A Child's Journey with Dickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin (Nabu Press, 2010. Originally published in 1912.)
Kate Douglas Wiggin would become well-known as the author of the children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. But in 1868 she was a child of eleven, longing to see her idol, Charles Dickens. (She and her family had named "almost every living thing" on the farm "after one of Dickens's characters.")
When he came to America, her mother went to hear a reading, but Kate wasn't allowed to go. She did go to town with her mother, but the tickets were so expensive ("there was a general feeling in the community that any one who paid it would have to live down a reputation for riotous extravagance forever afterward") that no one even thought of taking her along to the reading."If any martyr in Fox's 'Book' ever suffered more poignant anguish than I, I am heartily sorry for him," Wiggin writes, "yet my common sense assured me that a child could hardly hope to be taken on a week's junketing to Charlestown, and expect any other entertainment to be added to it for years to come."
Can you imagine? I think our cultural philosophy about children and pleasures has changed considerably since then -- fortunately for the children!
Anyway, little Kate had the last word in that situation, because on the train to Charlestown . . . guess who she ran into? And ended up sitting next to, and had a wonderful conversation with?
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