The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1891-01-25
Wakeman's Account of a Visit
to Dear Old Bowes.
THE WILD MooRS OF YORKSHIRE
AND FAMOUS UNICORN INN.
The wretched Abode of ssSmike'' and
'sNicholas Nfcl1leby.' as Pictured
I'm Dickens Great Novel of ssNicho-
Las Nickleby.''
Irregular Correspondence of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1911

Irregular Correspondence of the SUNDAY
UNION. Copyright, 1871
YORK, England, Jan. 8, 1891.
Probably the greatest immediate and
lasting good ever done any nation by
single work of fiction was effected by the
Nicholas Nickleby' of Charles Dickens.
During the early part of the present
century the private schools, and particu-
larly the boys schools of England, with
few notable exceptions like that of
Rugby, were the most infamous in the
world. If there can be superiority in in
fanny, Yorkshire stood first and best
Dickens himself said of its private school
masters: TRADERS in the avarice, indif-
ference or imbecility of parents, and the
helplessness Of children; ignorant, sordid,
brutal men, TO whom few considerate
persons would have entrusted the board
and lodging of a horse or dog; they
formed the worthy cornerstone of a
structure which, for absurdity and a mag
nificent high-minded loiSses-aller ne
glect, has rarely been exceeded in the
world"
How Dickens grand and humane ge-
MUS came to espouse the cause of the
hosts of helpless and outraged children
IN England is a pleasing Renaissance of
his magnificent literary career. The
Notwithstanding world was still in rap
lures over his first success under the nom
de-piume of Boz" His publishers,
Chapman& Hall, OF London, had immedi-
ately engaged another work from his pen,
TO appear in parts. Its plan and scope
We're still subjects for discussion, and,
under the burdens and impositions of the
young authors new relation TO men and
things, a grievous and desperate anxiety
fn I..f 1,
unrest and perturbation, there fioated
into his mind misty rehabilitation o
his own vague childish fancies regardingf
Yorkshire schools. He tells of these in
his own inimitable way in the last pre-
face written by him for Nicholas MCKEE
by" He says: Il cannot call to mind
now how | came to hear about York shire
schools when | was not very robust
child sitting in by-placeS near Rochester
Castle, with head full of Partridge, Strap
Tom Pipe and Sancho PanZa; but l know
that my first impressions of them We're
picked up at that time, and that they were
somehow or other connected with a sup
purated abscess that some boy had come
home with, in consequence Of his York
shire guide, philosopher and friend hav-
ing ripped it open with an inky PEN
knife"
Here was opportunity for great and
merciful motive in fiction. With a boon
companion, talbot Browne, Dickens left
London few weeks before Christmas of
1887. The two made a thorough pilgrim
age OF Yorkshire on the old post-chaise
routes, gathering, under all manner of
pretenseS, every possible fact bearing on
the accursed system; consulting files of
old newspapers in York and neighboring
cities for records of damage suits brought
against proprietors of these schools for
cruelty; wheedling his way into this OBJ
scure den and forcing his way into that
al Lost fI,a ,@x+N 4
most dreary portion of northern York
shire, coming upon a nest of the dreadful
places at and near the then thriving vii
lage of Bowes. Here Dickens remained
for time. He had letters to a yeoman of
the place, soon to shine as one of the i'm
nortals of fiction as honest "John Brow
die" He represented himself as agent of
a poor widow DESTROYS OF placing her only
boy in q quiet country school. In this
way he secured admission to number in
the vicinity, though shut out of some by
the wary masters. The school" SEEM
ing most suitable as prototype of them
all, from the personnel of its savage
owner and his family, with wild and
desolate physical surroundings, in keep
ing with the hopelessness of the school
life of the place itself, was the Dotheboys
Hall, still standing in Bowes, where
misery, the wretched ''Smike," and scores
of other helpless young lives, are depicted
as undergoing an almost inconceivable
life of servitude, starvation and cruelty.
Investigations showed that the horrible
picture drawn was not an exaggeration,
and bore out Dickens own statement in
the original preface, that "Mr. Squeers
and his school are faint and feeble pic
lures of an extinct reality, purposely sub
dued and kept down lest they should be
deemed impossible." This, Dickens sec
ond, and in some respects his greatest,
pnyal W. hntr11r in A nd
ished in October, 1889. AT the appearance
of the first part he ran away from Lon
don, as he always did, to remain in hid
ing until distinct measure of public IA
vor or disfavor was shown. In the case
of Nicholas Nickleby'' his forgivable
skulking was of short duration. The first
days sale of the first part exceeded $4,000
copies. Not six months had passed be-
fore the torture and cruelty to helpless
scholars in these remote prison pens were
abated, and before the last chapter of
Nicholas Nickleby" had been read, pub
lie feeling, which in many portions of the
country barely escaped expression of
riot, had annihilated every child-hell of
the Dotheboys Hall variety in England
Famous and infamous as Dickens made
Bowes, few in England had ever before
heard of the village. To the millions who
learned BoweS-eyery object in it, its
surroundings and every room in Dothe-
boys Hall, by heart-it was a purely fic-
tional town. / asked over 500 Intelligent
people in England where Bowes was.
and never found an individual who knew
until l came to Kirby Stephen, in the
moorland wilds of Northeastern West
moreland, sixteen miles away. Even in
that town nobody seemed to know, until
found rustic antiquarian who had at
one time discovered an old Roman coin
at BoweS, and who, after hard struggle.
remembered where it lay, over beyond
wild old StanpnOrQ mountain ssDaaJ II,
its shell " as he put it, in ending an adj
Duration not to cross Stanemoor that day
unless willing to risk being blown from
the road into the rock-beds of its passes,
or worse, meeting the bowling, ferocious
warlock hays which, during every wild
mountain storm, waylay belated travel
ers at the lonely site of Rere Cross. But
the pilgrimage was to rescue from obliv-
ion the actual site of national infamy
and fix in the real geography of literature
the location and enyironS of spot, dim,
heeting and phantom-like in the minds
of millions in the Old World and the
New. No two stout American legs could
shrink from this, even though the wind
fairly Shrleked III its mad way from Sol
way Firth TO the German Ocean, pound
ing the sides of Westmoreland moors
and fells with mighty balls of fog which
slid and ricocheted over Langdon Fell and
Brownber Edge to rebound against the
sides of the loftier Stanemoor nights, and
finally be hurled over the mountain
upon dreary, dead Bowes, as if to crush
every remaining silver of its meager old
shell.
over the same coach-road as did Nicholas
NiclSleby, when, nearing the end of his
dreary journey, lat about 6 o'clock that
night, he and Mr.. Squeers and the little
boys and their united luggage We're put
down at the George and New Inn.' Won
!, hx-t ba old !