Retitled 'Some Recollections of Mortality' in collected editions of the series

Georges Haussmann, later Baron, had been appointed prefect of the Seine under Napoleon III in 1853, and was responsible for many of the improvements in the layout and appearance of Paris which Dickens notes in the present item. Dickens had been lodging in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré in the last few months of 1862; letters of 24 October and 4 November comment on the 'vast changes... and the vast works doing and done' in the city, and the way 'the Genius of the Lamp is always building Palaces in the night' (see Pilgrim, Vol. X, p. 149, p. 154). He returned to Paris in the early months of 1863, staying intermittently at the Hôtel du Helder.

      Dickens's fascination with the Morgue – also apparent in article 10 ['The Uncommercial Traveller [vi]', AYR, Vol. II, 7 April 1860; titled 'Travelling Abroad' in collected editions of the series] (pp. 88–91 [in the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism, Vol. 4]) and ['A Slight Depreciation of the Currency', HW, Vol. XII, 3 November 1855] Item 49 of Vol. 3 of [in the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism] – was by no means unusual amongst Victorian visitors. Guidebooks had included descriptions of it for many years (see, for example, A. and W. Galignani's Galignani's New Paris Guide for 1851 [1851], pp. 84, 325). Although much of the ÃŽle de la Cité where the Morgue stood had already been cleared by Haussmann in 1863, the Morgue itself was not to be demolished until 1923.
      In January 1840, shortly after taking up residence at 1 Devonshire Terrace in the parish of Marylebone, Dickens did jury service at the inquest into the death of the infant child of a young housemaid, Eliza Burgess, employed by Mrs Mary Symmons of 65 Edgeware Road. Burgess's presence at the inquest on 14 January and subsequent trial at the Old Bailey on the charge of concealing birth was reported by The Times on 15 January and 10 March (p. 7, col. a; p. 7, col. d). Forster records a letter sent to him by Dickens on [15?] January â€“ 

Whether it was the poor baby, or its poor mother, or the coffin, or my fellow-jurymen, or what not, I can't say, but last night I had a most violent attack of sickness and indigestion which not only prevented me from sleeping, but even from lying down. Accordingly Kate and I sat up through the dreary watches. (Pilgrim, Vol. II, p. 10&nn.)

 â€“ and describes the episode as an illustration of 'the practical turn of [Dickens's] kindness and humanity' (Forster, Book 2, Ch. 7). Eliza Burgess was defended at her trial on 9 March by barrister Richard Doane of the Inner Temple, and the jury, while finding her guilty of concealment, made a strong recommendation to mercy. She was taken back into service by a sympathetic previous employer and seems to have been eventually admitted to the Magdalen Asylum (see W. J. Carlton, 'Dickens in the Jury Box', The Dickensian, Vol. 52 [1956], pp. 65–69). Dickens had already paid public tribute to Thomas Wakley's performance of his duties as coroner for West Middlesex, in his Examiner article 'The Paradise at Tooting' in 1849 (see headnotes and text of article 33 in Vol. 2 of [the Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism]). The incident in the present item is recounted with commentary in S. Squire Sprigge's Life and Times of Thomas Wakley (Longmans &c., 1897), pp. 424–27.

Literary allusions:

• CD's later title for this paper, 'Some Recollections of Mortality' plays on the title 'Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood' chosen by Wordsworth in 1815 for his ode 'There was a time...' (1807); 
• 'as if he had been Cassim Baba': brother of Ali, cut up into quarters in the Arabian Nights tale of the forty thieves; 
• 'a Masaniello look': Auber's opera Masaniello (1828), featuring colourful scenes among the fishermen of Naples; 
• 'the youth in Gray's Elegy... for his own': Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' (1751), ll. 118–20; 
• ''for safety and for succour' ...believing in him': Home's tragedy Douglas (1756), Act 2, Sc. 1; 
• 'what race of Patagonians': Goldsmith's The Citizen of the World (1762 [1761]), Letter 114.

Textual note

copytext has '...old man, so quiet for evermore': [The Uncommercial Traveller (The Charles Dickens Editions), (Chapman & Hall, 1868)] has '...old man, quiet for evermore' 
 
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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