59. Published in: The Dickensian Document Version: Version created as part of publication process; publisher's layout; not normally made publicly available Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:06. Oct. 2021 TheSpring 2003 No. 459 Vol. 99 Part 1 ISSN 0012-2440 Dickensian DPublished by The Dickens Fellowship Subscriptions and Advertising THE DICKENSIAN is published three times a year, in Spring, Summer and Winter. Subscriptions must be paid in advance, and cover a year’s three issues. Standing orders are not accepted. Rates are as follows: United Kingdom individual subscribers £11.50 United Kingdom institutional subscribers £14.00 Overseas individual subscribers £12.50 Overseas institutional subscribers £16.00 Members of the Dickens Fellowship enjoy a privilege rate of £8.00. Overseas subscribers wishing to receive their copies by airmail must send an additional sum of £6.00. Payment in currencies other than Sterling should include an additional £1.00 to cover bank charges. 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Contributions and Editorial Correspondence Contributions and editorial correspondence should be sent to the Editor at: School of English, Rutherford College, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NX. Fax: (01227) 827001. Email: [email protected]. Contributors wishing to have their articles returned should enclose an s.a.e. or international reply coupon. Contributors are asked to observe the following house-style conventions in submitting material to THE DICKENSIAN: 2 copies of each submitted article or review; typescripts to be double-spaced; single quotation marks should be used, with double for quotations within quotations; the possessive ‘s’ is added to ‘Dickens’ (i.e. ‘Dickens’s’) and to similar proper names; dates should give Day followed by Month followed by Year (e.g. 7 February 1812); no full stop should follow abbreviations such as ‘Mr’ or ‘Dr’. The Dickensian Edited by MALCOLM ANDREWS Fellowship Notes & News: TONY WILLIAMS Picture Research: ANDREW XAVIER Published three times a year by the Dickens Fellowship, The Dickens House, 48 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LF (See opposite for details concerning Subscriptions and Contributions) Spring 2003 No. 459 Vol. 99 Part 1 ISSN 0012-2440 CONTENTS Editorial 3 Notes on Contributors 4 Charles Dickens and Kate Field 5 CAROLYN J. MOSS The Contemporary Dutch Critical Reception of Dickens 11 OSCAR WELLENS Charles Dickens – Syndrome Spotter: 22 A Review of Some Morbid Observations JOHN COSNETT Nickleby’s Pilgrimage: Footnote to a Footnote 32 EDGAR ROSENBERG Dickens, Ireland and the Irish – Part I 34 LEON LITVACK Letters to the Editor 60 Book Reviews JEREMY TAMBLING on Lyn Pykett’s Critical Issues 62 LOUIS JAMES on Michael Slater’s biography of Douglas Jerrold 64 LEON LITVACK on Lilian Nayder’s Unequal Partners 66 ROGER CARDINAL on Dominic Rainsford’s68 history of ‘La Manche’ Radio Reviews ROBERT GIDDINGS on Scrooge Blues and Not So Tiny Tim 71 DONALD HAWES on the serialised Old Curiosity Shop 73 JEREMY CLARKE on Lend Me Your Ears 74 Fellowship Notes and News 77 When Found Fellowship Diary & Branch Lines ‘About the House’ & Friends of Dickens House A Gad’s Hill ‘Mystery’ Obituaries 1 Kate Field, author of Pen Photographs of Charles Dickens’s Readings as she appeared in 1868 when introduced to the ‘Great Charles’. (Photograph by Sarony). See article in this issue on ‘Charles Dickens and Kate Field’. 2 Editorial The Fellowship is in process of reviewing its 100-year-old constitution. This has meant a reconsideration not only of its managerial structures and machinery, the relationship between branches and headquarters, and so on, but also of the principles underpinning its identity: what does the Fellowship stand for? The four stated aims in the constitution prioritise community, compassion, charity and commemorative preservation – all in the name of Charles Dickens. So, is corporate commitment to these aspirations what it takes to be a signed-up ‘Dickensian’? What exactly does ‘Dickensian’ now mean, either as noun or adjective? Dictionaries seldom give formal recognition to the noun ‘Dickensian’, although it appears regularly as an adjective, and in that form is notoriously a mesh of apparent contradictions. A trawl of modern dictionary definitions of the adjective produces the following examples (following on from the simple, neutral meaning of ‘after the style of Charles Dickens’): denoting poverty, distress, and exploitation as depicted in the novels… grotesquely comic, as in some of the characters of Dickens [Collins Concise Dictionary, 4th edn. 1999]… resembling the 19c English social life depicted in the novels of Charles Dickens…, especially the poor living and working conditions or the odd and often grotesque characters described [Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, updated edn. 1999]… resembling or suggestive of conditions described in Dickens’ novels, esp: (a) squalid and poverty- stricken (b) characterized by jollity and conviviality (c) grotesquely comic [Collins English Dictionary 1979: 3rd edn. updated 1994]… suggestive of the conviviality of Victorian amusements and customs… vividly delineated in character or incident [Longman Dictionary, 1984) We might want to offer a few other meanings, just to complicate the picture a little more, such as ‘suggestive of picturesquely archaic and inefficient working practices or environment’. Readers might like to contribute further meanings? None of these dictionary entries, incidentally, includes that distinctive attribute enshrined for us in our constitution: …suggestive of Dickens’s ‘love of humanity’. When dictionaries admit the noun form, the definition of ‘a Dickensian’ is usually something like ‘an admirer of Dickens’, or ‘a student of Dickens’. Compare this with some analogies. A ‘Marxist’ is someone who abides by the doctrines of Karl Marx. A ‘Christian’ is someone whose life is governed by respect for (in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary) ‘the precepts and example of Christ’. To what extent does the Fellowship’s notion of being ‘a Dickensian’ imply ideological commitment to Dickens’s ‘precepts and example’? Is Dickens someone we would wish to ‘follow’? The Fellowship’s four stated aims imply that to be formally a ‘Dickensian’, in Fellowship 3 terms, does indeed involve some active allegiance to particular values beyond being simply an ‘admirer’ or ‘student’ of Dickens. Therein lies some of the difference between a ‘Fellowship’ and a literary ‘Society’. The particular Dickensian values we adopted a hundred years ago at the founding of the Fellowship are, of course, exclusively the benign ones associated with Dickens’s ‘precepts and example’: the charity, the compassion. Dickens’s political radicalism, for instance, would not be to the taste of every ‘Dickensian’; nor would his spasms of racism, his sexist prejudices, his making comic or dramatic capital out of deformity and eccentricity. Furthermore, the Dickens known to the Fellowship a century ago is not the same as the Dickens we know now. We have changed, culturally, and Dickens has changed: every few years scholars and biographers give the accumulated kaleidoscopic data of his life and works a good shake and watch ‘Charles Dickens’ resettle to a shape with slightly new configurations. Perhaps, as ‘Dickensians’, we compromise. Selectively and privately, as individuals, we are drawn to a man with many different, contentious and often contradictory qualities: publicly and formally, as an organisation, we devote ourselves to his unexceptionable ‘precepts and example’. Notes on Contributors JOHN COSNETT is a retired physician-neurologist, previously Associate Professor at the University of Natal Medical School, Durban. He now lives in Northern Ireland. He has written on aspects of Tropical Neurology and Medical History. ROBERT GIDDINGS is Professor Emeritus, School