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DICKENSLAND

i
ii
DICKENSLAND
THE CURIOUS HISTORY OF
DICKENS’S LONDON

LEE JACKSON

YALE UNIVERSIT Y PRESS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

iii
Copyright © 2023 Lee Jackson

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

All reasonable efforts have been made to provide accurate sources for all images that
appear in this book. Any discrepancies or omissions will be rectified in future editions.

For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com
Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk

Set in Adobe Caslon Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd

Printed in Great Britain by TJ Books, Padstow, Cornwall

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023938167

e-ISBN 978-0-300-27505-6

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

iv
 CONTENTS

List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii

1 Dead: To Begin With 1

2 Great Rambling Queer Old Places 15
3 The Burial Ground 40
4 Kingsgate Street to Dickens Avenue 60
5 A Tale of Two Houses 93
6 The Haunted Bridge 127
7 An Old Curiosity Shop 146
8 Down Newgate Lane 162
9 Somebody Else’s Sieve 200

A Dickens Chronology 219

Endnotes 221
Select Bibliography 249
Index 263

v
 ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Scene from The Pickwick Papers, by Hablot K. Browne. Author’s

personal collection.
2. White Hart Inn, photograph by Henry Dixon, c. 1881. © London
Metropolitan Archives (City of London).
3. A party at the George Inn, Southwark, London, The Graphic,
May 1910. Print Collector / Getty Images.
4. The Maypole Inn, by George Cattermole. Author’s personal
collection.
5. The King’s Head in Chigwell, 1947. Mirrorpix / Getty Images.
6. Photographs of Bransby Williams portraying a range of
Dickensian characters. Courtesy of the Dickens Museum.
7. Lady Dedlock and Jo at the burial ground in Bleak House, by
Hablot K. Browne. Courtesy of the Dickens Museum.
8. Illustration for a music cover of Jo, 1876. British Library Board.
All Rights Reserved / Bridgeman Images.
9. Kingsgate Street from Martin Chuzzlewit, by Hablot K. Browne.
Author’s personal collection.
10. Kingsway, Westminster, 1909. © London Metropolitan Archives
(City of London).
vi
 illustrations

11. ‘Charles Dickens Street’ in Scraps magazine, c. 1904. Courtesy of

the Dickens Museum.
12. Furnival’s Inn, Daily Graphic, 9 December 1897. Courtesy of the
Dickens Museum.
13. The Empty Chair, by Luke Fildes, 1870. Courtesy of the Dickens
Museum.
14. London Bridge steps in Oliver Twist, by George Cruickshank.
Universal History Archive / Getty Images.
15. New London Bridge, by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd, 1831.
Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy.
16. A page from ‘Charles Dickens in Southwark’, published in the
English Illustrated Magazine, 1888. Courtesy of the Dickens
Museum.
17. The Tabard Players recreate the London Bridge scene on
‘Nancy’s Steps’, 1936. brandstaetter images / Getty Images.
18. The Old Curiosity Shop in Portsmouth Street, c. 1900 and
c. 1930. Author’s personal collection.
19. ‘Merrie England’ zone, including the Old Curiosity Shop and
south entrance, Chicago Century of Progress International
Exposition, c. 1933. Boston Public Library Arts Department,
Digital Commonwealth.
20. ‘Old London Street’, International Health Exhibition, 1884.
Look and Learn.
21. Barnaby Rudge, directed by Thomas Bentley, 1915. © Courtesy
of the BFI National Archive, Barnaby Rudge (SPD-3136111).
22. ‘Fagin’s Bridge’, a rooftop panorama from Oliver Twist, directed
by David Lean, 1948. Courtesy of Peter Cook.
23. On the set of Oliver!, directed by Carol Reed, 1968. Columbia
Pictures / Alamy.
24. Dickens World, Chatham, Kent. PA Images / Alamy.

vii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Professor Juliet John (City University, for-

merly Royal Holloway) and Dr Cindy Sughrue (Director of the
Charles Dickens Museum) who offered me an opportunity to think
about Charles Dickens and heritage, as part of PhD research gener-
ously funded by the Techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.
Staff at the Charles Dickens Museum, past and present, have also
been consistently helpful and welcoming, including curators Louisa
Price, Emily Dunbar and Frankie Kubicki. This book, of course,
builds on a long tradition of enquiry and research into Dickens and
Dickensiana and, therefore, owes a great debt to the Dickens Fellow-
ship, Dickens Society and the worldwide community of Dickens
scholars. Thanks, as ever, must also go to Heather McCallum and
everyone at Yale, who make the business of publishing a pleasure;
and to my dad, Ken Jackson, who has always appreciated Boz and
offered helpful suggestions. Lastly, my love and gratitude to Joanne
and Clara, although I cannot forgive them for not allowing me to
christen the cat ‘Mr Dickens’.

viii
 1

DEAD: TO BEGIN WITH

C harles Dickens died at his home in Kent on 9 June 1870, having

suffered a stroke the previous evening. Within twenty-four hours
of his passing, innumerable tributes to the great author appeared in
the press. Many began with the same exclamation – ‘Charles Dickens
is dead!’ – capturing a widespread sense of astonishment and disbe-
lief.1 The talk was of a national loss that simultaneously felt like a
personal bereavement. For Dickens had established a profoundly inti-
mate connection with his readership. His recent public reading tours,
where he had acted out both comic and tragic scenes from his fiction,
had only cemented this bond. Audiences in both Britain and America
had responded to his performances ‘with an almost painful intensity
of feeling’.2 Such was the strength of this attachment, the power and
reach of his work, the extent of his fame, that his death seemed almost
unthinkable. Obituarists concurred that the world had been deprived
of a titan of English literature, perhaps second only to Shakespeare,
‘utterly unmatched for originality and greatness of heart’.3
There was some debate about arranging a fitting funeral. Dickens
himself had hoped for a simple burial in Rochester, not far from his

1
 DICKENSLAND

country retreat at Gads Hill. Nonetheless, John Forster (his friend

and biographer), his son Charley and the Dean of Westminster
conspired to ensure that he was buried in Westminster Abbey, albeit
with a private service.4 The general public were then permitted to file
past the open grave in ‘Poet’s Corner’ and pay their respects. The spot
soon had to be protected by a temporary wooden barrier, lest it disap-
pear from view amidst multitudinous flowers and wreaths. The
modest inscription on the memorial tablet would simply read:

CHARLES DICKENS
BORN 7th FEBRUARY 1812
DIED 9th JUNE 1870

Of course, Dickens never really departed. Literary immortality,

predicted during the author’s lifetime, was amply realised after his
death. Print editions multiplied, much to the satisfaction of the book
trade (as one contemporary put it, ‘to quote a term used in the trade,
“Dickens is still alive” ’).5 Theatrical and then cinematic adaptations,
likewise, kept his famous novels fresh in the public imagination. His
characters, meanwhile, seemed to acquire a life of their own. Charitable
Dickens-themed pageants, balls and bazaars, where people dressed
as Little Nell, Mr Pickwick et al., became remarkably popular in
the late Victorian and Edwardian period. Rochester even hosted a
‘Dickens Fancy Dress Roller-Skating Carnival’.6 Advertisers, mean-
while, had their own particular uses for Dickens’s familiar creations.
Mr Micawber can be found in turn-of-the-century advertisements
for cork linoleum; Serjeant Buzfuz makes the case for Gordon and
Dilworth’s Tomato Catsup; a sketch of Nicholas Nickleby endorses a
mail-order secretarial course (‘ “I want to get on,” said Nicholas’ being
the tag line).7 Dickens’s highly individual characters also readily lent
themselves to being turned into gifts and collectibles. The Charles
Dickens Museum in Bloomsbury holds a variety of these curios, from
silver bookmarks to figurine pin cushions (imagine a miniature porce-

