Selected Short Fiction (63 page)

4
(p. 114)
Bishop and Williams.
The body-snatchers John Bishop and Thomas Head, alias Williams, were hanged on 5 December 1831 for murdering a young boy.

5
(p. 114)
Jack Sheppard
... Dick
Turpin.
Jack Sheppard (1702-24) and Dick Turpin (1706-39) were notorious thieves and highwaymen. The former was famous for his daring escapes from prison, but both were eventually hanged, Sheppard at Tyburn and Turpin at York. Both figured in novels by Dickens's contemporary Harrison Ainsworth.

6
(p. 118)
stump bedstead.
A bedstead whose framework ends at the level of the mattress.

7
(p. 119)
Scotch cap.
A brimless woollen cap with two tails.

8
(p. 120)
turn, and flee from the wrath to come!
Matthew 3: 7 and Luke 3: 7 read ‘O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?'

First published in the Christmas 1850 number of
Household Words
(21 December 1850) and included in
Reprinted Pieces
(1858) in the Library Edition of Dickens's works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of
American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces
(1868).

1
(p. 129)
Barmecide.
In the story of the Barber's Sixth Brother in the
Arabian Nights' Entertainments,
a member of the Barmecide family serves a beggar an imaginary banquet (see Chapter 5 of Edward William Lane's translation).

2
(p. 129)
Punch's hands.
In the Punch and Judy puppet show.

3
(p. 130)
Jack, who achieved all the recorded exploits.
The adventures described here appear in the fairy tales of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk' and ‘Jack the Giant-Killer'.

4
(p. 130)
ferocious joke about his teeth.
‘The better to eat you with, my dear' - said by the wolf in the fairy tale just before swallowing Little Red Riding-Hood.

5
(p. 131)
Robin Hood ... Valentine... the Yellow Dwarf.
..
and all Mother Bunch's wonders.
The exploits of the legendary English outlaw Robin Hood, like the adventures of Valentine (raised at court as a knight) and his brother Orson (carried off by a bear and brought up in the woods) which were first recorded in an early French romance, formed part of young Dickens's imaginative diet. The tale of the wicked Yellow Dwarf, who steals a beautiful princess and kills his rival only to have the princess die of a broken heart, is another of the traditional nursery stories, sometimes collected under the supposed aegis of ‘Mother Bunch', which Dickens remembered with delight.

6
(p. 132)
we all three breathe again.
The allusions here, as in the previous paragraphs, are to the
Arabian Nights' Entertainments,
narrated by Scheherazade to forestall her execution by the Sultan: ‘trees are for Ali Baba to hide in' and ‘cobblers are all Mustaphas', from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves‘, traditionally considered part of this collection; ‘beef steaks are to throw down into the Valley of Diamonds', from the second voyage of Es-Sindibád of the Sea (Chapter 20 of Lane's translation); ‘the Vizier's son of Bussorah, who turned pastrycook', from the story of Noor-ed-Deen and Shems-ed-Deen (Chapter 4 of Lane); cave which only waits for the magician‘, from ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp' (see note I to ‘A Visit to Newgate‘, p. 414); ‘unlucky date‘, from the story of the Merchant and the Jinee (Chapter I of Lane): ‘fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant‘, from ‘The Story of Ali Cogia, Merchant of Bagdad‘, traditionally associated with the
Arabian Nights;
‘apple ... which the tall black slave stole from the child‘, from the story of the three apples (Chapter 4 of Lane); ‘dog ... who ... put his paw on the piece of bad money' and ‘rice which the awful lady ... could only peck by grains‘, from ‘The Story of Sidi-Nouman' (like ‘Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp', ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves', and ‘Ali Cogia, Merchant of Bagdad', included by Antoine Galland in his early eighteenth-century French translation of the
Arabian Nights
but omitted from many more recent versions including Lane's translation of 1839-41); ‘fly away .., as the wooden horse did with the Prince of Persia', from the story of the Magic Horse (Chapter 17 of Lane).

