Results 241 - 260 of 423 Article Index

Split in two and retitled 'His General Line of Business' and 'The Shipwreck' in collected editions of the series 

On 29 December 1859 Dickens travelled to the village of Llanalgo in Anglesey, to inspect the site of the wreck of the 'Royal Charter', a full-rigged iron liner en route to Liverpool from Melbourne with 498 passengers on board and £800,000 in gold specie and bullion. After a good passage as far as Holyhead, the ship met fearsome gales and was driven off course, and sank on the night of 26 October 1859, holed by rocks in Muffa Redwharf bay. Only 39 of those on board survived. Later reports have suggested that the Captain's judgement was impaired by heavy drinking on the leg from Queenstown to Holyhead (see Jack Shaw, 'The Wreck of the "Royal Charter", 1859', The Dickensian, Vol. 3 [1907], pp. 185–86). By the time of Dickens's visit, numerous factual accounts had already appeared in the newspapers, along with graphic depictions of the disaster (e.g. in The Illustrated London News, 29 Oct 1859, p. 413; 5 Nov 1859, pp. 447-48).

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Retitled 'Wapping Workhouse' in collected editions of the series 

'My knowledge of the general conditions of the sick poor in workhouses is not of yesterday,' Dickens wrote in 1866 to the Secretary of the newly-formed Association for the Improvement of the Infirmaries of London Workhouses: 'nor are my efforts in my vocation to call merciful attention to it. Few anomalies in England are so horrible to me as the unchecked existence of many shameful sick wards for paupers side by side with the constantly increasing expansion of conventional wonder that the poor should creep into corners and die rather than fester and rot in such places' (Pilgrim, Vol. XI, [late Feb 1866] pp. 164–65). Dickens's 'efforts' included the commissioning and publishing of dozens of articles in HW and ATYR on workhouse conditions, and also the writing of such powerful papers as 'A Walk in a Workhouse' ([HW, Vol. I, 27 May 1850] see Vol. 2 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], Item 45), 'A Nightly Scene in London' ([HW, Vol. XIII, 26 January 1856] (see Vol. 3 [of the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], Item 45), and the present article.

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Retitled 'Two Views of a Cheap Theatre' in collected editions of the series  

The 'cheap theatre' in question was the Britannia Theatre on Old Street, Hoxton, which had been entirely rebuilt by its owner Samuel Lane in 1858. On its former incarnation,the 'Britannia Saloon', Dickens had already reported in 1850 (['The Amusements of the People [i]' and 'The Amusements of the People [ii]', HW, Vol. I, 30 March and 13 April 1850] see Vol. 2 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], Item 41). For a comprehensive history of the theatre's construction and management, see Jim Davis's The Britannia Diaries, 1863–75 (1992). According to Dickens's former HW colleague John Hollingshead, the theatre became 'familiar to most theatrical people and to many others' through the publication of this essay (My Lifetime, 1895; Vol. I, p. 33).

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Retitled 'Poor Mercantile Jack' in collected editions of the series

As Basil Lubbock has noted, 'legislation in the days of sail gave absolute power into the hands of the sea-captain' ('The Mercantile Marine, 1830–65' in Early Victorian England, ed. G.M. Young, Vol. 1, pp. 387–88). The Merchant Shipping Act of 1854 tightened rather than eased the procedures by which an ordinary merchant sailor might formally complain of mistreatment by senior officers, to discourage the lodging of unfounded complaints. While the same Act devoted a small number of its sections to steps for the 'Protection of Seamen from Imposition' (17 & 18 Vict. Cap. 104, Sections 233–38), these applied only while seamen returning to the United Kingdom remained aboard their vessels, and the only penalties were small fines (£5 to £20).

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Titled 'Refreshments for Travellers' in The Uncommercial Traveller, Vol. 1 (1860, 1863). 