2
 dead: to begin with

lain Pickwick or Bumble, garlanded with a sort of puffball skirt). In

1912, Gamage’s Department Store in Holborn installed a mocked-
up ‘street in Old London of Dickens’ Time’. This was part of their
Christmas offering, selling ‘reproductions in brass of interesting and
historical subjects’, including Pickwickian pipe-stoppers and an Old
Curiosity Shop door knocker.8 The celebrated author and his fictional
world seemed to offer boundless possibilities for marketing and
merchandising. Dickens had become a commodity, a brand, a visitor
experience. This sort of commercial appropriation, in fairness, had
some precedent. A review of The Pickwick Papers from 1837, for
instance, makes passing mention of ‘Pickwick chintzes [which]
figured in linendrapers’ windows, and Weller corduroys in breeches-
maker’s advertisements’.9 Nonetheless, there was a growing sense that
Dickens had created an entire imaginative universe which could now
be freely exploited for pleasure and profit. This included excursions
into ‘Dickens’s London’.
From the 1880s onwards there was a remarkable boom in
Dickensian tourism, evident in the publication of dozens of books,
travelogues, and newspaper and magazine articles. Professional
guides offered to take metropolitan visitors on ‘Dickensian Rambles’.
Lecturers armed themselves with magic lantern slides of ‘Dickens
views’ and toured the nation’s public halls and meeting rooms.10
Places mentioned in Dickens’s fiction suddenly seemed to exert an
extraordinary fascination. The pitch was simple: these famous fictive
locations actually exist in the real world – dozens of them – and so why not
visit them for yourself ? The delineation of touristic ‘Dickens’s London’
was partly the work of diehard fans, dubbed ‘The Dickens Cult’ in
the popular press, for whom making a literary pilgrimage was one
way of keeping the author’s memory alive. But the general public
were soon to be found stalking the Inns of Court in search of Pip’s
lodgings; window shopping at the so-called Old Curiosity Shop
on Portsmouth Street; and admiring the author’s former homes and
haunts. Guides and guidebooks touted novel touristic experiences,

3
 DICKENSLAND

some of which I discuss in this book: discovering the hospitality of

archetypal ‘Dickensian’ coaching inns; locating the neglected burial
ground which featured in Bleak House; standing upon London
Bridge’s riverside steps at midnight, reimagining Nancy’s confession
to Mr Brownlow; enjoying a ‘Dickens shave’ in Poll Sweedlepipe’s
barbershop (or, at least, its real-world ‘original’ in Kingsgate Street).
There was now a modicum of money to be made from proclaiming
that a business had Dickensian associations. Shopkeepers, hoteliers
and publicans all benefited from the Dickens tourist craze and shaped
its progress. Members of public could also, of course, explore the
territory at a more leisurely pace, from the comfort of their own
armchair, merely by perusing articles such as ‘Charles Dickens in
Southwark’ or ‘The Haunts of Sarah Gamp’, or books with titles such
as Dickens’s London, A Pickwickian Pilgrimage or The Real Dickens
Land.11
Some literary topographers – a term I will use throughout this
book for creators of works of literary tourism – preferred ‘Dickensland’
(or ‘Dickens Land’) to ‘Dickens’s London’. It possessed a certain
imperialist swagger, as if the great man had stamped his name on
vast swathes of conquered territory. Not everyone, however, was
impressed by such pretensions to literary dominion. One journalist,
writing in 1903, noted sardonically:

. . . where Dickens posted his first manuscript – where he had a

red hot chop – where he looked out of a window, and what he saw
when he looked out. It is all recorded. He might be a dead king
with a vast empire still of loyal subjects who will hardly believe he
is dead. At the worst, they can make a vice-regent of one of his
old hats, and reverence that. He has been canonised and his
shrines are everywhere.12

‘Dickensland’ also conveyed a sense of enchantment, redolent of the

obligatory ‘transformation scene’ in Victorian pantomime, in which

4
 dead: to begin with

an ordinary place became a magical ‘fairyland’.13 Indeed, many

literary topographers suggested that the appeal of Dickensian
tourism was mentally conjuring up favourite moments from the
novels in situ, a ‘transformation scene’ of sorts. To modern ears, of
course, ‘Dickensland’ sounds more like a theme park – an apt asso-
ciation. For the most visited real-world sites were themselves
moulded by commercial interests, adapted to meet the demands of
eager visitors. Canny entrepreneurs, at places such as Wood’s Hotel
(formerly Furnival’s Inn, where Dickens lodged as a young man) or
the George Inn (a typical Borough coaching inn), made the most of
their Dickensian credentials, as I have already hinted. Moreover,
when those credentials were underwhelming, they embellished or
invented them. The Old Curiosity Shop – undoubtedly the most
popular destination of all – had not the slightest connection to the
novel, nor to its author. ‘Dickens’s London’, in other words, was
always something of a construct, not merely a collection of historic
buildings but a tailor-made ‘Dickensland’.
This might seem counter-intuitive. Surely the literary tourist
always seeks out the ‘real’ place, the authentic original building which
inspired or informed the author’s work? The line between the
authentic and the manufactured in literary tourism, however, is often
rather blurred; and the general public are not necessarily overly trou-
bled by the distinction. Representations and recreations of ‘Dickens’s
London’ are instructive in this regard: topographically themed
Victorian bazaars; the stage sets of televisual and cinematic adapta-
tions; even the failed Dickens World theme park in Chatham. Such
ersatz places – avowedly artificial ‘Dickenslands’ – have a good deal
in common with the most popular ‘real’ sites. The principal differ-
ence is that they are explicitly manufactured to suit the public taste.
This is not to say that literary tourists place no value on visiting
authentic buildings and locations, but they are often content to over-
look a degree of simulation and fakery. One is reminded of the
famous witticism about sincerity, attributed to the comedian George

5
 DICKENSLAND

Burns (‘The secret to success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve
got it made’). Manufactured authenticity, likewise, can prove very
appealing.

***
‘Dickens’s London’ flourished as a tourist experience c. 1870–1930,
and, of course, although public interest has waxed and waned, it can
still be enjoyed to this day. The origins of the phenomenon, however,
are quite complex. Obviously, Dickens’s own topographic specificity
is fundamental. He seems to have regularly prowled the streets of
London, scouting for suitably interesting locations that he might use
in his fiction. Whilst writing The Old Curiosity Shop, he famously
penned a note to John Forster which read, ‘intended calling on you
this morning on my way back from Bevis-marks, whither I went to
look at a house for Sampson Brass’ (the venal solicitor in the novel).14
This reference to Bevis Marks also highlights his interest in the older
parts of the metropolis. Situated on the border of the City of London,
the run-down district was particularly quaint, containing a number
of Elizabethan buildings, such as the timbered, gabled Blue Pig
public house, on the corner of St Mary Axe and Bevis Marks, later
known as the Golden Axe.15 In fact, a fascination with old buildings
runs through Dickens’s fiction and was noted by his critics. John
Ruskin, writing in a private letter shortly after the great author’s
death, criticised Dickens for being ‘a pure modernist . . . with no
understanding of any power of antiquity except as a sort of jackdaw
sentiment for cathedral towers . . . [who] uses everything for effect
on the pit’.16 The accusation was that Dickens appropriated historic
locations as picturesque scenic backdrops for his novels – a superfi-
cial engagement with the past. Walter Bagehot, similarly, imagined
the author drawing upon an extensive memory bank of (real-world)
‘old buildings and curious people’.17 Bagehot, however, differed from
Ruskin, praising Dickens for assembling a peculiar sort of modernist
literary collage. The novels, he argued, recalling these random and

6
 dead: to begin with

curious facets of the metropolis, reflected the fragmentary nature of

urban existence. Bagehot’s notion of the author pulling together
disconnected elements – an old building here, an eccentric character
there – nevertheless echoes Ruskin’s jibe about ‘jackdaw sentiment’.
I hope to demonstrate that Dickens was not quite so random. For
there are biographical, historical and contemporary (nineteenth-
century) resonances in his choice of particular London localities
which suggest a very purposeful approach to place (see, in particular,
my discussion of ‘Nancy’s Steps’ in Chapter 6).
In terms of the literary topographers who actually produced the
travelogues and tourist guidebooks, there was no single guiding hand.
Some of this material, certainly, was initially generated by literary
acolytes, such as Percy Fitzgerald (1830–1925), one of the young
writers whom Dickens himself had encouraged and championed
whilst editing his magazines Household Words and All the Year Round.
Various other writers and journalists, also tried their luck. John Rose
Greene Hassard (1836–88), for example, literary editor of the New
York Tribune, published the first series of articles charting ‘Dickens’s
London’ for American readers in 1879.18 Predictably, professional
tour guides also contributed, such as Robert Allbut (1832–1915),
who penned a Dickens guidebook, London Rambles “en zigzag” with
Charles Dickens (1886), whilst working for a London travel agency.
But one did not have to be a litterateur, or even involved in the tourism
industry. Thomas Edgar Pemberton (1849–1905), author of the
first complete book of Dickens tourism, Dickens’s London (1876),
found time to write plays, pantomimes, the occasional novel and
theatrical biographies but was also the manager of his family’s brass
foundry. William R. Hughes (1830–99), author of A Week’s Tramp
in Dickens-Land (1891) and one of the first great collectors of
Dickens’s first editions and memorabilia, was treasurer of the City of
Birmingham. Admittedly, there was not great social diversity amongst
these figures. The majority, as readers will have gathered, were middle-
and upper-middle-class men, often financially comfortable men of

