Retitled 'Arcadian London' in collected editions of the series 

The theme of the present item – London during the Autumn recess of Parliament – was something of a set piece for Victorian sketch-writers: three essays all entitled 'Out of Town' by Dickens, Thackeray and Edmund Yates make interesting parallel reading (see HW, Vol. XII, 29 September 1855; Punch, Vol. 17 [II, 18 August 1849], pp. 53, 66–69; repr. in Miscellanies, 1854-57, Vol. II, p. 279f.; After Office Hours, 1861, Ch. 8). The title and subsequent development of this paper plays on the word Arcadia, as the traveller's Autumn lodgings are in London's fashionable West End, close to the Burlington Arcade, a permanent covered shopping mall of a kind becoming common in London and other European capitals. In a literary context, however, 'Arcadia' was celebrated in the pastoral tradition as the home of the most primitive of the Ancient Greek peoples, those least corrupted by civilisation.

      Between August and September 1860, Dickens was waiting for his rooms above the ATYR office to be fitted out, and had not yet fully moved into Gad's Hill Place, and although his published correspondence is not revealing, it is possible that in this period he was indeed in temporary lodgings in London. Bond Street had been divided into 'Old' and 'New' since 1721, so Dickens's narrator is deliberately unspecific but Gwen Major has suggested that Hood's, formerly the hatter's at 2 New Bond Street, is the most 'likely' site ('Arcadian London', The Dickensian, Vol. 45 [1949], pp. 208–12). Various letters to family and friends written in Autumn 1853, however, show that the topic had been in Dickens's mind for some considerable time, and need not have required any fresh personal experience as an inspiration:

The West End of London is entirely deserted, and no business . . . is being carried on. I went to three shops this morning, for some things I want to wear. Blackmore the tailor was at Brighton. Butler the Tailor was playing the piano among some mignionette boxes, in the bosom of his family. Only two subordinates were in attendance at Beale's the hosier's, and they were playing at draughts. . . . (Pilgrim, Vol. VII [7 Sept 1853], p. 138)

I suppose that part of London never was so empty... This really is the experience of a solitary traveller in those regions at eleven o'Clock yesterday forenoon. (Ibid. [[9] Sept 1853], p. 141; see also [21 Sept. 1853], p. 154)

The description of the volunteering activities of the hatter's young man is both topical and accurate: the headquarters of the 11th Middlesex Volunteers (formed 1792; re-established 1859) were in Hanover Square, close to New Bond Street, and their rifle-green uniform included a shako hat with a dark green cock's feather plume, and knickerbocker shorts for field days and manoeuvres (see T. W. Hill, 'Unpublished Notes to The Uncommercial Traveller' (The Staples Bequest, Dickens House Museum, London [1948]), 16.4). But for a flâneur of Dickens's perceptiveness, such observation could easily be the product of a short stroll.

Literary allusions

• 'they drowsily bide or recall their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand': Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610) Act 5, Sc. 1; 
• 'where all the lights are not fled... but I have not departed' paraphrases Thomas Moore's ballad 'Oft in the stilly night', National Airs (1815); 
• 'the New Zealander of the grand English History... gloat upon the ruins of Talk': Dickens refers to an image not from Macaulay's History of England (1849–61) but from [Macaulay's] Edinburgh Review article on Leopold von Ranke's History of the Popes (1834–6), repr. in Vol. 1 of Critical and Historical Essays: Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, 3 vols (London: Longman & Co., 1843); the controversy over 'this unfortunate man' refers either to debate over whether Macaulay had himself derived the image from Horace Walpole's letter to Sir Horace Mann of 24 November 1774 (Correspondence, 1967, Vol. 24, p. 62; see also Notes and Queries, Vol. 9 [Jan 28 1854], p.74, col. b et seq.;) or to the fact that reference to 'the New Zealander' had become a popular journalistic device for speculating about futurity (see, for example, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 85 [Jan 1859], p. 73, col. a; Vol. 86 [Dec 1859], p. 683, col. );
• 'rookery of mare's nests': John Fletcher, Bonduca (acted c. 1614; printed 1647), Act 5, Sc. 2; 
• 'tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow': Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606), Act 5, Sc. 5; 
• 'my hatter hermitage will then know them no more': Job 7:10.

Textual note 

• Copytext has 'It's on'y Mr Klem': [The Uncommercial Traveller (The Charles Dickens Edition), (Chapman & Hall, 1868)] has 'It's only Mr Klem'; 
• copytext has 'another 'ouse in Serjameses Street': [The Uncommercial Traveller (The Charles Dickens Edition), (Chapman & Hall, 1868)] has 'a 'ouse in Serjameses Street'; 
• copytext has 'If I get up': [The Uncommercial Traveller (The Charles Dickens Edition), (Chapman & Hall, 1868)] has 'If I rise from my bed'.