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Passage Illustrated: Complementing The Third Head, "III. As It Might Be Made"

Throngs of people, pouring out from the lanes and alleys of the metropolis, to various places of common resort at some short distance from the town, to join in the refreshing sports and exercises of the day — the children gambolling in crowds upon the grass, the mothers looking on, and enjoying themselves the little game they seem only to direct; other parties strolling along some pleasant walks, or reposing in the shade of the stately trees; others again intent upon their different amusements. Nothing should be heard on all sides, but the sharp stroke of the bat as it sent the ball skimming along the ground, the clear ring of the quoit, as it struck upon the iron peg: the noisy murmur of many voices, and the loud shout of mirth and delight, which would awaken the echoes far and wide, till the fields rung with it. The day would pass away, in a series of enjoyments which would awaken no painful reflections when night arrived; for they would be calculated to bring with them, only health and contentment. The young would lose that dread of religion, which the sour austerity of its professors too often inculcates in youthful bosoms; and the old would find less difficulty in persuading them to respect its observances. The drunken and dissipated, deprived of any excuse for their misconduct, would no longer excite pity but disgust. Above all, the more ignorant and humble class of men, who now partake of many of the bitters of life, and taste but few of its sweets, would naturally feel attachment and respect for that code of morality, which, regarding the many hardships of their station, strove to alleviate its rigours, and endeavoured to soften its asperity.

This is what Sunday might be made, and what it might be made without impiety or profanation. The wise and beneficent Creator who places men upon earth, requires that they shall perform the duties of that station of life to which they are called, and He can never intend that the more a man strives to discharge those duties, the more he shall be debarred from happiness and enjoyment. Let those who have six days in the week for all the world’s pleasures, appropriate the seventh to fasting and gloom, either for their own sins or those of other people, if they like to bewail them; but let those who employ their six days in a worthier manner, devote their seventh to a different purpose. Let divines set the example of true morality: preach it to their flocks in the morning, and dismiss them to enjoy true rest in the afternoon; and let them select for their text, and let Sunday legislators take for their motto, the words which fell from the lips of that Master, whose precepts they misconstrue, and whose lessons they pervert — "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man to serve the Sabbath." ["III. As It Might Be Made," pp. 47-49]

Commentary: Social Activism or "Pie in the Sky"?

Nothing could be further from the crime-ridden slums of White Chapel, the social and physical milieu of The Adventures of Oliver Twist (February 1837 through April 1839 in Bentley's Miscellany) than twenty-four-year-old Charles Dickens's idealised working-class family's Sunday afternoon. The parish church, hypothesizes Dickens, could become a sort of community centre where whole families might participate in wholesome outdoor activities, including sports and recreation. Beyond the confines of the churchyard, whole families could participate in such educational experiences as attending museums and art galleries on Sundays. His point is that legislative reforms by themselves will not improve conditions for the working classes of the metropolis. The illustration provided by Phiz certainly eschews "fasting and gloom" on Sunday afternoon in the parish churchyard. Taking his cue from Sparks, Phiz has depicted an elderly parishioner (once, a champion cricketer) with a cane, attended by his married daughter, her young husband (decently dressed, but obviously not a professional), and some half-dozen children. Although the church spire still points heavenward as in second wood-engraving, here it is framed and softened by abundant greenery, and is not the massive, square Gothic tower which dominates the backdrop of Sunday As It Is. Moreover, it no longer looms ominously over the figures as in the first full-page illustration, but has receded into the background. Moreover, Phiz has conceived of the church in specifically rural terms: this is not the dominating urban edifice of "Sunday as it is," and therefore the image undermines Sparks' argument about the local church's providing recreation for the urban proletariat, who indeed do not feature in the miscellaneous frequenters of the country churchyard this Sunday afternoon. The six adults and numerous small children are framed by leafy boughs, and a picnic appears to be in progress among the figures on the sward, right of centre.