7
 DICKENSLAND

advancing years, for whom Dickensian topography was something of

a pleasant hobby.
Solitary men, of course, could wander the streets of the capital,
particularly its less salubrious districts, with much greater social
freedom than their female counterparts. Nonetheless, middle-class
women also played a lively and active part in Dickensian tourism,
even if constrained by the requirement to be chaperoned. In fact,
another famous author, Louisa May Alcott, a self-styled ‘spinster on
the rampage’ in mid-Victorian London, has good claim to be the first
documented Dickensian literary tourist/topographer. Alcott records
making a ‘Dickens pilgrimage’ in her diary entry for June 1866 and
would chronicle her adventures in a lightly fictionalised account
published the following year.19 Later fictionalised travelogues, also
written by female authors, similarly hint at American enthusiasm for
‘Dickens’s London’ as both an imaginary place and a real-world
tourist destination. The heroine of Elizabeth Williams Champney’s
Three Vassar Girls in England (1884), for example, sees the London
crowds as akin to ‘a grand Dickens carnival’.20 The heroine of Susan
Coolidge’s What Katy Did Next (1886) likewise finds London ‘just
like a dream or a story’, part of a ‘Story-Book England’ (although
she wonders why Dickens made so much of muffins, ‘a great
disappointment, tough and tasteless’).21 We might also note that
the Lady Guides Association (LGA), founded in 1888 by Edith
A. Davis to provide employment for ‘intelligent gentlewomen’,
included tours of Dickensian sites for its exclusively female clientele.
Some of the LGA’s female guides actually made this their speciality
and became ‘acquainted with every single place of which mention is
made in the great novelist’s works’.22 The intention was to satisfy
knowledgeable and rather exacting American fans. The LGA laid
on numerous other tours and visits, with Davis even arranging for
female-led tours of Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel.23 Nevertheless,
‘Dickens’s London’ was perennially in demand, particularly among
her transatlantic clients.

8
 dead: to begin with

I would argue, however, that the more rewarding question is not

so much who created touristic ‘Dickens’s London’ – who wrote the
books or gave the tours – as under what circumstances it flourished.
The Victorians’ burgeoning interest in London’s built environment
as urban heritage was critical. During the late nineteenth century,
what were once merely everyday old buildings increasingly came
to be seen as valuable survivals, preservation-worthy cultural assets.
The Dickensian tourist trail was an important part of a new heritage
metropolis of commemorative plaques and authenticated ‘historic’
buildings. Mentally summoning up Dickens’s scenes and characters
in situ exemplified the possibilities for rich imaginative engagement
with place in this ‘newly old’ capital.24 This relationship was
not, however, entirely straightforward. Some questioned whether
‘Dickens’s London’ was worthy of preservation. The author’s patent
interest in the seamier side of London life – the slum and the back
alley – was particularly problematic for progressives, such as the
members of the newly formed London County Council (LCC),
established in 1889. The Council was both self-appointed guardian
of the capital’s history and heritage and yet simultaneously engaged
in redevelopment work that involved the wholesale demolition of
‘old London’. For the LCC, ‘Dickensian’ streets were places not to be
commemorated but to be wiped from the map. Indeed, a good deal
of Dickens’s literary territory would be obliterated by the turn of the
twentieth century, laid waste by schemes for urban improvement.
The general popularity of literary tourism was, of course, another
important factor that nurtured Dickensian tourism. The practice of
visiting sites associated with authors and their work has a long
history. For example, during the 1520s, tourists sought out real-life
locations in the south of France which were associated with Petrarch’s
sonnets of unrequited love. They were assisted by ‘the publications
of maps [. . .] the construction of museum-like collections [. . .]
the rise of more or less organised tours’.25 Most academic studies
of the subject, however, look to the continental ‘Grand Tour’ in the

9
 DICKENSLAND

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as the precursor of not only

modern mass tourism but also literary tourism. The Romantics’
enthusiasm for venerating creative genius and finding imaginative
stimulation in historical/picturesque localities also fostered a growing
interest in ‘literary pilgrimage’ in the early 1800s.26 Suffice to say, by
the mid-Victorian period the literary tourist was a familiar figure.
Some travellers sought out the homes of literary celebrities, inspired
by books such as William Howitt’s Homes and Haunts of the Most
Eminent British Poets (1847). In Scotland, excursion trains and coach
tours took visitors to destinations found in the works of Walter Scott,
the likes of Melrose Abbey and Loch Katrine.27 The publication of
Mrs Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), two years after
Charlotte’s death, similarly brought a constant stream of tourists to
Haworth, determined to see the Brontë parsonage and experience
the surrounding moorland. The influx of visitors reportedly produced
‘quite a revolution’ in the district, not least in the price of food
and accommodation at local inns and hotels.28 Touristic ‘Dickens’s
London’, therefore, was part of this pre-existing tradition, but it
was, I suggest, rather unusual and distinctive. For a start, there had
never been such an extensive urban literary territory, charted by so
many interested parties. Literary tourism was traditionally associated
with the remote, rural and picturesque, a legacy of Romanticism.
‘Dickens’s London’, moreover, went largely unexplored during
Dickens’s own lifetime (unlike, for instance, the Scotland of Walter
Scott, or the Lake District of Wordsworth). Dickensian tourism
was part of a tradition but it was also a historically specific cultural
phenomenon, with its own particular origins in the late nineteenth
century.
Certain individuals, of course, have always been keen to encounter
famous living writers, and even Dickens’s removal from London to
Gads Hill did not deter sightseers hoping to catch a glimpse of the
famous author. One local recalled that American tourists were wont
to park their carriages outside the raised front garden ‘and there sit

10
 dead: to begin with

and gloat and nudge one another if a daughter of a maid servant

came out of the dwelling and picked a flower’.29 Dickens’s reading
tours also pandered to, and doubtless boosted, a demand for making
a personal connection with the author. Nonetheless, aside from those
who hoped to catch a glimpse of the man himself, few seem to have
been interested in Dickensian tourism before the 1880s. We do know
that individual readers would occasionally query the real-world
correlate of places in his fictional world. Sarah Hammond Palfrey, a
writer who met Dickens en route to America in 1867, quizzed him
on the location of the burial ground in Bleak House and was later
treated to a letter which described its location near Drury Lane
Theatre (a site which I will discuss in detail). Louisa May Alcott, as
already noted, included Dickens-related literary sites in her tours
of the capital. But Alcott, writing in the mid-1860s, whose strolls
through mid-Victorian London made her feel ‘as if I’d got into a
novel’, was rather ahead of her time.30 While a trio of American arti-
cles containing topographical content marked Dickens’s death, and
T. Edgar Pemberton’s guidebook/travelogue Dickens’s London was
published in 1876, they made little immediate impact (‘a reverential,
but as far as we can see, useless piece of work’, remarked a reviewer of
Pemberton).31 It was not until the 1880s that similar books and arti-
cles began to be produced in large numbers and organised guided
tours began to appear.32 Percy Fitzgerald regretted that he had never
spoken to Dickens about Pickwickian topography while the great
author still lived, remarking, ‘But, at that time, no one much cared.
The thing was assumed to be concluded. It was enough to read your
“Pickwick” then without troubling about details – a sensible course
enough, after all.’33 Fitzgerald would nonetheless become one of the
most assiduous chroniclers of ‘Dickens’s London’.34
This prompts the question: what changed? There is no doubt that
Dickens’s death and his induction into the national literary pantheon
at Poet’s Corner provided some impetus to chart his literary territory.
For literary pilgrimage had long been associated with notions of

