Wherein The Dickens Chronological Reading Club (2022-24) embarks on its 23rd read as a group; with this post as “placeholder” for group comments.
“But the river had an awful look, the buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.”
This passage, from the essay “Night Walks,” could equally apply to our next novel–and Dickens’s final finished novel–Our Mutual Friend, where the darkness of London is inextricably bound to her fateful River.
Dickens’s essay collection, The Uncommercial Traveller, is one of our group’s “optional” reads, which we are excited to be embarking on starting today, 7 May! We will be reading it for three weeks, ending on the 27th.
We will not have any wrap-ups nor summaries, nor any final wrap-up nor Zoom chat, unless there is a great deal of participation. Comments can be made under this “placeholder” post, or on twitter with the hashtag #DickensClub.
For Boze’s introduction to Great Expectations and The Uncommercial Traveller, please click here. For Chris’s supplementary reads on both, please click here. If you would like to read The Uncommercial Traveller online, it can be found at several sites, including Gutenberg.
We hope you join Chris, Boze, & Rach on this journey with Dickens! Otherwise, we’ll see you on 28 May for Boze’s introduction to Our Mutual Friend!
All the (Dickensian) Year Round 
NOTE: The Charles Dickens Page – https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/charles-dickens-the-uncommercial-traveller.html – has nice little blurbs about each of the 37 essays.
I. His General Line of Business: The Uncommercial Traveller’s introduces himself and his essays.
II. The Shipwreck
The aftermath of the wreck of the Royal Charter from Australia. This dwells more on the charity of the local clergyman and citizens towards the dead, survivors, and their grieving relations – just doing what needs to be done without complaint or comment.
I like how the Traveller says of the boats lying offshore: “all slowly and regularly heaving up and down with the breathing of the sea”
And of the clergyman: “I read more of the New Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five minutes, that I have read in anathematizing discourses (albeit put to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life.”
III. Wapping Workhouse
A pathetic essay. Helps one understand why in A Christmas Carol one of the gentlemen who come to Scrooge in Stave 1 to solicit aid for the poor says many people would rather die than go to the workhouse, and why characters such as Betty Higden of OMF refuse to go to the workhouse.
I appreciate “the apparition’s” response to the Traveller’s question about people who are pulled out of the river when attempting suicide:
“They are often taken out, are they, and restored?”
“I dunno about restored . . . they’re carried into the werkiss and put into a ‘ot bath, and brought round. But I dunno about restored, . . . blow that!”
I appreciate that one can never be “restored” after attempting suicide. The trauma of the act and the weight of whatever it was that led to the act can never be removed or varnished over (i.e., restored) – they can only be mitigated and hopefully reconciled.
The poignancy of the final sentences sums up the piece:
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!’
That the master – a mason – refuses to recognize the pauper – a fellow mason – simply because he is a pauper. This seems to go against the mason code of ethics as stated in wikipedia (granted, perhaps not the best source, but not the worst either) “Masons will promise [among other things] to support a fellow Mason in distress”. I think it goes without saying (but I’m saying it anyway) that the master here represents Society at large and its refusal to acknowledge its unfortunate members simply because they are unfortunate. What’s that line from that other tale – “’Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business.” (“A Christmas Carol”)
IV. Two Views of a Cheap Theatre
This essay has my very favorite Dickens quote – Who else but Dickens could immortalize a sandwich thus:
“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.”
But this facetiousness aside, this essay discusses the difference between the “audience” at a Cheap Theatre on a Saturday night and that of a Sunday evening. While the size of the audience on Sunday is double what it is on Saturday (“full four thousand” on Sunday vs “about two thousand and odd hundreds” on Saturday) it seems the Sunday “actors”, if you will, do not reach their audience the way the Saturday actors do. Sunday actors speak “to” their audience while the Saturday actors speak “with” them. The Traveller suggests that the Sunday actors need to become more familiar with the actual make-up of their audience – they need to know their audience, to not speak down to them but try to understand their actual lives and speak to them on their (the audience’s) terms as the Saturday actors do, or rather, as the New Testament itself models.
