I don’t know which has given me more laughs of late, the examples of Dickens’ wonderful scatological humour (Letters, 6 July) or the idea that they might not be the conscious product of Dickens’ imagination. We could profitably ask why we are so keen to project prudery and purity of thought on to 19th-century writers, when there’s bawdy humour to be found everywhere. Anthony Trollope manages to slip in “There’s nothing like a good screw”, and even the F-word, though my favourite is his description of Plantagenet Palliser struggling with an inconvenient erection: “Since he had been told that Lady Dumbello smiled upon him, he had certainly thought more about her smiles than had been good for his statistics. It seemed as though a new vein in his body had been brought into use, and blood was running where blood had never run before.”
Margaret Markwick
School of English, University of Exeter
