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The Floating Press - Charles Dickens

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241 pages

English

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Taking a cue from his love of pleasure travel and people-watching, in 1860 Charles Dickens developed a new persona he called the "Uncommercial Traveller." In the series of essays written from this perspective, Dickens describes his long, leisurely walks around London and occasional jaunts to other locales. This charming collection highlights Dickens attention to detail and his keen powers of observation.

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 décembre 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776594399
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
* * *
CHARLES DICKENS

*
The Uncommercial Traveller First published in 1869 Epub ISBN 978-1-77659-439-9 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77659-440-5 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Chapter I - His General Line of Business Chapter II - The Shipwreck Chapter III - Wapping Workhouse Chapter IV - Two Views of a Cheap Theatre Chapter V - Poor Mercantile Jack Chapter VI - Refreshments for Travellers Chapter VII - Travelling Abroad Chapter VIII - The Great Tasmania's Cargo Chapter IX - City of London Churches Chapter X - Shy Neighbourhoods Chapter XI - Tramps Chapter XII - Dullborough Town Chapter XIII - Night Walks Chapter XIV - Chambers Chapter XV - Nurse's Stories Chapter XVI - Arcadian London Chapter XVII - The Italian Prisoner Chapter XVIII - The Calais Night Mail Chapter XIX - Some Recollections of Mortality Chapter XX - Birthday Celebrations Chapter XXI - The Short-Timers Chapter XXII - Bound for the Great Salt Lake Chapter XXIII - The City of the Absent Chapter XXIV - An Old Stage-Coaching House Chapter XXV - The Boiled Beef of New England Chapter XXVI - Chatham Dockyard Chapter XXVII - In the French-Flemish Country Chapter XXVIII - Medicine Men of Civilisation Chapter XXIX - Titbull's Alms-Houses Chapter XXX - The Ruffian Chapter XXXI - Aboard Ship Chapter XXXII - A Small Star in the East Chapter XXXIII - A Little Dinner in an Hour Chapter XXXIV - Mr. Barlow Chapter XXXV - On an Amateur Beat Chapter XXXVI - A Fly-Leaf in a Life Chapter XXXVII - A Plea for Total Abstinence Endnotes
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, nowaiter worships me, no boots admires and envies me. No round ofbeef or tongue or ham is expressly cooked for me, no pigeon-pie isespecially made for me, no hotel-advertisement is personallyaddressed to me, no hotel-room tapestried with great-coats andrailway wrappers is set apart for me, no house of publicentertainment in the United Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion ofits brandy or sherry. When I go upon my journeys, I am not usuallyrated at a low figure in the bill; when I come home from myjourneys, 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 maninto ordering something he doesn't want. As a town traveller, I amnever to be seen driving a vehicle externally like a young andvolatile pianoforte van, and internally like an oven in which anumber 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 bya 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 botha town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on theroad. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of HumanInterest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancygoods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here andthere from my rooms in Covent-garden, London—now about the citystreets: now, about the country by-roads—seeing many littlethings, and some great things, which, because they interest me, Ithink 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 quietercircumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had but another dayto live, and truly its end was Peace on that sea-shore thatmorning.
So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the bright lightof the sun and under the transparent shadows of the clouds, that itwas 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 theshore, the Lighter lying still nearer to the shore, the boatalongside the Lighter, the regularly-turning windlass aboard theLighter, the methodical figures at work, all slowly and regularlyheaving up and down with the breathing of the sea, all seemed asmuch a part of the nature of the place as the tide itself. Thetide 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 myfeet: as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it tokeep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a littlefrom the land—and as I stood upon the beach and observed itdimpling the light swell that was coming in, I cast a stone overit.
So orderly, so quiet, so regular—the rising and falling of theTug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat—the turning of thewindlass—the coming in of the tide—that I myself seemed, to myown thinking, anything but new to the spot. Yet, I had never seenit in my life, a minute before, and had traversed two hundred milesto get at it. That very morning I had come bowling down, andstruggling up, hill-country roads; looking back at snowy summits;meeting courteous peasants well to do, driving fat pigs and cattleto market: noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with theirunusual quantity of clean white linen, drying on the bushes; havingwindy weather suggested by every cotter's little rick, with itsthatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged into overlappingcompartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given a liftof fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), who wascoming to his spell of duty there, and had we not just now partedcompany? So it was; but the journey seemed to glide down into theplacid sea, with other chafe and trouble, and for the momentnothing was so calmly and monotonously real under the sunlight asthe gentle rising and falling of the water with its freight, theregular turning of the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slightobstruction so very near my feet.
O reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, andhearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slightobstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the RoyalCharter, Australian trader and passenger ship, Homeward bound, thatstruck here on the terrible morning of the twenty-sixth of thisOctober, broke into three parts, went down with her treasure of atleast 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 thebay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain yards outside her;these are rendered bootless questions by the darkness of that nightand 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 theside of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom.On the shore by the water's edge, was a rough tent, made offragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen shelteredthemselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum androast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. Cast upamong the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of thelost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea intothe strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and ironrusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailingair the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for yearsand years.
Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on thenearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed atabout daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off,and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neighbour to constructsome temporary device for keeping his house over his head, saw fromthe ladder's elevation as he looked down by chance towards theshore, some dark troubled object close in with the land. And heand the other, descending to the beach, and finding the seamercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up thestony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wildvillage hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and hadgiven the alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past thewaterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into theocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that partof Wales had come running to the dismal sight—their clergymanamong them. And as they stood in the leaden morning, stricken withpity, leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision oftenfailing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever formingand dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a partof the vessel's cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained uponthe land when the foam melted, they saw the ship's life-boat putoff from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three menin her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two; andagain, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was butone; and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, withhis arm struck through the broken planks and waving as if for thehelp that could never reach him, went down into the deep.
It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, while I stoodon the shore, looking in his kind wholesome face as it turned tothe spot where the boat had been. The divers were down then, andbusy. They were 'lifting' to-day the gold found yesterday—somefive-and-twenty thousand pounds. Of thre