The French idea of a 'restaurant' to refresh and restore travellers of both sexes during a journey, was still foreign to British cities in 1860, but the end of March saw the second reading of Gladstone's 'Refreshment Houses and Wine Licensing Bill', which proposed: to let small retailers take out licences (at the discretion of the issuing magistrate) for the sale of wine to be consumed off the premises, to let eating-house keepers take out licences for the sale of wine to be consumed on the premises, and to place all eating houses under the control of the police; the Bill became law on 1 July 1860 (Refreshment Houses and Wine Licenses Act, 23 Vict. cap. 27). Dickens's paper is in one sense highly topical, anticipating a leader in The Times of 28 March, which repeats the main complaint in Dickens's essay: '[o]ne of the most grievous discomforts to which all visitors to London are exposed is the difficulty of finding in it either a dinner or a luncheon, more especially if ladies are of the party... The want is in the deficiency of small Refreshment houses where people of moderate or even humble means may procure dinner and other necessary refreshments at a [small] cost' (p. 9 cols. d-e).

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Titled 'Travelling Abroad' in collected editions of the series

The 'German chariot' which conveys the narrator on his dreamy journey is modelled on the coach in which Dickens and his household made their trips to Italy (1844–45), Switzerland and France (1846–47). In May 1844 Dickens related to Forster how he hoped to find 'some good old shabby devil of a coach – one of those vast phantoms that hide themselves in a corner of the Pantechnicon' and how he had bought such a one for £45. 'As for comfort...' he continued, 'it is about the size of your library; with night-lamps and day-lamps and pockets and imperials and leathern cellars, and the most extraordinary contrivances'; sitting inside it, he felt 'a perfect Sentimental Traveller' (Pilgrim, IV, p. 127&n.). In Pictures from Italy this same carriage is described as 'an English travelling carriage of considerable proportions, fresh from the shady halls of the Pantechnicon' (1846; 'Going through France'). As in the travel book, Dickens here displays a tendency to give comically literal translations of common French expressions ('ordinary wine'; 'It is well'); 'the British Boaxe' appears to be an imitation of how the concept of boxing might be rendered in a French accent.

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Retitled 'The Great Tasmania's Cargo' in collected editions of the series

The London, Chatham & Dover railway, formed in 1859, had its terminus at London Bridge; there were barracks at Chatham. Dickens used this line frequently in the 1860s, boarding at Higham for journeys from Gadshill to both London and the south-east coast. Between 19 and 22 March 1860, an inquest was held at the Crown Court, St. George's Hall, Liverpool, into the deaths of British soldiers discharged from active service in India, who had fallen ill on the transport ship Great Tasmania during the voyage home. The majority were soldiers who 'refusing to be transferred from the service of the East India company to that of Her Majesty, without receiving the usual bounty given to recruits, were discharged and ordered to be sent home' (The Times, 20 March, p. 12, col. b). The ship had set out from Calcutta in November 1859, and had reached anchorage in the Mersey on the morning of 15 March, with doctors reporting 'two deaths and about 60 bad cases of scurvy' (The Times, ibid.) but according to India Office records signed by Captain Alexander Pond, by the 23rd of the month, there had been no less than 62 casualties (L/MIL/10/320, p. 39). During the intervening period, the sick had been removed to the Liverpool Workhouse, and given every medical attention. Over one in thirteen of the 971 passengers who made the journey, thus failed to survive it.

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Retitled 'City of London Churches' in collected editions of the series 

In his notes to The Uncommercial Traveller, ed. and introd Charles Dickens Jnr (Macmillan, 1925) (written in 1895) Charles Dickens Junior records having 'vivid recollections of some of the churches described in this paper, having on more than one occasion accompanied my father, when I was a boy, on Sunday expeditions from Devonshire Terrace into the City' (p. xx). As the Dickens household left their house at 1 Devonshire Terrace in November 1851, at least some of the 'expeditions' on which Dickens bases this paper clearly belong to the late 1840s or early 1850s. The sketch given in Dombey & Son of the church where Walter Gay and Florence Dombey marry (No. 18 [February 1848]; Ch. 56) is clearly the forerunner of the paper.

