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Abstract
This article will focus on the experience of one practitioner of one particular system of shorthand: the use by Charles Dickens of Thomas Gurney’s shorthand system, first when he worked at Doctors’ Commons (probably 1828–1831) and then as a parliamentary reporter in Westminster (roughly 1831–1834). My focus of interest is not so much the linguistic details of Gurney’s shorthand, which has been studied elsewhere, but the context in which this system was used by Dickens in his work as a reporter. I will explain how Dickens learnt the Gurney’s system and used it professionally, how his experience is given literary form in the character of David Copperfield, what it was like to report in Parliament in the 1830s and how Dickens’ experience as a shorthand writer influenced his writing and his political outlook.
Notes
1 On the history of the Gurney system, see Gurney-Salter (Citation1924).
2 The annotated bibliography in Westby-Gibson (Citation1887) remains the most useful starting point for the history of British shorthand, supplemented by listings in Brown and Haskell (Citation1935), Wedegärtner (Citation1968) and Alston (Citation1974).
3 See the discussion and further references in MacMahon (Citation1981), Hughes (Citation1992) and Slembrouck (Citation1992).
4 On the institutional uses of shorthand, see the studies by Underhill (Citation2013, 2015). For an informal and more general introduction, see Butler (Citation1951).
5 The editors of Dickens’ letters admit that we don’t know the precise date that Dickens started working in Parliament, or which publication he first worked for. They take a chance remark in a letter of 17 March 1831, ‘I was so exceedingly tired from last night’s exertions’, as ‘possibly indirect evidence’ that he was working for the Mirror of Parliament then, and so may have reported the debates on the Great Reform Act, which went through Parliament in that month. See House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 2). However, Forster, Dickens’ friend and biographer, says ‘His first parliamentary service was given to the True Sun’ (Forster, Citation1876), though the date Forster gives for Dickens starting work there predates the newspaper’s first published edition.
6 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 8: 131), quoted in Hessell (Citation2014: 129).
7 Forster (Citation1876, vol. 1: 58).
8 Forster (Citation1876, vol. 1: 61).
9 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 3). Forster says that Beard ‘often’ made this claim (Forster Citation1876, vol. 1: 55).
10 Dickens’ work as a reporter receives only cursory discussion in otherwise exhaustive biographies, such as Ackroyd (Citation1991), Slater (Citation2011), Tomalin (Citation2011), Callow (Citation2012) and Hibbert (Citation1968).
11 Hibbert (Citation1968: 52). Dickens obviously uses ‘wonderful’ to mean ‘incredible’ or ‘unbelievable’.
12 Forster (Citation1876, vol. 1: 25)
13 K.J. Fielding (ed.) The Speeches of Charles Dickens (1960: 240); quoted in Slater (Citation2011: 25).
14 Referred to as DC throughout. ‘Of all my books, I like this one the best … like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield’ (DC, preface, vi). I give references to Dickens’ novels by chapter as well as page, since so many editions are available. See Dickens [Citation1849–1850] 1892.
15 ‘Commons’ here means Doctors’ Commons, not the House of Commons.
16 See e.g. Carlton (Citation1926: 38).
17 Forster (Citation1876, vol. 1: 54).
18 See e.g. Carlton (Citation1926: 96) and Slater (Citation2011: 32): ‘it was apparently … John Barrow who taught Charles shorthand’.
19 The date is from Callow (Citation2012: 38); Slater suggests a less precise ‘some time in 1829’ for starting work in Doctors’ Commons (Slater Citation2011: 32).
20 ‘Doctors’ commons’ in Sketches by Boz (Citation[1836] 1892: 79, 80).
21 Forster (Citation1876, vol. 1: 55, 58).
22 Dickens, Charles (Citation[1852–1853] 2003: ch. 1 p. 15).
23 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 43). He became a student of the middle temple in December 1839 but was never called to the bar.
24 Mirror of Parliament (1828, vol. 1, p. 2).
25 Advertisement in the Gentleman’s Magazine, April to June 1828, dated April 25, 1828, unpaginated.
26 Hansard (1852, 2.4, col. 584), 3rd series, vol. 120.
27 Hansard, (1877, 20.4, col. 1578), 3rd series, vol. 233.
28 Hansard (1834, 4.2, col. iii), vol. 21.
29 Advertisement in the Gentleman’s Magazine, April to June 1828, dated April 25, 1828, unpaginated. In 1909, the Official Report was set up with the aims of being both a full and a first-personal report in its terms of reference, and these still apply today; although the publication is known as Hansard, its aims lie more with John Barrow than Thomas Hansard.
30 Fraser’s Magazine 2 (9), October 1830, p. 292, quoted in Chittick (Citation1990: 12). The system of using teams of reporters to cover debates rather than one individual was, Carlton says, originated by James Perry, editor of the Gazeteer, in the 1780s (Carlton Citation1926: 98); for more on this, see Sparrow (Citation2003: 27). The £300 salary is about £24,000 today; a new reporter in the House of Lords would start on about £10,000 more than that. The list system is still in use in Parliament today. See Vice and Farrell (Citation2016) for more detail.
31 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 69).
32 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 73).
33 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 30).
