Retitled 'Medicine Men of Civilisation' in collected editions of the series.

Dickens had expressed exasperation with the resurgence of popular support for the concept of 'the noble savage' in an article in HW of the same name (see Vol. 3 of the Dent edition of Dickens's Journalism, Item 19) but the present article, and others, display a considerable interest in the customs and rituals of aboriginal peoples in Asia, Australasia, Africa and the Americas, together with a tendency—central to the present paper—to instigate comparisons with the forms and ceremonies of so-called 'civilised' societies (i.e. the European) that are flattering to neither category (see, for example, Vol. 2 of the Dent edition, Item 25).

In particular, Dickens uses the opportunity to criticise yet again the hypocrisy and 'jobbery' involved in English funerals, most recently attacked by him in Ch. 35 of Great Expectations (AYR, 20 April 1861; see also Vol. 3 of the Dent edition, Item 14). It seems likely that the death of Dickens's mother on 12 September 1863 and his 'hav[ing] to look after the funeral' influenced the writing of the item. On 14th September he was writing to Wills that he had 'jobbed up an Uncommercial and sent Revise to Birtles [of Whitings, the printers of AYR] to day per messenger' (see Pilgrim, Vol. X, pp. 288-289&n.). For Dickens's extensive reading of colonial literature of voyages and travels—glossed here as 'voyages (in paper boats) among savages'—see Part I of John M.L. Drew's essay 'Voyages Extraordinaires—Dickens's 'Travelling Essays and The Uncommercial Traveller', Dickens Quarterly, 13.3 (1996).

The episode concerning 'Mr Kindheart' is a version of events concerning the eccentric sculptor Angus Fletcher, who was living in Genoa in 1844 and who was probably instrumental in persuading Dickens to select the city as his place of residence in 1844-1845 (see Pilgrim, Vol. IV, p. 123n.). Fletcher arranged the lease of the Villa di Bagnerello on the Dickenses' behalf, and seems to have occupied a room there for the initial period of their stay. Forster quotes a sentence from a letter of Dickens's of [?12-17] May 1845, describing how the locals employed by Fletcher to conduct the funeral of his unknown acquaintance 'were obliged to leave one of the coach-doors open for the accommodation even of the coffin; the widower walked beside the carriage to the Protestant ceremony; and Fletcher followed on a big grey horse' (Forster, Book 4, Ch. 7; Pilgrim, Vol. IV, pp. 310-311&n).

The experiment described—of attending a funeral without 'following' or wearing mourning—anticipates Dickens's appearance at the grave-side during Thackeray's funeral later that year. According to Harper's New Monthly Magazine for September 1870, rather than the customary funereal black, he wore 'trousers of a check pattern, a waistcoat of some coloured plaid and an open frock-coat', and, after listening intently to the service, departed alone (Vol. 244, p. 615).

Literary allusions:

• 'In the Tonga Islands... buried with him': Dickens recalls details incorrectly from John Martin's Account of the Tonga Islands...&c. ([1817] 3rd ed. 1827, Stonehouse), Vol. II, Ch. 5, where this belief is attributed, not to the Tongans, but to 'the Fiji people' (pp. 122-123);
• 'Tala Mungongo': Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857), Ch. 22 passim;
• ' at least one tribe of blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous... irrepressible laughter': Livingstone, Missionary Travels, Ch.. 8 ('The Bakalahari');
• 'Mataboos—or some such name—who are the Masters of all the public ceremonies': 'Matabooles ... have the management of all ceremonies', John Martin's Account of the Tonga Islands...&c. (1827, Stonehouse), Vol. II, pp. 89-90 et seq.

Author: John Drew; © J. M. Dent/Orion Publishing Group, Dickens' Journalism Volume IV: 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and Other Papers, 1859-1870, 2000.

DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

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