11
 DICKENSLAND

communing with the dead, a means of forging a spiritual connection

with famous figures from the past. As William Godwin put it at the
start of the nineteenth century, ‘let us visit their tombs; let us indulge
all the reality we can now have, of a sort of conference with these
men’.35 But one can also trace broader trends which stimulated the
Dickens tourism boom, not least the Victorians’ fascination with
history and heritage, to which I have already alluded – an interest
increasingly centred on the metropolis. ‘Dickens’s London’ thus
became part of the ‘old city’ that needed to be documented, commem-
orated, perhaps even saved from demolition, in the face of ongoing
urban redevelopment. The peculiar immersive pseudo-cityscapes of
international exhibitions – particularly the ‘Old London Street’ of
the 1884 International Health Exhibition – also increased public
interest in ‘virtual’ urban exploration. There was not much difference
between ‘stepping back in time’ at the Health Exhibition, where
visitors could walk through a meticulous recreation of medieval
streets and imagine themselves in Tudor London, and stepping into
‘Dickens’s London’, guided by the literary topographer. Both required
a particular sort of imaginative engagement with place and promised
similar imaginative rewards.
Perhaps the most significant factor fuelling the Dickens tourism
boom, however, was the remarkable passion for all things Dickensian
among American tourists. By the 1880s, ever-growing numbers of
wealthy Americans were visiting the capital and they were particularly
enamoured of the quaint places mentioned in Dickens’s fiction (‘[they]
especially love to trace the localities . . . they may be met, guidebook in
hand, wondering which were the grimy chambers in Barnard’s Inn
where Pip and Herbert Pocket lived’).36 Britons were often rather
condescending when they encountered such brazen enthusiasm,
declaring themselves mystified why such spots were ‘especially prized
by our American cousins’.37 American tourists also provoked a degree
of anxiety. Rumours circulated that the Portsmouth Street Old
Curiosity Shop might be demolished and rebuilt in the United States

12
 dead: to begin with

as an attraction managed by P.T. Barnum.38 Transatlantic visitors

reportedly regularly made cash offers for the ‘Little Wooden
Midshipman’ of Leadenhall Street (a real-world wooden figurine
which Dickens appropriated as a street sign for Sol Gills’s fictional
shop in Dombey and Son).39 Americans, in the British imagination,
were proverbially acquisitive; and it is true that they did make some
purchases of Dickens relics. For instance, a bed from the infamous
East End opium den of Edwin Drood fame was sold to a collector.40
But, as a scholar of Shakespearean heritage has noted, condemnation
of greedy foreign tourists also neatly shifted responsibility for the
tawdry commercialisation of British cultural sites onto a convenient
transatlantic scapegoat.41

***
Modern-day Dickens fans may legitimately ask why I have limited
my research to London. Naturally, I must concede that a complete
survey would extend beyond the metropolis. Rochester, Chatham
and their surrounds, associated with Dickens’s childhood, feature in
several of his books, and he resided at nearby Gads Hill from 1857
until his death. This corner of Kent, therefore, has long been a site for
Dickensian tourism. By the turn of the twentieth century, for example,
Thomas Cook was laying on tours of Rochester and its environs
entitled ‘A Day’s Pilgrimage to Dickens’ Country’.42 Growing interest
in ‘Dickens’s Kent’, in particular, went hand in hand with the late
Victorian cycling craze and then, a decade or two later, the advent of
the motor car, opening up the county to new waves of visitors.
Motoring, in fact, breathed new life into Kent’s ‘Dickensian’ coaching
inns, which had teetered on the brink of extinction (as well as
resulting in some peculiar advertisements, such as Mr Pickwick
advertising the likes of the Bean Tourer, a 1920s automobile).43 I do
make a brief diversion to Gads Hill, and I take a tour of Chatham’s
Dickens World, but a full exploration of the county’s ties with
Dickens is beyond the scope of this book. Any complete study of

13
 DICKENSLAND

Dickensian tourism, in any case, would have to go much further.

The Charles Dickens Museum – whose origins I will discuss – holds
Dickensian tourist guides to Yorkshire (home to the infamous
Mr Squeers and his school in Nicholas Nickleby); Portsmouth
(Dickens’s birthplace, also in Nicholas Nickleby); Bath (featured in
The Pickwick Papers); Italy (described in Pictures from Italy and an
important backdrop in Little Dorrit) and numerous other localities.
Hefty pictorial volumes, such as Charles Dickens’s England (2009),
nestle beside niche pamphlets such as Edwin Harris’s The Hundred of
Hoo and Its Dickensian Associations (1921) and Edward Preston’s
Hastings in Dickens and Dickens in Hastings (1988). But this is all too
much. I have, therefore, largely confined myself to selected sites in
London, the metropolis which Dickens did so much to define in the
popular imagination as a ‘special correspondent for posterity’.44
Readers must also forgive me for not arranging this book strictly
chronologically. Rather, I have settled on some key sites, investigating
their relationship with Dickens’s fiction, heritage and literary tourism
on a place-by-place basis. Hopefully this provides a clearer insight into
the subject. I begin with coaching inns – a suitable point of entry into
the great metropolis and a type of building well known to Dickens as
a young man. For the budding author worked as a parliamentary
reporter in the early 1830s, covering local elections and public meet-
ings for London newspapers, including the Morning Chronicle. This
involved regular travel to the provinces, and he would later vividly
recall transcribing his shorthand notes as the mail coach rattled back
to the capital, ‘writing on the palm of my hand, by the light of a dark
lantern, in a postchaise and four, galloping through a wild country’.45
He thus became familiar with the character of numerous coaching
inns and his pen portrait of these institutions in The Pickwick Papers
remains the definitive description of what the late Victorians nostalgi-
cally dubbed ‘the old coaching days’.The inns which Dickens described,
rendered somewhat obsolescent by the coming of the railways, would,
in turn, come to fascinate the literary tourist.

14
 2

GREAT RAMBLING QUEER OLD PLACES

In the Borough especially, there still remain some half-dozen old

inns, which have preserved their external features unchanged, and
which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and
the encroachments of private speculation. Great, rambling queer
old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases,
wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a
hundred ghost stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to
the lamentable necessity of inventing any, and that the world
should exist long enough to exhaust the innumerable veracious
legends connected with old London Bridge, and its adjacent
neighbourhood . . .1

D ickens’s first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was originally published

in serial form between March 1836 and October 1837. The
book recounts the picaresque travels of a club of bumbling middle-
class gentlemen, led by the cherubic, kind-hearted Mr Pickwick.
Coaching and coaching inns feature prominently in the narrative,
with characters making road trips to Kent and East Anglia, Bath and

15
 DICKENSLAND

Birmingham. Dickens, however, singles out the ancient inns which

lined Borough High Street in Southwark for particular attention.
Their old wooden balustrades, courtyard galleries and winding stair-
cases are inextricably associated with a litany of ‘ghost stories’ and
‘veracious legends’ that almost adhere to the buildings. Dickens
clearly has a strong sense that run-down antiquity prompts the im-
agination, akin to the suggestive power of the ruin. To quote John
Forsyth, author of Remarks on Antiquities (1802), ‘we must fancy what
a ruin has been . . . we rebuild and re-people it, we call in history, we
compose, we animate, we create’.2 The allusion to stories and legends
is also a typically self-referential touch. Dickens knows that The Pick-
wick Papers, his own traveller’s tale, will add a new layer of narrative, a
new set of associations belonging to these ‘great rambling queer old
places’. Mr Pickwick and his companions will become part of the
fabric.
But how long would that fabric actually survive? Dickens’s fictional
portrait of coaching and coaching inns captured a world on the brink
of extinction, even though great improvements had recently been
made in road transport. By the early 1800s, better road surfaces,
improved coach suspension, regular changes of horses and fierce
competition amongst rival companies had produced mail coaches
capable of averaging eight miles an hour. This was considered a
remarkable achievement. Nevertheless, as one nostalgic historian of
the period put it, this new road network, ‘just as it was perfected,
apparently, was rendered useless’.3 The first railway line in London,
from Deptford to Spa Road in Bermondsey, opened only a month
before the first episode of Pickwick appeared; and both London Bridge
and Euston stations would open while the novel was still being seri-
alised. Coaching would soon be in decline and many of the old inns
would, indeed, fall victim to those powerful forces of improvement
and speculation. By the 1860s, the old-fashioned coaching inn had
all but vanished from contemporary life; and Pickwick seemed like
a historical document. As an anonymous journalist, writing shortly