V. Poor Mercantile Jack
One night of the Traveller’s adventures as a member of the Liverpool police force. They are hunting among the “vermin”, that is, the lowest population of the low, for Mercantile Jack, that is, sailors or laborers of the mercantile ships which come and go from the Liverpool docks. The traps consist of brothels, “crimps” (people who entrap usually men into service on board ship or in the army), drug dens, gambling joints and sweat shops among others not mentioned: “They were all such miserable places that really, Jack, if I were you, I would give them a wider berth.” Each place described is worse than the one before it. No wonder, then, that our Traveller’s “term of service . . . was short”! I’m sure the Traveller’s aim in writing this piece is to alert his readers to the existence and nature of this seamier side of life always in the hope that some of them will take some kind of action to make things better.
[NOTE to compare this with the other essays about walking with policemen.]
VI. Refreshments for Travellers
The trials of waiting for “fast food” – anyone who has been to a McDonald’s which employs chiefly teenagers can attest to the truth of this essay – not a one of them understands the operative word “fast” in their workplace. Nor, it seems, do any hotel, restaurant, cafe, coffee house, bistro, etc., etc., etc., understand the meaning of the word “service” according to our Traveller. I suppose he should know, given his occupation. On the other hand, I’m sure he could, with equal gusto, write about any number of places that DO know the meaning and who provide both excellent service and excellent fare. (Note to self – keep looking for that essay.) On this whole, I found this a very tiresome essay which could have used some drastic editing – the same complaints could have been made in half the space.
VII. Traveling Abroad
Spoiler Alert – turns out to be an essay of memories invoked while sitting “in a German traveling chariot that stood for sale” that he had been “commission[ed] to buy . . . for a friend”.
Our Traveller recalls mostly happy memories of traveling abroad, some not so happy but strong memories (in the Paris morgue), What is wonderful is how in such a short space of time and with so slight stimulation whole months’ worth of memories are conjured up. How wonderful to have such memories, to have such experiences that, when recalled, again put you in “that delicious traveller’s trance which knows no cares, no yesterdays, no to-morrows, nothing but the passing objects and the passing scents and sounds!”
VIII. The Great Tasmania’s Cargo
Details the horrible condition in which soldiers are returned home from service but also the remarkable care they receive from the doctors and staff at the workhouse of Liverpool. The Traveller uses Pangloss to illustrate the lack of feeling of Society – heads in the sand, out of sight out of mind, etc. This is a plea for action to be take to ensure that soldiers – who put their lives on the line for their country – are given recompense and compensated for their service, though there is, really, no amount of either that is enough for their service and sacrifice. The very least Society can do is to provide for their basic needs from the moment they enter service. And, I am not sure that there is ever an end point for such provision.
IX. City of London Churches
You know, I really kind of want to go to London and retrace the Traveller’s excursions into these churches! His last paragraph is so enticing. I’d like to see how much, if indeed anything, has changed in any of them.
X. Shy Neighbourhoods
“Shy” here I think should be defined as “disreputable” as none of the neighborhoods discussed are very nice. This essay is “cute” in that the Traveller personifies the animals he discusses and gets their personalities right. However, this essay seems to me to be a collection of ideas he may have had for individual animals left out of novels – I see hints of Bull’s-Eye and Merrylegs and Diogenes, of the Garland’s pony, Aunt Betsey’s donkey’s, Grip, and Miss Flite’s birds. But as a stand-alone essay this seems trite and silly – like Dickens was looking for filler and so stuck this one in, which is a feeling, sadly, I’m finding I have about several of the essays so far.
XI. Tramps
Details the various types (some dozen or so) of tramps the Traveller encounters while on the road. The descriptions begin with the worst of the lot and gradually come to a better type of tramp – from those who seem to believe they are owed something to those who have something to offer for any charity they receive. Women and children are not exempt from tramping. I”m reminded of Noah Claypole and Charlotte in the first tramp discussed: “She wears her bonnet rakishly perched . . .she is the most affectionate.” And later on of the bricklayers from “BH” though the ones described here are a much nicer lot – not beating their wives or being nasty to mis-guided evangelists. I love the remark, and will use it sometime perhaps when interrupted, of the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes to the Giant – “Now, Cobby . . . ain’t one fool enough to talk at a time?”
