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Charles Dickens

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The Uncommercial Traveller

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THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

CHAPTER I--HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS

Allow me to introduce myself--first negatively.

No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn't want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.

And yet--proceeding now, to introduce myself positively--I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London--now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads--seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.

These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.

CHAPTER II--THE SHIPWRECK

Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.

So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that very day. The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the land--and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over it.

So orderly, so quiet, so regular--the rising and falling of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat--the turning of the windlass--the coming in of the tide--that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every cotter's little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping compartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet.

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The Uncommercial Traveller

By charles dickens.

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The Uncommercial Traveller

Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)

The Uncommercial Traveller is a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences written by Charles Dickens. In 1859 Dickens founded a new journal called All the Year Round and the Uncommercial Traveller articles would be among his main contributions. He seems to have chosen the title and persona of the Uncommercial Traveller as a result of a speech he gave on the 22 December 1859 to the Commercial Travellers' School London in his role as honorary chairman and treasurer. The persona sits well with a writer who liked to travel, not only as a tourist, but also to research and report what he found; visiting Europe, America and giving book readings throughout Britain. He does not seem content to rest late in his career when he had attained wealth and comfort and continued travelling locally, walking the streets of London in the mould of the flâneur, a 'gentleman stroller of city streets'. He often suffered from insomnia and his night-time wanderings gave him an insight into some of the hidden aspects of Victorian London, details of which he also incorporated into his novels. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Genre(s): Essays & Short Works

Language: English

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The Uncommercial Traveller by Charles Dickens

• Charles Dickens
• Originally published in magazines

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

CHAPTER I–HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS

Allow me to introduce myself–first negatively.

No landlord is my friend and brother, no chambermaid loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from my journeys, I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle a man into ordering something he doesn’t want. As a town traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst of a light Stonehenge of samples.

And yet–proceeding now, to introduce myself positively–I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in Covent-garden, London–now about the city streets: now, about the country by-roads–seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others.

These are my chief credentials as the Uncommercial Traveller.

CHAPTER II–THE SHIPWRECK

Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore that morning.

So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright light of the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, for years past or to come, than it was that very day. The Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. The tide was on the flow, and had been for some two hours and a half; there was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my feet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a little from the land–and as I stood upon the beach and observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone over it.

So orderly, so quiet, so regular–the rising and falling of the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat–the turning of the windlass–the coming in of the tide–that I myself seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seen it in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits; meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market: noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; having windy weather suggested by every cotter’s little rick, with its thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlapping compartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now parted company? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so very near my feet.

O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, and hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the Royal Charter, Australian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound, that struck here on the terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, and has never stirred since!

From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern foremost; on which side, or on which, she passed the little Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her; these are rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that night and the darkness of death. Here she went down.

Even as I stood on the beach with the words ‘Here she went down!’ in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the water’s edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.

Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device for keeping his house over his head, saw from the ladder’s elevation as he looked down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object close in with the land. And he and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given the alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales had come running to the dismal sight–their clergyman among them. And as they stood in the leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the vessel’s cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship’s life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two; and again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was but one; and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the help that could never reach him, went down into the deep.

It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stood on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned to the spot where the boat had been. The divers were down then, and busy. They were ‘lifting’ to-day the gold found yesterday–some five-and-twenty thousand pounds. Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds’ worth, in round numbers, was at that time recovered. The great bulk of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. Some loss of sovereigns there would be, of course; indeed, at first sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered far and wide over the beach, like sea-shells; but most other golden treasure would be found. As it was brought up, it went aboard the Tug-steamer, where good account was taken of it. So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work: in which, also, several loose sovereigns that the ingot had swept in before it, had been found, as firmly embedded as though the iron had been liquid when they were forced there. It had been remarked of such bodies come ashore, too, as had been seen by scientific men, that they had been stunned to death, and not suffocated. Observation, both of the internal change that had been wrought in them, and of their external expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and easy. The report was brought, while I was holding such discourse on the beach, that no more bodies had come ashore since last night. It began to be very doubtful whether many more would be thrown up, until the north-east winds of the early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the passengers, and particularly the second-class women-passengers, were known to have been in the middle of the ship when she parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen upon them after yawning open, and would keep them down. A diver made known, even then, that he had come upon the body of a man, and had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he had left it where it was.

It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left home for Wales. I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried many scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his house and heart to their agonised friends; of his having used a most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and weeks, in the performance of the forlornest offices that Man can render to his kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the dead. I had said to myself, ‘In the Christmas season of the year, I should like to see that man!’ And he had swung the gate of his little garden in coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.

So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true practical Christianity ever is! I read more of the New Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life. I heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have ever blown conceit at me.

We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying water, and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately thawed. It was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the way) to suppose that the peasantry had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned; on the whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily. Ten shillings had been paid for the bringing of each body up to the church, but the way was steep, and a horse and cart (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) were necessary, and three or four men, and, all things considered, it was not a great price. The people were none the richer for the wreck, for it was the season of the herring-shoal–and who could cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the draught?

He had the church keys in his hand, and opened the churchyard gate, and opened the church door; and we went in.

It is a little church of great antiquity; there is reason to believe that some church has occupied the spot, these thousand years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other things usually belonging to the church were gone, owing to its living congregation having deserted it for the neighbouring school-room, and yielded it up to the dead. The very Commandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the bringing in of the dead; the black wooden tables on which they were painted, were askew, and on the stone pavement below them, and on the stone pavement all over the church, were the marks and stains where the drowned had been laid down. The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination, could yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the head had been and where the feet. Some faded traces of the wreck of the Australian ship may be discernible on the stone pavement of this little church, hundreds of years hence, when the digging for gold in Australia shall have long and long ceased out of the land.

Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one time, awaiting burial. Here, with weeping and wailing in every room of his house, my companion worked alone for hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could not see him, and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently examining the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from linen, anything that might lead to subsequent identification, studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, comparing letters sent to him with the ruin about him. ‘My dearest brother had bright grey eyes and a pleasant smile,’ one sister wrote. O poor sister! well for you to be far from here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him!

The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two sisters-in- law, came in among the bodies often. It grew to be the business of their lives to do so. Any new arrival of a bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to compare the description brought, with the dread realities. Sometimes, they would go back able to say, ‘I have found him,’ or, ‘I think she lies there.’ Perhaps, the mourner, unable to bear the sight of all that lay in the church, would be led in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many compassionate words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with a piercing cry, ‘This is my boy!’ and drop insensible on the insensible figure.

He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identification of persons, though complete, was quite at variance with the marks upon the linen; this led him to notice that even the marks upon the linen were sometimes inconsistent with one another; and thus he came to understand that they had dressed in great haste and agitation, and that their clothes had become mixed together. The identification of men by their dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence of a large proportion of them being dressed alike–in clothes of one kind, that is to say, supplied by slopsellers and outfitters, and not made by single garments but by hundreds. Many of the men were bringing over parrots, and had receipts upon them for the price of the birds; others had bills of exchange in their pockets, or in belts. Some of these documents, carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in appearance that day, than the present page will be under ordinary circumstances, after having been opened three or four times.

In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even such common commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants. Pitch had been burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at hand, and the frying-pan in which it had bubbled over a brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes. Hard by the Communion-Table, were some boots that had been taken off the drowned and preserved–a gold-digger’s boot, cut down the leg for its removal–a trodden- down man’s ankle-boot with a buff cloth top–and others–soaked and sandy, weedy and salt.

From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. Here, there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that had come ashore from the wreck. He had buried them, when not identified, in graves containing four each. He had numbered each body in a register describing it, and had placed a corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave. Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in another part of the church-yard. Several bodies had been exhumed from the graves of four, as relatives had come from a distance and seen his register; and, when recognised, these have been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all such cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and the ladies of his house had attended. There had been no offence in the poor ashes when they were brought again to the light of day; the beneficent Earth had already absorbed it. The drowned were buried in their clothes. To supply the great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the neighbouring people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sunday likewise. The coffins were neatly formed;–I had seen two, waiting for occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls of a stone hut on the beach, within call of the tent where the Christmas Feast was held. Similarly, one of the graves for four was lying open and ready, here, in the churchyard. So much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts whether they themselves could lie in their own ground, with their forefathers and descendants, by-and-by. The churchyard being but a step from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we crossed to the latter; the white surplice was hanging up near the door ready to be put on at any time, for a funeral service.

The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister was as consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone were sad. I never have seen anything more delightfully genuine than the calm dismissal by himself and his household of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that was quietly done and ended. In speaking of it, they spoke of it with great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress upon their own hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had attached many people to them as friends, and elicited many touching expressions of gratitude. This clergyman’s brother–himself the clergyman of two adjoining parishes, who had buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard, and who had done to them all that his brother had done as to the larger number- -must be understood as included in the family. He was there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no more account of his trouble than anybody else did. Down to yesterday’s post outward, my clergyman alone had written one thousand and seventy-five letters to relatives and friends of the lost people. In the absence of self-assertion, it was only through my now and then delicately putting a question as the occasion arose, that I became informed of these things. It was only when I had remarked again and again, in the church, on the awful nature of the scene of death he had been required so closely to familiarise himself with for the soothing of the living, that he had casually said, without the least abatement of his cheerfulness, ‘indeed, it had rendered him unable for a time to eat or drink more than a little coffee now and then, and a piece of bread.’

In this noble modesty, in this beautiful simplicity, in this serene avoidance of the least attempt to ‘improve’ an occasion which might be supposed to have sunk of its own weight into my heart, I seemed to have happily come, in a few steps, from the churchyard with its open grave, which was the type of Death, to the Christian dwelling side by side with it, which was the type of Resurrection. I never shall think of the former, without the latter. The two will always rest side by side in my memory. If I had lost any one dear to me in this unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thankful to GOD that that house was so close to it, and that its shadow by day and its domestic lights by night fell upon the earth in which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear one’s head.

The references that naturally arose out of our conversation, to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to the gratitude of relations and friends, made me very anxious to see some of those letters. I was presently seated before a shipwreck of papers, all bordered with black, and from them I made the following few extracts.

A mother writes:

REVEREND SIR. Amongst the many who perished on your shore was numbered my beloved son. I was only just recovering from a severe illness, and this fearful affliction has caused a relapse, so that I am unable at present to go to identify the remains of the loved and lost. My darling son would have been sixteen on Christmas-day next. He was a most amiable and obedient child, early taught the way of salvation. We fondly hoped that as a British seaman he might be an ornament to his profession, but, ‘it is well;’ I feel assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed. Oh, he did not wish to go this last voyage! On the fifteenth of October, I received a letter from him from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he wrote in high spirits, and in conclusion he says: ‘Pray for a fair breeze, dear mamma, and I’ll not forget to whistle for it! and, God permitting, I shall see you and all my little pets again. Good- bye, dear mother–good-bye, dearest parents. Good-bye, dear brother.’ Oh, it was indeed an eternal farewell. I do not apologise for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is so very sorrowful.

A husband writes:

MY DEAR KIND SIR. Will you kindly inform me whether there are any initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as the Standard says, last Tuesday? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will you tell me what I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to prevent my mind from going astray?

A widow writes:

Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that my dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I should have liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit. I feel, from all I have heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order. Little does it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this poor body lies, but we who are left behind would do all we can to show how we loved them. This is denied me, but it is God’s hand that afflicts us, and I try to submit. Some day I may be able to visit the spot, and see where he lies, and erect a simple stone to his memory. Oh! it will be long, long before I forget that dreadful night! Is there such a thing in the vicinity, or any shop in Bangor, to which I could send for a small picture of Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred to me?

Another widow writes:

I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most kindly for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well for the sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian who can sympathise with those who, like myself, are broken down with grief.

May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in this great trial. Time may roll on and bear all its sons away, but your name as a disinterested person will stand in history, and, as successive years pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct, and the tears of gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a thankful heart, when other things are forgotten for ever.

A father writes:

I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude to you for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion of his visit to his dear brother’s body, and also for your ready attention in pronouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate son’s remains. God grant that your prayers over him may reach the Mercy Seat, and that his soul may be received (through Christ’s intercession) into heaven!

His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks.

Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, write thus, after leaving it:

DEAR AND NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN FRIENDS. I arrived here yesterday morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my home by railway.

I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home. No words could speak language suited to my heart. I refrain. God reward you with the same measure you have meted with!

I enumerate no names, but embrace you all.

MY BELOVED FRIENDS. This is the first day that I have been able to leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of my not writing sooner.

If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realised in recovering the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned home somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been comparatively resigned.

I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without hope.

The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feelingly allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well know that everything will be done that can be, according to arrangements made before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to the identification of my dear son, and also his interment.

I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired since I left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations I am under to you by writing to me? And should the body of my dear and unfortunate son be identified, let me hear from you immediately, and I will come again.

Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy.

MY DEARLY BELOVED FRIENDS. I arrived in safety at my house yesterday, and a night’s rest has restored and tranquillised me. I must again repeat, that language has no words by which I can express my sense of obligation to you. You are enshrined in my heart of hearts.

I have seen him! and can now realise my misfortune more than I have hitherto been able to do. Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink! But I bow submissive. God MUST have done right. I do not want to feel less, but to acquiesce more simply.

There were some Jewish passengers on board the Royal Charter, and the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly expressed in the following letter bearing date from ‘the office of the Chief Rabbi:’

REVEREND SIR. I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heartfelt thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortunately been among those who perished at the late wreck of the Royal Charter. You have, indeed, like Boaz, ‘not left off your kindness to the living and the dead.’

You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting them in their mournful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to have our co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our rites. May our heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity and true philanthropy!

The ‘Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool’ thus express themselves through their secretary:

REVEREND SIR. The wardens of this congregation have learned with great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at the scene of the late disaster to the Royal Charter, which have received universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed your valuable efforts to assist such members of our faith as have sought the bodies of lost friends to give them burial in our consecrated grounds, with the observances and rites prescribed by the ordinances of our religion.

The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity to offer to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their warm acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for your continued welfare and prosperity.

