Volume I Part 17 (1/2)

Dear Sir, very faithfully yours.

FOOTNOTES:

[53] The ”Medical Aspects of Death, and the Medical Aspects of the Human Mind.”

[54] The injurious effects of the manufacture of lucifer matches on the employed.

1853.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.]

1, JUNCTION PARADE, BRIGHTON, _Thursday night, 4th March, 1853._

MY DEAR WILLS,

I am sorry, but Brutus sacrifices unborn children of his own as well as those of other people. ”The Sorrows of Childhood,” long in type, and long a mere mysterious name, must come out. The paper really is, like the celebrated amba.s.sadorial appointment, ”too bad.”

”A Doctor of Morals,” _impossible of insertion as it stands_. A mere puff, with all the difficult facts of the question blinked, and many statements utterly at variance with what I am known to have written. It is exactly because the great bulk of offences in a great number of places are committed by professed thieves, that it will not do to have pet prisoning advocated without grave remonstrance and great care. That cla.s.s of prisoner is not to be reformed. We must begin at the beginning and prevent, by stringent correction and supervision of wicked parents, that cla.s.s of prisoner from being regularly supplied as if he were a human necessity.

Do they teach trades in workhouses and try to fit _their_ people (the worst part of them) for society? Come with me to Tothill Fields Bridewell, and I will show you what a workhouse girl is. Or look to my ”Walk in a Workhouse” (in ”H. W.”) and to the glance at the youths I saw in one place positively kept like wolves.

Mr. ---- thinks prisons could be made nearly self-supporting. Have you any idea of the difficulty that is found in disposing of Prison-work, or does he think that the Treadmills didn't grind the air because the State or the Magistracy objected to the compet.i.tion of prison-labour with free-labour, but because the work _could not be got_?

I never can have any kind of prison-discipline disquisition in ”H. W.”

that does not start with the first great principle I have laid down, and that does not protest against Prisons being considered _per se_.

Whatever chance is given to a man in a prison must be given to a man in a refuge for distress.

The article in itself is very good, but it must have these points in it, otherwise I am not only compromising opinions I am known to hold, but the journal itself is blowing hot and cold, and playing fast and loose in a ridiculous way.

”Starting a Paper in India” is very droll to us. But it is full of references that the public don't understand, and don't in the least care for. Bourgeois, brevier, minion, and nonpareil, long primer, turn-ups, dunning advertis.e.m.e.nts, and reprints, back forme, imposing-stone, and locking-up, are all quite out of their way, and a sort of slang that they have no interest in.

Let me see a revise when you have got it together, and if you can strengthen it--do. I mention all the objections that occur to me as I go on, not because you can obviate them (except in the case of the prison-paper), but because if I make a point of doing so always you will feel and judge the more readily both for yourself and me too when I take an Italian flight.

YOU: How are the eyes getting on?

ME: I have been at work all day.

Ever faithfully.

[Sidenote: The same.]

BOULOGNE, _Sunday, 7th August, 1853._

MY DEAR WILLS,

Can't possibly write autographs until I have written ”Bleak House.” My work has been very hard since I have been here; and when I throw down my pen of a day, I throw down myself, and can take up neither article.

The ”C. P.” is very well done, but I cannot make up my mind to lend my blow to the great Forge-bellows of puffery at work. I so heartily desire to have nothing to do with it, that I wish you would cancel this article altogether, and subst.i.tute something else. As to the guide-books, I think they are a sufficiently flatulent botheration in themselves, without being discussed. A lurking desire is always upon me to put Mr.