XII. Dullborough Town
The Traveller returns home. The at-times somberness of this reminds me of GE and the mean way Pip describes his town – which I’m now realizing is never given a name – IS THIS RIGHT?. There are the four (or five) dead babies, the shopkeepers who loiter at their doorways, the unfinished Mechanic’s Institute reminds me of Satis House, the theatre with, perhaps, Mr Wopsle performing, Thank goodness for Joe Specks who saves both the Traveller and the essay from falling into despondency. How fortunate to have re-found this friend and his wife, and to rekindle the fondness for the otherwise dull town.
I especially like the remark, “And this is so commonly the case, that I never can imagine what becomes of all the mediocre people of people’s youth – especially considering that we find no lock of the species in our maturity.”
XIII. Night Walks
Of note –
His last sentence is a lead-in to Inspector Field (see p 513), and a follow-up to Poor Mercantile Jack (see V. above)
XIV. Chambers
CD certainly unloads a lot of baggage here. His paragraph, “Indeed, I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of the most depressing institutions of brick and mortar, known to the children of men” unloads so much pent-up anger, disappointment, and frustration. Even though the episodes he recounts are, in their gallows humorous way, funny, I can’t help but sense that he really hates the place.
He talks of his “impressions of the loneliness of life in chambers” – that the people who dwell there – mostly men but women also (laundresses) – are somehow isolated or distanced from their fellows. But this seems to be more a result of people choosing not to interact with each other rather than there being no one to interact with. Mr Parkle has a neighbor, the “man of law”. It takes these gentlemen “three or four years” to become acquainted. Even then they do not become such friends that Parkle has any idea that his neighbor is going to commit suicide. It seems that a lack of putting oneself out is the problem and nto the lack of people available to interact with. But then, our Traveller tells us that “It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have been built for changers, to have the right kind of loneliness” as if the loneliness was a feature, like the “mysterious bunk or bulkhead on the landing outside” or the “dismalest underground” basement den
The best line is of Mr Testator who “felt as wicked as a Resurrection Man” – oh, so bad!
Also good: “He was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech or carriage; but he was stiff with gin in both particulars.”
XV. Nurse’s Stories
Horror stories from one entrusted with the most precious charge! Indeed, I wonder what Momma would have said had she knows what was going on in the nursery.
XVI. Arcadian London
Or, “these days of unprofessional innocence” when, London is empty because everyone has gone on holiday. I particularly like that “Talk” has taken a holiday, too.
XVII. The Italian Prisoner
Compassion for a political prisoner rewarded. The Traveller’s role in this story is more than “so very subordinate” as it adds comic relief to the otherwise heaviness of it. I do like that the actual gift is accepted for its meaning and intent rather than for its literal quality – as vinegar it could have so easily been rejected as an insult or failure and thrown away. Rather, it is enjoyed at times in the spirit of the heartfelt gratitude it was meant to convey.
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I said I would read The Uncommercial Traveler but I’m sorry to say I haven’t been able to get into it so far. There are just so many other books I’d rather read right now. (I’ve been in a Wind in the Willows mood lately.) By skimming, I’ve only been able to reach the end of Chapter III.
I don’t know why I’m not more engaged by it. The writing seems just as great as any Dickens wrote. (Maybe it’s just my mood at the moment.) While the description of the workhouse is heartbreaking, there’s a great bit of humor.
“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.”
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Maybe the real problem with the church service in Chapter III is that nobody passed out sandwiches.
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Thanks for those fantastic blurbs from the CD Page, Chris!
Totally no worries, Stationmaster! I understand that certain things just feel right (or not) at various times…
Though Boze and I have read a bit into it together, I’m also going back to revisit it, and this morning I was enjoying how much Dickens’ first chapter is like those ads–or YouTube professions of disinterestedness–saying, essentially, I’m not getting paid to say any of this, no special treatment at these various locales, etc! 😂
The second chapter is moving; the humane ways the burials are arranged and care taken to identify the victims after such a tragedy. The touching letters from such a distance to testify to what that kind of care means, even though they might never make it out to see the burial site, etc.
Dickens is just so vibrant!