A Jewish gentleman writes:

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR. I take the opportunity of thanking you right earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my note with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I also herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you displayed and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains of my poor brother exhumed. It has been to us a most sorrowful and painful event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in a measure, somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffering so much easier to be borne. Considering the circumstances connected with my poor brother’s fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one. He had been away in all seven years; he returned four years ago to see his family. He was then engaged to a very amiable young lady. He had been very successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfil his sacred vow; he brought all his property with him in gold uninsured. We heard from him when the ship stopped at Queenstown, when he was in the highest of hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all was washed away.

Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation here, were the numerous references to those miniatures of women worn round the necks of rough men (and found there after death), those locks of hair, those scraps of letters, those many many slight memorials of hidden tenderness. One man cast up by the sea bore about him, printed on a perforated lace card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm:

A BLESSING.

May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of glory shine around thy bed; and may the gates of plenty, honour, and happiness be ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy days; may no grief disturb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleasures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years makes thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes around thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude blast to hasten on its extinction.

A sailor had these devices on his right arm. ‘Our Saviour on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture stained red; on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman; on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a half moon, with a face; on the other side, the sun; on the top of the Cross, the letters I.H.S.; on the left arm, a man and woman dancing, with an effort to delineate the female’s dress; under which, initials.’ Another seaman ‘had, on the lower part of the right arm, the device of a sailor and a female; the man holding the Union Jack with a streamer, the folds of which waved over her head, and the end of it was held in her hand. On the upper part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on the side in Indian Ink. On the left arm, a flag, a true lover’s knot, a face, and initials.’ This tattooing was found still plain, below the discoloured outer surface of a mutilated arm, when such surface was carefully scraped away with a knife. It is not improbable that the perpetuation of this marking custom among seamen, may be referred back to their desire to be identified, if drowned and flung ashore.

It was some time before I could sever myself from the many interesting papers on the table, and then I broke bread and drank wine with the kind family before I left them. As I brought the Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman back, with his leathern wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and terrier dog. Many a heart-broken letter had he brought to the Rectory House within two months many; a benignantly painstaking answer had he carried back.

As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants of this mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the little churchyard in the years to come; I thought of the many people in Australia, who would have an interest in such a shipwreck, and would find their way here when they visit the Old World; I thought of the writers of all the wreck of letters I had left upon the table; and I resolved to place this little record where it stands. Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan Epistles, and the like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare say, and Heaven send they may! but I doubt if they will ever do their Master’s service half so well, in all the time they last, as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon the rugged coast of Wales.

Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal Charter; had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of my life; had I lost my maiden daughter, had I lost my hopeful boy, had I lost my little child; I would kiss the hands that worked so busily and gently in the church, and say, ‘None better could have touched the form, though it had lain at home.’ I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it: I could be content to leave the grave near the house the good family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little churchyard where so many are so strangely brought together.

Without the name of the clergyman to whom–I hope, not without carrying comfort to some heart at some time–I have referred, my reference would be as nothing. He is the Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, of Penrhos, Alligwy.

CHAPTER III–WAPPING WORKHOUSE

My day’s no-business beckoning me to the East-end of London, I had turned my face to that point of the metropolitan compass on leaving Covent-garden, and had got past the India House, thinking in my idle manner of Tippoo-Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little wooden midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of his knee-shorts for old acquaintance’ sake, and had got past Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen’s Head (with an ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy countenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his ancient neighbour the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who departed this life I don’t know when, and whose coaches are all gone I don’t know where; and I had come out again into the age of railways, and I had got past Whitechapel Church, and was–rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial Traveller–in the Commercial Road. Pleasantly wallowing in the abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in back streets, the neighbouring canals and docks, the India vans lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers’ shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants and quadrants, that I should have bought a few cheap if I had the least notion how to use them, I at last began to file off to the right, towards Wapping.

Not that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or that I was going to look at the locality, because I believe (for I don’t) in the constancy of the young woman who told her sea-going lover, to such a beautiful old tune, that she had ever continued the same, since she gave him the ‘baccer-box marked with his name; I am afraid he usually got the worst of those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, I was going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magistrate had said, through the morning papers, that there was no classification at the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it was a disgrace and a shame, and divers other hard names, and because I wished to see how the fact really stood. For, that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men of the East, may be inferred from their course of procedure respecting the fancy-dressing and pantomime-posturing at St. George’s in that quarter: which is usually, to discuss the matter at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest perplexity, with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and, for a final expedient, to consult the complainant as to what he thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take the defendant’s opinion as to what he would recommend to be done with himself.

Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on predestination to bring me somehow or other to the place I wanted if I were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an hour or so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself on a swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in some dirty water. Over against me, stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young man, with a puffed sallow face, and a figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have been the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large thimble, that stood between us.

I asked this apparition what it called the place? Unto which, it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like gurgling water in its throat:

‘Mr. Baker’s trap.’

As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, I deeply considered the meaning of this speech, while I eyed the apparition–then engaged in hugging and sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the locks. Inspiration suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting coroner of that neighbourhood.

‘A common place for suicide,’ said I, looking down at the locks.

‘Sue?’ returned the ghost, with a stare. ‘Yes! And Poll. Likewise Emily. And Nancy. And Jane;’ he sucked the iron between each name; ‘and all the bileing. Ketches off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers down here, they doos. Always a headerin’ down here, they is. Like one o’clock.’

‘And at about that hour of the morning, I suppose?’

‘Ah!’ said the apparition. ‘THEY an’t partickler. Two ‘ull do for THEM. Three. All times o’ night. On’y mind you!’ Here the apparition rested his profile on the bar, and gurgled in a sarcastic manner. ‘There must be somebody comin’. They don’t go a headerin’ down here, wen there an’t no Bobby nor gen’ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.’

According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself a General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public. In which modest character I remarked:

‘They are often taken out, are they, and restored?’

‘I dunno about restored,’ said the apparition, who, for some occult reason, very much objected to that word; ‘they’re carried into the werkiss and put into a ‘ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno about restored,’ said the apparition; ‘blow THAT!’–and vanished.

As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not sorry to find myself alone, especially as the ‘werkiss’ it had indicated with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand. So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible trap (baited with a scum that was like the soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys), and made bold to ring at the workhouse gate, where I was wholly unexpected and quite unknown.

A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of keys in her hand, responded to my request to see the House. I began to doubt whether the police magistrate was quite right in his facts, when I noticed her quick, active little figure and her intelligent eyes.

The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst first. He was welcome to see everything. Such as it was, there it all was.

This was the only preparation for our entering ‘the Foul wards.’ They were in an old building squeezed away in a corner of a paved yard, quite detached from the more modern and spacious main body of the workhouse. They were in a building most monstrously behind the time–a mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and objectionable circumstance in their construction, and only accessible by steep and narrow staircases, infamously ill-adapted for the passage up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of the dead.

A-bed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there (for a change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women in every stage of distress and disease. None but those who have attentively observed such scenes, can conceive the extraordinary variety of expression still latent under the general monotony and uniformity of colour, attitude, and condition. The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had turned its back on this world for ever; the uninterested face at once lead-coloured and yellow, looking passively upward from the pillow; the haggard mouth a little dropped, the hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so light, and yet so heavy; these were on every pallet; but when I stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the figure lying there, the ghost of the old character came into the face, and made the Foul ward as various as the fair world. No one appeared to care to live, but no one complained; all who could speak, said that as much was done for them as could be done there, that the attendance was kind and patient, that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to ask for. The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it is possible for such rooms to be; they would become a pest-house in a single week, if they were ill-kept.

I accompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous staircase, into a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and imbecile. There was at least Light in it, whereas the windows in the former wards had been like sides of school-boys’ bird-cages. There was a strong grating over the fire here, and, holding a kind of state on either side of the hearth, separated by the breadth of this grating, were two old ladies in a condition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very last and lowest reduction of self-complacency to be found in this wonderful humanity of ours. They were evidently jealous of each other, and passed their whole time (as some people do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally disparaging each other, and contemptuously watching their neighbours. One of these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was extremely talkative, and expressed a strong desire to attend the service on Sundays, from which she represented herself to have derived the greatest interest and consolation when allowed that privilege. She gossiped so well, and looked altogether so cheery and harmless, that I began to think this a case for the Eastern magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion of her attending chapel she had secreted a small stick, and had caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing it and belabouring the congregation.

So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the grating– otherwise they would fly at one another’s caps–sat all day long, suspecting one another, and contemplating a world of fits. For everybody else in the room had fits, except the wards-woman; an elderly, able-bodied pauperess, with a large upper lip, and an air of repressing and saving her strength, as she stood with her hands folded before her, and her eyes slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding somebody. This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify a reduced member of my honourable friend Mrs. Gamp’s family) said, ‘They has ’em continiwal, sir. They drops without no more notice than if they was coach-horses dropped from the moon, sir. And when one drops, another drops, and sometimes there’ll be as many as four or five on ’em at once, dear me, a rolling and a tearin’, bless you!–this young woman, now, has ’em dreadful bad.’

She turned up this young woman’s face with her hand as she said it. This young woman was seated on the floor, pondering in the foreground of the afflicted. There was nothing repellent either in her face or head. Many, apparently worse, varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were about her, but she was said to be the worst here. When I had spoken to her a little, she still sat with her face turned up, pondering, and a gleam of the mid-day sun shone in upon her.

– Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their confused dull way, ever get mental glimpses among the motes in the sunlight, of healthy people and healthy things? Whether this young woman, brooding like this in the summer season, ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even mountains and the great sea? Whether, not to go so far, this young woman ever has any dim revelation of that young woman–that young woman who is not here and never will come here; who is courted, and caressed, and loved, and has a husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and who never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming upon her? And whether this young woman, God help her, gives herself up then and drops like a coach-horse from the moon?

I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, penetrating into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleasant or painful to me. It was something to be reminded that the weary world was not all aweary, and was ever renewing itself; but, this young woman was a child not long ago, and a child not long hence might be such as she. Howbeit, the active step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me past the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by the children), and into the adjacent nursery.

There were many babies here, and more than one handsome young mother. There were ugly young mothers also, and sullen young mothers, and callous young mothers. But, the babies had not appropriated to themselves any bad expression yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared to the contrary in their soft faces, Princes Imperial, and Princesses Royal. I had the pleasure of giving a poetical commission to the baker’s man to make a cake with all despatch and toss it into the oven for one red-headed young pauper and myself, and felt much the better for it. Without that refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition for ‘the Refractories,’ towards whom my quick little matron–for whose adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived a genuine respect–drew me next, and marshalled me the way that I was going.

The Refractories were picking oakum, in a small room giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with their backs to a window; before them, a table, and their work. The oldest Refractory was, say twenty; youngest Refractory, say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained in the course of my uncommercial travels, why a Refractory habit should affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed that Refractories of both sexes and every grade, between a Ragged School and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in which the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency.

‘Five pound indeed! I hain’t a going fur to pick five pound,’ said the Chief of the Refractories, keeping time to herself with her head and chin. ‘More than enough to pick what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we gets here!’

(This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that the amount of work was likely to be increased. It certainly was not heavy then, for one Refractory had already done her day’s task–it was barely two o’clock–and was sitting behind it, with a head exactly matching it.)

‘A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain’t it?’ said Refractory Two, ‘where a pleeseman’s called in, if a gal says a word!’

‘And wen you’re sent to prison for nothink or less!’ said the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron’s hair. ‘But any place is better than this; that’s one thing, and be thankful!’

A laugh of Refractories led by Oakum Head with folded arms–who originated nothing, but who was in command of the skirmishers outside the conversation.

‘If any place is better than this,’ said my brisk guide, in the calmest manner, ‘it is a pity you left a good place when you had one.’

‘Ho, no, I didn’t, matron,’ returned the Chief, with another pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy’s forehead. ‘Don’t say that, matron, cos it’s lies!’

Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, and retired.

‘And _I_ warn’t a going,’ exclaimed Refractory Two, ‘though I was in one place for as long as four year–_I_ warn’t a going fur to stop in a place that warn’t fit for me–there! And where the family warn’t ‘spectable characters–there! And where I fortunately or hunfort’nately, found that the people warn’t what they pretended to make theirselves out to be–there! And where it wasn’t their faults, by chalks, if I warn’t made bad and ruinated– Hah!’

During this speech, Oakum Head had again made a diversion with the skirmishers, and had again withdrawn.

The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he supposed Chief Refractory and Number One, to be the two young women who had been taken before the magistrate?

‘Yes!’ said the Chief, ‘we har! and the wonder is, that a pleeseman an’t ‘ad in now, and we took off agen. You can’t open your lips here, without a pleeseman.’

Number Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers followed suit.

‘I’m sure I’d be thankful,’ protested the Chief, looking sideways at the Uncommercial, ‘if I could be got into a place, or got abroad. I’m sick and tired of this precious Ouse, I am, with reason.’

So would be, and so was, Number Two. So would be, and so was, Oakum Head. So would be, and so were, Skirmishers.

The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he hardly thought it probable that any lady or gentleman in want of a likely young domestic of retiring manners, would be tempted into the engagement of either of the two leading Refractories, on her own presentation of herself as per sample.

‘It ain’t no good being nothink else here,’ said the Chief.

The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying.

‘Oh no it ain’t,’ said the Chief.

‘Not a bit of good,’ said Number Two.

‘And I’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a place, or got abroad,’ said the Chief.

‘And so should I,’ said Number Two. ‘Truly thankful, I should.’

Oakum Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new idea, the mention of which profound novelty might be naturally expected to startle her unprepared hearers, that she would be very thankful to be got into a place, or got abroad. And, as if she had then said, ‘Chorus, ladies!’ all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose. We left them, thereupon, and began a long walk among the women who were simply old and infirm; but whenever, in the course of this same walk, I looked out of any high window that commanded the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all the other Refractories looking out at their low window for me, and never failing to catch me, the moment I showed my head.

In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age. In ten minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed to have been blown out, and nothing in that way to be left this vault to brag of, but the flickering and expiring snuffs.

