Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 29.djvu/453



THE SHIPWRECK.

The Royal Charter, homeward bound from Australia, struck and was wrecked in the darkness before the dawn, on October 26, 1859, near Llanallgo, Moelfra, Anglesea. "This marking custom."

Learned works have been written, in French and English, on tattooing. Dickens's guess at its origin, in a "desire to be identified," is so far correct, that, among some very low races, as the Australians, tribal marks are tattooed. These, in a rude way, give a man's totem name and address, and to do this may have been the original purpose of the art. It soon becomes mainly decorative in intention, as among Maoris, Burmese, and Polynesians. Seamen have adopted it, from their acquaintance with tattooing races, but it is quite as common in the French army, and the idea of identification cannot recommend it to the much-tattooed criminal classes. POOR MERCANTILE JACK.

"Hogarth drew her exact likeness."

Dickens probably refers to the procuress, in The Harlot's Progress.

TRAVELLING ABROAD.

"The very queer small boy."

See the first chapter of Mr. Forster's Life of Dickens for the author's early desire to acquire Gadshill. CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES.

"Angelica."

No doubt this lady is the Flora of Little Dorrit, and, in a more chivalrous light, the Dora of David Copperfield. See Forster, chap. iii.