Here Phiz has realised what Dickens sees in his imagination, "some large field, or open piece of ground, in every outskirt of london, exhibiting each Sunday evening on a larger scale, the scene of the little country meadow." (46). The illustrator has contrasted the Present's scenes of debauchery and drunkenness, with yet another familial idyll as three generations enjoy each other's company in a tranquil arboreal setting. However, Phiz has not attempted to depict members of the working class crowding into "museums, and repositories of scientific and useful inventions" (46) in the city. Apparently, the older generation are watching their children play cricket and quoits, physical activities which would "bring with them, only health and contentment" (47). The grandfather appears to be trying to participate in the children's game. Indeed, this scene originated at the very time that Dickens was composing the cricket match scene for The Pickwick Papers, Chapter VII, illustrated by Seymour's replacement, Robert W. Buss, for the June 1836 (third) serial instalment. [M. D. Allen]

The Final Scene as a Conclusion to the 1836 Essay: The Care of the Kindly Clergyman

Dickens’s polemical aim is clear and focused throughout “Sunday Under Three Heads.” In the second “head,” “As Sabbath Bills Would Make It,” the evils that would be wrought or exacerbated by a legalized and aggressive Sabbatarianism are described in terms reminiscent of some of the grimmer scenes (“Regard well the closeness of these crowded rooms, and the noisome exhalations that rise from the drains and kennels”) in Oliver Twist, begun the next year; whereas in the first “head,” “As It Is,” and the third, “As It Might Be Made,” he employs the idealizing glow found, for example, in the treatment of the home life of the Cratchits and Peggottys in A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. It is in these sections that Dickens wishes to insist on the virtues and legitimate pleasures of “the humbler classes of society” (“Their good humour and delight knew no bounds”), virtues and pleasures that no self-righteous legislator should be permitted to thwart.

In “As It Might Be Made,” the healthy delights afforded by a compassionate and genuinely Christian attitude to the seventh day take various forms. Although Dickens (under the pseudonym “Timothy Sparks”) insists on the benefits that would accrue to urbanites, including their ability to visit museums and “repositories of scientific and useful inventions,” institutions which he hopefully envisages as “crowded with ingenious mechanics and industrious artisans, all anxious for information,” he sees even town-dwellers as eager to head towards field and stream. And his most evocative and powerful paragraphs are set in an idyllicised English countryside by a “small village,” which in the very next line has become even “a little hamlet.”

He writes of a service in a picture-perfect country church in which the sermon is “well adapted to the comprehension of the hearers,” and the clergyman knows individually, and takes a personal interest in, his parishioners. But it is during the evening that the edenic felicity of the spot and its inhabitants is made most plain, when the narrator hears “shouts of merriment” occasioned by “a very animated game of cricket.” As the clergyman approaches, the narrator fears, despite his experience of the morning, an angrily sabbatarian condemnation of the game. No need! He is told that it is this very clergyman who has instigated the game, which is being played in his field, and even that it was “he who had purchased stamps, bats, ball, and all!” The narrator goes on to wish he could see such scenes around London: “Nothing should be heard on all sides, but the sharp stroke of the bat as it sent the ball skimming along the ground . . . : and the loud shout of mirth and delight, which would awaken the echoes far and wide, till the [outskirts of London] rung with it” (47). [Philip V. Allingham]

Dickens and Cricket: The Buss and Phiz illustrations

The only other game of cricket of which I am aware in Dickens’s work is that between Muggleton and Dingley Dell in Part III of the Pickwick Papers, which, like “Sunday,” was written during the second half of June 1836. The mocking tone here, however, is very different from the reverence shown the sport in “Sunday Under Three Heads.” Indeed, one wonders in the case of Pickwick just how familiar Dickens was with the game. It might, perhaps, be pedantic to wonder why in the imagined game played on the outskirts of London in “Sunday” the ball, as a characteristic event, is “sent skimming along the ground” when it is the aim of any batsman, an aim sometimes gloriously fulfilled, to send it sailing through the heavens past the boundary line without bouncing, an automatic six runs, or at least beyond the closer fielders, for as many runs as the batsmen think they can risk. But one makes in vain any attempt to follow the game featuring Luffey and Struggles, bowling for Dingley Dell, and Dumkins and Podder, batting for Muggleton (the comic names are revealing, of course), although it must be admitted that Podder does send the balls “flying to all parts of the field.” Eventually Dumkins is caught out and Podder is stumped (no other batsman is named or, perhaps, envisaged as playing), Muggleton’s fifty-four is seen as a high score, “the score of the Dingley Dellers is as blank as their faces” (but they haven’t yet batted), and Luffey and Struggles, again the only players named on their side, seem to be the leading batsmen for their team, as well as the most formidable bowlers. None of this, of course, interferes very much with the fun of reading about the game.

