All the Year Round, Volume II 29 October 1859-7 April 1860 Nos. 27-50

Abstract

Background As All Year Round entered its second semester of publication in November 1859, Dickens was back in regular attendance at All Year Round Office in Wellington Street, following successful tour of fourteen public readings in provinces. Nine further reading engagements were scheduled for December and for spring of 1860, all in London's St. Martin's Hall, but this left plenty of time for concentrating on magazine business and plans for journal's first Extra Christmas Number. Dickens's health had improved since heat of summer and stress that composing instalments of A Tale of Two Cities against clock had brought on; novel was now readying for publication as single volume, with five weekly instalments left to run. On 10 November, Dickens dined out with G. H. Lewes and George Eliot, impressing latter as a man one can thoroughly enjoy talking to--there is strain of real seriousness along with his keenness and humour. We had delightful talk about all sorts of things, Lewes recorded, for his part. (2) A few days Christmas, Dickens took chair at London Tavern at annual dinner to celebrate founding in 1845 of schools for children of commercial travelers who had been orphaned or left in want. [N]othing less than your note, he wrote to George Moore, Schools' Treasurer, after initially declining society's invitation, have induced me to undertake chairmanship (Letters 9: 146-47). It was his first speech in over twelve months, this being longest gap between public appearances of this kind since 1849. As he had done in his toast at Commercial Travellers' Schools' dinner in December 1854, when Crimean War was raging, Dickens began by proposing health of army and navy, but added on this occasion the Volunteers, for, he declared, the plain meaning of Rifle movement was but revival of old brave spirit of our forefathers, and proof that all who had stake in country [...] were ready if occasion required to fight and die in its defence. (22 December 1859; Speeches 289) Numerous articles in All Year Round during ongoing half-year bear testament to this sense of national interest in and patriotic support for Volunteer Movement (see below, under Current Affairs). Dickens's principal toast was also notable for its reminiscences of night spent amongst commercial travelers at hotel in Leeds where he happened to be staying about seven weeks before (he had stayed at George Hotel, Bradford on 20 October, on his provincial Readings tour), and of trying to get material for his speech by look[ing] through advertisement pages of Bradshaw, railway timetable, or considering whether anything could be done with word Travellers. (Speeches 290) The trains of thought emerging here bear close comparison with opening he would write about fortnight later for his first essay in All Year Round under guise of Uncommercial Traveller (see below under Other Series and Short Fiction). As group of school children were present at dinner, Dickens also introduced vein of storybook adventuring into his speech, figuring himself as hero of fairytale, and school buildings at Pinner in Middlesex (Moore and he had apparently toured them previous day)--as castle of bright red colour visited in company of a friendly giant--a commercial giant (Speeches 291). In letters to confidantes, Dickens was accustomed to use simplifying fairytale imagery of his own private affairs, but perhaps less self-consciously and appropriately than here. (3) The speech was received with great warmth by company, and John Bellew, minister of parish church in well-to-do St. John's Wood, hailed Chairman hyperbolically as the man who had done more than any who had ever lived to advance cause of humanity, and one who had been specially appointed to break down with sledge-hammer anointed iniquity of high places. …