More anon…
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I just love, at the beginning of Ch 3 (“Wapping Workhouse”), Dickens refers to several of his novels’ familiar spots: The Saracen’s Head (Nickleby), and the “Wooden Midshipman” (Dombey & Son), which Dickens taps on the knee for old acquaintance’s sake 🖤
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I’ve got a few more essays to read, but I’m not sure I’m going to get through them before we begin “Our Mutual Friend”, so I want to add what I’ve read so far before it gets lost.
XVIII. The Calais Night Mail
Rick and Rare were the gems she wore – ADD LINK
Recounting what it is like to take the ferry from Dover to Calais. CD had done this many times and, as we see, was well acquainted with the voyage. Makes me think of my (at least) weekly 1-1/2 hr Springfield-St.Louis drive in that there are anticipated landmarks that always bring certain things to mind – points of reference that tell me how much more time I have to drive, or landscapes I have created fictions about, e.g.. The journey south is different than the journey north though I’m traversing the same road. It is the destination that changes the impression of the journey. The journey south is usually more anticipated because I will be seeing my children and grandchildren; the journey north is more like going to work because most of my responsibilities are done there.
XIX. Some Recollections of Mortality
Again, not a very uplifting essay. But I guess Victorians had more familiarity with mortality and morgues and less information about physiology and anatomy than we do today so this essay would have been more of interest to Victorians than to us (or at least, to me). It does have the Traveller’s eye for people watching, particularly when his “interest, sated at a glance [at the cadaver], directed itself upon the striving crowd on either side and behind”; which crowd “concurred in possessing the one underlying expression of looking at something that could not return a look” (emphasis in original). In fact, now that I think about it, this essay is more about the living than the dead and how the living react or view the dead and/or those connected to it.
XX. Birthday Celebrations
I may be missing something here – there must be humor in these recollections of birthdays gone bad that I just don’t understand. I can understand, indeed I have had myself, birthdays that haven’t turned out the way they were planned, or that were less than festive or down right miserable, but I’m not sure that I would have written about them without at least trying to make them funny or make the best of them – or, conversely, to describe their badness as badness and not as just sad failures.
XXI. The Short-Timers
A plea for better schools for poor children. The Traveller posits “that if the State would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take those children out of the streets, while they are yet children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of England’s glory, not its shame—of England’s strength, not its weakness—would raise good soldiers and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds of its criminal population”. This begs the questions of what type of training is “wise” and who should be the one(s) to decide and create an appropriate curriculum? He gives us the example of the Half-Time System schools of Stepney. To our Traveller these schools are an unparalleled success based due to “the Stepney Board of Guardians having been earnest and humane men strongly imbued with a sense of their responsibility”. Therein lies the key.
XXII. Bound for the Great Salt Lake
Report on the mainly Mormon emigrants on board the ship Amazon awaiting the tide to sail. I am happy to see that the Traveller is able to change his initial opinion of these emigrants – “But I went on board their ship to bear testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully believe they would; to my great astonishment they did not deserve it; and my predispositions and tendencies must not affect me as an honest witness. I went over the Amazon’s side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known influences have often missed.” Nevertheless, the Traveller is concerned for the emigrants in that what they hope to find in Utah may not be realized. His alter ego having been as far as St. Louis himself, informs the Traveller that America is not always what it is advertised to be.
XXIII. The City of the Absent
Visiting empty churchyards and wondering where everybody goes on Sunday.
Of note:
“. . . the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-Tree that was once a drysaltery’s daughter and several councilmen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed leaves are dust beneath it.”
“Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far they will have to fall.”
“Saint Ghastly Grim” reminds me of the “hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated”, the “beastly scrap of ground”, entered into by “the iron gate”; “a burial ground—a dreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where . . . heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in by filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose walls a thick humidity broke out like a disease” (Bleak House, Ch XI; LIX)
XXIV. An Old Stage-Coaching House
Going back to see what’s become of coaching towns by-passed by the new railways. It makes me think of the slow and painful death of downtown areas in the wake of suburban expansion or, more recently, of once crowded malls now bereft of patrons due to Covid-19. The merchants of these once prosperous market/shopping centers can only look on with sadness as their way of life is pushed aside, or they must find other means of income to stay afloat. Such is the cost of “progress”.