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Retitled 'Shy Neighbourhoods' in collected editions of the series

With the opening sentence of the following paper, compare Dickens's reporting of 'The Great International Walking Match' [broadsheet printed at Boston for private circulation] (see appenix A [in the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism, Vol. 4], p. 410. Even during his lifetime, Dickens's passion for walking (although common among Victorian men-of-letters) was perceived as something of an obsession. Forster speaks of 'excesses in walking' encouraged by country life (Book 11, Ch. 3), while John Hollingshead recalls that 'when Dickens lived at Tavistock House [1851–60] he developed a mania for walking long distances which almost assumed the form of a disease. He suffered from Lumbago, and I have always thought that this was brought on by monotonous pedestrianism'. The same source affirms that in the late 1850s Dickens 'would frequently' walk from the Household Words office, to Gadshill: a journey of some thirty miles (My Lifetime, 1895, Book I, pp. 101–102). As well as country walking, Dickens's ubiquity as a 'flâneur' of the London streets remained undiminished in the 1860s. The language 'once pretty familiar to me' which the Uncommercial Traveller speaks while sleep-walking is probably Italian.

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Retitled 'Tramps' in collected editions of the series

Dickens had strong feelings on the subject of begging and mendicity (see 'The Begging-Letter Writer', HW, Vol. I, 18 May 1850), and while openly describing in the present article some of his favourite Kent haunts and scenery, also reveals knowledge of the ploys used by tramps and beggars to extract donations from other pedestrians. In David Copperfield (1850), Dickens had described how the young David is robbed on the road to Dover by a young tinker who beats his female companion. 'The trampers', David recalls, '...inspired me with a dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind' (Ch. 13).

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Retitled 'Dullborough Town' in collected editions of the series

In the index of Vol. III of ATYR (1860), the present Item appears under the title 'Childhood Associations', and the two are clearly linked by their presentation of what appear to be interesting recollections of Dickens's very early childhood. Accordingly, scholars and biographers since Forster have not hesitated to make use of both essays to supplement otherwise scanty evidence about his early life (see Forster, Book I, Ch. 3, Book 8, Ch. 5; Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens, His Tragedy and His Triumph, 1952, Vol. 1, pp. 11-26 passim). The memory of arriving in London for the first time at the Cross-Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, in a coach smelling of straw, is one Dickens later assigns to Pip in the 13th instalment of Great Expectations (ATYR, Vol. IV, 23 February 1861).

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Retitled 'Night Walks' in collected editions of the series 

In March of the year 1851, Dickens's father entered a painful last illness, resulting in his death on the final day of the month. He was buried on the 4th of April, in Highgate cemetery. On the morning of the 3rd, Dickens wrote to W.H. Wills from his bed at Tavistock House, to say that 'I took my threatened walk last night' and that 'I am so worn out by the sad arrangements ... that I cannot take my natural rest' (see Pilgrim, Vol. VI, p. 345–46&n.). The letter goes on to propose an all-night visit to the Bow-street Station House, described in 'The Metropolitan Protectives' (HW, Vol. III [26 Apr 1851], pp. 97–105; repr. in Stone, Vol. I, pp. 253–73), and remind Wills that the following night 'we go to the gas-works'. The letter thus indicates at least three consecutive night expeditions made by Dickens during a period of insomnia provoked by his father's death, and suggests a possible derivation of the narrator's opening remarks (and the description of Bow-street coffee shops) in Dickens's personal experience.

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Titled 'Chambers' in collected editions of the series

Dickens's interest in London's Inns of Court goes back to his vivid experiences of renting chambers and entertaining friends there in the early 1830s. From May 1827 to November 1828, he had worked in Gray's Inn as a clerk in Edward Blackmore's attorney's office, and then from December 1834 to March 1837 he was in chambers at 13 and 15 Furnival's Inn where latterly he lived with his new wife, first child, and sister-in-law Mary Hogarth as semi-permanent guest (see Vol. 1 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], pp. xxxii-xxxiii). Some of Dickens's earliest fiction tells of tenants in similar circumstances to himself, professional visits to lawyers in chambers (see Vol. 1 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], 'The Steam Excursion', p. 369; Pickwick Papers, Ch. 31), or 'queer' stories relating to them (see Jack Bamber's tales, ibid., Ch. 21). Writing to Forster in 1839 with 'rough notes of proposals for the New Work' to be undertaken with Chapman & Hall for Master Humphrey's Clock, Dickens commented that 'the Chapters on Chambers which I have long thought and spoken of, might be very well incorporated with it' (Pilgrim, Vol. I [14 July 1839], p. 564). Although these were never published, the idea mooted in 1839 seems eventually to find an outlet in the present item.

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