Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished: A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure
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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished, by R.M. Ballantyne.
First published 1884
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As so often with Ballantyne there are two concurrent stories in thisbook. In one of these we meet two little stray and homeless boys in thevicinity of Whitechapel in the East-End of London. These two are rescuedfrom the streets, trained up and sent to Canada to live as part of afarmer's family there.
The other story concerns the mother of one of the boys, with too manychildren, a drink-habit, and a wife-beating and criminal husband:plainly there's not much going for her, but her eldest daughter managesto bring life together for the family. The bad father, on his releasefrom jail, deserts his wife, which is no bad thing; the wife takes theBlue Ribbon and gives up drinking; a couple of well-to-do gentlemen takean interest in the family; and finally they all emigrate to Canada andlive happily ever after.
Of course, it is a little more complicated than that, with a burglarythrown in as well as a smattering of do-good-ers and do-bad-ers. But forthose with an interest in the street-life of the nineteenth century thiswill be a very interesting book for you.
A Note about the Author.
Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in 1825 and died in 1894. He waseducated at the Edinburgh Academy, and in 1841 he became a clerk withthe Hudson Bay Company, working at the Red River Settlement in NorthernCanada until 1847, arriving back in Edinburgh in 1848. The letters hehad written home were very amusing in their description of backwoodslife, and his family publishing connections suggested that he shouldconstruct a book based on these letters. Three of his most enduringbooks were written over the next decade, "The Young Fur Traders","Ungava", "The Hudson Bay Company", and were based on his experienceswith the H.B.C. In this period he also wrote "The Coral island" and"Martin Rattler", both of these taking place in places never visited byBallantyne. Having been chided for small mistakes he made in thesebooks, he resolved always to visit the places he wrote about. Withthese books he became known as a great master of literature intended forteenagers. He researched the Cornish Mines, the London Fire Brigade,the Postal Service, the Railways, the laying down of submarine telegraphcables, the construction of light-houses, the light-ship service, thelife-boat service, South Africa, Norway, the North Sea fishing fleet,ballooning, deep-sea diving, Algiers, and many more, experiencing thelives of the men and women in these settings by living with them forweeks and months at a time, and he lived as they lived.
He was a very true-to-life author, depicting the often squalid scenes heencountered with great care and attention to detail. His young readerslooked forward eagerly to his next books, and through the 1860s and1870s there was a flow of books from his pen, sometimes four in a year,all very good reading. The rate of production diminished in the lastten or fifteen years of his life, but the quality never failed.
He published over ninety books under his own name, and a few books forvery young children under the pseudonym "Comus".
For today's taste his books are perhaps a little too religious, and whatwe would nowadays call "pi". In part that was the way people wrote inthose days, but more important was the fact that in his days at the RedRiver Settlement, in the wilds of Canada, he had been a littledissolute, and he did not want his young readers to be unmindful of howthey ought to behave, as he felt he had been.
Some of his books were quite short, little over 100 pages. These booksformed a series intended for the children of poorer parents, having lesspocket-money. These books are particularly well-written and researched,because he wanted that readership to get the very best possible fortheir money. They were published as six series, three books in eachseries.
Re-created as an e-Text by Nick Hodson, September 2003.
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DUSTY DIAMONDS CUT AND POLISHED, BY R.M. BALLANTYNE.