Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman & Hall edition (TheWorks of Charles Dickens, volume 28) , email
SUNDAY UNDER THREE HEADS
By CHARLES DICKENS
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905
DEDICATION
To The Right Reverend
THE BISHOP OF LONDON
My Lord,
You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on thevicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sundayexcursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forthoccasional demonstrations of those extreme opinions on thesubject, which are very generally received with derision, if notwith contempt.
Your elevated station, my Lord, affords you countlessopportunities of increasing the comforts and pleasures of thehumbler classes of society—not by the expenditure of thesmallest portion of your princely income, but by merelysanctioning with the influence of your example, their harmlesspastimes, and innocent recreations.
That your Lordship would ever have contemplated Sundayrecreations with so much horror, if you had been at allacquainted with the wants and necessities of the people whoindulged in them, I cannot imagine possible. That a Prelateof your elevated rank has the faintest conception of the extentof those wants, and the nature of those necessities, I do notbelieve.
For these reasons, I venture to address this little Pamphletto your Lordship’s consideration. I am quiteconscious that the outlines I have drawn, afford but a veryimperfect description of the feelings they are intended toillustrate; but I claim for them one merit—their truth andfreedom from exaggeration. I may have fallen short of themark, but I have never overshot it: and while I have pointed outwhat appears to me, to be injustice on the part of others, I hopeI have carefully abstained from committing it myself.
I am,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s mostobedient,
Humble Servant,
TIMOTHY SPARKS.
June, 1836.
I
AS IT IS
There are few things from which Iderive greater pleasure, than walking through some of theprincipal streets of London on a fine Sunday, in summer, andwatching the cheerful faces of the lively groups with which theyare thronged. There is something, to my eyes at least,exceedingly pleasing in the general desire evinced by the humblerclasses of society, to appear neat and clean on this their onlyholiday. There are many grave old persons, I know, whoshake their heads with an air of profound wisdom, and tell youthat poor people dress too well now-a-days; that when they werechildren, folks knew their stations in life better; that you maydepend upon it, no good will come of this sort of thing in theend,—and so forth: but I fancy I can discern in the finebonnet of the working-man’s wife, or the feather-bedizenedhat of his child, no inconsiderable evidence of good feeling onthe part of the man himself, and an affectionate desire to expendthe few shillings he can spare from his week’s wages, inimproving the appearance and adding to the happiness of those whoare nearest and dearest to him. This may be a very heinousand unbecoming degree of vanity, perhaps, and the money mightpossibly be applied to