"Visit to a Tramps' Lodging-House" — Book 3, chap. viii, ninth illustration by Fred Barnard from the twenty-second volume of the Household Edition of the Works of Charles Dickens: John Forster's "Life of Charles Dickens" (1879)

Visit to a Tramps' Lodging-House — ninth illustration for Book 3, chap. viii. Extra illustration for Forster's Life of Charles Dickens in the Household Edition, Volume Twenty-two, by Fred Barnard (1879). Composite woodblock engraving by Dalziels, 10.8 by 14 cm (4 ¼ by 5 ½ inches), p. 128, framed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]

Passage Illustrated: Dickens Shows Longfellow the Seamier Side of London

Before our departure he was occupied by his preparation of the American Notes; and to the same interval belongs the arrival in London of Mr. Longfellow, who became his guest, and (for both of us I am privileged to add) our attached friend. Longfellow's name was not then the pleasant and familiar word it has since been in England; but he had already written several of his most felicitous pieces, and he possessed all the qualities of delightful companionship, the culture and the charm, which have no higher type or example than the accomplished and genial American. He reminded me, when lately again in England, of two experiences out of many we had enjoyed together this quarter of a century before. One of them was a day at Rochester, when, met by one of those prohibitions which are the wonder of visitors and the shame of Englishmen, we overleapt gates and barriers, and, setting at defiance repeated threats of all the terrors of law coarsely expressed to us by the custodian of the place, explored minutely the castle ruins. The other was a night among those portions of the population which outrage law and defy its terrors all the days of their lives, the tramps and thieves of London; when, under guidance and protection of the most trusted officers of the two great metropolitan prisons afforded to us by Mr. Chesterton and Lieut. Tracey, we went over the worst haunts of the most dangerous classes. Nor will it be unworthy of remark, in proof that attention is not drawn vainly to such scenes, that, upon Dickens going over them a dozen years later when he wrote a paper about them for his Household Words, he found important changes effected whereby these human dens, if not less dangerous, were become certainly more decent. On the night of our earlier visit, Maclise, who accompanied us, was struck with such sickness on entering the first of the Mint lodging-houses in the borough, that he had to remain, for the time we were in them, under guardianship of the police outside. Longfellow returned home by the Great Western from Bristol on the 21st of October, enjoying as he passed through Bath the hospitality of Landor; and at the end of the following week we started on our Cornish travel. [Book the Third. — America. Chapter VIII, "American Notes. 1842," 125]

Commentary: A Postscript to the American Reading Tours — Longfellow's 1842 and 1868 visits

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), still remembered as the author of Evangeline (1847), hobnobbed with a great many internationally known celebrities such as novelist Anthony Trollope and dramatist Oscar Wilde, as well as such American luminaries as Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Ralph Waldo Emmerson. However, he enjoyed a rather more personal relationship with novelist Charles Dickens, whom he met on Dickens's initial American Reading Tour. He followed up with a visit to London in 1842, during which took him on several nocturnal tours of London slums in the East End, a nightmare experience that Dickens so forcibly conjured up in Sunday under Three Heads, Oliver Twist, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In 1867, on Dickens's second tour, he spent the Thanksgiving holiday with Charles Dickens, renewing the friendship they had formed twenty-five years earlier in the United States. Then, the year following the Second American Reading Tour, the pair met again in England, where Longfellow had scheduled visits at Both Oxford and Cambridge to receive honorary degrees. He stayed at the homes of poet laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dickens, and Prime Minister William Gladstone, and took tea at Windsor Castle with Queen Victoria. The great American poet was vastly impressed by Dickens's so successfully continuing his performances as a public reader.

Relevant Illustrations from Other Works

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham [You may use these images without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the images, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Bibliography

Ackroyd, Peter. Dickens: A Biography. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1990.

Barnard, Fred, et al. Scenes and Characters from the Works of Charles Dickens; being eight hundred and sixty-six drawings by Fred Barnard, Hablot K. Browne (Phiz), J. Mahoney [and others] printed from the original woodblocks engraved for "The Household Edition." London: Chapman & Hall, 1908. Page 568.

[The copy of the book from which these pictures were scanned is in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.]

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. London: Chapman & Hall, 1872 and 1874. 3 vols.

Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Fred Barnard. 22 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1879. Vol. XXII.

Tucker, Edward L. "References in Longfellow's Journals (1856-1882) to Charles Dickens." Dickens Studies Annual, Vol. 24: pp. 197-214

Created 15 September 2009

Last modified 30 December 2024