MANAGER OF THE HOUSE 139lying; if she acted up later on, he would claim that he had had doubts about
her from the first. Truthfulness was his first principle, the symptom that
guaranteed internal reform; in the “Appeal to Fallen Women” he called on
prospective inmates to “be truthful in every word you speak. Do this, and all
the rest is easy” (5.699). In his adaptation of Alexander Machonochie’s Marks
System, a system of incentives for good conduct developed for prisoners
on Norfolk Island, Dickens created nine categories in which inmates could
receive daily good or bad marks; the first was “Truthfulness.” How, exactly,
a woman was to be assessed in this category was not explained in Household
Wo rd s. Dickens did, however, explain how he got truthful histories in his
interviews: “nothing is so likely to elicit truth as a perfectly imperturbable
face, and an avoidance of any leading question or expression of opinion. Give
the narrator the least idea what tone will make her an object of interest, and
she will take it directly. Give her none, and she will be driven on the truth,
and in most cases will tell it” (Dent 3.134).
That arguably good advice contains a measure of the self-imposed blind-
ness in Dickens’s assessment of his role at Urania Cottage. He was exquisitely
aware that his “cases” were savvy about the right language to put on when
appealing to reformers or agents of the law. He did not, however, want to
know that he produced his own reforming rhetoric, or that the inmates of
Urania Cottage learned to conform to it. In place of religion, he preached
the doctrine of Home—which for Dickens meant order, punctuality, neat-
ness, and good housekeeping. Persuading the religious Miss Coutts of his
plan, Dickens managed to slide neatly from religion as “the basis for the
whole system” to “a system of training” that is “steady and firm” as well
as “cheerful and hopeful”: it was to consist of “order, punctuality, cleanli-
ness, the whole routine of household duties—as washing, mending, cooking”
(4.554). Once he had found the house in Shepherd’s Bush that was to serve
their purpose, he furnished and arranged it in every detail before allowing
Miss Coutts to see it; in anticipation of her concerns he had framed and put
up in the living room inscriptions from Jeremy Taylor, Isaac Barrow, and
Jesus, as well as “a little inscription of my own, referring to the advantages of
order, punctuality, and good temper” (5.185–86).
After “Truthfulness,” Dickens’s categories for daily marks were “Indus-
try, Temper, Propriety of Conduct and Conversation, Temperance, Order,
Punctuality, Economy, Cleanliness” (Dent 3.132). He reported in “Home for
Homeless Women” that the names of the girls responsible for the neatness and
work for each room were hung there, “framed and glazed,” on each Monday
morning; this “was found to inspire them with a greater pride in good house-
wifery, and a greater sense of shame in the reverse.” Similarly—and despite