Two plates were made to illustrate a cricket match at about the same time for the same publishers. Robert William Buss (1804-75), the creator of the first, was taken on hurriedly by Dickens’s publishers after the suicide of Robert Seymour. But Buss did not give satisfaction: he had no experience in etching, having been trained as an engraver, and eventually handed his two attempts for Part III (June 1836), Chapters 6, 7, and 8: The Cricket Match and The Fat Boy Awake over to a professional engraver, “whose faithful execution lacked the verve and spontaneity of the original artist’s hand” (Schlicke 64). Chapman and Hall probably found the figures oversized and angular, their poses stiff, and their expressions too uniformly open-mouthed or vacant” (Cohen, "Robert Buss," 53). One takes the point of these criticisms, but The Cricket March does actually give the viewer an idea of what happens during a game: one sees the two batsmen, wickets, a wicket-keeper, and a fielder. Admittedly it does not reflect Dickens’s mocking attitude to the faux-heroic players of Muggleton and Dingley Dell and apparently to the game itself.

R. W. Buss was replaced by Hablot Knight Browne (1815-82), the famous Phiz, prolific illustrator to Dickens from 1836 through 1859. His pleasantly sentimental depiction of a scene in the “little hamlet” represents well the gently escapist mood of the third part of “Sunday Under Three Heads”: the old man, a formidable cricketer in his youth, at least in his own recounting, demonstratively poses, although apparently with a stick rather than a bat; his grand-daughter and her intended show him friendly respect; children gambol in the foreground and further within the world of the illustration. The church, although not “a low-roofed building with small arched windows” (41), embodies the idealism of the fictive world Dickens has created in his polemic, the whole being framed by symbols of the peaceful fecundity of the “west of England.” The proleptic illustration is so agreeable that one hesitates to observe that “The Cricket Match” would here be no suitable title. [M. D. Allen]

Bibliography

Buchanan-Browne, John. Phiz! Illustrator of Dickens' World. New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1978.

Cohen, Jane Rabb. "Chapter Three: Robert Buss." Charles Dickens and His Original Illustrators. Columbus: Ohio State U. P., 1980, pp. 51-58.

Davis, Paul. "Sunday under Three Heads." Charles Dickens A top Z: The Essential Reference to His Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, 1998. 371.

Dickens, Charles. "Pickwick Papers (1836-37). Illustrated by Robert Seymour, R. W. Buss, and Hablot Knight Browne. London: Chapman & Hall. Part Three (June 1836).

Dickens, Charles. Sunday Under Three Heads. Illustrated by Phiz [Hablột Knight Browne]. In One Vol. Project Gutenberg. Last Updated: August 19, 2024. Rpt.London: J. W. Jarvis & Son, 28, King William Street, Strand, 1 February 1884. Pp. v + 49.

Lester, Valerie Browne. Chapter Six, "The Collaborators." Phiz: The Man Who Drew Dickens. London: Chatto and Windus, 2004. Pp. 39-51.

Patten, Robert L. "Buss, Robert William." The Oxford Companion to Dickens, ed. Paul Schlicke. Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 64-65

Slater, Michael. Chapter 4: "Break-through Year: 1836." Charles Dickens. London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Pp. 59-83.

Sparks, Timothy. [Charles Dickens] Sunday Under Three Heads — As it is; as Sabbath Bills would make it; as it might be made. London: Chapman and Hall, 1836.

Steig, Michael. Dickens and Phiz. Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1978.

"Sunday Under Three Heads: An Example of Early Social Activism by Charles Dickens." 30 March 2021. DickensLit.com: Charles Dickens Online.

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Created 31 October 2024