Retitled 'Shy Neighbourhoods' in collected editions of the series
With the opening sentence of the following paper, compare Dickens's reporting of 'The Great International Walking Match' [broadsheet printed at Boston for private circulation] (see appenix A [in the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism, Vol. 4], p. 410. Even during his lifetime, Dickens's passion for walking (although common among Victorian men-of-letters) was perceived as something of an obsession. Forster speaks of 'excesses in walking' encouraged by country life (Book 11, Ch. 3), while John Hollingshead recalls that 'when Dickens lived at Tavistock House [1851–60] he developed a mania for walking long distances which almost assumed the form of a disease. He suffered from Lumbago, and I have always thought that this was brought on by monotonous pedestrianism'. The same source affirms that in the late 1850s Dickens 'would frequently' walk from the Household Words office, to Gadshill: a journey of some thirty miles (My Lifetime, 1895, Book I, pp. 101–102). As well as country walking, Dickens's ubiquity as a 'flâneur' of the London streets remained undiminished in the 1860s. The language 'once pretty familiar to me' which the Uncommercial Traveller speaks while sleep-walking is probably Italian.
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