The Uncommercial Traveller

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Charles Dickens. The Uncommercial Traveller

The Uncommercial Traveller

Table of Contents

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

FOOTNOTES

Отрывок из книги

Charles Dickens

Published by Good Press, 2019

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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.

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