And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women had one company notion which was the fashion of the place. Every old woman who became aware of a visitor and was not in bed hobbled over a form into her accustomed seat, and became one of a line of dim old women confronting another line of dim old women across a narrow table. There was no obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this way; it was their manner of ‘receiving.’ As a rule, they made no attempt to talk to one another, or to look at the visitor, or to look at anything, but sat silently working their mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows. In some of these wards, it was good to see a few green plants; in others, an isolated Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in that capacity, when separated from her compeers; every one of these wards, day room, night room, or both combined, was scrupulously clean and fresh. I have seen as many such places as most travellers in my line, and I never saw one such, better kept.

Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reliance on the books under the pillow, great faith in GOD. All cared for sympathy, but none much cared to be encouraged with hope of recovery; on the whole, I should say, it was considered rather a distinction to have a complication of disorders, and to be in a worse way than the rest. From some of the windows, the river could be seen with all its life and movement; the day was bright, but I came upon no one who was looking out.

In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of distinction, like the President and Vice of the good company, were two old women, upwards of ninety years of age. The younger of the two, just turned ninety, was deaf, but not very, and could easily be made to hear. In her early time she had nursed a child, who was now another old woman, more infirm than herself, inhabiting the very same chamber. She perfectly understood this when the matron told it, and, with sundry nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed out the woman in question. The elder of this pair, ninety- three, seated before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading it), was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully preserved, and amazingly conversational. She had not long lost her husband, and had been in that place little more than a year. At Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor creature would have been individually addressed, would have been tended in her own room, and would have had her life gently assimilated to a comfortable life out of doors. Would that be much to do in England for a woman who has kept herself out of a workhouse more than ninety rough long years? When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, arose, with a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure main, did her guardian angels positively forbid it in the Charter which has been so much besung?

The object of my journey was accomplished when the nimble matron had no more to show me. As I shook hands with her at the gate, I told her that I thought justice had not used her very well, and that the wise men of the East were not infallible.

Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home again, concerning those Foul wards. They ought not to exist; no person of common decency and humanity can see them and doubt it. But what is this Union to do? The necessary alteration would cost several thousands of pounds; it has already to support three workhouses; its inhabitants work hard for their bare lives, and are already rated for the relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable endurance. One poor parish in this very Union is rated to the amount of FIVE AND SIXPENCE in the pound, at the very same time when the rich parish of Saint George’s, Hanover-square, is rated at about SEVENPENCE in the pound, Paddington at about FOURPENCE, Saint James’s, Westminster, at about TENPENCE! It is only through the equalisation of Poor Rates that what is left undone in this wise, can be done. Much more is left undone, or is ill-done, than I have space to suggest in these notes of a single uncommercial journey; but, the wise men of the East, before they can reasonably hold forth about it, must look to the North and South and West; let them also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon, look into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and first ask themselves ‘how much more can these poor people–many of whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out of the workhouse–bear?’

I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from the neighbourhood of Mr. Baker’s trap, I had knocked at the gate of the workhouse of St. George’s-in-the-East, and had found it to be an establishment highly creditable to those parts, and thoroughly well administered by a most intelligent master. I remarked in it, an instance of the collateral harm that obstinate vanity and folly can do. ‘This was the Hall where those old paupers, male and female, whom I had just seen, met for the Church service, was it?’–‘Yes.’–‘Did they sing the Psalms to any instrument?’–‘They would like to, very much; they would have an extraordinary interest in doing so.’–‘And could none be got?’–‘Well, a piano could even have been got for nothing, but these unfortunate dissensions–‘ Ah! better, far better, my Christian friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the singing boys alone, and left the multitude to sing for themselves! You should know better than I, but I think I have read that they did so, once upon a time, and that ‘when they had sung an hymn,’ Some one (not in a beautiful garment) went up into the Mount of Olives.

It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling, in the streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to me, as I walked along, ‘Turn this way, man, and see what waits to be done!’ So I decoyed myself into another train of thought to ease my heart. But, I don’t know that I did it, for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only a change to a single pauper, who took possession of my remembrance instead of a thousand.

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ he had said, in a confidential manner, on another occasion, taking me aside; ‘but I have seen better days.’

‘I am very sorry to hear it.’

‘Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.’

‘I have no power here, I assure you. And if I had–‘

‘But, allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and a man who has seen better days, sir. The master and myself are both masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually; but, because I am in this unfortunate position, sir, he won’t give me the counter- sign!’

CHAPTER IV–TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE

As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out into the streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the last past month of January, all that neighbourhood of Covent-garden looked very desolate. It is so essentially a neighbourhood which has seen better days, that bad weather affects it sooner than another place which has not come down in the World. In its present reduced condition it bears a thaw almost worse than any place I know. It gets so dreadfully low-spirited when damp breaks forth. Those wonderful houses about Drury-lane Theatre, which in the palmy days of theatres were prosperous and long-settled places of business, and which now change hands every week, but never change their character of being divided and sub-divided on the ground floor into mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half-a-dozen nuts, or a pomatum-pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, are offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contemplated that evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent nose. Those inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, with nothing in them (not so much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before the curtain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets at reduced prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary hats too tall for them, whom one occasionally seems to have seen on race-courses, not wholly unconnected with strips of cloth of various colours and a rolling ball–those Bedouin establishments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless, except when sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger- beer bottles, which would have made one shudder on such a night, but for its being plain that they had nothing in them, shrunk from the shrill cries of the news-boys at their Exchange in the kennel of Catherine-street, like guilty things upon a fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in Great Russell-street, the Death’s-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori, admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an Institution. I walked up Bow-street, disposed to be angry with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which diadems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that some shops which had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled out of it, were not getting on prosperously–like some actors I have known, who took to business and failed to make it answer. In a word, those streets looked so dull, and, considered as theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the FOUND DEAD on the black board at the police station might have announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of water outside the fire-engine maker’s at the corner of Long-acre might have been occasioned by his having brought out the whole of his stock to play upon its last smouldering ashes.

And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object of my journey was theatrical. And yet within half an hour I was in an immense theatre, capable of holding nearly five thousand people.

What Theatre? Her Majesty’s? Far better. Royal Italian Opera? Far better. Infinitely superior to the latter for hearing in; infinitely superior to both, for seeing in. To every part of this Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress and egress. For every part of it, convenient places of refreshment and retiring rooms. Everything to eat and drink carefully supervised as to quality, and sold at an appointed price; respectable female attendants ready for the commonest women in the audience; a general air of consideration, decorum, and supervision, most commendable; an unquestionably humanising influence in all the social arrangements of the place.

Surely a dear Theatre, then? Because there were in London (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance-prices up to half-a-guinea a head, whose arrangements were not half so civilised. Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre? Not very dear. A gallery at three- pence, another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, boxes and pit-stalls at a shilling, and a few private boxes at half-a-crown.

My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every nook of this great place, and among every class of the audience assembled in it- -amounting that evening, as I calculated, to about two thousand and odd hundreds. Magnificently lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building was ventilated to perfection. My sense of smell, without being particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of the commoner places of public resort, that I have often been obliged to leave them when I have made an uncommercial journey expressly to look on. The air of this Theatre was fresh, cool, and wholesome. To help towards this end, very sensible precautions had been used, ingeniously combining the experience of hospitals and railway stations. Asphalt pavements substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of glazed brick and tile–even at the back of the boxes–for plaster and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting or baize used; a cool material with a light glazed surface, being the covering of the seats.

These various contrivances are as well considered in the place in question as if it were a Fever Hospital; the result is, that it is sweet and healthful. It has been constructed from the ground to the roof, with a careful reference to sight and sound in every corner; the result is, that its form is beautiful, and that the appearance of the audience, as seen from the proscenium–with every face in it commanding the stage, and the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, that a hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage without the movement being seen from thence–is highly remarkable in its union of vastness with compactness. The stage itself, and all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height and breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s Hospital in the Old-street- road, London. The Forty Thieves might be played here, and every thief ride his real horse, and the disguised captain bring in his oil jars on a train of real camels, and nobody be put out of the way. This really extraordinary place is the achievement of one man’s enterprise, and was erected on the ruins of an inconvenient old building in less than five months, at a round cost of five-and- twenty thousand pounds. To dismiss this part of my subject, and still to render to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his due, I must add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to make the best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a highly agreeable sign of these times.

As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of the night as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by looking about me at my neighbours. We were a motley assemblage of people, and we had a good many boys and young men among us; we had also many girls and young women. To represent, however, that we did not include a very great number, and a very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make a gross mis-statement. Such groups were to be seen in all parts of the house; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they were composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had many children with them. Among our dresses there were most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of our young men were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with our hands in our pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about our necks like eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts like links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair over each cheek- bone with a slight Thief-flavour in it. Besides prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-labourers, costermongers, petty tradesmen, small clerks, milliners, stay-makers, shoe-binders, slop-workers, poor workers in a hundred highways and byways. Many of us–on the whole, the majority–were not at all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or conversation. But we had all come together in a place where our convenience was well consulted, and where we were well looked after, to enjoy an evening’s entertainment in common. We were not going to lose any part of what we had paid for through anybody’s caprice, and as a community we had a character to lose. So, we were closely attentive, and kept excellent order; and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly get out from this place, or we would put him out with the greatest expedition.

We began at half-past six with a pantomime–with a pantomime so long, that before it was over I felt as if I had been travelling for six weeks–going to India, say, by the Overland Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in the Introduction, and the Four Quarters of the World came out of the globe, glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit, who sang charmingly. We were delighted to understand that there was no liberty anywhere but among ourselves, and we highly applauded the agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which did as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war with a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy Rust, and who would have got the better of them if the Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harlequina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarkably stout father and three spineless sons. We all knew what was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with a big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and began untying himself behind, with his big face all on one side. Our excitement at that crisis was great, and our delight unbounded. After this era in our existence, we went through all the incidents of a pantomime; it was not by any means a savage pantomime, in the way of burning or boiling people, or throwing them out of window, or cutting them up; was often very droll; was always liberally got up, and cleverly presented. I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who represented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had no conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real thing- -from which I infer that you may take that audience in (if you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done as to anything in the streets. I noticed, also, that when two young men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and-sausage-cravated portion of the audience, were chased by policemen, and, finding themselves in danger of being caught, dropped so suddenly as to oblige the policemen to tumble over them, there was great rejoicing among the caps–as though it were a delicate reference to something they had heard of before.

The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melo-Drama. Throughout the evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as triumphant as she usually is out of doors, and indeed I thought rather more so. We all agreed (for the time) that honesty was the best policy, and we were as hard as iron upon Vice, and we wouldn’t hear of Villainy getting on in the world–no, not on any consideration whatever.

Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and refreshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the bar of the neighbouring public-house, some of us drank spirits, crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the refreshment-bars established for us in the Theatre. The sandwich–as substantial as was consistent with portability, and as cheap as possible–we hailed as one of our greatest institutions. It forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, and we were always delighted to see it; its adaptability to the varying moods of our nature was surprising; we could never weep so comfortably as when our tears fell on our sandwich; we could never laugh so heartily as when we choked with sandwich; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Innocence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped stockings. When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell back upon sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, and home to bed.

This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Being Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half of my uncommercial journey; for, its object was to compare the play on Saturday evening with the preaching in the same Theatre on Sunday evening.

Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre. I drove up to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should have come on foot), and found myself in a large crowd of people who, I am happy to state, were put into excellent spirits by my arrival. Having nothing to look at but the mud and the closed doors, they looked at me, and highly enjoyed the comic spectacle. My modesty inducing me to draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at once forgot me, and applied themselves to their former occupation of looking at the mud and looking in at the closed doors: which, being of grated ironwork, allowed the lighted passage within to be seen. They were chiefly people of respectable appearance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and making a joke of being there as most crowds do.

In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a very obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was already full, and that the people whom I saw in the street were all shut out for want of room. After that, I lost no time in worming myself into the building, and creeping to a place in a Proscenium box that had been kept for me.

There must have been full four thousand people present. Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as holding little less than fourteen hundred. Every part of the house was well filled, and I had not found it easy to make my way along the back of the boxes to where I sat. The chandeliers in the ceiling were lighted; there was no light on the stage; the orchestra was empty. The green curtain was down, and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three ladies. In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered with red baize, was the presiding minister. The kind of rostrum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning forward over the mantelpiece.

A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. It was followed by a discourse, to which the congregation listened with most exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and decorum. My own attention comprehended both the auditory and the speaker, and shall turn to both in this recalling of the scene, exactly as it did at the time.

‘A very difficult thing,’ I thought, when the discourse began, ‘to speak appropriately to so large an audience, and to speak with tact. Without it, better not to speak at all. Infinitely better, to read the New Testament well, and to let THAT speak. In this congregation there is indubitably one pulse; but I doubt if any power short of genius can touch it as one, and make it answer as one.’

I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, that the minister was a good speaker. I could not possibly say to myself that he expressed an understanding of the general mind and character of his audience. There was a supposititious working-man introduced into the homily, to make supposititious objections to our Christian religion and be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable person, but remarkably unlike life–very much more unlike it than anything I had seen in the pantomime. The native independence of character this artisan was supposed to possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There was a model pauper introduced in like manner, who appeared to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, and to show himself in absolute want and dire necessity of a course of Stone Yard. For, how did this pauper testify to his having received the gospel of humility? A gentleman met him in the workhouse, and said (which I myself really thought good-natured of him), ‘Ah, John? I am sorry to see you here. I am sorry to see you so poor.’ ‘Poor, sir!’ replied that man, drawing himself up, ‘I am the son of a Prince! MY father is the King of Kings. MY father is the Lord of Lords. MY father is the ruler of all the Princes of the Earth!’ &c. And this was what all the preacher’s fellow-sinners might come to, if they would embrace this blessed book–which I must say it did some violence to my own feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm’s length at frequent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a sale. Now, could I help asking myself the question, whether the mechanic before me, who must detect the preacher as being wrong about the visible manner of himself and the like of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that pauper, might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the occasion, doubt that preacher’s being right about things not visible to human senses?

Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an audience continually as ‘fellow-sinners’? Is it not enough to be fellow- creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving to-day, dying to- morrow? By our common humanity, my brothers and sisters, by our common capacities for pain and pleasure, by our common laughter and our common tears, by our common aspiration to reach something better than ourselves, by our common tendency to believe in something good, and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some qualities that are superior to our own failings and weaknesses as we know them in our own poor hearts–by these, Hear me!–Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures. Surely, it includes the other designation, and some touching meanings over and above.

Again. There was a personage introduced into the discourse (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remembrance of my reading), who had been personally known to the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in all the ways of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many a time had the preacher talked with him on that subject, and many a time had he failed to convince that intelligent man. But he fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his conversion– in words which the preacher had taken down, my fellow-sinners, and would read to you from this piece of paper. I must confess that to me, as one of an uninstructed audience, they did not appear particularly edifying. I thought their tone extremely selfish, and I thought they had a spiritual vanity in them which was of the before-mentioned refractory pauper’s family.

All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but the slang and twang of the conventicle–as bad in its way as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can be said of it–should be studiously avoided under such circumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete on this occasion. Nor was it quite agreeable to see the preacher addressing his pet ‘points’ to his backers on the stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show him up, and testify to the multitude that each of those points was a clincher.

But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general tone; of his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his earnest and reiterated assurance to the people that the commonest among them could work out their own salvation if they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully following Our Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring man; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise. Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the plain emphatic words of his discourse in these respects. And it was a most significant and encouraging circumstance that whenever he struck that chord, or whenever he described anything which Christ himself had done, the array of faces before him was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive of emotion, than at any other time.

And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part of the audience of the previous night, WAS NOT THERE. There is no doubt about it. There was no such thing in that building, that Sunday evening. I have been told since, that the lowest part of the audience of the Victoria Theatre has been attracted to its Sunday services. I have been very glad to hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, the lowest part of the usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, decidedly and unquestionably stayed away. When I first took my seat and looked at the house, my surprise at the change in its occupants was as great as my disappointment. To the most respectable class of the previous evening, was added a great number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity, and drafts from the regular congregations of various chapels. It was impossible to fail in identifying the character of these last, and they were very numerous. I came out in a strong, slow tide of them setting from the boxes. Indeed, while the discourse was in progress, the respectable character of the auditory was so manifest in their appearance, that when the minister addressed a supposititious ‘outcast,’ one really felt a little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by anything the eye could discover.

The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings was eight o’clock. The address having lasted until full that time, and it being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the preacher intimated in a few sensible words that the clock had struck the hour, and that those who desired to go before the hymn was sung, could go now, without giving offence. No one stirred. The hymn was then sung, in good time and tune and unison, and its effect was very striking. A comprehensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a light cloud of dust.

That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, I do not doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will work lower and lower down in the social scale, if those who preside over them will be very careful on two heads: firstly, not to disparage the places in which they speak, or the intelligence of their hearers; secondly, not to set themselves in antagonism to the natural inborn desire of the mass of mankind to recreate themselves and to be amused.

There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to which my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In the New Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting history conceivable by man, and there are the terse models for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the models, imitate them, Sunday preachers–else why are they there, consider? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot read, some people will not read, many people (this especially holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue the verse-form in which the book is presented to them, and imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of continuity. Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting forth the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You will never preach so well, you will never move them so profoundly, you will never send them away with half so much to think of. Which is the better interest: Christ’s choice of twelve poor men to help in those merciful wonders among the poor and rejected; or the pious bullying of a whole Union-full of paupers? What is your changed philosopher to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud of the streets and of my life, when you have the widow’s son to tell me about, the ruler’s daughter, the other figure at the door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one of the two ran to the mourner, crying, ‘The Master is come and calleth for thee’?–Let the preacher who will thoroughly forget himself and remember no individuality but one, and no eloquence but one, stand up before four thousand men and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday night, recounting that narrative to them as fellow creatures, and he shall see a sight!

CHAPTER V–POOR MERCANTILE JACK

Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps watch on life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge of Mercantile Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy? If not, who is? What is the cherub about, and what are we all about, when poor

Mercantile Jack is having his brains slowly knocked out by penny- weights, aboard the brig Beelzebub, or the barque Bowie-knife–when he looks his last at that infernal craft, with the first officer’s iron boot-heel in his remaining eye, or with his dying body towed overboard in the ship’s wake, while the cruel wounds in it do ‘the multitudinous seas incarnadine’?

Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the brig Beelzebub or the barque Bowie-knife, the first officer did half the damage to cotton that he does to men, there would presently arise from both sides of the Atlantic so vociferous an invocation of the sweet little cherub who sits calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets that pay, that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have that gallant officer’s organ of destructiveness out of his head in the space of a flash of lightning?

If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of men, for I believe it with all my soul.

This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for me! I have long outgrown the state of sweet little cherub; but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, and very busy he was, and very cold he was: the snow yet lying in the frozen furrows of the land, and the north-east winds snipping off the tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with. Mercantile Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather: as he mostly is in all weathers, poor Jack. He was girded to ships’ masts and funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping and painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that tried to beat him off; he was dimly discernible up in a world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing; he was faintly audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo; he was winding round and round at capstans melodious, monotonous, and drunk; he was of a diabolical aspect, with coaling for the Antipodes; he was washing decks barefoot, with the breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though it was sharper than the knife in his leathern girdle; he was looking over bulwarks, all eyes and hair; he was standing by at the shoot of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down into the ice-house; he was coming aboard of other vessels, with his kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the very last moment of his shore-going existence. As though his senses, when released from the uproar of the elements, were under obligation to be confused by other turmoil, there was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a clashing of iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the very madness of sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood swaying about, with his hair blown all manner of wild ways, rather crazedly taking leave of his plunderers, all the rigging in the docks was shrill in the wind, and every little steamer coming and going across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and down, as if there were a general taunting chorus of ‘Come along, Mercantile Jack! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out. Come along, Poor Mercantile Jack, and be tempest-tossed till you are drowned!’

The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and Jack together, was this:- I had entered the Liverpool police force, that I might have a look at the various unlawful traps which are every night set for Jack. As my term of service in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is an admirable force. Besides that it is composed, without favour, of the best men that can be picked, it is directed by an unusual intelligence. Its organisation against Fires, I take to be much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remarkable discretion.

Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I had taken, for purposes of identification, a photograph-likeness of a thief, in the portrait-room at our head police office (on the whole, he seemed rather complimented by the proceeding), and I had been on police parade, and the small hand of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up my lantern to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set for Jack. In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall, well-looking, well-set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a cavalry air, a good chest, and a resolute but not by any means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a plain black walking-stick of hard wood; and whenever and wherever, at any after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with a ringing sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the darkness, and a policeman. To this remarkable stick, I refer an air of mystery and magic which pervaded the whole of my perquisition among the traps that were set for Jack.

We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of the port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, before a dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, Mr. Superintendent struck upon the ground, and the wall opened and shot out, with military salute of hand to temple, two policemen–not in the least surprised themselves, not in the least surprising Mr. Superintendent.

‘All right, Sharpeye?’

‘All right, sir.’

‘All right, Trampfoot?’

‘Is Quickear there?’

‘Here am I, sir.’

‘Come with us.’

‘Yes, sir.’

So, Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I went next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear-guard. Sharp-eye, I soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful and quite professional way of opening doors–touched latches delicately, as if they were keys of musical instruments–opened every door he touched, as if he were perfectly confident that there was stolen property behind it– instantly insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut.

Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for Jack, but Jack did not happen to be in any of them. They were all such miserable places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth. In every trap, somebody was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. Now, it was a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood Gipsy in the old sixpenny dream-books; now, it was a crimp of the male sex, in a checked shirt and without a coat, reading a newspaper; now, it was a man crimp and a woman crimp, who always introduced themselves as united in holy matrimony; now, it was Jack’s delight, his (un)lovely Nan; but they were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully disappointed to see us.

‘Who have you got up-stairs here?’ says Sharpeye, generally. (In the Move-on tone.)

‘Nobody, surr; sure not a blessed sowl!’ (Irish feminine reply.)

‘What do you mean by nobody? Didn’t I hear a woman’s step go up- stairs when my hand was on the latch?’

‘Ah! sure thin you’re right, surr, I forgot her! ‘Tis on’y Betsy White, surr. Ah! you know Betsy, surr. Come down, Betsy darlin’, and say the gintlemin.’

Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep staircase is in the room) with a forcible expression in her protesting face, of an intention to compensate herself for the present trial by grinding Jack finer than usual when he does come. Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendent, and says, as if the subjects of his remarks were wax-work:

‘One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has been indicted three times. This man’s a regular bad one likewise. His real name is Pegg. Gives himself out as Waterhouse.’

‘Never had sitch a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since I was in this house, bee the good Lard!’ says the woman.

Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes exceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our observation with a look, to the prints and pictures that are invariably numerous on the walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear are taking notice on the doorstep. In default of Sharpeye being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentleman encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from the outer air, like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, but knows himself to be Fogle; or that Canlon is Walker’s brother, against whom there was not sufficient evidence; or that the man who says he never was at sea since he was a boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails tomorrow morning. ‘And that is a bad class of man, you see,’ says Mr. Superintendent, when he got out into the dark again, ‘and very difficult to deal with, who, when he has made this place too hot to hold him, enters himself for a voyage as steward or cook, and is out of knowledge for months, and then turns up again worse than ever.’

When we had gone into many such houses, and had come out (always leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for Jack), we started off to a singing-house where Jack was expected to muster strong.

The vocalisation was taking place in a long low room up-stairs; at one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a small platform; across the room, a series of open pews for Jack, with an aisle down the middle; at the other end a larger pew than the rest, entitled SNUG, and reserved for mates and similar good company. About the room, some amazing coffee-coloured pictures varnished an inch deep, and some stuffed creatures in cases; dotted among the audience, in Sung and out of Snug, the ‘Professionals;’ among them, the celebrated comic favourite Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; beside him, sipping rum-and-water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her natural colours–a little heightened.

It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered not a good night for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show in very great force even here, though the house was one to which he much resorts, and where a good deal of money is taken. There was British Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy, lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying to read his fortune at the bottom; there was Loafing Jack of the Stars and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with his long nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish Jack, with curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and a knife not far from his hand, if you got into trouble with him; there were Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn, looming through the smoke of their pipes, and turning faces that looked as if they were carved out of dark wood, towards the young lady dancing the hornpipe: who found the platform so exceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous expectation of seeing her, in the backward steps, disappear through the window. Still, if all hands had been got together, they would not have more than half-filled the room. Observe, however, said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it was Friday night, and, besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack had gone aboard. A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, with tight lips and a complete edition of Cocker’s arithmetic in each eye. Attended to his business himself, he said. Always on the spot. When he heard of talent, trusted nobody’s account of it, but went off by rail to see it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent–four pound–five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted talent. Hear this instrument that was going to play–it was real talent! In truth it was very good; a kind of piano-accordion, played by a young girl of a delicate prettiness of face, figure, and dress, that made the audience look coarser. She sang to the instrument, too; first, a song about village bells, and how they chimed; then a song about how I went to sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, which Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the best. A good girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler. Kept herself select. Sat in Snug, not listening to the blandishments of Mates. Lived with mother. Father dead. Once a merchant well to do, but over-speculated himself. On delicate inquiry as to salary paid for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler’s pounds dropped suddenly to shillings–still it was a very comfortable thing for a young person like that, you know; she only went on six times a night, and was only required to be there from six at night to twelve. What was more conclusive was, Mr. Victualler’s assurance that he ‘never allowed any language, and never suffered any disturbance.’ Sharpeye confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was the best proof of it that could have been cited. So, I came to the conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am afraid he does) much worse than trust himself to Mr. Victualler, and pass his evenings here.

But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent–said Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with military salute–for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Ring the wonderful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies.

There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack; HE was producible. The Genii set us down in the little first floor of a little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack’s delight, his WHITE unlovely Nan, sitting against the wall all round the room. More than that: Dark Jack’s delight was the least unlovely Nan, both morally and physically, that I saw that night.

As a fiddle and tambourine band were sitting among the company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? ‘Ah, la’ads!’ said a negro sitting by the door, ‘gib the jebblem a darnse. Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ‘um QUAD-rill.’

This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half Greek and half English. As master of the ceremonies, he called all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself parenthetically–after this manner. When he was very loud, I use capitals.

‘Now den! Hoy! ONE. Right and left. (Put a steam on, gib ‘um powder.) LA-dies’ chail. BAL-loon say. Lemonade! TWO. AD- warnse and go back (gib ‘ell a breakdown, shake it out o’ yerselbs, keep a movil). SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!) THREE. GENT come for’ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come for’ard and do what yer can. (Aeiohoy!) BAL-loon say, and leetle lemonade. (Dat hair nigger by ‘um fireplace ‘hind a’ time, shake it out o’ yerselbs, gib ‘ell a breakdown.) Now den! Hoy! FOUR! Lemonade. BAL-loon say, and swing. FOUR ladies meet in ‘um middle, FOUR gents goes round ‘um ladies, FOUR gents passes out under ‘um ladies’ arms, SWING–and Lemonade till ‘a moosic can’t play no more! (Hoy, Hoy!)’

The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually powerful man of six feet three or four. The sound of their flat feet on the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as their faces were unlike white faces. They toed and heeled, shuffled, double- shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a childish good-humoured enjoyment that was very prepossessing. They generally kept together, these poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets. But, if I were Light Jack, I should be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack, for, whenever I have had to do with him I have found him a simple and a gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing him good night, and thus it fell out that the last words I heard him say as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, ‘Jebblem’s elth! Ladies drinks fust!’

The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles and hours we explored a strange world, where nobody ever goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting for Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than by the corporation: the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town. I need describe but two or three of the houses in which Jack was waited for as specimens of the rest. Many we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark that we felt our way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery; the quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have an extraordinary fondness for crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait in his traps.

Among such garniture, in one front parlour in the dead of the night, four women were sitting by a fire. One of them had a male child in her arms. On a stool among them was a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had evidently stopped playing when our footsteps were heard.

‘Well I how do YOU do?’ says Mr. Superintendent, looking about him.

‘Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.’

‘Order there!’ says Sharpeye.

