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Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Compiled in large part from Thomas Keightley, The History of England, and from George L. Craik and Charles MacFarlane, The Pictorial History of England.

Forster records (Book 6, Chapter 3) that in the summer of 1848 Dickens was reading a 'surprising number of books of African and other travel for which he had an insatiable relish' and many of these are recalled in the following piece.

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Dickens' chief contribution to 'On Her Majesty's Service' seems to have been editorial: cutting, emending, and interpolating. His hand seems most evident in the following sections: the paragraph beginning 'We are essentially a commercial people' (p. 435); the paragraph beginning 'Are you, therefore, a cousin' (p. 437); the concluding paragraph.
Dickens' hand seems more intermittently evident in the following sections: from the beginning to 'chink of money!' (p. 434); in the more sardonic phrasings toward the end.
Sir Hector Stubble, the ambassador depicted in this article, is Murray's malicious caricature of Sir Stratford Canning (1786-1880), one of the best-known diplomatists of the era. In 1852, while Canning was serving in Constantinople as ambassador to Turkey, Murray was appointed fifth paid attaché to the embassy. The two men did not get on, and Canning banished Murray to Mitylene. Dickens apparently was unaware of the caricature, but it was widely recognized and gleefully called to Canning's attention. Canning was furious and sought to destroy Murray's diplomatic career.
Most of Murray's Household Words pieces appeared under the general heading 'The Roving Englishman.' Between 1851 and 1856 Murray collected many of these pieces in a succession of five books. The second of these books, The Roving Englishman in Turkey (1855), contained, in a chapter entitled 'Our Embassy,' a heavily revised, much expanded, and relentlessly particularized version of 'On Her Majesty's Service.' In 1877 The Roving Englishman in Turkey was republished with many additional changes as Turkey: Being Sketches from Life by The Roving Englishman. In the latter version, Dahomey becomes Turkey - or more specifically, Constantinople - Sir Charles Grandison becomes Lord Palmerston, Timbuctoo becomes Vienna, and Sir Hector Stubble (though still retaining his pseudonym) becomes larger and grimmer than ever. In the 1877 version, Murray also added the following comments about his earlier portrait of Sir Hector: 'It is now nearly a quarter of a century since these lines were first penned, and one of those who wrote them, after pausing long to reflect whether he could upon his honour and conscience answer to God and to man, if he deliberately edited them for republication, can only express his regret that the sombre picture then drawn of Sir Hector Stubble was not painted in colours dark enough to give a just resemblance of him.'
The republished versions of 'On Her Majesty's Service' have been consulted in making the ascriptions set forth in the first two paragraphs above.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

On 27, 29 and 30 December Dickens gave a series of fund-raising public readings of A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth at the Birmingham and Midland Institute.

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