Champion of the People

In our day there’s hardly a person who doesn’t know the name Charles Dickens. He’s best known, of course, for writing the powerful classic “A Christmas Carol.” And his other most famous works include “Oliver Twist,” and “A Tale of Two Cities.” Many lines from his work have become commonly quoted as clichés. Who can’t relate to the well-known words, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times?” But what most people don’t realize is that Dickens didn’t just write about social injustice and the plight of the poor, he was very devoted to actively doing something about it. This is something that will surely come up more in my future writings on the inimitable Mr. Dickens, but there’s a particular thought I want to share with you now.

In the book “Dickens” by Peter Ackroyd, in talking about his burial in London, he writes, “His grave at Westminster Abbey was left open for two days. At the end of the first day, there were still one thousand people outside waiting to pay their respects. So for those two days the crowds of people passed by in procession, many of them dropping flowers onto his coffin - ‘among which,’ his son said, ‘were afterwards found several small rough bouquets of flowers tied up with pieces of rag.’ There in the ragged bundles of flowers, no doubt picked from the hedgerows and fields, we see the source and emblem of Charles Dickens’s authority. Even to the labouring men and women there was in his death a grievous sense of loss; they felt that he had in large measure understood them and that, in his death, they had also lost something of themselves.”

I continue to feel deeply touched by this story. When we pass from this world, who do we want to be remembered by, and what do we want to be remembered for? Dickens himself stated that his writings would tell who he was; people didn’t need to know anything more (or words to that effect). That may be partly true, but it is important to know that he stood for what he wrote and he wrote about what he stood for. As a writer, I hope to endeavor to do just a little bit of the same.