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Paris Morgue

From Travelling Abroad

Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the Morgue. I never want to go there, but am always pulled there (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 64).


Condition of the Great Tasmania

From The Great Tasmania's Cargo

I believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship's provisions (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 81).


Covent Garden

From Night Walks

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 (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 133-134).


London's Shabbiness

From The Boiled Beef of New England

The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva—almost any important town on the continent of Europe—I find very striking after an absence of any duration in foreign parts. London is shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds. London is shabby in contrast with New York, with Boston, with Philadelphia (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 250).


Foul Language

From The Ruffian

The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in our public thoroughfares—especially in those set apart for recreation—is another disgrace to us, and another result of constabular contemplation, the like of which I have never heard in any other country to which my uncommercial travels have extended (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 305).


Charlatan Preachers

From A Fly-Leaf in a Life

All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at my expense. I received the most uncompromising warning that I was a Heathen: on the conclusive authority of a field preacher, who, like the most of his ignorant and vain and daring class, could not construct a tolerable sentence in his native tongue or pen a fair letter. This inspired individual called me to order roundly, and knew in the freest and easiest way where I was going to, and what would become of me if I failed to fashion myself on his bright example, and was on terms of blasphemous confidence with the Heavenly Host (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 355).


Alcohol Consumption

From A Plea for Total Abstinence

Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and wrong-headed (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 361).




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The Queer Small Boy

From Travelling Abroad

Charles Dickens meets his childhood self on the road. The exchange recalls a scene from his past when he and his father would walk by Gads Hill Place.

So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed or black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.

'Holloa!' said I, to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'

'At Chatham,' says he.

'What do you do there?' says I.

'I go to school,' says he.

I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very queer small boy says, 'This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.'

'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I.

'All about him,' said the very queer small boy. 'I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But DO let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!'

'You admire that house?' said I.

'Bless you, sir,' said the very queer small boy, 'when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now, I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, "If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it." Though that's impossible!' said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might.

I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy; for that house happens to be MY house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true (Uncommercial Traveller, p. 61-62).




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Charles Dickens'

The Uncommercial Traveller

Sketches from All the Year Round

The Uncommercial Traveller - A collection of essays written by Dickens in the 1860s

Uncommercial Traveller
Leaving the Morgue from Travelling Abroad - by G.J. Pinwell

A series of sketches written by Charles Dickens for his weekly magazine All the Year Round in the 1860s. 17 of these sketches were collected in a single volume in 1861. Eleven more sketches were added when The Uncommercial Traveller was included in the Cheap Edition of Dickens' works in 1865. Eight more were added in the Illustrated Library Edition of 1874 and one additional sketch was included in the Gadshill Edition of the collection in 1898 bringing the total to 37 (Schlicke, 1999, p. 578). The stories sometimes ramble aimlessly, not unlike the Traveller himself.

Abbreviations: UT - Uncommercial Traveller     ATYR - All the Year Round



I - His General Line of Business

II - Shipwreck

III - Wapping Workhouse

IV - Two Views of a Cheap Theatre

V - Poor Mercantile Jack

VI - Refreshments for Travellers

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VII - Travelling Abroad

VIII - The Great Tasmania's Cargo

IX - City of London Churches

X - Shy Neighborhoods

XI - Tramps

XII - Dullborough Town

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XIII - Night Walks

XIV - Chambers

  • XV - Nurse's Stories
    • The UT fondly recalls visits to places he has never been...in the beloved books of his youth. He also recalls being terrified as a child by the macabre stories told him by his nurse
    • Originally published in ATYR on Sep 8, 1860
    • Characters:

    XVI - Arcadian London

    • The UT describes a deserted London out of season
    • Originally published in ATYR on September 29, 1860
    • Characters:

    XVII - The Italian Prisoner

    • While on a tour of Italy the UT meets a former political prisoner, now a wine merchant, and undertakes a commission to deliver an enormous bottle back to the man's benefactor in England
    • Originally published in ATYR on Oct 13, 1860
    • Characters:

    XVIII - The Calais Night Mail

    • The UT describes the journey from Dover to Calais by steamer and then on to Paris via the night express train
      • Originally published in ATYR on May 2, 1863

    XIX - Some Recollections of Mortality

    • The UT presses with a Parisienne crowd to view the body of a recently killed old man. He also recounts seeing the body of a woman drowned in Regents Canal in London and of his serving at the inquest of a young mother whose baby has died
    • Originally published in ATYR on May 16, 1863

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    XX - Birthday Celebrations

    XXI - The Short-Timers

    • The UT visits the School of Industry, sponsored by the Stepney Union Workhouse where students attend class for half of the regular school hours and the other half in industrial (vocational) training. He approves of this form of education and cites his reasons
    • Originally published in ATYR on June 20, 1863

