Retitled 'A Small Star in the East' in collected editions of the series.

The electioneering described in the present item relates to the campaign which led to the resounding Liberal victory in the General Election of November 1868, following which Disraeli resigned as Prime Minister on 2 December, and Gladstone formed his first ministry, with Lord Clarendon as foreign secretary and Robert Lowe as chancellor.

In 1841, Dickens had acquired Douce and Pickering's edition of The Dance of Death containing reproductions of famous wood engravings by Hans Holbein first published in 1538, and an essay on the different treatments the subject had received (Stonehouse; Pilgrim, Vol. II, p. 229n.). The images, showing men of every condition being led in a dance to the grave by Death in a variety of disguises, had always impressed Dickens greatly and he makes many references to the idea in his writings.

In a letter to Annie and James Fields, Dickens observed:

As an instance of how strangely something comic springs up in the midst of the direst misery, look to a succeeding Uncommercial, called A Small Star in the East, published today, by-the-by. I have described, with exactness, the poor places into which I went, and how the people behaved, and what they said. I was wretched, looking on; and yet the boiler-maker and the poor man with the legs filled me with a sense of drollery not to be kept down by any pressure. (16 Dec 1868; Nonesuch, Vol. III, p. 687)

As George F. Young has reported, these visits were not made at random, but under the direction of Nathaniel Heckford, the doctor in charge of the hospital which is described later in the essay (see Young's 'A Small Star in the East in Three Twinkles', The Dickensian, Vol. 30 [1934], pp. 286-291). After showing Dickens over the site, Heckford took him to inspect the houses of certain out-patients of the hospital, including that of the sufferer from white lead poisoning described below. An employer's record, preserved by the successors of the firm of white lead manufacturers mentioned, identifies the nameless Irish family: 'Mrs Crawford, 1 Ratcliff Cross, living with her mother, Mary Hurley—has four children. Sister, Mary Hurley, has been here 3 years on and off at 10/- a week. Was ill 6 weeks with lead poisoning and was attended by Dr Rogers, M.O., and Dr Heckford'.

Heckford had married Sarah Goff on 28 January 1867, and using her capital, bought premises at Old Ratcliff Cross (now Narrow Street, E14) for £2,000, which were opened exactly a year later as 'The East Hospital for Children and Dispensary for Women.' On Heckford's premature death of consumption in 1871, his widow left England for a new life among the Boers in the Transvaal, and the hospital was carried on by a Committee of Management until 1875, when it moved to Glamis Road, Shadwell (renamed the 'Princess Elizabeth of York' Hospital in the 1930s, it merged with the Queen's Hospital, Hackney Road, in 1942, and moved to that site).

In an account of the early years of the hospital, Heckford's widow recalled that by the last post on the day Dickens's essay was published in AYR, her husband received a letter stating that 'Mamma has just read to me the story of your hospital. I am only a little girl of six, but I would like to give the contents of my money-box for your little children.' This was 'the poetical beginning of an influx of money and other help ... The next day, and for long after, letters flowed in' (Sarah Heckford, 'Story of the East London Hospital for Children', intro. to Voluntaries for An East London Children's Hospital by the Earl of Lytton et al., 1887, pp. xxvii-xxviii). Over nine months later, Dickens was still re-directing enquiries from prospective donors (see Nonesuch, Vol. III, p. 740), and his interest in the hospital remained lively. When James and Annie Fields visited him at Gad's Hill the following year, he took them to see it, as Annie recorded in a book of memoranda published under her late husband's name:

Friday [14 May 1869], he came at half-past ten A.M. to go to the hospital, bringing with him some small alleviations for colds, with recipes. Started promptly... Dickens was perfectly at home in this part of London. He was full of interest in the young physician and his wife..., who looked upon him as one of their best friends. It was evidently always [their] gala day when he arrived. He could not say enough to express his admiration for the simple reverent earnestness of their lives. 'How they bear it,' he said, 'I cannot imagine. I wish you could have seen,' he continued, 'the little child I wrote of, who died afterward, so exquisite in beauty and so patient.... Certainly there is nothing more touching than the suffering of a child, nothing more overwhelming.' The doctor carried us, before our return, into one of the poor-houses in the neighborhood. A mother, father, & seven children in one room!' (J. T. Fields, Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches&c., 1881, pp. 173-174)

Literary Allusions:

• 'hewers of wood and drawers of water': Joshua 9:21;
• 'the friend of Victorine': John B. Buckstone's play Victorine; or, I'll Sleep on It, performed at The Adelphi repeatedly between 1831 and 1866;
• 'An affecting play ...acted in Paris years ago, called The Children's Doctor...the Paris artist's ideal': Messrs. Anicet Bourgeois & A. Dennery's Le Médecin Des Enfants (1855), seen by CD in Paris in April 1856, with M. Laferrière as the doctor, Lucien Lemonier, and Eugène Bignon as M. Delormel (repr. in Le Théatre Contemporain, 1856).

Author: John Drew; © J. M. Dent/Orion Publishing Group, Dickens' Journalism Volume IV: 'The Uncommercial Traveller' and Other Papers, 1859-1870, 2000.

DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

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