China and the West

Dickens, Charles. Works.
http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/.
1836-1837
Dickens, Charles. The posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club, containing a faithful record of the perambulations, perils, travels, adventures and sporting transactions of the corresponding members. (London : Chapman & Hall, 1836-1837).
Chap. 51
'He read, Sir,' rejoined Pott, laying his hand on Mr. Pickwick's knee, and looking round with a smile of intellectual superiority --'he read for metaphysics under the letter M, and for China under the letter C, and combined his information, Sir!'
'They appeared in the form of a copious review of a work on Chinese metaphysics, Sir,' said Pott.

1837-1839
Dickens, Charles. Sketches by "Boz" : illustrative of every-day life and every-day people. Illustrations by George Cruikshank. Vol. 1-2. (London : John Macrone, 1836). (Library of English literature ; LEL 21048). [20 monthly parts ; Nov. 1837-June 1839].
Chap. 2
She is very scrupulous in returning these little invitations, and when she asks Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, to meet Mr. and Mrs. Somebody-else, Sarah and she dust the urn, and the best china tea-service, and the Pope Joan board; and the visitors are received in the drawing-room in great state.

1839
Dickens, Charles. The life and adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. (London : Chapman and Hall, 1839).
Chap. 10
Giving loose to the playfulness of his imagination, after this fashion, the gentleman led the way to a private sitting-room on the second floor, scarcely less elegantly furnished than the apartment below, where the presence of a silver coffee-pot, an egg-shell, and sloppy china for one, seemed to show that he had just breakfasted.
Chap. 32
The rags of the squalid ballad-singer fluttered in the rich light that showed the goldsmith's treasures, pale and pinched-up faces hovered about the windows where was tempting food, hungry eyes wandered over the profusion guarded by one thin sheet of brittle glass--an iron wall to them; half-naked shivering figures stopped to gaze at Chinese shawls and golden stuffs of India.

1840-1841
Dickens, Charles. Barnaby Rudge. In : Dickens, Charles. Master Humphrey's clock. With illustrations by George Cattermole and Hablot Browne. Vol. 1-2. (London : Chapman and Hall, 1840-1841). [88 weekly parts ; Febr.-Nov. 1841].
Chap. 54
Here was the bar—the bar that the boldest never entered without special invitation—the sanctuary, the mystery, the hallowed ground: here it was, crammed with men, clubs, sticks, torches, pistols; filled with a deafening noise, oaths, shouts, screams, hootings; changed all at once into a bear-garden, a madhouse, an infernal temple: men darting in and out, by door and window, smashing the glass, turning the taps, drinking liquor out of China punchbowls, sitting astride of casks, smoking private and personal pipes, cutting down the sacred grove of lemons, hacking and hewing at the celebrated cheese, breaking open inviolable drawers, putting things in their pockets which didn't belong to them…

1841
Dickens, Charles. Old curiosity shop : a tale. (London : Chapman & Hall, 1841).
Chap. 27
Then run to Jarley's - besides several compositions in prose, purporting to be dialogues between the Emperor of China and an oyster, or the Archbishop of Canterbury and a dissenter on the subject of church-rates, but all having the same moral, namely, that the reader must make haste to Jarley's, and that children and servants were admitted at half-price.
Chap. 49
He was no less tickled than his hopeful assistant, and they both stood for some seconds, grinning and gasping and wagging their heads at each other, on either side of the post, like an unmatchable pair of Chinese idols.

1842
Dickens, Charles. American notes for general circulation. Vol. 1-2. (London : Chapman and Hall, 1842).
Chap. 3
At length it becomes plain that the old lady or gentleman has not long to live; and the plainer this becomes, the more clearly the old lady or gentleman perceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against their poor old dying relative; wherefore the old lady or gentleman makes another last will — positively the last this time — conceals the same in a china teapot, and expires next day.
Chap. 5
The clean cardboard colonnades had no more perspective than a Chinese bridge on a tea-cup, and appeared equally well calculated for use.