‘None of that!’ says Quickear.

Trampfoot, outside, is heard to confide to himself, ‘Meggisson’s lot this is. And a bad ‘un!’

‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the shoulder of the swarthy youth, ‘and who’s this?’

‘Antonio, sir.’

‘And what does HE do here?’

‘Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I suppose?’

‘A young foreign sailor?’

‘Yes. He’s a Spaniard. You’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, Antonio?’

‘Me Spanish.’

‘And he don’t know a word you say, not he; not if you was to talk to him till doomsday.’ (Triumphantly, as if it redounded to the credit of the house.)

‘Will he play something?’

‘Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. YOU ain’t ashamed to play something; are you?’

The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and three of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any money in with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, and it even strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in a bad way. But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the instrument so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until he leaves off.

I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my uncommercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this establishment, by having taken the child in my arms. For, on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker not unstimulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnatural parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept it; backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring, regardless of remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it to be Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his own will, was bound to stick to it. The uncommercial sense of being in a rather ridiculous position with the poor little child beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot; who, laying hands on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest woman, and bade her ‘take hold of that.’ As we came out the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat down as before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby’s head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always kept up–and would grow up, kept up–waiting for Jack.

Later still in the night, we came (by the court ‘where the man was murdered,’ and by the other court across the street, into which his body was dragged) to another parlour in another Entry, where several people were sitting round a fire in just the same way. It was a dirty and offensive place, with some ragged clothes drying in it; but there was a high shelf over the entrance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding hands, possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece of Cheshire cheese.

‘Well!’ says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive look all round. ‘How do YOU do?’

‘Not much to boast of, sir.’ From the curtseying woman of the house. ‘This is my good man, sir.’

‘You are not registered as a common Lodging House?’

‘No, sir.’

Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, ‘Then why ain’t you?’

‘Ain’t got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,’ rejoin the woman and my good man together, ‘but our own family.’

‘How many are you in family?’

The woman takes time to count, under pretence of coughing, and adds, as one scant of breath, ‘Seven, sir.’

But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about it, says:

‘Here’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of your family?’

‘No, Mr. Sharpeye, he’s a weekly lodger.’

‘What does he do for a living?’

The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and shortly answers, ‘Ain’t got nothing to do.’

The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp apron pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance at him I become–but I don’t know why–vaguely reminded of Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Dover. When we get out, my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye, addressing Mr. Superintendent, says:

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'The Uncommercial Traveller' is a series of semi-autobiographical essays by Dickens in which he wanders the streets of London and reminisces about his childhood and past. These pieces are among the most admired and quoted of Dickens's journalistic essays, highlighting his unique skills as a social observer and commentator and 'sketcher' of contemporary life. The series began in All the Year Round on 28 January 1860 with 16 articles appearing irregularly between January and October 1860. Dickens followed with another 12 articles between May and October 1863 and, five years later, 8 more pieces, 7 of which under the title 'New Uncommercial Samples'. 

The conception of the series seems to have been influenced by a number of different ideas. Only a month before he published his first Uncommercial paper, in a speech at the annual dinner of the Commercial Travellers' School Board, Dickens had wondered whether 'anything could be do done with the word Travellers; and [...] whether any fanciful analogy could be drawn between those travellers who diffuse the luxuries and necessities of existence' and other kinds of travellers, such as 'and those who carry into desert places the waters of life, such as Doctor Livingstone, or Captain McClintock'.

Shortly after this, on 20 January 1860 Britain signed the 'Commercial' Treaty with France. The treaty, essentially a trade agreement, was praised by its supporters as decreasing the likelihood of future war with France. For its detractors, this was the problem. They believed that decision to go or not to go to war should based upon moral principles rather than economics. The relationship between commerce and morality became the subject of an energetic public debate that dominated the newspapers while Dickens was hard at work trying to come up with 'an idea for my series of gossiping papers', as he wrote to Wilkie Collins. Some scholars argue that Dickens was responding directly to the challenge of the Cornhill Magazine , a monthly magazine costing one shilling (three-pence more than the monthly issue of All the Year Round ) and edited by his famous rival William Makepeace Thackeray, which began publication in January 1860. The Cornhill  contained a section titled 'Roundabout Papers', penned by Thackeray, and it is arguable that 'The Uncommercial Traveller' series was a direct response to this feature in the  Cornhill  which gave its author-editor a direct mouthpiece.    Intriguingly, at the time of his death in 1863, Thackeray had published 34 'Roundabout Papers' in the Cornhill , while Dickens had penned 28 'Uncommercial' pieces, thus suggesting an intense and closely-matched rivalry. The original 28 'Uncommercial' pieces (1860 and 1863) were untitled, but they were given titles in subsequent collected editions of the series. These titles are listed below, although they do not appear on the pages of All the Year Round . The first number (28 January 1860) is often split into two parts in collected editions – titled 'His General Line of Business' and 'The Shipwreck' – which means the numbering in collected editions often doesn't quite match that of the original series. 

1860  

1868 ('New Uncommercial Samples') 

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Night Walks with the Uncommercial Traveller

All the year round - july 21, 1860.

S ome years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might have taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming home tired at sunrise.

In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every night in the year.

The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for confronting it.

The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently broken. But, it was always the case that London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a divergence from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.

At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out--the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or hot-potato man--and London would sink to rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up--nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in windows.

Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next. Grim and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished, and the seats all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew itself at such a time but Yorick's skull. In one of my night walks, as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these great deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the orchestra--which was like a great grave dug for a time of pestilence--into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like everything else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and space, but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away. Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head towards the rolled-up curtain--green no more, but black as ebony-- my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver might, at the bottom of the sea.

In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see the fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall. Not an inappropriate time either, to linger by that wicked little Debtors' Door--shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw-- which has been Death's Door to so many. In the days of the uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes-- many quite innocent--swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes! Is there any haunting of the Bank Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey?

To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would take it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give a thought to the treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers passing the night there, and nodding over the fire. Next, I went to Billingsgate, in some hope of market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed London-bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey shore among the buildings of the great brewery. There was plenty going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the smell of grains, and the rattling of the plump dray horses at their mangers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having mingled with this good society, I made a new start with a new heart, setting the old King's Bench prison before me for my next object, and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.

A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of the old King's Bench prison, and it had carried him out with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to look at, in the prime of life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among many friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty children. But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong external revelation of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When this manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that the patient was living a little too hard. He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form the terrible suspicion 'Dry Rot,' when he will notice a change for the worse in the patient's appearance: a certain slovenliness and deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this, succeeds a smell as of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times; to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is in wood, so it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound usury quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with it, and the whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been with the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription. Those who knew him had not nigh done saying, 'So well off, so comfortably established, with such hope before him--and yet, it is feared, with a slight touch of Dry Rot!' when lo! the man was all Dry Rot and dust.

From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital; partly, because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly, because I had a night fancy in my head which could be best pursued within sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this: Are not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a dreaming? Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the condition of those inside it, every night of our lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and empresses, and notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly jumble events and personages and times and places, as these do daily? Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions? Said an afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, 'Sir, I can frequently fly.' I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I--by night. Said a woman to me on the same occasion, 'Queen Victoria frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I dine off peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns, and his Royal Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform.' Could I refrain from reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amazing royal parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable viands I had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting myself on those distinguished occasions? I wonder that the great master who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day's life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity.

By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again setting towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the external walls of the British Parliament--the perfection of a stupendous institution, I know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the better now and then for being pricked up to its work. Turning off into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Law kept me company for a quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors. Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries going before. And indeed in those houseless night walks--which even included cemeteries where watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, and moved the tell-tale handle of an index which recorded that they had touched it at such an hour--it was a solemn consideration what enormous hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they were raised while the living slept, there would not be the space of a pin's point in all the streets and ways for the living to come out into. Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away all round it, God knows how far.

When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such. But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive at such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested) in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder. Once--it was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face north--I came to the great steps of St. Martin's church as the clock was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing, rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. We then stood face to face looking at one another, frightened by one another. The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me--persecutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought me--it made with its whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog. Intending to give this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it--for it recoiled as it whined and snapped--and laid my hand upon its shoulder. Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in my hands.

Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful company. The great waggons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden neighbourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party. But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their their thieving hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.

There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and that was more company--warm company, too, which was better. Toast of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room, hadn't got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind the partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and lost his way directly. Into one of these establishments (among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it. This mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up. The remembrance of this man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the most spectral person my houselessness encountered. Twice only was I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively red face, though shaped like a horse's. On the second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily to the man of sleep, 'Am I red to-night?' 'You are,' he uncompromisingly answered. 'My mother,' said the spectre, 'was a red-faced woman that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her coffin, and I took the complexion.' Somehow, the pudding seemed an unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no more.

When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway terminus with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative company. But like most of the company to be had in this world, it lasted only a very short time. The station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters would emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the post-office carts were already in theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up, and the train would come banging in. But there were few passengers and little luggage, and everything scuttled away with the greatest expedition. The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets--as if they had been dragging the country for bodies--would fly open as to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters; the engine would blow and heave and perspire, like an engine wiping its forehead and saying what a run it had had; and within ten minutes the lamps were out, and I was houseless and alone again.

But now, there were driven cattle on the high road near, wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone walls, and squeeze themselves through six inches' width of iron railing, and getting their heads down (also as cattle always do) for tossing- purchase at quite imaginary dogs, and giving themselves and every devoted creature associated with them a most extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble. Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale with the knowledge that daylight was coming, and straggling workpeople were already in the streets, and, as waking life had become extinguished with the last pieman's sparks, so it began to be rekindled with the fires of the first street-corner breakfast- sellers. And so by faster and faster degrees, until the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired and could sleep. And it is not, as I used to think, going home at such times, the least wonderful thing in London, that in the real desert region of the night, the houseless wanderer is alone there. I knew well enough where to find Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen; but they were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own solitary way ( Uncommercial Traveller , p. 127-135 ) .

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The Works of Charles Dickens/Volume 29

The Uncommercial Traveller is a collection of literary sketches and reminiscences written by Charles Dickens, published in 1860-1861. Warning: template has been deprecated.

This edition was published in 1897, as Volume XXIX of The Works of Charles Dickens , a 32-volume book, edited by Andrew Lang .

GADSHILL EDITION.

The Works of Charles Dickens

In Thirty-two Volumes.

With Introductions, General Essay, and Notes

by Andrew Lang.

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

Printed from the Edition that was carefully corrected by the Author in 1867 and 1868.

UNCOMMERCIAL

By CHARLES DICKENS

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

ANDREW LANG

In One Volume

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY FURNISS

LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.

NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

INTRODUCTION .

The Uncommercial Traveller , a set of essays, on occasion autobiographical, was begun by Dickens in 1860, for his serial, All the Year Round , and was continued, on occasion, "till the last autumn of his life." The first paper, on the wreck of the Royal Charter , records a visit to the scene of the wreck, made on the day before Old Year's Day, in 1859. His constant interest in the condition of the poor caused his visit to Wapping Workhouse; on this pilgrimage the view of "Mr. Baker's trap" may have supplied hints for the gloomier river-scenes in Our Mutual Friend . "The Cheap Theatre" was useful in the matter of the stage-struck Mr. Wopsle of Great Expectations . The "witches" are a ghastly replica, modem and urban, of the rural hags in The Bride of Lammermoor .

There are many touches which combine in Dickens's other works. "Refreshments for Travellers," a social satire as necessary as any, repeats itself partially in Mugby Junction . But no wit can "laugh away" the stale sponge-cakes, shining brown patties of unascertained contents, and sandwiches that have long been pining under an exhausted receiver. We "cannot dine on barley-sugar," or on toffee, but such are our casual "refreshments." When satire cannot touch these ​ ills, how vain appear the loftier aspirations of the satirist! Dickens had slight faith in "the Hotel Millennium."

In "Travelling Abroad," the small boy, with his dream of owning a certain house, is, of course, Dickens himself. He had fixed on Gadshill House, as a paradise, when his father lived at Chatham, and when he himself was about eight years old. He knew all about the Fat Knight's adventure even then, and he purchased the place in 1856.

The essay on "City of London Churches" revives a question which often puzzles the reader of Dickens. In the Shepherd, in Stiggins, in Chadband, in the passage about the hero's youth in Little Dorrit , and in many other places, he displays his hatred of certain sides of Calvinism, and of Dissent. When did Dickens, as a boy, suffer so much from greasy tedious preachers, and from "tidings o' damnation"? Neither of his parents, neither Mr. Micawber nor Mrs. Nickleby, is recorded to have been of a gloomy piety. We do not know when or how Dickens was brought so much into unwilling contact with degenerate descendants of the Puritans. He detested them and ridiculed them: clearly he had endured much from them, but we do not know when, where, or wherefore. Was it at Wellington House Academy, under the rule of the Celtic Mr. Jones? As a child, in earlier days, he was carried "to platform assemblages," and slept under Boanerges. Who carried him to such scenes? Was it his teacher in childhood, "a young Baptist minister," Mr. Giles, whom he does not appear to have disliked? Probably the blame lies between Jones and Giles: Mr. Micawber was certainly no fanatic. Thus frightened away from some forms of Christianity, and only sentimentally attracted, at one moment, by the Church, Dickens worked out a creed of his own, sincere but informal. The arithmetical ​ devotee, in this chapter on churches, with his "Thirteen thousand pounds," to which the child added in a weak human voice, "Seventeen and fourpence," may have lent a trait to Mr. Pumblechook.

"Shy Neighbourhoods" illustrate Dickens's very original remedy for insomnia, of which the Faculty, we may presume, does not approve. Going to bed tired, and failing to sleep, he did not, like Wordsworth, count the visionary flocks, nor adopt any such devices. He merely got up, and walked endlessly through the night. It was a remedy apt to kill most men of weary brains. He tells how, walking half asleep, he composed thousands of verses, and spoke with fluency a language almost lost to him in his waking condition. His intellect was as remarkable in its abnormal as in its normal condition, and psychologists might have worse themes than the less normal psychical states of Dickens, as of Shelley, Tennyson, George Sand, Alfred de Musset, Scott, Goethe, and many others. Dickens has left some very curious notes on experiences of his own, in the subconscious region out of which genius appears to rise. But these notes are scattered, as mere curiosities, among the less curious things which he observed in his nocturnal rambles. Among "Tramps" he is out again in the sunlit world, and his remarks prove that the tramp has forgotten nothing.