7
(p. 132)
Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.
From
Robinson Crusoe
(1719) by Daniel Defoe.

8
(p. 132)
Philip Quarll among the monkeys.
From
The Adventures of Philip Quarll
(1727), describing the exploits of an imitation Robinson Crusoe, by ‘Edward Dorrington' (Peter Longueville).

9
(p. 132)
Sandford and
Merton with Mr
Barlow.
From
The History of Sandford and Mer:on
(1783-9) by Thomas Day.

10
(p. 133)
devoted dog of Montargis.
Owned by Aubry de Montdidier who was murdered by Richard de Macaire in 1371. The story of the way in which the dog called attention to his master's assassin, fought him in judicial combat, and forced him to confess his crime was popular in chapbooks as well as on the adult and toy theatre stage.

11
(p. 133)
Jane Shore.
Mistress of Edward IV but later accused of sorcery by Richard III and forced to do public penance. She is the subject of
The Tragedy of Jane Shore
(1714) by Nicholas Rowe.

12
(p. 133)
how George Barnwell killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had.
In
The London Merchant; or The History of George Barnwell
(1731) by George Lillo.

13
(p. 133) the Pantomime. For a contemporary account of this form of entertainment in which Dickens delighted, see the description by Francis Wey, reprinted in
London in Dickens' Day,
ed. Jacob Korg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), pp. 144-7.

14
(p. 133)
‘Nothing is, but thinking makes it so.'
cf. Shakespeare's
Hamlet
II, ii, 255-7: '... there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'

15
(p. 133)
the toy-theatre.
A favourite nineteenth-century amusement. The sheets of characters and stage fittings could be purchased at toy shops, and, as Dickens notes, hours of labour went into the ‘attendant occupation with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in the getting-up of' plays such as
The Miller and His Men
and
Elizabeth or the Exile of Siberia
which had been successful in the adult theatres of the day. The actual toy-theatre performance undoubtedly provided a splendid forum for Dickens's youthful imagination since all parts had to be read by the young producer, and the characters were frequently printed in a single attitude in which they necessarily appeared throughout the play, except for ‘a few besetting accidents and failures (particularly an unreasonable disposition ... to become faint in the legs, at d double up, at exciting points of the drama)'. Much of the juvenile popularity of
The Miller and His Men,
in which the character of Kelmar appears, was probably attributable to the explosion with which it ended. See A. E. Wilson,
Penny Plain Two Pence Coloured: A History of the Juvenile Drama
(London: Harrap, 1932) and George Speaight,
The History of the English Toy Theatre,
revised ed. (Boston, Mass.: Plays, 1969).

16
(p. 134)
‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
Luke 23: 34.

17
(p. 134)
Rule of Three.
In mathematics, ‘a method of finding a fourth number from three given numbers, of which the first is in the same proportion to the second as the third is to the unknown fourth'
(Oxford
English
Dictionary
)
.

18
(p 134)
Terence and Plautus.
Terence (190?-159 B.C.) and Plautus (254?- 184 B.C.), Roman dramatists.

19
(p. 138)
the old King.
George III, who became incurably insane in 1810.

20
(p. 140)
Legion is the name of.
cf. Mark 5: 9.

21
(p. 141)
This, in remembrance of Me!
Luke 22: 19.

First published in
Household Words
(30 August 1851) and included in
Reprinted Pieces
(1858), in the Library Edition of Dickens's works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of
American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces
(1868).

1
(p. 142)
Deputy Chaff Wax.
An officer responsible for preparing the wax used in sealing documents. The position was abolished in 1852.

2
(p. 142)
Meat-chell.
John Mitchell (1806-74), who had made the St James's Theatre the London location for drama in French at the time of this sketch.

3
(p. 142)
Abd-el-Kader
(1807-83), an Arab leader noted for his skilful battles against the French. In 1847, he was forced to surrender and imprisoned in France until 1852.

4
(p. 142)
Zamiel.
A demonic spirit like Lucifer and Mephistopheles. He appears in Karl Maria von Weber's Der
Freischütz
(1821).

