Selected Short Fiction Page 49

  Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!

  Macbeth does murder sleep’ - the innocent sleep,

  Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,

  The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,

  Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

  Calm nourisher in life’s feast -

  4 (p. 161) Mr Bathe. The proprietor of the London Tavern.

  5 (p. 162) the Mannings, husband and wife hanging on the top of Horsemonger Lane Jail. On 13 November 1849, George and Maria Manning were hanged for murdering their lodger, Patrick O’Connor. The trial aroused great excitement, and a crowd of approximately thirty thousand people, including Dickens, witnessed the execution. For a discussion of Dickens’s reaction, and his attitude toward capital punishment in general, see Philip Collins, Dickens and Crime, 2nd ed. (1964; reprinted Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 235ff.

  6 (p. 164) Cremorne reality. The Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea, opened in 1845 and closed in 1877, were the site of numerous forms of entertainment including extraordinary balloon ascents. See the contemporary description of Cremorne by Francis Wey, reprinted in London in Dickens’ Day, ed. Jacob Korg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), pp. 142-4.

  7 (p. 165) like that sagacious animal in the United States who recognized the colonel who was such a dead shot, I am a gone ‘Coon. Frederick Marryat related this anecdote about Captain Martin Scott in A Diary in America (New York: D. Appleton, 1839), p. 150.

  8 (p. 165) Pet Prisoning. Giving more consideration to the welfare of criminals in prison than to the needs of honest men outside the prison walls, the consequence, according to Dickens, of the system of solitary confinement currently being tried at the model prison at Pentonville. Under this system, at the conclusion of David Copperfield (Chapter 61), the hypocrites Mr Littimer and Uriah Heep prove to be model prisoners. For a more factual treatment of this theme, see ‘Pet Prisoners‘, Household Words, 27 April 1850. Philip Collins has discussed ‘the Pentonville experiment’ at length in Dickens and Crime, 2nd ed. (1964; reprinted Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 140-63.

  THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

  Dickens published a series of sketches in All the Year Round under the heading of ‘The Uncommercial Traveller’ at intervals between 1860 and 1869. All but the last of the selections presented here appeared in the inaugural group of sketches, published in 1860 and subsequently collected in The Uncommercial Traveller (1861) [1860].

  HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS

  First published in All the Year Round (28 January 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS

  First published in All the Year Round (24 March 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 168) practised thieves with the appearance and manners ofgentlemen. In a similar vein, in his 1841 preface to Oliver Twist, Dickens contrasted his own treatment of underworld characters with that of novelists such as Harrison Ainsworth who show ‘thieves by scores - seductive fellows (amiable for the most part), faultless in dress, plump in pocket, choice in horseflesh, bold in bearing, fortunate in gallantry, great at a song, a bottle, pack of cards or dice-box, and fit companions for the bravest’. However, Dickens’s insistence upon the literality of his own work, whether in Oliver Twist or in this particular sketch, cannot be completely taken at face value. As George H. Ford has pointed out, although Dickens ‘may have wanted to be considered an accurate social historian, his art consisted in the transmutation of a strong impression, sometimes derived from an actual scene, into convincing illusion’ (Dickens and His Readers, [1955; reprinted New York: Norton, 1965], p. 134).

  2 (p. 169) Sir Richard Mayne. (1796-1868), commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police.

  3 (p. 172) like Dr Johnson, Sir, you like to dine. Boswell says about Samuel Johnson, ‘I never knew any man who relished good eating more than he did. When at table, he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment his looks seemed rivetted to his plate; nor would he, unless when in very high company, say one word, or even pay the least attention to what was said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite, which was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible’ (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, edited by George Birkbeck Hill, revised by L. F. Powell, vol. I [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934], p. 468).

  TRAVELLING ABROAD

  First published in All the Year Round (7 April 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 178) ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind.’ From Shakespeare’s As You Like It, II, vii, 174.

  2 (p. 179) Sterne’s Maria. The half-witted French girl of volume 9 of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (1760-67) who reappears in A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768).

  3 (p. 185) nursery rhyme about Banbury Cross and the venerable lady who rode in state there. From the nursery rhyme which begins ‘Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross’. In modern versions, the lady is usually described as ‘fine’, but, in some earlier versions, she was termed ‘old’.

  4 (p. 186) a new Gesler in a Canton of Tells, and went in highly deserved danger of my tyrannical life. Austrian bailiff of the canton of Uri, killed, according to Swiss legend, by William Tell.

  5 (p. 186) Don Quixote on the back of the wooden horse. From part Two, chapter 41, of Don Quixote (1605-15) by Miguel de Cervantes.

  CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES

  First published in All the Year Round (5 May 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 193) comet vintages. Wine produced in a comet year, which is supposed to possess unusually fine flavour.

  2 (p. 193) Saint Anthony. (c. A.D. 250-355) the first Christian monk, noted for his successful struggles against the temptations of secular life.

  3 (p. 195) spencer. A waist-length jacket.

  4 (p. 195) boxing-gloves. It appears that the child is wearing mittens.