1843-1844
Dickens, Charles. The life and adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit. (London : L Chapman and Hall, Jan. 1843-July 1844).
Monthly: January 1843 - July 1844
Chap. 5
Also there were farmers' wives in beaver bonnets and red cloaks, riding shaggy horses purged of all earthly passions, who went soberly into all manner of places without desiring to know why, and who, if required, would have stood stock still in a china-shop, with a complete dinner-service at each hoof.

1846
Dickens, Charles. The battle of life. (London : Bradbury & Evans, 1846).
Chap. 1
How he laboured under an apprehension not uncommon to persons in his degree, to whom the use of pen and ink is an event, that he couldn't append his name to a document, not of his own writing, without committing himself in some shadowy manner, or somehow signing away vague and enormous sums of money; and how he approached the deeds under protest, and by dint of the Doctor's coercion, and insisted on pausing to look at them before writing (the cramped hand, to say nothing of the phraseology, being so much Chinese to him), and also on turning them round to see whether there was anything fraudulent underneath; and how, having signed his name, he became desolate as one who had parted with his property and rights; I want the time to tell.

1846
Dickens, Charles. Pictures from Italy. (London : Bradbury & Evans, 1846). [First appeared under the title Traveling sketches in The Daily News, 1846].
Chap. 4
They who would know how beautiful the country immediately surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) to the top of Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city walls: a feat more easily performed. No prospect can be more diversified and lovely than the changing views of the harbour, and the valleys of the two rivers, the Polcevera and the Bizagno, from the heights along which the strongly fortified walls are carried, like the great wall of China in little.
Chap. 10
I would infinitely rather (as mere works of art) look upon the three deities of the Past, the Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Collection, than upon the best of these breezy maniacs; whose every fold of drapery is blown inside-out; whose smallest vein, or artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger; whose hair is like a nest of lively snakes; and whose attitudes put all other extravagance to shame.

1848
Dickens, Charles. Dombey and son. (London, Bradbury and Evans, 1848).
Chap. 14
The weak-eyed young man himself had once consulted him, in reference to a little breakage of glass and china.
Chap. 17
Not that the Captain's signals were calculated to have proved very comprehensible, however attentively observed; for, like those Chinese sages who are said in their conferences to write certain learned words in the air that are wholly impossible of pronunciation, the Captain made such waves and flourishes as nobody without a previous knowledge of his mystery, would have been at all likely to understand.

1849-1850
Dickens, Charles. The personal history of David Copperfield. (London : Bradbury & Evans, 1850). [Issued in 20 monthly parts, May 1849 to November 1850].
Chap. 10
I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old little room, my darling ; and if you was to go to China, you might think of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.'
Chap. 38
But, as to reading them after I had got them, I might as well have copied the Chinese inscriptions of an immense collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters on all the great red and green bottles in the chemists' shops!

1850
Dickens, Charles. The begging-letter writer. In : Household words ; May (1850).
He has wanted a greatcoat, to go to India in; a pound to set him up in life for ever; a pair of boots to take him to the coast of China; a hat to get him into a permanent situation under Government.

1851
Dickens, Charles. . flight. In : Household words ; 30 Aug. (1851).
Very like a small room that I remember in the Chinese baths upon the Boulevard, certainly; and, though I see it through the steam, I think that I might swear to that peculiar hot-linen basket, like a large wicker hour-glass.

1852-1853
Dickens, Charles. Bleak house. With illustrations by H.K. Browne. (London : Bradbury and Evans, 1852-1853). [20 numbers issued monthly, March 1852 – September 1853].
Chap. 6
Our sitting-room was green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of surprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real trout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with gravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of preparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists…
Chap. 9
The whole of that family are the most solemnly conceited and consummate blockheads! But it's no matter; he should not shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and living in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory balls in a Chinese carving…
Chap. 14
So, Richard said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no other foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man the Great Wall of China…
Chap. 17
We had a visitor next day. Mr. Allan Woodcourt came. He came to take leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to China and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a long, long time…
Chap. 30
I had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in India and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say it was a great thing to be so highly connected…

1854
Dickens, Charles. Hard times : for these times. (London : Bradbury & Evans, 1854).
Chap. 15
It is remarkable as showing the wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the British possessions in India, also in a considerable part of China, and among the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of computation yet furnished us by travellers, yield similar results. The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears.