16
 great rambling queer old places

before Dickens’s death, noted, ‘Half the fun and the humorous
description in “Pickwick” is about mail-coaches and drivers, and
guards, and country inns, which the young Londoner of today never
saw even in a picture.’ Indeed, the whole milieu of The Pickwick Papers
now seemed thoroughly quaint and antiquated, ‘older than the Elgin
marbles’.4 Dickens’s literary topographers, consequently, would come
to paint him as a sort of accidental historian of this bygone era.5
A review of the 1886 ‘Jubilee edition’ of Pickwick (an annotated
edition of the novel, complete with historical and topographical foot-
notes) remarked that coaching inns had been ‘frightened away by
the whistle and roar of the steam engine’ and expressed gratitude that
Dickens had fictively preserved them.6 John Camden Hotten, an
early Dickensian biographer, likewise claimed that the great author
had gifted posterity with the best possible description of ‘those old
coaching days and that old tavern life that have passed out of actual
existence, to live forever in Dickens’s pages’.7
London’s coaching inns, of course, were particularly hard hit by
the coming of the new railway termini. Their generous galleried
yards which allowed coaches space to turn, robbed of their trade in
passengers, would generally come to serve as goods depots for the
railways and local hauliers, before being demolished altogether. Inns
situated outside the capital, on the other hand, tended to have greater
longevity, facing less pressure from the railway and land-hungry
developers and still serving local communities as large public houses.
Regardless, by the latter part of the nineteenth century, those old
inns which stubbornly clung to life were increasingly hailed as rare
historic survivals. Tourists began to seek them out, both in London
and beyond. Literary tourists, in particular, were keen to discover the
‘great rambling queer old places’ which Dickens had so eloquently
described and to mentally populate them with Dickens’s characters.
This chapter considers three examples of Dickensian inns: the
White Hart Inn in Southwark (demolished in 1889), the King’s
Head in Chigwell (nowadays a restaurant) and the George Inn in

17
 DICKENSLAND

Southwark (still a public house). Their histories hint at themes that

run throughout this book: the threat posed to ‘Dickens’s London’ by
urban redevelopment; how individual literary shrines were not simply
places visited by a curious public but were shaped and promoted
by canny interested parties (such as pub landlords); and how will-
ingly literary tourists embraced somewhat confected Dickensian
destinations. For the George Inn, owned by the National Trust, a
proverbially ‘Dickensian’ tavern in the heart of London, has very
little connection to the author or his work.

***
Not everyone, it must be said, was enamoured of the old-fashioned
coaching inn. The writer Albert Smith would pen a damning portrait
entitled ‘Of the Good Old Coaching Days’ in his satirical magazine
The Month in 1851.8 The article does not mention Dickens but
Pickwickian nostalgia is plainly in the author’s sights.9 Coaching inn
dinners, according to Smith, were coarse; fellow passengers usually
drunk (the only way to get through the trundling rigours of the
journey, even when vehicles were fitted with the latest in spring
suspension); the accommodation wretched. Indeed, Smith lists every
possible inconvenience belonging to antiquated coaching inns, from
the soap (‘that little inconvenient latherless cube’), to ineffectual wax
candles, to airless rooms dominated by a single giant four-poster
bed, with the poor traveller barely able to move or draw breath (a
‘heavy expensive, elaborate mass of serge, chintz, feathers, mahogany,
horsehair, sacking, holland, ticking, quilting, winch-screws, brass
rings, castors and watch pockets’). Smith documents his sundry
discontents in minute detail – the article even includes a diagram-
matic plan of the typical cramped room – before concluding that, for
the benefit of the public, ‘Every inn ought to be entirely burnt down
every ten years’.
The various inns depicted in Pickwick, in fact, are not treated
identically. Some are cosy and welcoming, such as the Saracen’s Head

18
 great rambling queer old places

in Towcester, with its blazing hearth, where ‘everything looked (as

everything always does, in all decent English inns) as if the travellers
had been expected, and their comforts prepared, for days before-
hand’.10 The faults of the bustling White Horse Cellar in Piccadilly
are patent but are treated with comic indulgence (‘The travellers’
room at the White Horse Cellar is of course uncomfortable; it would
be no travellers’ room if it were not’).11 The Great White Horse at
Ipswich, on the other hand, is described more unfavourably, savouring
of a disgruntled nineteenth-century Tripadvisor review (‘Never was
such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy, ill-
lighted rooms . . .’).12 But the tenor of the novel is relentlessly cheerful,
carefree and jolly; and this is what lingers in the memory. Pickwick
was fondly remembered for its charming portrayal of ‘coaching days’
because of this enduring effervescent mood. But, of course, literary
tourism demands specific locations. Where were Dickensian tourists
to find the ‘great rambling queer old places’ so beloved by the great
author?
The most obvious candidate in the metropolis was the White
Hart Inn, one of the antique Borough inns described in The Pickwick
Papers. The original public house on this spot served as the head-
quarters of Jack Cade’s popular rebellion of 1450, as dramatised by
Shakespeare in Henry VI, Part 2. Destroyed by fire in 1676, it was
rebuilt along similar lines and, at the start of the nineteenth century,
remained a notable example of a traditional galleried coaching inn.
Pickwick arrives there in the novel on the tail of the conniving scoun-
drel Mr Jingle, who has eloped with the naïve spinster Rachel Wardle
and taken a room at the inn. Dickens paints a meticulously detailed
picture of the building:

A double tier of bedroom galleries, with old clumsy balustrades,

ran round two sides of the straggling area, and a double row of
bells to correspond, sheltered from the weather by a little sloping
roof, hung over the door leading to the bar and coffee-room. Two

19
 DICKENSLAND

or three gigs and chaise-carts were wheeled up under different

little sheds and pent-houses; and the occasional heavy tread of a
cart-horse, or rattling of a chain at the farther end of the yard,
announced to anybody who cared about the matter, that the stable
lay in that direction.13

Here, Pickwick also meets the ‘boots’ (boot cleaner) of the inn, Sam
Weller, a fast-talking, indefatigable individual who swiftly becomes
his servant and cherished companion on his travels. The scene is illus-
trated by Phiz, showing the galleried inn courtyard with its latticed
windows and wooden balustrades, an enormous goods wagon, and
Pickwick and his companions addressing Sam, the cheeky Cockney
with his hat tipped rakishly askew. It is notable that late Victorian
literary tourists would often seek out scenes which had originally been
illustrated in Dickens’s novels. The translation from printed text to
image seems to have suggested the further possibility of encountering
the place in three dimensions. Hence the act of illustration itself made
the White Hart a likely destination for literary pilgrimage.
Sam Weller, of course, would become one of Dickens’s most
memorable characters, the Sancho Panza to Pickwick’s Don Quixote.
Weller was soon recognised as a literary phenomenon and a crucial
factor in turning Pickwick into a bestseller – ‘the prime character in
the whole book’.14 His comic sayings or ‘Wellerisms’ were endlessly
copied and reproduced, his character given pride of place in stage
adaptations (such as W.T. Moncrieff ’s farce ‘Sam Weller, Or the
Pickwickians’, which played at the New Strand Theatre in June
1837). The initial encounter at the White Hart Inn, therefore, would
be remembered as a key scene in the novel purely for its introduction
of the irrepressible Cockney bootblack. Theatrical adaptations, in
turn, rarely scorned reproducing the coaching inn yard. Moncrieff ’s
farce opened at the White Hart Inn (‘Entrance to Coach Yard of the
White Hart Inn – Bar and Coffee-Room on one side – Staircase,
leading to a range of bedrooms, on the other’).15 When a desultory

20
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
to the danger to a certain extent. I swear, however, that not all the
gold in the world would induce me to do again what we did on this
trip under similar conditions. Ten times a day at least we had to face
these awful rapids, to go through all the agony of suspense,
succeeded by the awful sensation of passing over the obstacles
before us, whilst the boat seemed to rush from beneath us and
plunge into the foam, from which it seemed simply impossible that
she should ever again emerge.
Or again some rock barred our passage, and only by force of
moving were we able to make our way inch by inch against the
current which threatened to sweep us away. Then, as we literally
scraped the rock, we knew that two or three inches made all the
difference between life and death! For there would have been no
hope of escape if we were once upset in these awful rapids. Death
would have been inevitable, for the best swimmer could not have
made head against such currents as these, but would have been
dashed to pieces by them against the rocks.
Or supposing that by a miracle he should escape death by
drowning or by being flung upon the rocks, a yet more awful danger
awaited him after he had safely passed the rapids, for beneath all of
them many terrible crocodiles lie concealed, on the watch for the
luckless fish, which, rendered giddy by the whirling turmoil of water,
simply swim into their jaws. Crocodiles, you must know, do not kill
their prey as sharks do, and no death could be more terrible than
that inflicted by these awful denizens of the Niger, for they plunge
their victims under water and drown them. Imagine what it must be to
feel oneself gripped by the huge teeth of a merciless brute and
dragged along until death from suffocation ensues.
 THE ‘AUBE’ IN THE LAST LABEZENGA RAPID.