XXV. The Boiled Beef of New England
I’ve had trouble in a few of these essays in understanding the transition from the opening to the body. This one in particular – why open an essay about a Self Supporting Cooking Depot with a discussion of the shabbiness of the London population in comparison to other metropolises? I see how the Traveller gets to his topic, but it seems to me he could have gotten there much quicker without his opinion piece on shabbiness and fashion trends, which could have been an essay in and of itself. Be that as it may, his comments about fashion’s filtering from high to low brought to mind how fashion in the Midwest (where I live) usually takes months – perhaps as many as 18 – to catch up to trends which filter inland from either coast. New York and Los Angeles are way ahead of even Chicago in fashion, and by the time fashion reaches the very central states it is already on its way out in the originating cities. As for the Self Supporting Cooking Depot – sounds like a winning enterprise! Rather than a handout it is inexpensive good wholesome food. Not far off from some fast food restaurants, but perhaps with better fare. As for not serving beer, I wonder if this is due to temperance or to economics (how cost effective would it have been to serve beer?).
XXVI. Chatham Dockyard
I really like this one because I think it is most indicative of The Uncommercial Traveller’s “general line of business” (see the 1st essay above). On his wanderings about “out-of-the-way landing-places” he comes upon a boy – is this, perhaps, young Pip shortly after his battle with “the pale young gentleman”? – whose expertise & conversation pique the Traveller’s interest in investigating the Dockyard. We are then given a detailed and interesting account – both factual and imaginative – of the Yard. Nicely done!
XXVII. In the French-Flemish Country
Unfortunately, this essay follows the previous one. The previous one – Chatham Dockyard – was to the point. This one rambles with repetition and belabors the point of how tedious the Traveller finds the theater of the Family P. Salcy and then the Fair. Editing needed, please.
XXVIII. Medicine Men of Civilisation
Like the Traveller, I don’t like funerals because oftentimes they are more about the ritual than the dearly departed. A funeral has always been, after all, more about those left behind than the one who has gone. I prefer a “Celebration of Life” wherein family and friends gather to celebrate the life of the deceased by sharing stories and experiences. Dickens has already given us the best way to celebrate and honor our deceased loved ones: “If our affections be tried, our affections are our consolation and comfort; and memory, however sad, is the best and purest link between this world and a better.” (Ch 6, Nicholas Nickleby)
XXIX. Titbull’s Alms-Houses
This reminds me so much of the goings on at my late mother’s assisted living residence. My mother knew all her neighbor residents and all the staff and loved nothing better than to gossip about them. She had opinions about each of them, their families, their furniture, their behavior, etc. She knew which ones were on their way out, so to speak, and observed closely the ones coming in. She was always “right” about everyone, though I’m sure they all had their opinions, too. From my own perspective, all of these “retired” persons were lovely, some a little sad, most still had a lot to say and to offer. There were, too, several who never had visitors and to these we – my mother, sisters, and I, tried to pay especial attention knowing what they craved was acknowledgement of their lives well lived.
XXX. The Ruffian
Yes, the Ruffian situation is bad and getting worse, the Police cannot handle the vast number of Ruffians. This is as true in the Traveller’s day as in our own. The question of what to do, how to stem this tide, would seem to be to enact and enforce more laws. But we have seen, as the Traveller has, that this alone does not work. What is needed is the Public’s constant vigilance to keep both the Ruffian and the Police on their toes – to not let the Ruffian get away with his ways and to not let the Police become lax in their pursuit of said Ruffian. Easier said than done. The Ruffian is intimidating, the Police are ineffectual – because the law doesn’t always work the way it’s supposed to and because mitigating circumstances seem to be always present. Sometimes the law works and the Ruffian is curtailed for a time – but s/he always finds a way back and then we are right back where we began. Perhaps, like death and taxes, the Ruffian is a thing certain in society.
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Whoops – need to proofread! Here’s the link I wanted to add to The Calais Night Mail: Rich and Rare: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EcOgqxPukFM&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D
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Actually, this is the correct link. Sorry for the mixup
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Wonderful, wonderful thoughts, Chris!! I’ll still be on the Uncommercial for a bit–Boze and I have been reading it along with OMF. Then I’ll be rereading OMF again in sync with everyone. So, I will continue to comment here, but not nearly so beautifully as you’ve been doing! 🙂
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