Retitled 'The Calais Night Mail' in collected editions of the series

Dickens had already recorded his impressions of travelling on the South Eastern Railway's 'Special Express Train and Steam Ship' service between London and Paris, in a HW article of August 1851 (see ['A Flight', HW, Vol. III, 30 August 1851] Vol 3 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism], article 4). In the present item, he draws on memories of cross-channel trips going back to his first journey abroad in July 1837, when he had written to Forster of his sea-sickness as 'that dismal extremity of qualmishness into which I am accustomed to sink whenever I have "the blue above and the blue below". I have always thought that "the silence where'er I go" is a beautiful touch of Barry Cornwall's... descriptive of the depression produced by sea voyaging.' (Pilgrim, Vol. I, p. 280). The allusion then was to "Cornwall's" [Procter's] song 'The Sea' (English Songs, 1832); in the present item, poetry again distracts him, this time a ballad by Thomas Moore (see Literary Allusions, below). Dominic Rainford explores Dickens's representation of such voyages in 'Crossing the Channel with Dickens', the opening essay in Dickens, Europe and the New Worlds, ed. Anny Sadrin, 1999.

      Descriptions of both Dover and Calais, modern and historical, had featured in Dickens's fiction of the late 1850s. Dickens offers a depressing portrait of the latter through the eyes of Arthur Clennam in Little Dorrit, Book 2, Ch. 20 (1857) as he approaches at low-tide, while an affectionate description of 'The Ship Hotel', Dover, where Dickens overnighted on cross-channel trips prior to the building of the Lord Warden Hotel, is given in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) under the name of the 'Royal George Hotel' (Ch. 4 et seq.). Dickens's knowledge of northern France and the towns of French Flanders dates from a similar period in the 1850s. He had celebrated Boulogne as 'Our French Watering-Place' in HW [Vol. X, 4 November 1854] and holidayed there in 1853, 1854 and 1856 (see Vol. 3 of [the Dent Edition of Dickens' Journalism], article 30). He increased his familiarity with the interior of what are now the Départements du Nord and Pas de Calais during trips in 1862 and 1863, probably in the course, as various biographers have surmised, of making clandestine visits to or with Ellen Ternan, centering around the village of Condette, near Boulogne. During one such trip in February 1863, he wrote to Forster from Arras on his birthday (the 7th) mentioning a version of the incident described [...] below:

An odd birthday, but I am as little out of heart as you would have me be... I wanted to see this town, birthplace of our amiable Sea Green [Robespierre]; and I find a Grande Place so very remarkable and picturesque that it is astonishing how people miss it. Here too I found, in a by-country place just near, a Fair going on, with a Religious Richardson's in it – THÉÂTRE RELIGIEUX – "donnant six fois par jour, l'histoire de la Croix en tableaux vivants, depuis la naissance de notre Seigneur jusqu'à son sépulture..." [presenting six performances daily of the Story of the Cross given in dramatic tableaux from the birth of Our Lord until his Burial...]. It was just before nightfall when I came upon it; and one of the three wise men was up to his eyes in lamp oil, hanging the moderators. A woman in blue and fleshings (whether an angel or Joseph's wife I don't know) was addressing a crowd through an enormous speaking-trumpet; and a very small boy with a property lamb (I leave you to judge who he was) was standing on his head on a barrel-organ. (Pilgrim, Vol. X, p. 212)

A follow-up letter a few days later (?12 February) described the 'deserted ramparts and silent little cathedral closes' by which he walked, passing over 'rusty drawbridges and stagnant ditches out of and into the decaying town' (ibid., p. 213). Material from this, and other private tours of 1862–63, finds its way into the present item and Article 32 ['The Uncommercial Traveller [xxvi]', AYR, Vol. X, 12 September 1863; titled 'In The French-Flemish Country' in collected editions of the series] in [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism, Vol. 4].

Literary allusions

• 'the distant dogs of Dover... Richard the Third': Shakespeare's Richard III (1597) Act 1, Sc. 1; 
• 'commit us to the deep': 'At the Burial of their Dead at Sea', 'Forms of Prayer to be Used at Sea', Book of Common Prayer (1662); 
• 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore', one of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies (1807), of which the relevant stanzas run: 

Rich and rare were the gems she wore,
And a bright gold ring on her wand she bore:

But Oh her beauty was far beyond
Her sparkling gems or snow-white wand.

Lady! Dost thou not fear to stray,
So lone and lovely through this bleak way?
Are Erin's sons so good or so cold
As not to be tempted by woman or gold?

Sir Knight I fear not the least alarm,
No son of Erin will offer me harm:--
For though they love woman and golden store,
Sir Knight they love honour and virtue more. 

• 'Robinson Crusoe ...was near foundering': Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 2; 
• 'Calais will be found written on my heart': adaptation of phrase attrib. to Mary I of England following the loss of the city in 1558, and recorded in Holinshed's Chronicles (1808 [1577]), Vol. IV, p. 107;
• 'an ancient and fish-like smell'': words used by Trinculo with reference to Caliban in Shakespeare's Tempest (c. 1611), Act 2, Sc. 2; 
• 'such corporals... and many a blue-eyed Bebelle': Corporal Théophile and 'Bebelle' (Gabrielle), characters in CD's story, 'His Boots', contributed to Somebody's Luggage, the Extra Christmas Number of ATYR for 1862.