General Skobeleff said one day, “If any one says to you that he
has never been afraid, spit in his face and tell him he is a liar!”
I don’t in the least mind owning that we were afraid, that we knew
what fear was day by day for a whole month; fear in the day at the
passage of every fresh obstacle, and yet greater fear in the night, for
then nightmare exaggerated the horrors of the light, crocodiles and
rapids haunting our sleep in dreams more awful even than the reality
had been.
I challenge in advance the next person who goes down the Niger
to say whether I have exaggerated anything in this account.
 LOOKING UP STREAM FROM KATUGU.

We had to push on, however, and the first thing to be done was to
replace the burnous of Mamé, which still served as a plug in the hole
in the Davoust, with something a little more suitable for the purpose.
We had brought with us a piece of aluminium to meet just such an
emergency as this, but we had neither the time nor the means to
rivet it now. So we cut a piece of wood the right size to serve
provisionally, and fitted it into the hole, interposing a kind of mattress
of tarred oakum, and making the whole thing taut with the aid of two
strong bolts. Some putty made it more or less watertight, and
anyhow we could now keep our Davoust afloat.
The next day, the 16th, was as exciting as the 15th had been.
Three very strong rapids succeeded each other, completing the
awful pass of Labezenga. At each one the barges were halted above
the fall, and a reconnaissance was made, then they passed over one
by one, with the crew strengthened by every man who could be
pressed into the service. Digui continued to show wonderful
intrepidity, a quiet audacity and courage, and a readiness to grasp
the bearings of every situation, which were beyond all praise. We
can really say without exaggeration that we owed not only the safety
of our boats, but our very lives to him.

THE CHIEF OF AYURU.

A little creek of almost calm water brought us to Katungu, where

we were very well received by the inhabitants. Here we procured
some fresh guides who were to take us to Ayuru.
Rapids! rapids! and yet more rapids! As we approached Ayuru the
river became more and more terrible; we struck five or six times a
day, again and again narrowly escaping the staving in of our boats.
On the 18th, however, we safely reached Ayuru, a pretty little village
of thatched huts on a rocky islet. My nerves had been overstrained,
and in the evening when we were at dinner I fainted away. I did not
come to again for two whole hours, and was very much surprised
when I recovered consciousness to find myself lying on a mat
wrapped up in coverlids, and being fanned by a coolie who was
keeping watch over me.
From Ayuru I sent twenty rifles to Madidu, in token of my gratitude
for the way in which his people had treated us.
 We pushed on on the 19th for Kendadji, but navigation was, if
possible, more difficult than ever. It became almost impossible to
make our way amongst the countless islands impeding the stream
and breaking it up into a confusing number of arms each with rapids
of its own. These islets were all alike clothed with grand vegetation
such as palms, sycamores, and other tropical trees.
The two large boats both struck on the same rock and the
Davoust re-opened her old wound. How was it that in spite of this
neither of our vessels sunk and our ranks remained unbroken? Only
by a miracle! I have used that word before, I know, but really it is not
too strong in this case either.
At last, however, after surmounting unheard-of difficulties, getting
through apparently impossible obstacles, and after Digui had
executed many an admirable manœuvre, we arrived opposite
Kendadji.
Alas! our troubles were not yet over. The river in front of us was
surging terribly, the bed everywhere encumbered by large flints.
Where could we pass?
Hitherto the natives, whether Tuaregs or negroes, had helped us
to the best of their ability. The orders of Madidu had been strictly
obeyed, and no obstacles whatever had been thrown in our way. But
at Kendadji all was changed. Our guides from Katungu had gone to
the village, having begged us to let them go and palaver before we
appeared, and we were kept waiting all day for the envoy of the chief
to listen to reason, only to be told at last that the people were afraid
of us, for a relation of ours (Captain Toutée) had killed ever so many
at Sinder the year before.
 AN ISLAND BETWEEN AYURU AND KENDADJI.

I did my best to reassure the messenger, and he promised that

the chief himself should come to see us the next day. He did in fact
do so, and at last let us have some guides.
Digui had gone to reconnoitre the rapids further down stream, and
about noon he returned in a great state of agitation. “We must start
at once,” he said, “there was just enough water to float our boats
now, but the river was sinking rapidly, and in an hour it would
perhaps be too late.”
 A ROCKY HILL NEAR KENDADJI.