34 Fraser’s Magazine, 4 (21) October 1831, p. 319.
35 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 67).
36 Reminiscence from Collier, quoted in Carlton (Citation1926: 100, 101).
37 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 62).
38 ‘A parliamentary sketch’ in Sketches by Boz (Citation[1836] 1892: 145).
39 Forster (Citation1876, vol. 1: 352).
40 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 71).
41 House and Storey (Citation1965–2002, vol. 1: 64–72).
42 Hessell Citation2014: 146. The memoir is from Julian Charles Young, who based it on a conversation with Dickens.
43 The Mirror of Parliament, 22 December 1837; the quotes here are all from a Commons debate on affairs in Canada. Hansard used much more descriptive stage directions, and only adopted the approach of The Mirror of Parliament in the late 1880s, and exclusively used it from the 1920s.
44 Sketches by Boz (Citation[1836] 1892: 21).
45 ‘Mr KWAKLEY stated the result of some most ingenious statistical inquiries relative to the difference between the value of the qualification of several members of Parliament as published to the world, and its real nature and amount … the amount of such income possessed by each was 0 pounds, 0 shillings, and 0 pence, yielding an average of the same. (Great laughter.)’ Dickens, Charles [1837–1838] 2017. Mudfog and other sketches. London: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (64). Much of ‘Mudfog’ is laid out like a parody of Hansard, with speakers being reported in the third person.
46 Dickens, Charles (Citation[1836–1837] 1892: ch. 1: 5, 6).
47 Ackroyd (Citation1991:132). The only source for Dickens learning Gurney’s system in three months that I am aware of is the passage in David Copperfield quoted above: ‘in three or four months I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers in the Commons’; however, the skills he acquired in that short period left his ‘imbecile pencil staggering about the paper as if it were in a fit!’ (DC, ch. 38: 508).
48 Quoted in Carlton (Citation1926: 133).
49 Callow (Citation2012: 54). David Copperfield attributes much more sober and Victorian values to his success as a reporter: ‘I never could have done what I have done without the habits of punctuality, order and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time. I do not hold one natural gift, I daresay, that I have not abused … whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well … Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand on anything on which I could not throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules’ (DC, ch. 47: 565-6).
50 John Payne Collier (Citation1872, part III, p. 12), quoted in Carlton (Citation1926: 96). Collier was quoting John Barrow’s opinion of Dickens’ shorthand. Collier writes more fully: ‘I enquired his nephew’s qualifications, and the reply was that he was extremely clever, and that he (Barrow) had taught him Gurney’s shorthand, which he wrote well, as had been proved on the True Sun’ (Carlton Citation1926: 96).
51 Collier (Citation1872, part III, p. viii). The timeline attributed to Dickens’ father is fuzzy; Dickens didn’t start working for the Morning Chronicle at the start of his career.
52 I am here applying Sigmund Freud’s wise maxim, ‘it is unavoidable that if we learn more about a great man’s life we shall also hear of occasions on which he has in fact done no better than we, has in fact come near to us as a human being.’ Freud (Citation[1930] 1987: 471).
53 Schlicke (Citation2011: 463). Dickens moderated ‘dung heap’ to ‘cinder-heap’ in Hard Times – more on that below.
54 Schlicke (Citation2011: 463).
55 Callow (Citation2012: 329). Parliament, he said, gives ‘little adequate expression of … or apparent understanding of the general mind’, and debates were ‘a great deal of the reproof valiant and the counter check quarrelsome’. Schlicke (Citation2011: 463).
56 Schlicke (Citation2011: 324).
57 ‘A Parliamentary Sketch’ in Sketches by Boz Citation([1836] 1892: 145).
58 ‘Tales’ Sketches by Boz (Citation[1836] 1892: 303).
59 The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club [1836–1837] 1892 (ch 13: 170).
60 Nicholas Nickleby (Citation[1838–1839] 2003, ch. 16: 191).
61 Dickens, Charles. [1843]. A Christmas carol and other stories. London: Reader’s Digest Association. (Stave 1: 18-19). Poor Fred replies, ‘Don’t be angry with me, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow.’
62 Dickens, Charles. [1854] 2003. Hard Times. London: Penguin Books. (Book 2, ch. 11: 199). See also (book 2 ch. 12: 207) and (book 2 ch. 9: 191) for similar comments on Parliament.
63 Schlicke (Citation2011: 102). Dickens’ politics was built on benevolence, generosity and love, an outlook which has been sharply summarised as ‘the immense spiritual power of the Christmas turkey’ (Margaret Oliphant, in Tombs Citation2014: 423). George Orwell perceptively observed that Dickens ‘attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached. Yet he managed to do so without making himself hated [and] he has become a national institution’. As Robert Tombs says, jolly Christmases and failing hospitals are both Dickensian (Orwell Citation2014: 36; Tombs Citation2014: 423).
64 Ackroyd (Citation1991: 134). The quote is of George Dolby, an old colleague of Dickens’.
65 Newspaper Press Fund Speech, May 1865, in Forster (1872–1874, vol. 1: 61).
66 I am very grateful to David Cram, Sue Vice, Will Humphreys-Jones, Carole Smith and Harriet Coles for their help and support with this article.