The Begging-Letter Writer Page #2

"The Begging-Letter Writer" is a short story by Charles Dickens that explores themes of poverty, social class, and the impact of charity. The narrative follows a writer who is asked to compose begging letters for the impoverished, revealing the struggles of the lower class and the complexities of compassion and deception. Through sharp wit and poignant observations, Dickens critiques societal attitudes toward the needy while illustrating the moral dilemmas faced by those on both sides of the begging letter. The story serves as a commentary on the human condition and the intricate relationships between wealth, desperation, and morality.

• Short story

								

expiated in the House of Correction.  Not long after his release, and on
a Sunday morning, he called with a letter (having first dusted himself
all over), in which he gave me to understand that, being resolved to earn
an honest livelihood, he had been travelling about the country with a
cart of crockery.  That he had been doing pretty well until the day
before, when his horse had dropped down dead near Chatham, in Kent.  That
this had reduced him to the unpleasant necessity of getting into the
shafts himself, and drawing the cart of crockery to London—a somewhat
exhausting pull of thirty miles.  That he did not venture to ask again
for money; but that if I would have the goodness to leave him out a
donkey, he would call for the animal before breakfast!

At another time my friend (I am describing actual experiences) introduced
himself as a literary gentleman in the last extremity of distress.  He
had had a play accepted at a certain Theatre—which was really open; its
representation was delayed by the indisposition of a leading actor—who
was really ill; and he and his were in a state of absolute starvation.
If he made his necessities known to the Manager of the Theatre, he put it
to me to say what kind of treatment he might expect?  Well! we got over
that difficulty to our mutual satisfaction.  A little while afterwards he
was in some other strait.  I think Mrs. Southcote, his wife, was in
extremity—and we adjusted that point too.  A little while afterwards he
had taken a new house, and was going headlong to ruin for want of a
water-butt.  I had my misgivings about the water-butt, and did not reply
to that epistle.  But a little while afterwards, I had reason to feel
penitent for my neglect.  He wrote me a few broken-hearted lines,
informing me that the dear partner of his sorrows died in his arms last
night at nine o’clock!

I despatched a trusty messenger to comfort the bereaved mourner and his
poor children; but the messenger went so soon, that the play was not
ready to be played out; my friend was not at home, and his wife was in a
most delightful state of health.  He was taken up by the Mendicity
Society (informally it afterwards appeared), and I presented myself at a
London Police-Office with my testimony against him.  The Magistrate was
wonderfully struck by his educational acquirements, deeply impressed by
the excellence of his letters, exceedingly sorry to see a man of his
attainments there, complimented him highly on his powers of composition,
and was quite charmed to have the agreeable duty of discharging him.  A
collection was made for the ‘poor fellow,’ as he was called in the
reports, and I left the court with a comfortable sense of being
universally regarded as a sort of monster.  Next day comes to me a friend
of mine, the governor of a large prison.  ‘Why did you ever go to the
Police-Office against that man,’ says he, ‘without coming to me first?  I
know all about him and his frauds.  He lodged in the house of one of my
warders, at the very time when he first wrote to you; and then he was
eating spring-lamb at eighteen-pence a pound, and early asparagus at I
don’t know how much a bundle!’  On that very same day, and in that very
same hour, my injured gentleman wrote a solemn address to me, demanding
to know what compensation I proposed to make him for his having passed
the night in a ‘loathsome dungeon.’  And next morning an Irish gentleman,
a member of the same fraternity, who had read the case, and was very well
persuaded I should be chary of going to that Police-Office again,
positively refused to leave my door for less than a sovereign, and,
resolved to besiege me into compliance, literally ‘sat down’ before it
for ten mortal hours.  The garrison being well provisioned, I remained
within the walls; and he raised the siege at midnight with a prodigious
alarum on the bell.

The Begging-Letter Writer often has an extensive circle of acquaintance.
Whole pages of the ‘Court Guide’ are ready to be references for him.
Noblemen and gentlemen write to say there never was such a man for
probity and virtue.  They have known him time out of mind, and there is
nothing they wouldn’t do for him.  Somehow, they don’t give him that one
pound ten he stands in need of; but perhaps it is not enough—they want to
do more, and his modesty will not allow it.  It is to be remarked of his
trade that it is a very fascinating one.  He never leaves it; and those
who are near to him become smitten with a love of it, too, and sooner or
later set up for themselves.  He employs a messenger—man, woman, or
child.  That messenger is certain ultimately to become an independent
Begging-Letter Writer.  His sons and daughters succeed to his calling,
and write begging-letters when he is no more.  He throws off the
infection of begging-letter writing, like the contagion of disease.  What
Sydney Smith so happily called ‘the dangerous luxury of dishonesty’ is
more tempting, and more catching, it would seem, in this instance than in
any other.

He always belongs to a Corresponding-Society of Begging-Letter Writers.
Any one who will, may ascertain this fact.  Give money to-day in
recognition of a begging-letter,—no matter how unlike a common
begging-letter,—and for the next fortnight you will have a rush of such
communications.  Steadily refuse to give; and the begging-letters become
Angels’ visits, until the Society is from some cause or other in a dull
way of business, and may as well try you as anybody else.  It is of
little use inquiring into the Begging-Letter Writer’s circumstances.  He
may be sometimes accidentally found out, as in the case already mentioned
(though that was not the first inquiry made); but apparent misery is
always a part of his trade, and real misery very often is, in the
intervals of spring-lamb and early asparagus.  It is naturally an
incident of his dissipated and dishonest life.

That the calling is a successful one, and that large sums of money are
gained by it, must be evident to anybody who reads the Police Reports of
such cases.  But, prosecutions are of rare occurrence, relatively to the
extent to which the trade is carried on.  The cause of this is to be
found (as no one knows better than the Begging-Letter Writer, for it is a
part of his speculation) in the aversion people feel to exhibit
themselves as having been imposed upon, or as having weakly gratified
their consciences with a lazy, flimsy substitute for the noblest of all
virtues.  There is a man at large, at the moment when this paper is
preparing for the press (on the 29th of April, 1850), and never once
taken up yet, who, within these twelvemonths, has been probably the most
audacious and the most successful swindler that even this trade has ever
known.  There has been something singularly base in this fellow’s
proceedings; it has been his business to write to all sorts and
conditions of people, in the names of persons of high reputation and
unblemished honour, professing to be in distress—the general admiration
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