What a passage it was! We pushed on, actually moored, so to

speak, to an anchor and a grappling-iron, using first one and then
the other, sometimes both according to circumstances. We kept on
bumping against rocks, here, there, and everywhere, but fortunately
we were going too fast to do the boats much harm. Then we had to
fling ourselves into a perfect labyrinth of obstacles, striking against
them again and again, but fortunately without making any fresh holes
in our much-tried barks. Still more rocks ahead! Quousque tandem!
At about eleven o’clock on the 22nd we reached Tumaré. The
chief at first refused to give us guides, but a liberal present won him
over.
Things seemed likely to be worse rather than better, for we had
not gone more than four and a half miles during the whole of the
23rd. The river was now but a river in name; a mere maze of narrow
channels between innumerable islets covered with fine trees and
millet. The bed of these channels is encumbered with rocks,
amongst which our barges had to follow a serpentine course for
which they were little fitted. At two o’clock we reached the village of
Desa, and the evening was wasted in a palaver without result. A
feeling of sullen hostility against us was everywhere manifested, and
the first question the natives asked was whether we were the same
white men who had come the year before. At last, however, we
succeeded in getting some guides who took us as far as Farca.
Our coolies told us that the crocodiles lay their eggs at this time of
the year, when it always rains and blows hard. On this account we
were obliged to remain anchored opposite Desa all the morning. We
started at two o’clock in the afternoon. What a river we had to pass
down! Before we arrived at the anchorage, where we remained for
the night, we had to go through a pass not much more than five
yards wide.
The people of Desa, we were told by the natives above Gao, are
Kurteyes of a very fierce and inhospitable disposition, and, truth to
tell, their first reception of us was anything but cordial. “What had we
come to their village for?” they asked. “Why had we not stopped at a
bigger one?” By dint of the exercise of much patience, and the use of
many soothing arguments, we gradually succeeded in appeasing
them. They gave us an original version of the fight which had taken
place with Captain Toutée the year before. It was not, according to
them, with the Tuaregs that he had fought, but with the people of
Sinder.
All the negroes of the riveraine districts of the Niger wear the
same kind of costume, including the veil, and use the same kind of
weapons as the Tuaregs, which explains the mistake. The Tuaregs
had been awaiting the expedition at Satoni, intending to attack it, but
it had made a détour and avoided them. The Wagobés of Sinder by
order of Bokar Wandieïdu, and also because a sentinel had by
accident killed a nephew of the chief of the village, attacked the
canoes of the Toutée expedition, attributing what they thought was a
retreat to fear. Fifty natives were killed, and the memory of their fate
was still fresh.
About noon the next day we were opposite Satoni, and we
anchored the same evening near the right bank, where we could
make out some lofty dunes on which were perched three villages
and a Tuareg encampment.
I had a presentiment that we had now reached a critical and most
perilous moment of our expedition. All the defiance we had recently
met with, and the unwillingness to help us was of bad augury, and
we were, as a matter of fact, entirely at the mercy of the natives.
Higher up stream, when the Kel es Suk and the Tademeket
wanted to bar the road against us, the river was free from obstacles,
and they were quite unable to stop us. We could afford to laugh at
their futile efforts. Below Ansongo, too, though the difficulties of
navigation were considerable, we could to some extent count upon
the goodwill of the people, who would, if they were not particularly
ready to serve us, at least remain neutral.
Now, alas! I felt that at any moment the smouldering powder might
explode, for at our approach the women and children hid
themselves. To get guides I had to use every possible means:
caresses, presents, even threats, for without guides we should be
utterly lost.
The stream here divides literally into thousands of channels; how
then were we to choose the best one amongst perhaps ten opposite
to us at a time? Then again, in some pass when we are being swept
along in the one finally chosen as the best, the least hesitation, the
smallest slip in steering, and our boat would be lost, staved in, utterly
wrecked. Here and there, too, massive rocks rose on either side of
us, so covered with dense vegetation that twenty men armed with
bows and arrows or spears could easily have made an end of us.
A little after our arrival at Satoni we were hailed from a canoe
containing the son of the chief of Farca, who could not refrain from
showing his satisfaction when he found we were not the same white
men as those who had come the year before. We had scarcely
entered into conversation with him when three Tuaregs also arrived
to interview us.
One was a relation of Bokar Wandieïdu, chief of the Logomaten,
another his blacksmith, and the third a young man, the son of El
Mekki, chief of the Kel es Suk of Ansongo.
The situation was becoming interesting. Our throats were parched
with our anxiety. Would peace or war be the issue of the interview?
“Bokar sends you greeting,” began his messenger, “and bids me
inform you that at the news of your approach he collected a troop of
his warriors; the Wagobés of Sinder, the Kourteyes, the Fulahs, and
the Toucouleurs of Amadu Cheiku, have held a palaver with him, and
all of one accord agreed to unite their forces, and bar the road
against you. Some Toucouleurs are now, in fact, with Bokar making
final arrangements.
“Two days ago, however, the young man you see here came to
us, sent by Madidu to order us not merely to do you no harm, but to
aid you if need were. Fear nothing, therefore, no one can speak
further after the Amenokal has spoken. If you flung a dagger up in
the air, saying, ‘That is for Madidu!’ it would not touch the ground
again until it reached his hands.”
I had not then been mistaken; a formidable coalition had been
formed against us, and had it taken action we should, I repeat once
more, have been hopelessly lost. True to his word, worthy son of the
noble race to which he belongs, chief of the most powerful of the
confederations of Nigritia, the Amenokal had interposed his all-
powerful influence on our behalf just at the right moment. I assert
once more, and would have all my fellow-countrymen know it, that if
we ever get home again, if we were the first to go down the Niger to
the sea, and to trace the course of that mighty river, if we did not
leave our skeletons to bleach upon its banks, it was due to the
mighty chief of the Awellimiden, to Madidu Ag el Khotab, and to him
alone.
I do not think I owe such a debt of gratitude as this to any man of
my own race!
His task no sooner accomplished, however, our young friend, the
son of El Mekki, became rather a bore, for he had taken it into his
head to try and convert us to the religion of Islam. Truth to tell, the
reasons he gave for this attempt at proselytism did more honour to
his heart than to his head.
“We know each other now,” he said, “and you are just going away.
We like you, and we think that you like us. We cannot hope ever to
see you again in this life, do not deprive us of the chance of meeting
you once more in another world.
“When we are all dead, we faithful followers of the true faith will go
to enjoy everlasting happiness in Paradise. You, however, who are
good fellows enough, will not be able to cross El Sirat, the bridge
leading to the gardens of Paradise, but will have to go to Hell, where
you will burn eternally, and we shall be able to do nothing for you but
pity you.
“Well then,” he went on, “do not remain in this evil case; stay
amongst us for a time, and you shall be instructed in the essentials
of our faith. We shall thus be enabled to hope to meet you again in
eternity.”
The most amusing part of it all was that Father Hacquart, whose
Arab costume had especially attracted our young visitor, was the
chief victim of the ardent proselytism of the earnest Tuareg believer.
For a missionary to be attacked in this way was really too comic,
and the Father roared with laughter over the incident.
When night fell we had to separate, and our friend left us, quite
melancholy at the failure of all his eloquence.
We arrived at Farca the next morning, the 26th, at about two
o’clock.
The chief of the village, brother of the chief of Sinder, and father of
the young man who had been killed by Captain Toutée’s sentinel,
with a number of other notables, came to see us.
They confirmed all we had already been told; it had really been
with the people of Sinder, not with the Tuaregs, that the preceding
expedition had come to blows.
Bokar had sent instructions to the Wagobés to treat us well, and
they themselves intended to act as our guides. They begged me,
however, not to anchor at the village of Sinder, though I was
particularly anxious to visit that important centre, which is the chief
mart for the vast quantities of cereals cultivated in the
neighbourhood.
Farca is an island completely covered with a tropical forest, and a
similar mass of verdure is to be seen on another islet opposite to it.
The village, which had been deserted after the fracas with Captain
Toutée’s people, was just beginning to be rebuilt.
This was the furthest point reached by the expedition which had
preceded ours, and is situated in N. Lat. 14° 29′ and Long. 1° 22′
55″, thirty kilometres from Sinder, and eight hundred and sixty from
Timbuktu.[9]
The connection between the expeditions which had started from
the coast of Guinea and those which had come from the French
Sudan had at last been achieved, and the Niger had been navigated
for its entire course by Frenchmen.
Below Farca, the stream becomes a little less difficult. We were
followed the day after by a regular fleet of canoes. A nephew of the
chief of Sinder, named Boso, accompanied us. I now felt that, at
least until we came into actual contact with Amadu Cheiku, all
danger from the hostility of the natives was at an end.
The islands dotting the river are inhabited by Kurteyes and
Wagobés, and it is to the latter tribe that the inhabitants of Sinder
belong, not to the Songhay race. Their name clearly indicates that
they are Soninkés, and therefore related to our Saracolais coolies.
Saracolais, Marka, Dafins, etc., are really all mere local names of the
Soninkés. It seems at first surprising that a race supposed to be
native to the districts watered by the Senegal, should be found so far
away from the basin of that river; but later still, nearer to Say, we
came upon another tribe of the same origin, the Sillabés, on the
subject of which there cannot be the slightest doubt, for they have
preserved the language of their ancestors.
 FARCA.

A little above Sinder the bed of the river becomes again

encumbered with rocks, making navigation difficult, at least in the
channels our guides made us choose near the left bank.
My own private opinion is, however, that there was a better
channel nearer the village which these guides managed for us to
avoid.
On the evening of the 28th, we came abreast of the huts of
Sinder, and a deputation from the village brought us some
provisions. I expressed my intention of going to see the chief, but I
was dissuaded from doing so on one pretext or another, and when I
insisted I was told—“Well, come if you will, but if you want to please
us, you will not come. We know now that you do not intend to do us
any harm, but the last white man who passed this way killed a lot of
people, and the grief of the mothers and wives of the dead will be
renewed if they see you.”
Whether this excuse was true or not, it seemed to me a very
reasonable one. We had had such an exceedingly narrow escape of
a conflict with the Tuaregs, that I was determined to be extremely
prudent. I did not see Sinder after all, but I console myself with the
thought that at least those who come after us will not suffer from the
memory of anything we did, and will not, through our fault, incur any
of the dangers we escaped.
Below Sinder the river again became such as to make us almost
despair. After having painfully made our way for about a mile, we
found some fresh guides waiting for us. Evidently the natives were
eager to speed the parting guest! “I don’t know however we shall get
through,” said Digui; but we did manage it once more, though the
Aube scraped on a rock without doing herself much harm. In the
course of the whole day we only made about four and a half miles.
Monday the 30th was again a most exciting day. The Aube struck
no less than three times, and the last accident in the Kokoro pass
was a serious one. It really seemed as if our troubles would never
end! The unfortunate barge had three planks of her bottom staved in,
and the water rushed in as if she were made of wicker-work.

OUR SINDER GUIDES.

