Tell us about Copperfield and Oliver
and his wishing for the dishing out of more
let’s hear about the optimist Micawber,
his persistent hopes of what lay up afore.
Do divulge of Mister Scrooge and poor Miss Havisham,
that disenchanted woman who set all her world alight.
Tell us any of your stories that you fancy
but please don’t tell us Nancy’s tale tonight.
Let your prose expose those social conditions
where there should be an improvement of the plight.
Tell us and impel us to correction,
to protection and to setting things aright.
Perhaps pick one of Mister Pickwick’s Papers,
Dingley Dell at Christmastime, would do us very well
but please don’t tell us Nancy’s tale tonight.
Don’t spill the beans of her and Bill.
Don’t put your public through the mill,
Mr Dickens as you will
yes, as you fancy, up until
That villainous and sinking bag of spite.
Let common sympathy prevail
leave us hearty, leave us hale
and please don’t tell us Nancy’s tale tonight.
The steps of The British Library 14.vi.11
Dear Mister Pickwick,
I have been reading your papers, and am enjoying your capering very much. I obtained my green volume of these adventures from my local public library lending department. I feel sure that your creator, Mister C. Dickens, would have approved of such places – particularly because of the benefit to readers unable to afford a text of their own. I have renewed the book 4 times and paid about 70 pence in fines, but you are worth it. 70 pence is fourteen shillings in your money. There have been many changes since your day; far fewer people wear hats for instance. Also, in your day, did you have, I wonder, telescopic handles to pull your luggage along? You are always travelling about, aren’t you? Today, I read aloud a bit of one of your travels to some blue-clad schoolchildren in Northumberland – the story where you mistakenly settled in the twin room of a hotel in Ipswich, which was actually the accommodation of an unsuspecting woman. There you were, in your nightcap, behind the curtain of the bed, ready for sleeping when in she comes and starts her preparations for dreaming, not dreaming that you are in the immediate vicinity. I asked the youngsters to relate the tale in verse and one of them put: ‘Mister Pickwick went to bed, with his nightcap on his head.’ (Yes, you even wore hats to sleep in in your day.) And someone else called Shannon wrote, ‘Mr Pickwick in his night cap, watching the woman take off her slap.’ Yes, Mister Pickwick, you can be gratified in knowing that the youth of another millennium are engaged by your appearance, your ambience and your antics. Here is a drawing for you to complete.
Your admirer