    XXII - Bound for the Great Salt Lake

    XXIII - The City of the Absent

    • The UT rambles through the deserted City on the weekend. He observes couples making hay, and making love, in the old churchyards. He also muses about the closed up banks and Garraways shut up coffeehouse
    • Originally published in ATYR on July 18, 1863
    • Characters:

    XXIV - An Old Stage-Coaching House

    • The UT finds himself in an old coaching inn, the Dolphin's Head, in a town gone to seed since coach travel was supplanted by the railroad
    • Illustration: Mr J. Mellows by Edward G. Dalziel (Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham)
    • Originally published in ATYR on August 1, 1863
    • Characters:

    XXV - The Boiled Beef of New England

    • The UT visits an eating establishment expressly catering to the working class. At the Self-Supporting Cooking Depot for the Working Classes one can buy a ticket, good for an entire meal, for 4 pence haypenny. The UT reports that a meal at his club in Pall Mall cost 12 times as much and is not nearly as good. He does, however, lament on the absence of beer
    • Originally published in ATYR on Aug 15, 1863

    XXVI - Chatham Dockyard

    • The UT dreamily looks out over the Medway in Chatham and visits the dockyards where the warship Achilles in under construction. He also sees a machine that turns out oars
    • The Warship Achilles - Wikipedia
    • Originally published in ATYR on Aug 29, 1863

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    XXVII - In the French-Flemish Country

    • On a trip by train to French Flanders the UT attends the theatre and goes to a fair
    • Originally published in ATYR on Sep 12, 1863
    • Characters:

    XXVIII - Medicine Men of Civilisation

    • The UT muses on seemingly absurd savage rituals, particularly funerals and government, that, on reflection, are no more absurd, and maybe less so, than those of civilized England
    • Originally published in ATYR on Sep 26, 1863
    • Characters:

    XXIX - Titbull's Alms-Houses

    • The UT pays a series of visits to one of the alms-houses established in his last will and testament by Sampson Titbull in 1723. He observes how the inmates, men and women, keep close tabs on one another and as one voice curse the trustees who run the place. A conceived blight upon the establishment occurs when the youngest of the ladies of the house marries a Greenwich pensioner
    • Originally published in ATYR on Oct 24, 1863
    • Characters:

    XXX - The Ruffian

    • The UT laments the ubiquitous thug having free reign in the streets of London and the seemingly powerless effect of the police. He also gives an account of his bringing charges against a young woman for using foul language in public
    • Originally published in ATYR on Oct 10, 1868

    XXXI - Aboard Ship

    • The UT boards the steamship Russia in New York for his return from America on April 22, 1868. He reports on the voyage and the contant roar of the ship's screw. He arrives in Liverpool on May 1, 1868, completing a trip that severely taxed his health
    • The SS Russia - Cunard Line
    • Originally published in ATYR on Dec 5, 1868

    XXXII - A Small Star In the East

    • The UT visits several miserably poor abodes in Ratcliff. He is heartbroken at the sight of these poor families and starving children. He brightens as he turns his steps towards home and stumbles across the East London Children's Hospital, run by a young doctor and his wife. This saintly couple, with a staff of young nurses, give much-needed care to the children of this poor neighborhood
    • Originally published in ATYR on June 19, 1868
    • Characters:

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    XXXIII - A Little Dinner in an Hour

    • The UT, accompanied by his friend Bullfinch, endures a terrible dining experience at the Temeraire in Namelesston
    • Originally published in ATYR on Jan 2, 1869
    • Characters:

    XXXIV - Mr Barlow

    • The UT reflects on a tutor from his youth and imagines himself as Tommy Merton, from the children's book The History of Sanford and Merton (by Thomas Day-1783) who was tutored by Mr Barlow
    • The History of Sanford and Merton - Wikipedia
    • Originally published in ATYR on Jan 16, 1869

    XXXV - On an Amateur Beat

    • The UT imagines himself a policeman on his beat in East London. He revisits the Children's Hospital and visits the lead-mills, both referred to in A Small Star in the East
    • Originally published in ATYR on Feb 27, 1869

    XXXVI - A Fly-Leaf in a Life

    • The UT has been sidelined with exhaustion and ordered bed-rest from his physician. During his retirement he compares his condition to that of Mr Merdle from Little Dorrit, is warned on his spiritual condition by a clergyman, and is hounded by begging-letter writers offering to relieve his mind by bestowing a little money
    • Dickens is referring to the halt of his final reading tour in the north of England and immediate bed-rest ordered by his physician, Frank Beard, in April 1869
    • Originally published in ATYR on May 22, 1869

    XXXVII - A Plea for Total Abstinence

    • The UT observes a Temperence Movement rally from his window in Covent Garden. His view on Temperence has always been that there can be use without abuse. Noticing that some of the wagons used in the rally were over-burdening their horses he states the case that all should obstain from using horses, even those who do not misuse them
    • Originally published in ATYR on June 5, 1869

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