"Poodles Going the Round" by "W. M." — illustration for "Chambers" in "The Uncommercial Traveller" (1868)

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Poodles Going the Round

1868

12.4 x 8.8 cm (4 ⅞ by 3 ⅜ inches), framed.

In the eighth and last of the George Pinwell and "W. M." illustrations — which the 1893 reprint of the Illustrated Library Edition has mistakenly attributed to Marcus Stone — the illustrator depicts the charming scene in which a knowing dog-about-town visits the surgical ward of the Children's Hospital in the 1868 edition of The Uncommercial Traveller. [Commentary continued below.]

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Scanned image, caption, and commentary by Philip V. Allingham.

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Passage Illustrated: A Pleasant Visitation from a Canine Companion

The Children’s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full force. All its beds are occupied. There is a new face on the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at rest for ever. Much kind sympathy has been here since my former visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished with dolls. I wonder what Poodles may think of them, as they stretch out their arms above the beds, and stare, and display their splendid dresses. Poodles has a greater interest in the patients. I find him making the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by another dog, — a friend, — who appears to trot about with him in the character of his pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious to make me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully healthy, who had had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee. A difficult operation, Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you see, dear sir! The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile, ‘The leg was so much trouble to me, that I am glad it’s gone.’ I never saw anything in doggery finer than the deportment of Poodles, when another little girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the tongue. Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on a level with the occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own sympathetically out) so very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand in my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. [Chapter XXIV, "On an Amateur Beat," 203]

Commentary: A Sanguinary Scene at the London Children's Hospital at Great Ormond Street

On his amateur beat around the less savoury streets in the inner city, the Uncommercial is joined by a canine companion. Together they respond to crime-infested slums and desperate scenes of urban poverty involving ragged children. Thus, Dickens intends the scene in the surgical ward of the Children's Hospital to be an antidote to so much urban decay and despondency. However, the effect of the illustration is not quite the same as that of the text, partly because Poodles (manifestly not a poodle, but perhaps a cocker-spaniel) more decorously occupies a chair at the patient's bedside rather than a table. A nurse's aid (not mentioned in the original article) is bringing the child some soup, but the child is clearly more interested in the canine visitor. The picture accompanying the facing letterpress does not include either the Uncommercial Traveller himself or the second "consulting" dog.

Thus, the illustrator has changed the texture and social dynamics of the scene as Dickens (adopting the persona of a parent whose young child has died there) describes the "professional" visitation of the dog-as-physician as well as comforter. Nor does Dickens, despite considerable specificity in describing the various London districts he visits, including Lime House and the East India Docks, even mention No. 49 Great Ormand Street by name, or identify the "hospital" as that which Dr. Charles West founded in 1852 as a dispensary for sick women and children, replacing the Universal Dispensary for Children and Women in Waterloo Road. An illustration in The Illustrated Times in April 1858 depicts the environment as active, warm, and sociable as Dr. West, the resident, examines the leg of one of the children in the general ward where other children are playing and doing crafts. Dickens favours the individual, personal response and a sentimental tone here which the plant on the window ledge complements in W. M.'s illustration.

Link to Related Material

The London Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street

Bibliography

Baldwin, Nicholas. "The History of The Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond Street (1852-1914)." HHARP: Historic Hospital Admissions Record Project. Web. Accessed 10 May 2023.

Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by Marcus Stone ["W. M." and George Pinwell]. Illustrated Library Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1868, rpt., 1893.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times and The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by Charles Stanley Reinhart. The Household Edition. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1876.

Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by Edward Dalziel. The Household Edition. London: Chapman and Hall, 1877.

Dickens, Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. Illustrated by G. J. Pinwell and "W. M." The Centenary Edition. London: Chapman and Hall; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911.

Schlicke, Paul, ed. "The Uncommercial Traveller." The Oxford Companion to Dickens. Oxford and New York: Oxford U. P., 1999. Pp. 100-101.

Slater, Michaell, and John Drew, eds. Dickens' Journalism: 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and Other Papers 1859-70. The Dent Uniform Edition of Dickens' Journalism, vol. 4. London: J. M. Dent, 2000.

Created 11 May 2023