MODES OF TRAVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 16, 18 July 1936, Page 26

MODES OF TRAVEL

IN TIME OF DICKENS

TRANSPORT IN LITERATURE

(By "Qulvis.")

A suggestion, in an article on transport a hundred years ago, by "Redux" in "'The:Post" last week, that "in the pages of Dickens may be read, between the lines, a whole history of the transport of his times not only in England but in America," led to the sort of rapid,'survey of the works of that author one can make most pleasantly with van edition with which one is familiar. This was a fairly old set of Dickens, unfortunately not quite complete, published by Chapman and Hal] in the eighties and nineties and profusely illustrated by artists like F. Barnard, C. Green, J. Mahoney, A. B. Frost, Gordon Thomson, and others, among them "Phiz" for "Pickwick Papers." It is wonderful how pictures aid the- memory to retrace old tracks. This was an edition given as a present to a boy and there could be no better Dickens for boyhood. But when it came to 'passages on modes of travel and transport in his! time. I'could soon see that, within the measure of this column, irritating though it might be to readers who like a quart in a pint pot, there was no room for a full treatment.

. Dickens must, in his comparatively short life, have, travelled, tremendously. As a newspaperman he kne* his England in its period of, most interesting transition. He Saw the stage coach rise with the development of good roads to'be an institution in'the land, and he,rsaw it decline to a memory even more swiftly before the spread of railways. He must have seen the building of 'the first railways into London, a process which he. describes so well in "Dombey and Son" (chapter xv). Canals also were in their heyday in his youth and early manhood before the railway curtailed their scope. There is a fine description of ar voyage in a canal boat in "Old Curiosity Shop," where Little Nell and her-grandfather, in their distress, are given a lift by the rough, but kindly, bargees. Of travel ,by. road, in all sorts of vehicles and on horseback, there are innumerable passages in all the stories and in the notes of journeys abroad. There can hardly have been any mode of locomotion on land and sea, available in his time, that Dickens did not use. In 1842 he sailed for America in the first Cunarder, the Britannia, a paddle steamer, which took nearly three weeks to getjiim across the Atlantic. In his "American Notes" he gives a full description of this painful voyage, which must contrast very strangely with the four-and-a-half days' trip in the luxury of the latest Cunarder, the Queen Mary. In the United States Dickens spent six-months and he must have travelled several thousand miles on ' every kind. of conveyance—railway train, river ff steamer,' "sounds: steamer (from Ne^Hayen'to New York),: stage coach; of. the American variety, which he detested, and canal boat, in regular passenger service,,, .which he found worse than, anything; else. - .Curiously enough; when he cariie' to visit the Continent, two years later, when railways in Britain had already extended over the land in every direction, there is n^yrhention-in his account, "Picturesgfrom\ltaly,n:;pf his having set foofcjiri;:a:train in France or Italy. The only1 reference; to a railway I could find^was jin'i;the chapter "To; Rome by Pisa, arid;. Siena," 'where, discussing humorously the reputation of Leghorn as the home of an. assassination club, he says:—.. ..' .'.-.■.:■. It would, probably, have 'disappeared ln: the natural, course of events, before' the railroad between Leghorn and Piaa,:which is a good one, and has already begun toastonish' Italy with a precedent of punctuality, order, plain dealIng, and improvement-^the most dangerous and heretical - astonlsher. of all. There must have ibeen.a alight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in-the,Vatican, when.ithe:first- Italian railroad was thrown open. '■.".."' ■ ,' FULL USE OF MATERIAL.: Throughout his life Dickens seemed to find' time to travel. He visited the Continent again and America 'too (in 1868), and went all over Britain, lecturing and giving readings from his works. He made good use of the material he gained by his experiences. Sometimes it was a double use. His travels in America are vividly described in "American Notes," and the material is used again, of course, with variations, in "Martin Chuzzlewit.'.' The Americans never forgave him for his caustic references to them and their modes of life and travel. The scenes in "Pictures from Italy" appear again in fictional form in "Little Dorrit," in which,; it is believed, a character, Mr. Merdle, is intended to represent Hudson, the. "Railway King," or, at any rate, a speculator of that type. What is specially characteristic of Dickens is the accuracy of his descriptions, perhaps the result of his early journalistic experience. To these passages historians will undoubtedly turn when they want to know what was actually happening in the world of his time, probably-one of the most revolutionary periods in the story of mankind. ' The language of Dickens in these descriptions is extraordinarily vivid and vigorous. There is room for just one quotation, from "Dombey and -Son": . . '.. To and from the heart of this great' chance all day and night, throbbing currents rushed and returned incessantly like Its llfe's-blood. Crowd* of people and mountains of goods, departing and arriving scores upon scores of times in every foQr-and-twenty hours, produced ! a fermentation In the place that was always In action. The very houses seemed disposed to pack up and take trips. Wonderful members of Parliament, who, little more . than twenty years before, had made themselves merry with, the wild railroad theories of engineers, and given them the liveliest rubs in cross-examination, went down into the north with their watches in their hands, and sent messages before by the electric telegraph to say that they were coming. Night and day the conquering engines rumbled at their- distant work, or, advancing smoothly to their journey's end, and gliding' like tame dragons into the allotted corners grooved out to the inch for their reception, stood bubbling and trembling there, making tho walls quake, as if they were dilating ■ with the secret knowledge of great ,powers yet Unsuspected in them, and strong purposes not yet achieved. If there were any doubt as^to the greatness of Dickens, not only as an artist, but as,a seer, this passage should be a sufficient answer. Wells himself could not have bettered it. DIANA TRAVELS THIRD. "Redux," into whose province I fear I have intruded too much already, men-tioned-also Meredith, who likewise is a treasure-house of his time. Meredith is full of journeys on horseback and in all sorts of vehicles on the road,"- but I ■ culled this on railways from "Diana of the Crossings" (period about 1840), chapter xx, where the heroine, travels third-class to London: In those pre-democratic, blissful days before the miry Deluge, the opinion of the requirements of poor English travellers entertained by the Seigneur Directors of the class above them, was that they differed from cattle in stipulating for seats. With the exception of that provision to suit, their weakness, the accommodation extended to them resembled pens, and the seats were emphatically sears of penitence, intended to grind the sitter for his mean pittance payment and absence of aspiration to a higher state. Hard, angular wood, a low iroof, a shabby square of window aloof, demanding of him to quit the seat he insisted on': having, if he would indulge in views of the . passing" scenery—such was the furniture of dens where a refinement of castlgation..wasriiractised_on -villain, poverty .by