"Dullborough Town" is Rochester: "all my early readings and early recollections dated from this place," he said; and from Chatham, where the field and hawthorns of his infancy were devoured, as is usual, by a railway station. "I suppose it is all built over now," said the English child wistfully, when first informed about the amenities of Heaven.

Returning to dreams, in " Night Walks," Dickens asks, un consciously repeating Swift, "whether the sane and insane ​ are not equal at night, as the sane lie a-dreaming?" In dreams we are usually insane, but, once in a way, we are persons of genius, and the sleeping outruns, in creative power, the waking mind, or, as in the experience of Dickens's own, slips the limits of space and time. [1]

In "Nurse's Stories," Dickens proves that he had a useful, though at the time uncomfortable, attendant for an imaginative child. Probably the young woman, with her variants of popular tales (so interesting to the FolkLorist), could not guess that she was narrating to a babe whose fancy made her legends into pictures hardly to be discerned from reality. "Captain Murderer" occurs in Grimm, and in other collections; but he is much more appalling here, whether because the nurse had a good version, or because Dickens had a marvellous imagination. Terque quaterque beati must the boys have been, the Steerforths and Traddleses, to whom the young Dickens told stories at Wellington House Academy. The legend of Chips is worthy of Poe, and, indeed, Miss Mercy, the nurse, had obviously a true genius as a narrator. Her habit of localising all the romances in her own family was like the method of De Foe. A man who, like Dickens, confesses to a hankering after the Morgue, has no locus standi when he complains of the ingenious Mercy.

Dickens wanders through his memories, as he wandered through country and town; he revisits his past, as he revisited Dullborough; and, in "Medicine Men of Civilisation," the Italian anecdote concerns his dead friend, Angus Fletcher, who appears as the benevolent Englishman in "The Italian Prisoner." Dickens hits at his old enemies, his old abuses— ​ the House of Commons, the neglect of children (and, indeed, the universal neglect of everybody); he denounces street ruffians, and tells how, as a dutiful citizen, he brought a blasphemous young woman to justice. The essays set forth the actual Dickens as clearly as Montaigne appears in his own pages. The author's observation, kindness, humour; his pleasure in the good deeds of others (as in the first paper); his indignation against public indifference and Pangloss; his reminiscences of the childhood which dwelt so vividly in his brain; his delight in the kind of nature which most attracted—him human nature—are all conspicuous in The Uncommercial Traveller . It is an epitome of Dickens; none of his greater qualities, scarcely one of his blemishes, is absent. He is still the man who began by "Sketches by Boz," the lover of the open air, the un-bookish naturalist of human life, the student of tramps, cheap-jacks, sailors on shore, and plyers of odd trades in shy neighbourhoods. His art, as a writer, has greatly improved; the mechanical humour of 1830-35 has been worked off; but he remains what he was, what he showed himself to be, before Mr. Pickwick first beamed upon mankind, before his creator's name was the most widely known in modern English literature. There is development in Dickens, but there is no essential modification.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTES ON THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

THE SHIPWRECK.

The Royal Charter , homeward bound from Australia, struck and was wrecked in the darkness before the dawn, on October 26, 1859, near Llanallgo, Moelfra, Anglesea.

"This marking custom."

Learned works have been written, in French and English, on tattooing. Dickens's guess at its origin, in a "desire to be identified," is so far correct, that, among some very low races, as the Australians, tribal marks are tattooed. These, in a rude way, give a man's totem name and address, and to do this may have been the original purpose of the art. It soon becomes mainly decorative in intention, as among Maoris, Burmese, and Polynesians. Seamen have adopted it, from their acquaintance with tattooing races, but it is quite as common in the French army, and the idea of identification cannot recommend it to the much-tattooed criminal classes.

POOR MERCANTILE JACK.

"Hogarth drew her exact likeness."

Dickens probably refers to the procuress, in The Harlot's Progress .

TRAVELLING ABROAD.

"The very queer small boy."

See the first chapter of Mr. Forster's Life of Dickens for the author's early desire to acquire Gadshill.

CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES.

"Angelica."

NIGHT WALKS.

"The chopped-up murdered man."

Remains of a corpse were found deposited on a pier of one of the bridges. No discovery as to their provenance was ever made; and as, if a murder had been done, it would have been easy to sink the fragments in the river, another theory was popular. The affair was supposed to be a practical joke, by some successors of Messrs. Sawyer and Allen.

"Sir, I can frequently fly."

This subjective impression, in dreams and lunacy, might be the origin of the world-wide tales of "levitation." Witnesses, however, have deposed on oath (chiefly at trials for witchcraft, and in processes of canonisation) to having observed the phenomenon. The Acta Sanctorum are full of cases. See, too, "Recueil de Documents relatifs à la Lévitation du Corps Humain," by M. Albert de Rochas, Leymarie. Paris, 1897.

" Entering my friend's rooms."

The sentence is destitute of an apodosis. By deleting "and " in the last line, a semblance of construction may be restored to the text.

NURSE'S STORIES.

"Never involved any ghostly fancies."

This omission, on the part of De Foe, may seem singular to others, as it did to Dickens, for no author ever dealt more freely in ghosts than De Foe. But his always were, or were thought to be, "evidential," and it has lately been proved that Mrs. Yeal's was a real "case," not an ingenious fiction. De Foe seems only to have handled ghosts as matters of recorded observation, not as materials of romance.

"Captain Murderer."

This appears to be a decorated variant of "The Robber Bridegroom" (Grimm, xl.). For an English version alluded to by Shakespeare, see Mr. Hunt's Grimm , vol. i. p. 389 . Dickens, or his nurse, greatly improved upon the original donnée , as it exists in printed collections.

THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL.

"Rich and rare were the gems she wore."

Perhaps no author but Dickens has observed how a refrain of a song is apt to haunt the sufferer from sea-sickness.

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS.

"It is unnecessary to name Her."

MEDICINE MEN OF CIVILISATION.

"Kindheart."

This was Dickens's name for his friend Angus Fletcher. He died in 1862. See Forster, book iii. chap, vii., and the essay on "The Italian Prisoner."

A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR.

Namelesston, where this awful dinner was served up, seems to be Brighton, if we may judge from allusions to George IV.

MR. BARLOW.

"Every schoolboy knows."

Probably Dickens does not mean Lord Macaulay by Mr. Barlow, though he cites Macaulay's favourite phrase.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES

• ↑ The anecdote is in Mr. Forster's chapter of "Personal Characteristics; it is the story "Miss Napier," and might with a struggle, be explained as retrospective hallucination of memory

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The Uncommercial Traveller

Charles Dickens

Published by Chapman & Hall, 1907

Seller: World of Rare Books , Goring-by-Sea, SXW, United Kingdom

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First Edition

Used - Hardcover Condition: Fair

Within United Kingdom

Quantity: 1

Condition: Fair. 1907. First Edition Thus. 354 pages. No dust jacket. Green cloth. Black and white illustrated frontispiece. Slight cracking to gutters causing binding to be loose, however pages remain attached. Pages have light tanning and foxing throughout. Previous owner's inscription to half-title page. Boards have light shelf-wear with corner bumping. Light tanning to spine and edges with crushing to spine ends. Wear marks overall.

Condition: Fair. 1907. First Edition Thus. 354 pages. No dust jacket. Green cloth. Pages are lightly tanned and foxed throughout, heavier to endpapers. Light damp staining to edges. Slight cracking to gutters of a few pages. Binding is slightly shaky. Boards have mild edge wear with slight rubbing to surfaces. Crushing to spine ends with small splits and fraying to cloth. Mild tanning to spine and edges.

The Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces (New Oxford Illustrated Dickens)

Dickens, Charles

Published by Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1987

ISBN 10: 0192545213 ISBN 13: 9780192545213

Seller: Beach Hut Books , Lingfield, United Kingdom

Book First Edition

Used - Hardcover Condition: Fine

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. G.J.Pinwell; F.Walker; W.M. (illustrator). 1st Edition. The Oxford Illustrated Dickens. Dustwrapper is price clipped and protected by a layer of clear, non adhesive plastic.

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.

Dickens, Charles.

Published by Waverley

Seller: Cambridge Rare Books , Cambridge, GLOUC, United Kingdom

Used - Hardcover Condition: VERY GOOD

Hardback. Condition: VERY GOOD. 1st Edition. No date. Waverley. First. Book - VG. Gilt titles on spine and embossing on cover. 8x5. 431pp. Few b/w illus.

Published by J. M. Dent & Sons, 1931

Used - Hardcover Condition: Good

Condition: Good. 1931. First Edition Thus. 354 pages. No dust jacket. Blue cloth. Pages and binding are presentable with no major defects. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Overall a good condition item. Boards have mild shelf wear with light rubbing and corner bumping. Some light marking and sunning.

Published by Collins' Clear-Type Press, London & Glasgow

Seller: J J Basset Books, bassettbooks, bookfarm.co.uk , Peter Tavy, United Kingdom

Used - Hardcover Condition: Good (BELOW AVERAGE)

Maroon Cloth. Condition: Good (BELOW AVERAGE). No Jacket. A.A. Dixon (illustrator). Undated Circa 1920's/30's. Very stained boards , Contents Very Good.POSTED AT OUR STANDARD RATES! AND FULLY INSURED! (UK ONLY).Please e-mail for further details Size: 16mo - over 5�" - 6�". Signed By a "B. Larry.". HARDBACK.

The Old Curiosity Shop. / Uncommercial Traveller

Published by Odhams Press Limited., London, UK., 1930

Used - Hardcover Condition: Near Fine (ABOVE AVERAGE)

Brown Faux Leather. Condition: Near Fine (ABOVE AVERAGE). No Jacket. Pbiz (illustrator). FEEL FREE TO E-MAIL FOR PHOTOGRAPHS AND FURTHER DETAILS. FROM A DEALER WHO TELLS YOU WHO THEY ARE AND WHAT THEIR TELEPHONE AND ADDRESS CONTACT DETAILS ARE! Size: 12mo - over 6�" - 7�" This is the FIRST EDITION of This Editio. Not Signed or Inscribed. HARDBACK.

Published by Heron Books, England

Faux-Leather Sage-Green Skiver. Condition: Fine. No Jacket. Harry Furniss (illustrator). Centennial Edition. Charles Dickens Complete Works .Please email for further details. Size: 8vo - over 7�" - 9�". Not Signed or Inscribed. Hardback.

The Uncommercial Traveller. Universal Edition

Published by Chapman and Hall, London, 1914

Seller: Victoria Bookshop , BERE ALSTON, DEVON, United Kingdom

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. 8vo. Marks to front board. Damp affected rear board. 433pp. Browned feps. Slight spotting to half title, frontis verso and title page. Book.

The Dent Uniform Edition of Dicken's Jounalism. 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and other papers Vol. IV

Dickens, Charles; Edited Michael Slater

Published by J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd, 2000

ISBN 10: 0460877283 ISBN 13: 9780460877282

Seller: RIVERLEE BOOKS , Waltham Cross, HERTS, United Kingdom

Used - Hardcover Condition: Very Good

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover in very good condition. Dustjacket very good. Spine rather cocked. No annotation noted. 476 pages.

Published by Oxford University Press, 1987

Seller: Books Do Furnish A Room , Durham, NC, U.S.A.

From U.S.A. to United Kingdom

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Standard ex-library flaws, otherwise unmarked. Dust jacket glossy. Binding square & firm. Ex-Library.

Seller: The Maryland Book Bank , Baltimore, MD, U.S.A.

hardcover. Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Used - Very Good.

The Uncommercial Traveller with the original illustrations (Lloyd's Sixpenny Dickens)

Published by Edward Lloyd, London

Seller: Lime Works: Books Art Music Ephemera Used and Rare , Toronto, ON, Canada

Used - Softcover Condition: Fair

From Canada to United Kingdom

Soft cover. Condition: Fair. 1st Edition. n.d. circa 1910. Scarce. Pasted down cover colour illustration. X14.

The Uncommercial Traveller and A Child's History of England

Published by Macmillan & Co, New York, 1896

Seller: The Book Shed , Benson, VT, U.S.A.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Thus. shelf wear to tips, corners, and edges of the book, very slight loss to the upper spine tip, spine darkened a bit, previous owner's initials to the front endpaper, hinges cracked-reglued. From the Novels of Charles Dickens edition in green and gilt bindings with the CD device on the front cover. Introduction and notes by Charles Dickens the Younger. This set was released over a number of years by the publisher. Every effort is made to ship all books and other items within 24 hours. Clean recycled packing material will be used when possible. The Book Shed has a been a member of the Vermont Antiquarian Bookseller's Association since 1997. An online bookseller with a bookshop sensibility!.

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER AND REPRINTED PIECES

Published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1958

Seller: Evolving Lens Bookseller , Kingston, NY, U.S.A.

Association Member: IOBA

Used - Hardcover

Hardcover. First Edition Thus. Book condition is Very Good; with a Good+ dust jacket. Wear to jacket, including a blemish to the jacket at front panel. Edgewear to jacket, including a chip to the jacket crown at rear panel and to jacket base at spine and a few tears. Text is clean and unmarked. An uncommon edition, with illustrations taken from the illustrated library edition, 1862-1868. ; The New Oxford Illustrated Dickens Series; 8vo 8" - 9" tall.

The Uncommercial Traveller and Reprinted Pieces

Published by Oxford U. P. Oxford 1987, 1987

Seller: Andrew Barnes Books / Military Melbourne , Melbourne, VIC, Australia

From Australia to United Kingdom

1st ed. thus hardback with dust jacket As New octavo. xiv + 756pp., illusts., The Oxford Illustrated Dickens with the original illustrations. Bound in quality buckram & on fine paper. The nicest modern edition.

