Copying and Reporting Life (1830–1833)

London, 1830. In the topographical watercolours of George’ sidney’ Shepherd and George Scharf, the city is depicted not as a placid, neoclassical panorama — a civilization resting on its laurels — but as a place of accelerating change and incongruous juxtapositions. It looks like a spectacularly unregulated building site, what Dickens was later to call in an article about the engineering works at Euston, ‘an unsettled neighbourhood.’ It was unsettled physically and also politically, with the death of George IV in June, a General Election in July, newspaper reports in August of the Paris revolution, the reassembly of Parliament in October, and, in November, after 47 years out of office, the return of a Whig-led government, bringing representatives of radical new partnerships between the middle and working classes into untried alliance with the party aristocracy. Planned legislation, much of it imbued with Benthamite social philosophy acting through the newly-appointed Commissions, included reform of Parliamentary representation, a complete overhaul of town corporations, ‘improvements’ to the Poor Law, and, in return for the support of the hundred Irish MPs under the fiery leadership of Daniel O’Connell, its corollary at every turn was the condition of Ireland and the Irish. By 1832, armed rebellion, revolutionary uprisings in major cities, were not just a ‘spectre’ imaged by later historians, but a real and present danger. Not only was the reform programme furiously debated, but the precise manner in which the contests were recorded and mediated to the country was the subject of intense, and, in stylistic terms, subtle scrutiny.