  5 (p. 197) the church in the Rake’s Progress where the hero is being married to the horrible old lady. Plate 5 of the set of engravings by William Hogarth (1735).

  6 (p. 198) Wren. Christopher Wren (1632-1723), noted English architect.

  SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS

  First published in All the Year Round (26 May 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 199) Mr Thomas Sayers ... and Mr John Heenan. The pugilists Sayers (1826-65) and Heenan (1835-73) fought a celebrated match in 1860, which was considered a draw.

  2 (p. 200) in the manner of lzaak Walton. Like the bucolic descriptions in Walton’s The Compleat Angler (1653, continued by Charles Cotton in 1676), a discussion of the art of fishing.

  3 (p. 202) Green Yard. A pound for holding stray animals and lost vehicles.

  4 (p. 203) dogs ... who perform in Punch’s shows. A dog called Toby was a traditional figure in the Punch and Judy puppet show, and, according to the showman interviewed by Mayhew, the use of a live rather than a stuffed dog in the performance became highly popular: a great hit it were - it made a grand alteration in the hexhibition, for now the performance is called Punch and Toby as well There is one Punch about the streets at present that tries it on with three dogs, but that ain’t much of a go - too much of a good thing I calls it (London Labour and the London Poor, vol. III [1861 ; reprinted New York: Dover, 1968], p. 45)·

  5 (p. 206) surplus population. An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) by Thomas Malthus, one of the laissez-faire political economists Dickens disliked, predicted that population, if unchecked, would inevitably increase more rapidly than the supply of food.

  6 (p. 207) Mrs Southcott. Joanna Southcott (1750-1814), Engli
sh religious prophet.

  7 (p. 207) Chinese circle. According to an unpublished note by the late T. W. Hill, the ‘circle’ is apparently a reference to the group to which the fowls belonged. Hill observes that Dickens alludes to several kinds of chickens in this paragraph: Bantam, Dorking, speckled and Cochin-China (information about Hill’s comment kindly supplied by Dr Michael Slater, editor of the Dickensian).

  DULLBOROUGH TOWN

  First published in All the Year Round (30 June 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 209) S.E.R. South Eastern Railway.

  2 (p. 209) Seringapatam. The capital of the Indian state of Mysore at the end of the eighteenth century; it was the stronghold of the sultan Tippoo Sahib, killed when the British captured the city in 1799.

  3 (p. 212) model on which the Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin. See note I to ‘A Visit to Newgate’ (p. 414).

  4 (p. 212) .Richard the Third... struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond. In the last scene of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

  5 (p. 213) witches in Macbeth ... calling himself something else. ‘Lying Awake’ describes an adult recollection of a more sophisticated performance of the same play.

  6 (p. 217) Mr Random. From The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) by Tobias Smollett.

  7 (p. 218) Pickle. From The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751) by Smollett

  NURSE’S STORIES

  First published in All the Year Round (8 September 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 219) belated among wolves, on the borders of France and Spain. An episode, like. those mentioned in the previous paragraph, from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

  2 (p. 220) the robbers’ cave where Gil Blas lived ... lies everlastingly cursing in bed. Chapters 4-10 of the first book of The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane (1715-35) by Alain René Le Sage.

  3 (p. 220) Don Quixote’s study... great draughts of water. From Part One, Chapters I and 5, of Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

  4 (p. 220) little old woman who... told the merchant Abudah to go in search of the Talisman of Oromartes. From the first of The Tales of the Genii (1764) by James Ridley.

  5 (p. 220) the school where the boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed to steal the pears ... let down out of window with a sheet. The anecdote appears in the first chapter of The Life of Nelson (1813) by Robert Southey.

  6 (p. 220) Brobingnag. Correctly spelled ‘Brobdingnag’ by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver’s Travels (1726), where, like Lilliput and Laputa, it is one of the countries visited by Gulliven

  7 (p. 221) Blue Beard. A fairy-tale villain who murders his wives. His last bride opens a forbidden closet, discovers the bodies of her predecessors, and verges on the same fate, but her brothers rescue her and kill her husband.

  8 (p. 224) ’ The Black Cat’ ... sucking the breath of infancy, and... endowed with a special thirst ... for mine. Strikingly similar to the bloodthirsty young man, hungering for juvenile heart and liver, with which Magwitch threatens Pip in chapter I of Great Expectations (originally conceived as a short piece in the vein of these Uncommercial Traveller sketches which Dickens was writing in 1860 - see the letter to Forster of September 1860 in The Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Walter Dexter (London-Nonesuch Press, 1938), voL 3, p. 182).

  ARCADIAN LONDON

  First published in All the Year Round (29 September 1860). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 230) a Volunteer. The subsequent details seem drawn from the 11th Middlesex Volunteer Rifle Corps. See Gwen Major ‘Arcadian London’, Dickensian, voL 45 (1949), p. 209.

  2 (p. 233) chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed sea-sand. cf. Prospero’s farewell to his magic in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (V, i, 33-5):

  Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves,

  And ye that on the sands with prindess foot

  Do chase the ebbing Neptune...

