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.

      Mention of 'Mr Thomas Sayers' and 'Mr John Heenan' (alias 'The Benicia Boy') picks up a topical sporting story, in which Dickens took a keen interest. The English champion boxer and his American challenger had taken part in the so-called Great Fight, the biggest held in Britain for decades, on 17 April 1860, despite such fights being banned under the new Police Act. Dickens had considered attending, but in the end sent Hollingshead to cover the event for ATYR (see Pilgrim, Vol. IX, pp. 234-35&nn. and 'The Great Pugilistic Revival,' ATYR, Vol. III, 19 May 1860).
      Forster asserts that he is himself 'in a position to vouch... [f]or the truth of the personal adventure' recounted in the paper about the buying of a goldfinch that refused to sing (p. 000). 'Walking by a dirty court in Spitalfields one day, the quick little busy intelligence of a goldfinch... so attracted him that he bought the bird, which had other accomplishments; but not one of them would the little creature show off in his new abode in Doughty-street' (Forster, Book 8, Ch. 5). The incident may be dated to the late 1830s. This present paper seems to have been a personal favourite of Forster's; he quotes more extensively from it than from any of the other 'Uncommercials' (ibid.). Dickens's concluding remarks on the fowls of shy neighbourhoods appears to have been informed by a prosaic chapter on 'Classification of Fowls' and their origins in the Rev. Edmund Dixon's Ornamental and Domestic Poultry (1848), a copy of which was presented to Dickens by the author in June 1849, and which Dickens kept in his library (Stonehouse).

Literary allusions

• 'in the manner of Izaak Walton': the pastoral and contemplative style of Walton's popular guide to freshwater fishing, The Compleat Angler (1653); 
• 'a man and a brother': adaptation of the famous anti-slavery slogan 'Am I not a man and a brother?' given wide currency by Josiah Wedgewood in 1787, when he used it on a jasper medallion depicting a black slave kneeling in chains.

Textual note

• copy text has 'when leisure and inclination serve': UT1 has 'when leisure and opportunity...'; 
• copytext has 'hauling the blind man away': UT1 has 'haling...'

Author: John Drew; © J. M. Dent/Orion Publishing Group, Dickens' Journalism Volume IV: 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and Other Papers, 1859–70 (2000). DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

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