Retitled 'Dullborough Town' in collected editions of the series

In the index of Vol. III of ATYR (1860), the present Item appears under the title 'Childhood Associations', and the two are clearly linked by their presentation of what appear to be interesting recollections of Dickens's very early childhood. Accordingly, scholars and biographers since Forster have not hesitated to make use of both essays to supplement otherwise scanty evidence about his early life (see Forster, Book I, Ch. 3, Book 8, Ch. 5; Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens, His Tragedy and His Triumph, 1952, Vol. 1, pp. 11-26 passim). The memory of arriving in London for the first time at the Cross-Keys, Wood-street, Cheapside, in a coach smelling of straw, is one Dickens later assigns to Pip in the 13th instalment of Great Expectations (ATYR, Vol. IV, 23 February 1861).

      'Dullborough' is a composite portrait of the Medway towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester, which Dickens pretends not to have revisited since childhood. He had already described Rochester as it appeared to him in the 1850s in a Household Words essay jointly composed with Henry Morley, 'One Man in a Dockyard' (HW, Vol. III, 6 Sept 1851; repr. in Stone, [Uncollected Writings,] Vol. 1, pp. 331-42). Topographical details of the three towns seem deliberately confused. For example, if the 'playing-field' referred to, was that adjacent to the school of the Rev. William Giles in Clover-lane, Chatham, which Dickens attended (see Foster, Book I, Ch. 1), then it could not have been 'swallowed up' by the South Eastern Railway station as the 'Uncommercial Traveller' claims. Until 1891 S.E.R. only reached as far as Strood, and in 1860, it was the London, Chatham and Dover Railway which had a station under construction in Chatham (see B. Matthews, History of Strood District Council, 1971, p. 72). Likewise, while both the 'Miss Green' and the doctor 'Joe Specks' have been tentatively identified as actual childhood friends of Dickens – the former as Lucy Stroughill of Ordnance Terrace, Chatham; the latter as John Dan Brown (see Michael Slater, Dickens and Women, 1983, pp. 40-41 and H. Smetham in The Dickensian, Vol. 33 [1937], pp. 52–53) – the 'originals' were never married to each other (see Gordon Spence, Charles Dickens as a Familiar Essayist, 1978, pp. 123–24&n.) The coach proprietor Timpson, said to have had an office 'up-street' seems likely to be based on the historical coach proprietor, Simpson, who operated a coach called 'The Blue-Eyed Maid', but from Brompton, rather than from Rochester or Chatham (see Dexter, W., The Dickensian, Vol. 18 [1922], p. 21f.) Similarly, in the description of the 'High-street' of what seems initially to be Rochester, Dickens blurs his details: the public clock in Rochester belonged to the Old Corn Exchange, not to the Town Hall; nor was the Town Hall of Rochester ever a venue for public entertainments (see R. Marsh, Rochester: The Evolution of A City, 1974, p. 50f.). Finally, as Philip Collins has argued, the deprecatory sketch of the 'Dullborough' Mechanics Institution and its activities is strikingly at odds with what is known of Dickens's private efforts as 'the most notable literary supporter' of the Chatham, Rochester, Strood & Brompton Mechanics Institution (Collins, Dickens and Education, 1963, pp. 91–92&n.). He was its President until his death in 1870, invited speakers to talk there during the 1860s, and himself raised some £400 for its funds through public readings, such as that of 18 December 1860, when he expressed his hope 'that a time would come when a few mechanics would be found in a Mechanics Institute' (Speeches, p. 298).
      A critical study of the paper, and the means by which Dickens's retrospective portrait of the Medway towns 'broadens in a quite unforced way into a critique of cultural change', is to be found in Malcolm Andrews's Dickens and the Grown-up Child (1994), pp. 41–56.

Literary allusions

• '...Genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin': the story of 'Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp' from the Arabian Nights; 
• 'Richard the Third... struggling for life against the virtuous Richmond': Shakespeare's Richard III, Act V, Sc. 4; 
• 'the good King Duncan couldn't rest in his grave': recalls 'Duncan is in his grave/After life's fitful fever he sleeps well', Shakespeare, Macbeth (c. 1605), Act 3, Sc. 2; 
• 'Comin' through the Rye': title of the Robert Burns's lyric 'Comin thro' the rye' (1796); 
• 'Roderick Random...Narcissa... Strap': principal characters in Smollett's picaresque novel The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748); 
• 'Lieutenant Hatchway... Pickle': principal characters in Smollett's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751).

Textual note

Copytext has 'it quite touched my heart': [The Uncommercial Traveller (The Charles Dickens Editions), (Chapman & Hall, 1868)] has 'it quite touched my foolish heart'. 

Author: John Drew; © J. M. Dent/Orion Publishing Group, Dickens' Journalism Volume IV: 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and Other Papers, 1859–70 (2000). DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

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