 The scenery on the banks was grand; big villages alternating with
great plantations of millet. All the islands have a coating of extremely
fertile vegetable mould, unwholesome enough in itself, but which the
natives have known how to turn to account.
At our anchorage we found our old friend the blacksmith of Bokar
Wandieïdu, whose master himself it appears had wished to see us,
and had waited for us until the day before. Amadu had made one
last effort to turn him against us, and had sent couriers to him to urge
him to attack us, but Bokar had replied by quoting the orders of
Madidu, saying that all he had to do was to obey them.
The morning of the 31st began by the Aube striking again, but
after that the river became quite perfect. It had never been so good
anywhere before, and nothing impeded its course but a few low
rocks, which were just enough to relieve the monotony of the
voyage.
This was not of course likely to last, and very soon impediments
again became numerous. It was now the turn of the Davoust to fling
herself upon a pointed rock, escaping by a hair’s-breadth from
serious damage. We passed the big villages, or rather the collections
of villages known as Malo, containing perhaps as many as 10,000
inhabitants, and we halted for the night a little above Azemay,
opposite to a difficult pass, which would have to be reconnoitred
before we could attempt it. We had made 15½ miles!—a very good
day!
At our anchorage we met a man named Osman, from Say, who
had come, he told us, to see one of his relations, but being uneasy
as to our intentions with regard to Amadu, he begged us to give him
passage on board one of our boats.
The heat was now becoming most oppressive, and to remain
stationary for a whole day looking at the white sheets of our
hydrographical survey, not to speak of all the anxieties of our
position, was really a very hard task. We consoled ourselves,
however, by thinking of the rest we should get at Say. I did not,
however, entirely share the confidence of my companions, especially
of Dr. Taburet, who, always optimistic, indulged in visions of
calabashes full of milk, piles of eggs and other luxuries, building
culinary castles in the air. Hitherto, whenever we had hoped for a
friendly reception we had always been disappointed, and when we
feared hostility from the natives, we had generally been kindly
welcomed. The remembrance of Sinder proves that this was the
case with others. Captain Toutée says that he was hailed as a
liberator there, whilst we barely escaped ending our lives and
expedition alike at that fatal spot.
On April 1 we reached Sansan-Haussa about two o’clock. It is a
very large village, but we were disappointed in it, for we had
expected to find it encircled by a tata or earthen wall, its name of
Sansan meaning a fortified enceinte. Now there is an enceinte, it is
true, but it is made of straw! all the houses are also constructed of
straw. To make up for this, the granaries for storing the millet are
really beautiful. We anchored opposite the market-place, where the
market, it appeared, was to be held the very next day. The chief of
the village came to see us. He was a Kurteye, and told us he would
send a guide with us to the chief of his tribe at Sorbo, a little further
down stream.
After a night during which, for a wonder, our rest was not
disturbed by the noise of roaring rapids, we went over and anchored
opposite the left bank near the village itself. We were quickly
surrounded by a crowd of men, women, and children, all alike
showing a confidence in us to which we had long been
unaccustomed. Those who were ill flocked to Taburet, and dealers in
iron and ostrich feathers hastened to offer us their wares. The
feathers we found to be relatively dear, a complete set being worth
250,000 cowries, or nearly three pounds sterling. A caravan, we
were told, had lately arrived from Rhât, which had greatly raised the
value. A little boy from Rhât, of about twelve years old, came to see
us, and had a long chat with Father Hacquart. He had a gris-gris or
charm made for us by a marabout belonging to his caravan, to
protect us from the rapids we still had to encounter.
For the first time since we left Gao we met with the valuable kola
nuts so much appreciated by the negroes, and I gave my people the
greatest possible pleasure by distributing quantities of this delicacy
amongst them. Each nut is worth some 150 cowries, or about three-
halfpence.
Here, as the reader will have noticed, we begin to talk about
cowries again. I have already said that these little univalve shells of
the African coast are the usual currency from the source of the Niger
to Timbuktu.

AT SANSAN-HAUSSA.

We went with Father Hacquart to return the visit the chief of the
village had paid us the evening before. He did not seem to wish us to
remain long in his country. He was afraid, he said. Why? we asked. It
was evident that the Toucouleurs, of whom there were a good many
in the village, had prejudiced him against us.
Two people came and asked us to give them a passage, one a
Fulah named Mamadu of Mumi in Massina, who had been here for
nine years unable to get away. We were to have a good deal to do
with him during our stay at Say.
The other was a Toucouleur named Suleyman, who spoke Wolof,
and had followed Amadu Cheiku in his exodus from Nioro to Dunga.
He was a poor deaf old man, but had a very intelligent face. He told
us that the whole recompense Amadu had given him for his long and
faithful service was to take away his gun, his only wealth, to give it to
one of his sofas or captives taken in war. This last misfortune had
disgusted Suleyman with the Holy War, in which he said more blows
than pay were received, and he wanted to go back with us to his own
land of Footah on the Senegal, the reigning chief of which was a
relation of his.
He did not know what we had come here for. He did not know
what route we meant to take on our way back, and surely nothing
could have been a greater mark of confidence in us than this
readiness of one of our worst enemies to trust himself to us.
At first I rather distrusted the man, who might be a spy, or worse,
a traitor sent to try and seduce my men from their duty. However,
whilst resolving to watch him closely, I decided to take him with us,
but I gave him a good talking to to begin with, saying—“I don’t know
whether you are a liar or an honest fellow, but most of your relations
are deceivers and humbugs, and it is no recommendation in my eyes
that you belong to the Toucouleur race. However, I will not be unjust,
for I may be mistaken about you. So you can come with us, and you
will be treated as if you were one of my own men. If we have plenty
you shall have your share, and if we run short of food you will have
to tighten your waistband like the rest of us. But deceive us once,
only once, and your head will not remain on your shoulders for a
moment. You are warned, please yourself about going or stopping.”
I must add here that Suleyman, the Toucouleur, or, as he was at
once called amongst us, Suleyman Foutanké, was always true to us.
I took him with me to Saint Louis, and he is now enjoying in his natal
village a repose which must indeed be grateful to him after his thirty
years’ wanderings.
We started again at two o’clock in the afternoon, and in the
evening we halted for the night not far from Sorbo, where we were to
see the chief of the Kurteyes.
We went to see him the next day, and passed the morning at
Sorba. We were very well received by Yusuf Osman. Don’t tell him
that I have revealed his name to the public, for amongst the Kurteyes
it is very bad form to call any one by his name. I have noticed that
there is a similar superstition in the Bambara districts of the Upper
Niger.
Yusuf is a big, good-looking fellow of about forty years of age,
who has recently succeeded his father as chief. When we arrived he
was suffering from some affection of the eyes. Taburet prescribed for
and cured him, thus contributing to establishing us in his good
graces.
The former chief of Sorba had been a great friend of Amadu, and
had given him canoes for crossing the river. If therefore the
Toucouleurs had succeeded in establishing their authority in the
districts torn from the Djermas of Karma and Dunga, it was in some
measure due to him.
Yusuf, however, did not disguise that he was becoming rather
uneasy about the future, and as far as was possible without
compromising himself he had tried to be useful to us. If ever we
succeed, as I hope we shall, in driving Amadu from the
neighbourhood of Say, we shall certainly find auxiliaries in the
Kurteyes.
Yusuf gave us as a guide to take us to Say, a man named Hugo,
chief of his own slaves, a capital fellow, and an excellent pilot.
Needless to add that we all at once dubbed him Victor in honour of
the great French author.
Relieved on the point about which I had been so anxious, the
securing of a guide to take us to Say, we went down to the village of
Kutukole, and anchored near it for the night, the river between it and
Sarbo being quite easy to navigate.
On the 3rd we passed Karma, and were now amongst the
Toucouleurs. On every side our approach was announced by the
lighting of fires, and the beating of the tabala or war-drum. A group of
horsemen followed us along the bank, watching us closely, but now
the stream was quite quiet, only one more rapid, that of Bobo, had to
be crossed, and that we left behind us the same evening. All we had
to do was to steer carefully clear of the few rocks which still impeded
the course of the river.
Bobo, opposite to which we passed the night, is, like Karma,
under the direct authority of Ali Buri, that venerable Wolof chieftain,
who, driven out of Cayor by the French, went to seek an asylum at
Nioro near Amadu, whose fortunes he followed. Captain Toutée was
mistaken in thinking that Ali Buri had been killed in the attack on his
expedition at Kompa. He was still alive, unfortunately for us, and we
were told was now in the Sorgoé district near the country of the Kel
Gheres, where he busied himself in winning partisans for Amadu.
On the right bank opposite our anchorage, Bokar Wandieïdu had
fought the year before with the Futankes, and had inflicted on them a
serious defeat. More than two hundred of Amadu’s warriors are still
prisoners in the hands of the Tuareg chief. Unfortunately, however,
after the Sinder affair, the chief of Say succeeded in reconciling the
enemies, and, as we have seen, the truce between them was
brought about at the expense of the French.
The 5th of April was Easter Sunday, and Father Hacquart
celebrated mass as we slipped easily down stream through
charming scenery, preceded by Hugo in his canoe acting as guide.
We passed several big villages belonging to the chiefs under
Amadu, and anchored opposite Saga.