Poem of the week: 'The Fine Old English Gentleman' by Charles Dickens
These satirical verses from the young author of Nicholas Nickleby pour scorn on his era's complacent Conservatives
“It would be a pity to let the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens pass by without including an example of his verse on Poem of the week. The novelist's poetic output was small: a few songs in The Pickwick Papers, poems for plays, and a brilliant trio of political squibs which appeared in the liberal journal The Examiner in 1841. This week's poem, "The Fine Old English Gentleman: New Version", is one of the latter, and the pick of the crop.
The poem was published on 7 August, signed simply "W". It embodies the writer's angry response to the election of Sir Robert Peel as British prime minister, replacing Lord Melbourne and his Whig ministry. The power shift was a serious threat to the liberal cause and its reforms…
The poem runs tirelessly through a roster of political injustice and corrupt practice, and every verse hits its targets… The corruption of the press is not forgotten. Neither is the repression of fellow literary liberals. The imprisonment of Leigh and John Hunt for their satire on the Prince Regent as "The Prince of Whales" prompts a particularly nice piece of ridicule: "For shutting men of letters up, through iron bars to grin / Because they didn't think the Prince was altogether thin"…
“Dickens's irony is deliberately heavy, and he may, after all, exceed rationality in blaming the Tories for all the ills of the past. But he drives the narrative forward with a storyteller's flair, seen both in the whole poem and in the individual verses, and, most importantly, his targets are real ones, and truly worthy of the cudgel. While appearing to generalise, he keeps his eye on historical detail. There's no doubt of an extraordinary skill in conveying and evoking strong feeling – as if the young writer, who had earlier thought of standing for the Liberals in Reading, seriously intended his pen to rally a band of "rebel heads" against the renewed Tory times. For us, the poem may, of course, gain further edge from a certain topicality.”
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/14/charles-dickens-gentlemen-poem-week/print