Item Info

Accession Number: 81-1077
Transcription: What is Sensational? Under this title I want the most ferocious and bitter attack made upon Mr. Hardy of the Poor Law Board, that can possibly be made by a writer who respects himself and his vocation. In his official capacity Mr. Hardy refers to the case of a wretched pauper (I think his name was Gibson) who died under the most frightful circumstances of disease, neglect and filth in a workhouse. And being quite unable to contradict the facts, Mr. Hardy says the case was the subject of "Sensational" articles in the Newspapers. What does he mean by Sensational? Is it Sensational to tell the Truth? Is it Sensational to call the public attention to a noteworthy example of a costly Board existing under false pretences and showing mankind How not to do it? Is it Sensational to be poor, abject, wretched, dying? Is it Sensational in a public officer when he has nothing to say for his Department, basely and meanly to shelter himself under the Miserable Slang of the hour? Is the commonest humanity -- the narrowest charity Sensational? What is Mr. Hardy's opinion of the New Testament? A sensational performance surely! The Good Samaritan. A highly sensational character! The 12 Apostles. What a Sensational dozen! Their Divine Master. Inconveniently and most ably Sensational! There was a time when men symbolically appended their names in what was called a "Rebus".†3 Maybe it is the last Sensational effect, for a public Servant to do this in a new way, and thus Mr. Hardy sensationally exhibits himself as the most hardy man alive. The House of Commons may be all that Mr. D Israeli says it is, or it may be†4 the different thing that most other men know it to be; but in either case it is surely remarkable that there is no man in it to put a notice in the paper "to ask the chief of the Bumbles for his definition of Sensational.
Media Type: Letters
Source: Rare Book Department
Call Number: DMS W556i