  3 (p. 234) the Every-Day Book. By William Hone, containing a description of ‘the popular amusements, sports, ceremonies, manners, customs, and events, incident to the three hundred and sixty-five days, in past and present times’, first published weekly from January 1825 to December 1826.

  4 (p. 234) Break. ‘A portion of ground broken up for cultivation’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

  5 - (p. 235) taking of Delhi. Recaptured by the British from Indian mutineers in September 1857. William Oddie, ‘Dickens and the Indian Mutiny‘, Dickensian, vol. 68 (1972), pp. 3-15, is a discussion of Dickens’s reaction to the insurrection and its reflection in his contributions to The Perils of Certain English Prisoners, the extra Christmas number of Household Words for 1857.

  6 (p. 235) New Zealander of the grand English History. An allusion to Macaulay’s prophecy that one day’ some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul’s’. The prediction occurs not in Macaulay’s History of England but in his essay ‘Von Ranke‘, Edinburgh Review, October 1840.

  7 (p. 235) to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. Shakespeare, Macbeth, V, v, 19.

  8 (p. 236) Agapemone. Greek for ‘abode of love‘, and the name of a religious community established near Bridgwater c. 1846 by Henry James Prince (1811-99).

  9 (p. 238) Lord Shaftesbury. Anthony Ashley Cooper, seventh Earl of Shaftesbury (1801-85), English philanthropist active in organizing so-called ‘ragged schools’ for poor children.

  THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL

  First published in All the Year Round (2 May 1863). The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of The Uncommercial Traveller (1868).

  1 (p. 240) dogs of Dover bark at me in my mis-shapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the Third. See Richard’s description of himself in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Richard III (I, i, 20-23):

  Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

  Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

  And that so lamely and unfashionable

  That dogs bark at me as I halt by them -

  2 (p. 241) ‘Rich and rare were the gems she wore.’ The opening line of one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (1808-34) which the Uncommercial Traveller subsequently weaves into his description of his surroundings:

  Rich and rare were the gems she wore,

  And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore:

  But oh! her beauty was far beyond

  Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand.

  ‘Lady! dost thou not fear to stray,

  So lone and lovely through this bleak way?

  Are Erin’s sons so good or so cold,

  As not to be tempted by woman or gold?’

  ‘Sir Knight! I I feel not the least alarm,

  No son of Erin will offer me harm: -

  For though they love woman and golden store,

  Sir Knight! they love honour and virtue more!’

  On she went, and her maiden smile

  In safety lighted her round the Green Isle;

  And blest for ever is she who relied

  Upon Erin’s honour and Erin’s pride.

  3 (p. 243) Robinson Crusoe ... in his first gale of wind. There are other illusions in ‘A Christmas Tree’ and ‘Nurse’s Stories’ to this fondly remembered novel of Dickens’s childhood.

  4 (p. 243) a bull’s eye bright. A bull‘s-eye lantern.

  5 (p. 243) those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes round their necks. One of the conditions on which Calais was surrendered to Edward III in 1347.

  6 (p. 244) Calais will be found written on my heart. Calais was retaken by the French in 1558 during the reign of Queen Mary who is reputed to have said in her final illness, as Dickens quotes in A Child’s History of England, ‘When I am dead and my body is opened ... ye shall find C
alais written on my heart.’

  7 (p. 244) ‘an ancient and fish-like smell.’ cf. Shakespeare, The Tempest, II, ii, 26-7.

  8 (p. 246) Vauban. Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), French military engineer.

  9 (p. 246) such corporals as you heard of once upon a time, and many a blue-tyed Bebelle. Described in the story contained in ‘His Boots‘, in the extra Christmas number of All the Year Round for 1862. See note 1 to Somebody’s Luggage, below.

  10 (p. 246) Richardson’s. There is a re-creation of a Richardson’s Show in ‘Greenwich Fair’, one of the Sketches by Boz omitted from this selection.

  SOMEBODY’s LUGGAGE

  The monologues presented here were first published in Somebody’s Luggage, the extra Christmas number of All the Year Round for 1862 which provides the present text. ‘His Leaving it till called for’ and ‘His Wonderful End’ opened and closed the Christmas number while ‘His Brown-Paper Parcel’ formed one of the pieces which Dickens introduced into this framework. In addition to contributions by other authors, Somebody’s Luggage also contained a story by Dickens about a little French girl, narrated in the third person and supposedly found in ‘His Boots‘, omitted from this selection. For the contents of the Christmas numbers, see Deborah A. Thomas, ‘Contributors to the Christmas Numbers of Household Words and All the Year Round, 1850-1867’, Dickensian, part 1, vol. 69 (1973), pp. 163-72; part 2, vol. 70 (1974), pp. 21-9, as well as Dickens and the Short Story (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 140-53.

  HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR

  1 (p. 252) Lord Palmerston. Henry John Temple, third Viscount Palmerston (1784-1865) British statesman and prime minister.