5
(p. 144)
Parliamentary Train.
By Act of Parliament, railways were required to run one cheap train, charging no more than a penny a mile, daily on all major lines; they were known as Parliamentary trains.

6
(p. 151)
statue ... at Hyde Park Corner.
Matthew Cotes Wyatt's huge bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington on horseback, erected at Hyde Park Corner on Decimus Burton's arch in 1846 (and not removed until more than thirty years after Wellington's death in 1852), was a frequent target of contemporary ridicule. Dickens was generally unsympathetic towards the idea of commemorative statues; among his set of dummy bookbacks invented for the library door at Tavistock House was a ten-volume
Catalogue of Statues to the Duke of Wellington.

First published in
Household Words
(11 October 1851) and included in
Reprinted Pieces
(1858) in the Library Edition of Dickens's works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of
American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces
(1868).

1
(p. 156)
Dog of Montargis.
See note 10 to ‘A Christmas Tree' (p. 416).

2
(p. 158)
solemn as the ghost in Hamlet.
cf. I, i, iv, v and III, iv of Shakespeare's play.

3
(p. 159)
So fades ... all that this world is proud of.
From William Wordsworth's
The Excursion
(1814), VII, lines 976-8, loosely quoted.

First published in
Household Words
(30 October 1852) and included in
Reprinted Pieces
(1858) in the Library Edition of Dickens's works. The text here is that of the Charles Dickens Edition of
American Notes, and Reprinted Pieces
(1868).

1
(p. 159)
My uncle ... just falling asleep.
From ‘The Adventure of My Uncle' in Irving's Tales
of a Traveller
(1824).

2
(p. 160)
‘Get out of bed... sweet and pleasant.'
From Franklin's ‘The Art of Procuring Pleasant Dreams' (1786).

3
(p. 160)
great actor ... playing Macbeth, and ... apostrophising ‘the death of each day's life'.
William Charles Macready (1793-1873), noted tragedian and close friend of Dickens. His last performance was at Drury Lane Theatre on 26 Feburary 1851 in the role of Shakespeare's Macbeth. The line quoted here occurs in the context of Macbeth's impassioned description of sleep (II, ii, 35-40):

4
(p. 161)
Mr Bathe.
The proprietor of the London Tavern.

5
(p. 162)
the Mannings, husband and wife hanging on the top of Horsemonger Lane Jail.
On 13 November 1849, George and Maria Manning were hanged for murdering their lodger, Patrick O'Connor. The trial aroused great excitement, and a crowd of approximately thirty thousand people, including Dickens, witnessed the execution. For a discussion of Dickens's reaction, and his attitude toward capital punishment in general, see Philip Collins,
Dickens and Crime,
2nd ed. (1964; reprinted Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 235ff.

6
(p. 164)
Cremorne reality.
The Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea, opened in 1845 and closed in 1877, were the site of numerous forms of entertainment including extraordinary balloon ascents. See the contemporary description of Cremorne by Francis Wey, reprinted in
London in Dickens' Day,
ed. Jacob Korg (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1960), pp. 142-4.

7
(p. 165)
like
that
sagacious animal in the United States who recognized the colonel who was such a dead shot, I am a gone ‘Coon.
Frederick Marryat related this anecdote about Captain Martin Scott in
A Diary in America
(New York: D. Appleton, 1839), p. 150.

8
(p. 165)
Pet Prisoning.
Giving more consideration to the welfare of criminals in prison than to the needs of honest men outside the prison walls, the consequence, according to Dickens, of the system of solitary confinement currently being tried at the model prison at Pentonville. Under this system, at the conclusion of
David Copperfield
(Chapter 61), the hypocrites Mr Littimer and Uriah Heep prove to be model prisoners. For a more factual treatment of this theme, see ‘Pet Prisoners‘,
Household Words,
27 April 1850. Philip Collins has discussed ‘the Pentonville experiment' at length in
Dickens and Crime,
2nd ed. (1964; reprinted Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1968), pp. 140-63.