Works of Charles Dickens, vol. XVIII -- The Uncommercial Traveller, and Short Christmas Stories

DICKENS, Charles

Published by G. W. Carleton, New York, 1874

Seller: Cleveland Book Company, ABAA , Rocky River, OH, U.S.A.

Association Member: ABAA ILAB IOBA MWABA

Used - Hardcover Condition: Very good

Hardcover. Condition: Very good. First edition thus (?). Octavo, 447pp., illustrated. A very good, clean, bright copy in the publisher's green cloth with gilt spine. Very mildly ex-private library with a contemporary ink notation on the front paste-down, and a pocket and label on the rear endpapers. Else a very nice, clean example. gently tapped at the corners.

The Uncommercial Traveller, Pictures from Italy, and Reprinted Pieces

Published by D. Appleton and Company, New York, 1868

Seller: Yesterday's Gallery, ABAA , East Woodstock, CT, U.S.A.

Association Member: ABAA ILAB

Used - Softcover

Soft cover. 1st Edition. First Edition, Thus. Octavo. Softcover, yellow wrappers with brown ink printed illustrations and lettering, early owner's cloth bookmark laid in. Very good, light edge wear, crackling at spine foot, chipping to spine ends, covers slight soiled.

The Uncommercial Traveller, Hard Times, and the Mystery of Edwin Drood

Published by Harper & Brothers, New York, 1876

Seller: NWJbooks , Lancaster, PA, U.S.A.

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. The Works of Charles Dickens - Household Edition. Bright Gilt lettering & front cover gilt & black ornate black cover decoration on green cloth covered boards. 4to, 171 pages plus ads. Attractive. Coat-of-Arms bookplate of Thomas Goddard Kent on the inside of the front cover. Spine ends & corners lightly worn. Occasional small foxing spots.

The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: The Uncommercial Traveller

Published by Cosimo, 2009

ISBN 10: 1616400404 ISBN 13: 9781616400408

Seller: Collectors Bookstore , Antwerpen, Belgium

From Belgium to United Kingdom

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. First Edition. First Edition thus. The Complete Works of Charles Dickens: The Uncommercial Traveller by Charles Dickens. Published by Cosimo in 2009. Hardcover ISBN:9781616400408. Collectible item in very fine condition.

American Notes, Pictures from Italy, The Uncommercial Traveller, The Life of Our Lord

Published by Easton Press, 1998

Seller: Zeds Books , Ashburn, VA, U.S.A.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. A very scarce title in any condition, this Easton Press Limited Edition is in Fine condition. The front and back covers are both in terrific condition and the gilded page edges show minor wear to the side edge (see pictures of all gilt sides). There is very faint residue on the second page. This book was published by Easton Press and would be a beautiful addition to your Easton Press collection.

Reprinted Pieces; the Uncommercial Traveller and Other Stories

Published by Nonesuch Press, Bloomsbury, 1938

Seller: Besleys Books PBFA , Diss, United Kingdom

Association Member: PBFA

Hard Cover. Condition: Good. Limited Edition. Hardback, original cloth. 26cm x 17cm. xiii, 857pp, [1]. Numerous illustrations. One of a limited edition of 877 copies. Spine a faded, a few marks to boards. Inside the label and stamps from the Lyons Club library. Contents generally clean. Firm binding. Slight wear only. A heavy book, additional postage may be required for orders outside the UK. (al13).

Every Saturday /Vol VII, No. 162, February 6, 1869 / original Wraps [not hardbound]. Probably the First American Publication of Dickens' "Mr. Barlow" , Chapter 34 from The Uncommercial Traveller.

[Editors of Fields, Osgood & Co.] Selections from Dickens, Charles; Jerrold, Blanchard; Stretton, Hesba and Others. Probable First American Publication of Any Part of "The Uncommercial Traveler"

Published by Fields, Osgood & Co., Boston, 1869

Seller: Singularity Rare & Fine , Baldwinsville, NY, U.S.A.

Used - Softcover Condition: Very Good Plus

Wrappers. Condition: Very Good Plus. Engravings (illustrator). First Edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co., 1869. First (and only) edition of the February 6th issue (Vol. VII, No. 162) of Every Saturday. 10 1/2" x 7", newsprint wraps, 32 pp. + 8 pp. ads. A couple of small corner folds, 2 small holes through which an early owner apparently tried to bind this issue with others, some discoloration at one edge of rear cover, small chips at bottom edge. Almost no age toning or foxing. Supple. A very solid Very Good Plus. An extraordinarily scarce original wraps copy of Every Saturday, which is found when it is found almost exclusively as six-monthly hardbound aggregations. Every Saturday was the weekly offering of Fields & Osgood (after Ticknor & Fields) which offered, in the publisher's words, "choice reading selected from current foreign literature" - i.e., usually reprints from similar overseas journals, generally English ones. This particular issue interestingly includes, as a "New Uncommercial Sample", Charles Dickens' "Mr. Barlow", which was Chapter 34 from his "The Uncommercial Traveller". As the original-wraps version of Every Saturday rather than the later hardbound accumulation, this piece is almost certainly the first American publication of that chapter. That title was originally published in England in 1860 by Chapman and Hall, but the first American edition was that of - yes, Fields & Osgood in 1869. F & O published chapters from the work here in Every Saturday, one in an issue, described as from "advance sheets" (most Every Saturday entries were reprinted from foreign journals). Herein is Chapter 34, the story of that difficult tutor, Mr. Barlow, who was "the vulture that gorges itself upon the liver of my uninstructed mind". Also included: "Handsome is That Handsome Does" (Blanchard Jerrold, reprinted from 'The London'); Nelly's New Year (Hesba Stretton, reprinted from 'The Argosy'); and a variety of pieces, unattributed as to author. Those include "Victor Hugo at Home" (Once A Week); "The Man With Two Memories" (The Spectator); "Mature Sirens" (The Saturday Review); "The Fifteen Louis D'Or of Beaumarchais (concluded)" (Blackwood's Magazine); "Diary of Prince Salm-Salm" (London Times); "Conjugal Tiffs" (The London review); "Foreign Notes" (Our Exchanges); and "Hippolytus to Artemis" (Frazer's Magazine). Eight pages of the usual funky - and historically highly educational - Every Saturday ads, separately numbered, are also quite entertaining. A piece of history. L-ES1.

[The works of]. . . The adventures of Oliver Twist, also, Pictures from Italy and American Notes; with illustrations by George Cruikshank, A Child's history of England, Miscellaneous; The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit; The personal history of David Copperfield; Our Mutual Friend; Christmas books and Reprinted pieces; , Great Expectations, The Uncommercial Traveller; Little Dorrit; The life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby; Sketches by Boz. . . , A tale of two cities; Dombey and son; Pickwick Club; Bleak House; The Old Curiosity shop and Hard Times; Barnaby Rudge & Edwin Drood.

DICKENS, Charles.

Published by Hurst & Co., 122 Nassau St., [1904]., New York:, 1904

Seller: Zephyr Used & Rare Books , Vancouver, WA, U.S.A.

Association Member: ABAA CBA ESA ILAB

Fifteen vols. Approx. 14,000 pp. Frntsps. each vol., numerous plates and illusts. Uniformly bound in publisher's three-quarter brown calf over marbled boards, marbled endpapers, elaborately gilt decorated spines, brown & blk & gilt morocco spine labels, marbled fore-edges (mnr rubbng, some mnr soilng to the foot of spines, toned paper as usual for Hurst), still an attractive and very nice set. First Hurst edition of Charles Dickens' works, with illustrations. Of particular interest is the publisher's calf binding which was quite unusual for Hurst & Company.

The Uncommercial Traveller [Original Cloth, Cheap Edition]

DICKENS, Charles (1812-1870)

Published by Chapman & Hall, 193, Piccadilly [from 1860], London, 1866

Seller: Fine Editions Ltd , Lancaster, PA, U.S.A.

Decorative Cloth. Condition: Fine. First Edition thus. New Edition of this collection of literary sketches and reminiscences. Crown 8vo (190 x 121mm): viii,204pp, with frontispiece by G. J. Pinwell. Original green cloth, covers elaborately stamped in blind with publisher's medallion: "The Works of Charles Dickens. Cheap Editions;" spine richly gilt, pale yellow end papers. Terrific bookseller's ticket to corner of rear paste-down. Perhaps a later issue, with the final sketch correctly numbered xxviii (according to Eckel, the final sketch was at first incorrectly numbered xviii). Virtually pristine, soundly bound and clean throughout, gilt bright. Smith II, 11 (see especially note 9). Eckel, pp. 132-34. Jarndyce 560. Flake & Draper 2829a.5. The first seventeen sketches collected here appeared originally in 1860, in All the Year Round and were first published in book form the following year; this is the first appearance of the final eleven sketches. Included among them is reportage (such as an investigation into a shipload of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ready to emigrate in "Bound for the Great Salt Lake"), embroidered descriptions of everyday London life ("The City of the Absent," "City of London Churches," and "Shy Neighbourhoods"), and character sketches ("Tramps") as well as Dickens' characteristic concern for the conditions of the poor ("Wapping Workhouse," "A Small Star in the East," and "Titbull's Alms-Houses"). Beginning in 1847, with the Pickwick Papers, the Cheap Editions were the first systematic reissuing of Dickens's works, each with a new preface by the author. They were issued both in weekly and monthly formats, as well as in single volumes, as here, printed in double columns and illustrated solely with a frontispiece. N. B. With few exceptions (always identified), we only stock books in exceptional condition, carefully preserved in archival, removable polypropylene sleeves. All orders are packaged with care and posted promptly. Satisfaction guaranteed. (Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.).

Published by Chapman & Hall: London, 1859

Seller: John K King Used & Rare Books , Detroit, MI, U.S.A.

7.25 x 4.75, finely bound in full gilt ruled full crushed golden morocco with raised bands; aeg, binding by Bayntun-Riviere (though not identified as such), 264 pp with original cloth spine affixed to rear blank, minor cover rubbing, hingesa little loose, pp a little edge toned but still a nice, beautiful copy of the FIRST ED but with no ads in rear.

Published by Chapman and Hall, [1860], 1861

Seller: Finecopy , Westbury, WILTS, United Kingdom

Association Member: ABA ILAB PBFA

Used - Hardcover Condition: Near Fine

Hardback. Condition: Near Fine. No Jacket. First Edition. The Uncommercial Traveller, first edition, half-title, 32pp. of advertisements at the end dated December 1860, original purple cloth decorated in blind, gilt lettering to spine, spine sunned, contemporary bookplate to pastedown. [Smith II: 11; Eckel, p.132; Gimbel A145], Chapman and Hall, 1861.

The Uncommercial Traveller.

Published by Chapman and Hall, London, 1861

Seller: Raptis Rare Books , Palm Beach, FL, U.S.A.

First edition in book form of Dickens' classic collection of personal vignettes. Octavo, bound in full polished calf by Tout, morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, elaborate gilt tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, gilt turn-ins and inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, ribbon bound in, all edges gilt. In near fine condition, bookplate to the pastedown. An attractive example. The literary sketches contained in The Uncommercial Traveller first appeared in serial form in Dickens' journal All the Year Round. The persona of the 'uncommerical traveller' echoed Dickens' personal sentiments as a writer who liked to travel, not only as a tourist, but also to research and report what he found visiting Europe, American, and cities and towns throughout Great Britain. Dickens did not seem content to rest late in his career when he had attained wealth and comfort and continued travelling locally, walking the streets of London in the mould of the flâneur, a "gentleman stroller of city streets". He often suffered from insomnia and his night-time wanderings gave him an insight into some of the hidden aspects of Victorian London, details of which he also incorporated into his novels.

The UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

Dickens, Charles [1812 - 1870]

Published by Chapman & Hall, London, 1861

Seller: Tavistock Books, ABAA , Reno, NV, U.S.A.

Association Member: ABAA ESA ILAB IOBA

[8], 264, 32 pp. 32 page catalogue of books concludes volume, dated December 1860. 8vo. 7-1/2" x 4-7/8" Contains 17 sketches of Dickens', which first appeared in his weekly periodical, All The Year Round. Minor extremity wear, with lower tips showing slight abrasion. Bookplate ["Barnton"]. Pencil note to preliminary blank, "This copy sold in the McKenzie sale." Withal, a handsome VG+ copy. 19th C. deep maroon full morocco binding by Reviere, with elaborate gilt decorated spine. TEG. Gilt dentelles 1st edition (Eckel, p. 132; NCBEL III, 819; Smith II, 11).

Uncommercial Traveller

Seller: Bauer Rare Books , San Diego, CA, U.S.A.

First edition. 8vo. 264, [32] pp. Lavender cloth, gilt, blind stamped, spine sunned, good. (12019).

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A short history of British tourism in Imperial Russia

It was St Petersburg, founded in 1703, that was to prove the great tourist attraction. Source: Bridgeman

British tourism in Russia was certainly not invented by Intourist during the Cold War. An otherwise tragic expedition to discover a northern sea route first brought the English to Muscovy in the middle of the 16th century and it was essentially trade and profit that inspired further embassies and led to the establishment of a Russia Company to exploit that trade. However the concept of travelling for pleasure or what was often termed “out of curiosity” was much undertaken in the ancient world. What was new was travelling to barbaric, wild Russia, land of snow and bears and wolves, and of peoples with the strangest habits and, as an Englishman would have it, ‘to vices vile inclin’d”.

The Grand Tour goes East

The 17th century saw the emergence in Britain of the Grand Tour, when young members of the aristocracy and gentry travelled through Europe, usually accompanied by tutors. Although Dr Samuel Johnson might suggest that “the grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean”, the northern lands increasingly beckoned more intrepid travellers.

British tavellers in Russia. Source: Anthony Cross

It was St Petersburg, founded in 1703, that was to prove the great tourist attraction, fulfilling the hopes of its first Governor-General Prince Alexander Menshikov that it “should become another Venice, to see which Foreigners would travel thither purely out of curiosity”. One of the first Englishmen to be so attracted some three decades after its foundation recorded in his diary that “I am well contented with my journey, and think it very much, worth any curious man’s while, going to See, and to Stay there three weeks or a month, but after Curiosity is Satisfied, I think one could amuse oneself better, in more Southern Climates”.