1856
Dickens, Charles. The wreck of the Golden Mary : being the captain's account of the loss of the ship, and the mate's account of the great deliverance of her people in an open boat at sea. In : Christmas number of Household words (1856)..
The first voyage John was third mate out to China, and came home second.

1857
Dickens, Charles. Lazy tour of two idle apprentices. In : Household words ; nos 395-396 (1857).
The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window, with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells.

1857
Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit. With illustrations by H.K. Browne. (London : Bradbury and Evans, 1857).
Chap. 1
Hindoos, Russians, Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapolitans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, descendants from all the builders of Babel, come to trade at Marseilles, sought the shade alike--taking refuge in any hiding-place from a sea too intensely blue to be looked at, and a sky of purple, set with one great flaming jewel of fire.

1860
Dickens, Charles. A message from the sea. In : All the year round ; christmas number (1860).
Chap. 1
Thus replying, and enjoining Tom to give an eye to the shop, Captain Jorgan followed Mrs. Raybrock into the little, low back-room,--decorated with divers plants in pots, tea-trays, old china teapots, and punch-bowls,--which was at once the private sitting-room of the Raybrock family and the inner cabinet of the post-office of the village of Steepways.

1860
Dickens, Charles. The uncommercial traveller. In : All the year round (1860).
Chap. 4
The native independence of character this artisan was supposed to possess, was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feelings, I should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, and as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar.
Chap 19
Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, and presently again in front of the Hotel de Ville, I called to mind a certain desolate open-air Morgue that I happened to light upon in London, one day in the hard winter of 1861, and which seemed as strange to me, at the time of seeing it, as if I had found it in China.

1861
Dickens, Charles. Great expectations. Vol. 1-3. (London : Chapman and Hall, 1861).
Chap. 25
These were agreeably dispersed among small specimens of china and glass, various neat trifles made by the proprietor of the museum, and some tobacco-stoppers carved by the Aged.

1864-1865
Dickens, Charles. Our mutual friend. With illustrations by Marcus Stone. (London : Chapman and Hall, 1864-1865). [Monthly May 1864-Nov. 1865].
Chap. 22
Present on the table, one scanty pot of tea, one scanty loaf, two scanty pats of butter, two scanty rashers of bacon, two pitiful eggs, and an abundance of handsome china bought a secondhand bargain.

1865
Dickens, Charles. Doctor Marigold's prescriptions. In : All the year round ; Christmas number ; vol. 12 (1865).
So she went to China with her young husband, and it was a parting sorrowful and heavy, and I got the boy I had another service; and so as of old, when my child and wife were gone, I went plodding along alone, with my whip over my shoulder, at the old horse's head.

1868
Dickens, Charles. Holiday romance : in four parts. Vol. 1-4. (Boston : Ticknor and Fields, 1868). (Our young folks ; vol. 4, no 1, 3-5, 1868).
Pt. 3
Boldheart, reclining in full uniform on a crimson hearth-rug spread out upon the quarter-deck of his schooner 'The Beauty,' in the China seas. It was a lovely evening; and, as his crew lay grouped about him, he favoured them with the following melody…

1869
Dickens, Charles. Sketches of young couples, young ladies, young gentlemen. (London : Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1869).
But Jane soon comes round again, and then surely there never was anything like the breakfast table, glittering with plate and china, and set out with flowers and sweets, and long-necked bottles, in the most sumptuous and dazzling manner.

1870
Dickens, Charles. The mystery of Edwin Drood. (London : Chapman & Hall, 1870). [Monthly April-Sept. 1870].
Chap. 4
I see some cups and saucers of Chinese make, equally strangers to me personally: I put my finger on them, then and there, and I say "Pekin, Nankin, and Canton."
Chap. 6
What is prettier than an old lady -- except a young lady -- when her eyes are bright, when her figure is trim and compact, when her face is cheerful and calm, when her dress is as the dress of a china shepherdess: so dainty in its colours, so individually assorted to herself, so neatly moulded on her ?

1909
Dickens, Charles. The runaway couple. In : Stories About Children Every Child Can Read. (Philadelphia : John C. Winston, 1909). (Every child's library).
The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing-paper folded up surprisingly small, an orange, and a china mug with his name upon it.