The Seven Poor Travellers: "The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again."
()
About this ebook
The Seven Poor Travellers is one of Charles Dickens’s Christmas stories that was first published in the 1854 Christmas issue of the Victorian Novelist’s periodical Household Words. It follows the adventures of six travelers in addition to the story of the seventh traveller who is none but the narrator himself. The narrative is divided into three chapters. In the first chapter entitled “In the Old City of Rochester,” the seven heroes meet at the old Richard Watts’s Charity and start telling stories to each other on a Christmas dinner. In the second and most important chapter entitled “The Story of Richard Doubledick,” the narrator entertains his companions by telling a story within a story whose hero is a strange twenty-two-year-old man who comes to Rochester to fall in love, enlist in the military and become the most “dissipated and reckless soldier in Chatham Barracks.” The final chapter of the booklet is entitled “The Road.” It speaks about the narrator’s journey home the following morning as each of the seven travellers goes his own way. Dickens’s conclusion of the story is skillfully woven in a way to let the readers long for more Christmas dinners and for more Christmas stories.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in 1812 near Portsmouth, where his father worked as a clerk. Living in London in 1824, Dickens was sent by his family to work in a blacking-warehouse, and his father was arrested and imprisoned for debt. Fortunes improved and Dickens returned to school, eventually becoming a parliamentary reporter. His first piece of fiction was published by a magazine in December 1832, and by 1836 he had begun his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. He focused his career on writing, completing fourteen highly successful novels, as well as penning journalism, shorter fiction and travel books. He died in 1870.
Read more from Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens: The Complete Novels (Quattro Classics) (The Greatest Writers of All Time) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Vintage Christmas: A Collection of Classic Stories and Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGhostly Tales: Spine-Chilling Stories of the Victorian Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Legal Loopholes: Credit Repair Tactics Exposed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Charles Dickens Collection Volume One: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and Bleak House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsClassic Children's Stories (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5David Copperfield (Centaur Classics) [The 100 greatest novels of all time - #64] Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Classic Christmas: A Collection of Timeless Stories and Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gothic Novel Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Christmas Library: 250+ Essential Christmas Novels, Poems, Carols, Short Stories...by 100+ Authors Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/550 Beautiful Christmas Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Christmas Stories of All Time: Timeless Classics That Celebrate the Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Charles Dickens Collection Volume Two: Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby, and Our Mutual Friend Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Christmas Carol: Level 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Big Book of Christmas Tales: 250+ Short Stories, Fairytales and Holiday Myths & Legends Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Ghost Stories Of Charles Dickens Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5American Notes: For General Circulation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oliver Twist: Level 4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Charles Dickens: Four Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Seven Poor Travellers
Related ebooks
Some experiences of an Irish R.M. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Top 10 Short Stories - Anton Chekov Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKing Richard II Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jane Eyre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Indiana Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSelected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mark of the Beast Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Jude the Obscure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Danger to the State: A Historical Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Princess Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Titus Andronicus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Home of the Gentry Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Making of a Saint Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath Comes for the Archbishop Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder The Greenwood Tree Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Schoolmaster and Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTom Brown's School Days Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Aeneid Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNotes from the Underground Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAntony and Cleopatra Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnder Western Eyes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Professor's House Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJenny: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tess of the Durbervilles Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Eclogues and Georgics Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCandide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jackal, Jackal: Tales of the Dark and Fantastic Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Candy House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recital of the Dark Verses Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Second Life of Mirielle West: A Haunting Historical Novel Perfect for Book Clubs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Other Black Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Seven Poor Travellers
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Seven Poor Travellers - Charles Dickens
THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS
IN THREE CHAPTERS
By CHARLES DICKENS
Index Of Contents
The Seven Poor Travellers
Charles Dickens – A Biography
CHAPTER I—IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER
Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a Traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the quaint old door?
RICHARD WATTS, Esq.
by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,
founded this Charity for Six poor Travellers,
who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,
May receive gratis for one Night, Lodging,
Entertainment, and Fourpence each.
It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the good days in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been wandering about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship’s figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than inquire the way to Watts’s Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the quaint old door.
Now,
said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, I know I am not a Proctor; I wonder whether I am a Rogue!
Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces which might have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath than they had had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb in that way, I came to the conclusion that I was not a Rogue. So, beginning to regard the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, share and share alike, by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward into the road to survey my inheritance.
I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door), choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans; and down to the times of King John, when the rugged castle—I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old then—was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.
I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. While I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one of the upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to mine. They said so plainly, Do you wish to see the house?
that I answered aloud, Yes, if you please.
And within a minute the old door opened, and I