Searching Russia’s economic past for secrets of growth

By the end of the 18th century, another traveller was writing that “Russia begins now to make a part of the grand tour, and not the least curious or useful part of it”. The British tourist was also beginning to explore other parts of the rapidly growing Russian empire, travelling south via Moscow to Russia’s newly acquired territories around the Black Sea and in the Crimea, often travelling on to Constantinople.

Pioneering lady

Lady Elizabeth Craven was the first English woman to publish an account of her journey, helping to boost the appeal of the Crimea and newly founded Odessa for a growing stream of travellers up to the Crimean War. A remarkable journey was undertaken towards the end of the reign of Catherine the Great by a young English milord, accompanied by his Oxford tutor, John Parkinson, who recorded in diaries their epic journey to Siberia as far as Tobolsk and then south to Astrakhan and the Caspian and the edge of the Caucasus before crossing to the Crimea and returning through Ukraine to Moscow and St Petersburg.

Russia’s first tour guides

As the Grand Tour gave way to middle-class tourism, an indication that Russia was indeed beginning to appeal to a wider public was the appearance of the ‘tourist guide’.

Royal ties that kept Russia in the fight

By the late 1830s there had appeared a Guide to St. Petersburg & Moscow, by Hamburg, and by steam-packet, across the Baltic to Cronstadt; fully detailing every form and expense from London-Bridge to St. Petersburg . It was soon followed by the first ‘Murray’ for Russia in 1839 which was several times updated, and ultimately, by the first English-language Baedeker guide to Russia, appearing in 1914 and offering information that was soon to be made obsolete and irrelevant by World War I and the October Revolution. It was reprinted in 1971 as an historical curiosity.

Ascent to the Caucasus

Following Russia’s further territorial acquisitions in the 19th century, Georgia, the Caucasus, Circassia, and Bessarabia joined Siberia, even Kamchatka, became favoured destinations for intrepid tourists and better prepared explorers. Among them were a striking number of members of the Royal Geographical Society. In the early 1840s Sir Roderick Murchison, soon to become the Society’s long-serving president, travelled extensively through the Urals, producing a work of lasting value on the geology of the region. His achievement was matched by another future president, the geographer and mountaineer Douglas Freshfield, who first climbed in the Caucasus in 1868, conquered Mts Kazbek and Elbruz, and published by the end of the century his monumental account of The Exploration of the Caucasus .

The Caucasus became a magnet for followers of mountaineering, which had gained increasing popularity in Britain following the establishment of the Alpine Club of London in 1857. One of the club’s early presidents published The Frosty Caucasus , recounting his tramps through the Caucasus in 1874.

Welcome to Siberia

Railways opened Russia to the tourist, particularly the Trans-Siberian and the Transcaspian. Begun in 1879, a few years before the Trans-Siberian, the Transcaspian railway followed the route of the Silk Road from its terminus at the harbour of Krasnovodsk on the Caspian via Bokhara to Samarkand, which had become part of the Russian empire in 1868. By the end of the century it was extended to Tashkent, which became the capital of Russian Turkistan soon after its seizure in 1865.

The Trans-Siberian caught the imagination, however. Begun in 1890 but only completed in 1916, it was the great ‘ribbon of iron’ along which the anthropologist and translator Annette Meakin travelled towards Vladivostok with her mother in 1900, the first Englishwomen to accomplish that journey. In 1900 the journey still involved a ferry ride across Lake Baikal on new steel-hulled ice-breaking boats that had been built in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and it was only in 1904 after horrendous difficulties in construction that the Circum-Baikal railway was completed and it became possible to travel the whole route by rail.

In 1900, the Russian Ministry of Ways of Communication published an English-language Guide to the Great Siberian Railway that described in exhaustive detail the main railway and all its connecting lines, with over 350 photographs. If its aim was to entice Anglo-American tourists to journey along the whole length of the railway then it succeeded. There are literally dozens of accounts from the first two decades of Nicholas’s reign about journeys on the Trans-Siberian.

By the 1890s cyclists were pedalling their way through Russia. Sir John Foster Fraser and friends cycled from Odessa through the Crimea and the Caucasus as part of a world tour that took 774 days. British cycling enthusiast Robert Jefferson claimed a record for his round trip from Warsaw to Moscow in 50 days in 1895. Returning three years later, and accompanied by Russian cycling friends, he followed the Volga and, crossing the Kirgkiz steppe, eventually reached Khiva, where he was received by the Khan.

A tea party in a Kirhis tent. Source: Anthony Cross

The war and the events of 1917 effectively put paid to British tourism, but by then it can be said that the British had penetrated virtually every corner of the Russian empire. Present-day tourism again offers fantastic opportunities to explore a vast country, but you may well find that wherever you go, a British traveller or tourist has been there long before you.

All rights reserved by Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

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Little Dorrit: The Uncommercial Traveller, Volume 2 (Hardcover)

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The Differences Between A Gentleman in Moscow the Book and the TV Series

Amor Towles's hit novel has been adapted for a gorgeous series starring Ewan McGregor. Are they the same?

Every item on this page was chosen by a Town & Country editor. We may earn commission on some of the items you choose to buy.

In the 1932 all-star film Grand Hotel, a sage observer of the human condition intones “What do you do in the Grand Hotel? Eat. Sleep. Loaf around. Flirt a little, dance a little. A hundred doors leading to one hall…And when you leave, someone occupies your room…that's the end.”

Count Rostov was first introduced to audiences in Amor Towles’ 2016 boffo bestseller A Gentleman in Moscow . Now, it’s been adapted into a Showtime limited series and the eponym is played with old-world panache, charm, and sparkle by a mustachioed Ewan McGregor .

In both iterations of A Gentleman in Moscow , you’ll find much to marvel at. But, it’s not all joy. There is death, contemplation of suicide, famine, the onset of war and other very heavy topics especially given the news today. But coupled with that, and embodied by the singular Count Rostov, is a commitment to finding beauty in the commonplace. That even amidst sadness and privation, there is a persistent glimmer of possibility to cling to. Start by reading and watching the life of Count Rostov unfold. By the time you’re done, you’ll want to, as he does, reach for Tolstoy.

There are, of course, differences between the book and the limited series—and some are of greater import than others. Here are the most important.

Adapt or Die Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Anna Urbanova in A Gentleman in Moscow.

Both the novel and the series, airing now, begin with Count Rostov as he is charged by a Bolshevik tribunal with house arrest. Fortunately for him, the luxurious Hotel Metropol is home. Unfortunately, the suite he has long been accustomed to is swapped for a very small room, many stories up, at the top of the hotel. Over the course of eight episodes, and several decades, we watch as his life changes inexorably, with the introduction of surprise, surveillance, comedy, catastrophe, and, most unexpectedly, love.

The fidelity to the novel, unspooled over each episode, is really quite something. As you might expect, that fidelity is best exhibited by the attention paid to the hotel. I’m not the only one who felt that way. I had a chance to ask Amor Towles, who is also an executive producer on the series, about his thoughts.

“When I visited the set in Manchester, England for the first time last March, I was a little anxious," he says. "I was met in the parking lot by Sam [Miller, a director and executive producer], Ben [Vanstone, writer] and the production designer, Victor Molero, who wanted to personally introduce me to the set. Entering the vast sound stage… we turned a corner and found ourselves before the façade of the Metropol. We passed through the revolving doors. And looking around the beautifully realized lobby, my first thought was: Everything is going to be just fine. ”

Who’s That in the Painting? Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME A view of Count Rostov’s room in the Hotel Metropol, where a portrait of his sister—who plays a larger role in the novel—is on display.

In the book, Rostov carries regret over the death of his sister, which occurred while he was exiled from Russia after defending her honor in a duel. She, and her legacy, are also featured far more prominently within the pages. There are toasts on the anniversary of her death, frequent reminiscences and an unshakeable grip of guilt around Rostov’s heart. In the show, she is the stuff of indeterminate flashbacks and the subject of a painting which resides in Rostov’s room. "To have one’s book taken up by a large and talented team who share the aim of faithfully translating your story to a visual medium, that’s a whole different level of having a life beyond the binding," Towles says. "Needless to say, it was an exciting development."

A Color-Conscious Cast Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME Lyes Salem as Andrey with Ewan McGregor in A Gentleman in Moscow.

The Metropol is peopled with a variety of characters who come in and out of Rostov’s life as time passes. In the series, they are brought to vivid life by a cast that reflects the world we live in more than the one of period Russia. This is most evident in three of the characters who enrich Count Rostov’s life at the Metropol: Fehinti Balogun who plays Rostov’s longtime friend Mishka, Marina as played by Leah Harvey and Andrey, touchingly brought to life by Lyès Salem.

Wait, He Still Has a Mustache? Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME One different between A Gentleman in Moscow the book and its small-screen adaptation? The fate of the title character’s impressive mustache.

Early on in the book, Rostov is accosted in the barber shop and ends up having to cut his mustache as a result. Later, after being seated in the hotel restaurant, a young girl, Nina, the precocious daughter of a diplomat, approaches him and inquires after it. Nina’s acute perception, curiosity and possession of a skeleton key which opens any room in the Metropol bond the two together from that day forward. In the series, he has the whiskers when he meets Nina—but not for too long.

The Truth About Nina Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME Ewan McGregor as Count Rostov and Alexa Goodall as Nina in A Gentleman in Moscow, streaming now on Showtime and Paramount+.

A gentleman in moscow.

The young girl with the skeleton key grows from a desire to share mischief to an intense love and trust for Rostov, even as she becomes increasingly pro-Stalin, which is definitely at odds with Rostov. In both the book and the series, Nina leaves her young daughter, Sofia, at the Metropol in order to follow her husband to Siberia, where he is sentenced to a labor camp. Like her mother before her, Sofia and the count became inseparable. Unlike the book, however, we find out explicitly what happened to Nina when we see her body in a mass grave. "Most of the texture of A Gentleman in Moscow springs from the marriage of my imagination with this 30-year interest in Russian culture," Towles says. "In fact, when I began writing the book, I had only been in Russia for a total of 10 days and had never spent the night in the Metropol Hotel. But once I finished the first draft, I flew to Russia and moved into the Metropol where I began the process of revision."

Whose Voice is That? Ben Blackall/Paramount+ with SHOWTIME Daniel Cerqueira as Vasily with Ewan McGregor in A Gentleman in Moscow, the new series based on Amor Towles’s novel.

The book is narrated by an omniscient narrator and peppered throughout with poems and transcripts. The show, however, is narrated by a woman’s voice. It isn’t until the tragic conclusion of the fifth episode that you find out it is a grown-up Sofia who is speaking.

@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-1jdielu:before{margin:0.625rem 0.625rem 0;width:3.5rem;-webkit-filter:invert(17%) sepia(72%) saturate(710%) hue-rotate(181deg) brightness(97%) contrast(97%);filter:invert(17%) sepia(72%) saturate(710%) hue-rotate(181deg) brightness(97%) contrast(97%);height:1.5rem;content:'';display:inline-block;-webkit-transform:scale(-1, 1);-moz-transform:scale(-1, 1);-ms-transform:scale(-1, 1);transform:scale(-1, 1);background-repeat:no-repeat;}.loaded .css-1jdielu:before{background-image:url(/_assets/design-tokens/townandcountrymag/static/images/diamond-header-design-element.80fb60e.svg);}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1jdielu:before{margin:0 0.625rem 0.25rem;}} Television @media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-128xfoy:before{margin:0.625rem 0.625rem 0;width:3.5rem;-webkit-filter:invert(17%) sepia(72%) saturate(710%) hue-rotate(181deg) brightness(97%) contrast(97%);filter:invert(17%) sepia(72%) saturate(710%) hue-rotate(181deg) brightness(97%) contrast(97%);height:1.5rem;content:'';display:inline-block;background-repeat:no-repeat;}.loaded .css-128xfoy:before{background-image:url(/_assets/design-tokens/townandcountrymag/static/images/diamond-header-design-element.80fb60e.svg);}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-128xfoy:before{margin:0 0.625rem 0.25rem;}}

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Watch CBS News

American tourist found dead on Greek island; search ongoing for another U.S. traveler

Updated on: June 16, 2024 / 3:00 PM EDT / CBS/AP

An American tourist was found dead near the Greek island of Corfu on Sunday, local media reported. It is the latest in a string of recent cases in which tourists in the Greek islands have died or gone missing.

Another tourist found the man in the sea near the old port of Mathraki and informed the police, AFP reported, citing local media.

The American tourist was reported missing on Thursday. He had last been seen alive Tuesday at a cafe in the company of two female tourists who have since left the island, The Associated Press reported.

According to Athens News Agency, he was at Mathraki for a holiday with a Greek-American friend, AFP reported. No further details about the victim, including a name or hometown, were immediately available.

Mathraki, with a population of just 100, is a heavily-wooded island covering 1.2 square miles. It is west of the better-known island of Corfu.

The man's death is the third in recent days on Greece's islands.

Dr. Michael Mosley, a noted British TV anchor and author,  was found dead last Sunday  on the island of Symi. A coroner concluded that he had died the previous Wednesday, shortly after going for a hike over difficult, rocky terrain.

Symi lies very close to the Turkish coast.

A missing Dutch tourist was found dead early Saturday on the eastern island of Samos, local media reported. The body of the 74-year-old Dutch tourist was found by a Fire Service drone lying face down in a ravine about 330 yards from the spot where he was last observed on Sunday, walking with some difficulty in the blistering heat.

Authorities were still searching for three people — including an American — reported missing on various Greek islands in the last few days.

On the island of Amorgos, authorities are still searching for 59-year-old Albert Calibet, who has been reported missing since Tuesday, when he went on a solo hike in very hot conditions. From Hermosa Beach, California, Calibet is a retired Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News on Thursday that the department was aware of reports of Calibet's disappearance, and would "work closely with local authorities as they carry out their search efforts." 

"The Greek missing persons alert program has issued a notice concerning this case," the State Department spokesperson said. 

On Friday, two French tourists were reported missing on Sikinos, a relatively secluded Cyclades island in the Aegean Sea, with less than 400 permanent residents.

The two women, aged 73 and 64, had left their respective hotels to meet.

• Missing Persons

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