The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Uncommercial Traveller, by Charles
Dickens, Illustrated by Harry Furniss
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
Title: The Uncommercial Traveller
Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: January 4, 2015 [eBook #914]
[This file was first posted on May 20, 1997]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER***
Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
The Uncommercial
Traveller
By CHARLES DICKENS
With Illustrations by Harry Furniss and A. J. Goodman
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1905
CONTENTS
|
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER | |
|
I | |
|
His General Line of Business | |
|
II | |
|
The Shipwreck | |
|
III | |
|
Wapping Workhouse | |
|
IV | |
|
Two Views of a Cheap Theatre | |
|
V | |
|
Poor Mercantile Jack | |
|
VI | |
|
Refreshments for Travellers | |
|
VII | |
|
Travelling Abroad | |
|
VIII | |
|
The Great Tasmania’s Cargo | |
|
IX | |
|
City of London Churches | |
|
X | |
|
Shy Neighbourhoods | |
|
XI | |
|
Tramps | |
|
XII | |
|
Dullborough Town | |
|
XIII | |
|
Night Walks | |
|
XIV | |
|
Chambers | |
|
XV | |
|
Nurse’s Stories | |
|
XVI | |
|
Arcadian London | |
|
XVII | |
|
The Italian Prisoner | |
|
XVIII | |
|
The Calais Night Mail | |
|
XIX | |
|
Some Recollections of Mortality | |
|
XX | |
|
Birthday Celebrations | |
|
XXI | |
|
The Short-Timers | |
|
XXII | |
|
Bound for the Great Salt Lake | |
|
XXIII | |
|
The City of the Absent | |
|
XXIV | |
|
An Old Stage-coaching House | |
|
XXV | |
|
The Boiled Beef of New England | |
|
XXVI | |
|
Chatham Dockyard | |
|
XXVII | |
|
In the French-Flemish Country | |
|
XXVIII | |
|
Medicine Men of Civilisation | |
|
XXIX | |
|
Titbull’s Alms-Houses | |
|
XXX | |
|
The Ruffian | |
|
XXXI | |
|
Aboard Ship | |
|
XXXII | |
|
A Small Star in the East | |
|
XXXIII | |
|
A Little Dinner in an Hour | |
|
XXXIV | |
|
Mr. Barlow | |
|
XXXV | |
|
On an Amateur Beat | |
|
XXXVI | |
|
A Fly-Leaf in a Life | |
|
XXXVII | |
|
A Plea for Total Abstinence | |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
|
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER | |
|
Time and his Wife |
Frontispiece |
|
A Cheap Theatre | |
|
The City Personage | |
|
Titbull’s Alms-Houses | |
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.