February 7 was the birth anniversary of renowned author Charles Dickens who, surprisingly, had a connection with this hill station in North India.
Dickens was born on February 7, 1812. In 2012, his bicentenary was celebrated all over the world. Mussoorie has been home to many writers and it is indeed a matter of great pride for the city that it even had a correspondent living here in the nineteenth century who wrote for two magazines edited by Charles Dickens namely Household Words and All the Year Round. John lang, the brilliant Australian writer and lawyer who was one of the famous correspondents who wrote for Household Words, a weekly magazine established by Charles Dickens, spent the last years of his life in Mussoorie. He died here on August 20, 1864, at the age of 48. The story of his life in Mussoorie is integral part of the hill station's almost two hundred year old history.
In Wanderings in India, his travelogue, lang has given vivid descriptions of the natural splendour Mussoorie was endowed with. He has written a long article on the famous "Himalaya Club" which was then the centre of all social activity and is now a hotel, located in the landour area of Mussoorie. Balls, carnivals, gambling and music marked the social life of which this club was the centre. lang also describes how "God Save the Queen" was sung on the Mall Road and the Marchpast conducted to the accompaniment of a band. This article appeared in the issue of Household Words dated March 21, 1857.
Noted contributors to Household Words included Dickens's deputy-editor, WH Wills, and members of the "stable" of writers Dickens patronized, encouraged, exhorted and criticized: Dickens's close friends Sir Edward GD Bulwer-lytton, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Chancy Hare Townshend, John Forster, Wilkie Collins, two colonial journalists, John Capper and John lang, Charles Whitehead, Edwin Arnold, Mary Howitt, Dora Greenell, William Cox Bennett, John Critchley Prince, Thomas Miller, Mary Jane Tomkins and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Household Words betrays itself as a Shakespearean allusion in its full title: "Familiar in their mouths as Household Words" (Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii, line, 52 - in the young monarch's famous "Saint Crispin's day" speech). Charles Dickens and his london publishers, Bradbury and Evans, founded Household Words, as a weekly magazine with the purpose "to show to all, that in all familiar things, even those which are repellant on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out".
Dickens's own contributions to Household Words were both plentiful and significant: in addition to providing the magazine with weekly instalments of Hard Times, in its pages he published both A Child's History of England (1851) andThe lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices (1857) serially, and contributed in his own right 108 essays and articles (as well as collaborating on a further 45).
Over a quarter of the pieces in Household Words were written by Dickens's regular editorial staff of five (Dickens, Collins, Wills, Horne, and Morley). When news of the 1857 revolution (called "mutiny" by the British) broke in Britain , Household Words responded slowly and cautiously. Not until the publication of John lang's series "Wanderings in India" which appeared from November 1857 to February 1858 did the journal produce a consistent reaction to the revolution.
Set in 1849-91, the series of 12 instalments posed as a straightforward travelogue that retrospectively prophesied and explained the rebellion, as it were. lang also used to contribute to All the Year Around, also edited by Dickens.