‘_What_ are you making?’ retorts Trampfoot, a little off his balance.

‘Bags to hold your money,’ says the witch, shaking her head, and setting

her teeth; ‘you as has got it.’

She holds up a common cash-bag, and on the table is a heap of such bags.

Witch Two laughs at us. Witch Three scowls at us. Witch sisterhood all,

stitch, stitch. First Witch has a circle round each eye. I fancy it

like the beginning of the development of a perverted diabolical halo, and

that when it spreads all round her head, she will die in the odour of

devilry.

Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got behind the

table, down by the side of her, there? Witches Two and Three croak

angrily, ‘Show him the child!’

She drags out a skinny little arm from a brown dustheap on the ground.

Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again. Thus we find

at last that there is one child in the world of Entries who goes to

bed—if this be bed.

Mr. Superintendent asks how long are they going to work at those bags?

How long? First Witch repeats. Going to have supper presently. See the

cups and saucers, and the plates.

‘Late? Ay! But we has to ’arn our supper afore we eats it!’ Both the

other witches repeat this after First Witch, and take the Uncommercial

measurement with their eyes, as for a charmed winding-sheet. Some grim

discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who will be

released from jail to-morrow. Witches pronounce Trampfoot ‘right there,’

when he deems it a trying distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be

fetched by niece in a spring-cart.

As I took a parting look at First Witch in turning away, the red marks

round her eyes seemed to have already grown larger, and she hungrily and

thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway, to see if Jack was

there. For, Jack came even here, and the mistress had got into jail

through deluding Jack.

When I at last ended this night of travel and got to bed, I failed to

keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman’s Homes (not overdone with

strictness), and improved dock regulations giving Jack greater benefit of

fire and candle aboard ship, through my mind’s wandering among the vermin

I had seen. Afterwards the same vermin ran all over my sleep. Evermore,

when on a breezy day I see Poor Mercantile Jack running into port with a

fair wind under all sail, I shall think of the unsleeping host of

devourers who never go to bed, and are always in their set traps waiting

for him.

VI

REFRESHMENTS FOR TRAVELLERS

IN the late high winds I was blown to a great many places—and indeed,

wind or no wind, I generally have extensive transactions on hand in the

article of Air—but I have not been blown to any English place lately, and

I very seldom have blown to any English place in my life, where I could

get anything good to eat and drink in five minutes, or where, if I sought

it, I was received with a welcome.

This is a curious thing to consider. But before (stimulated by my own

experiences and the representations of many fellow-travellers of every

uncommercial and commercial degree) I consider it further, I must utter a

passing word of wonder concerning high winds.

I wonder why metropolitan gales always blow so hard at Walworth. I

cannot imagine what Walworth has done, to bring such windy punishment

upon itself, as I never fail to find recorded in the newspapers when the

wind has blown at all hard. Brixton seems to have something on its

conscience; Peckham suffers more than a virtuous Peckham might be

supposed to deserve; the howling neighbourhood of Deptford figures

largely in the accounts of the ingenious gentlemen who are out in every

wind that blows, and to whom it is an ill high wind that blows no good;

but, there can hardly be any Walworth left by this time. It must surely

be blown away. I have read of more chimney-stacks and house-copings

coming down with terrific smashes at Walworth, and of more sacred

edifices being nearly (not quite) blown out to sea from the same accursed

locality, than I have read of practised thieves with the appearance and

manners of gentlemen—a popular phenomenon which never existed on earth

out of fiction and a police report. Again: I wonder why people are

always blown into the Surrey Canal, and into no other piece of water!

Why do people get up early and go out in groups, to be blown into the

Surrey Canal? Do they say to one another, ‘Welcome death, so that we get

into the newspapers’? Even that would be an insufficient explanation,

because even then they might sometimes put themselves in the way of being

blown into the Regent’s Canal, instead of always saddling Surrey for the

field. Some nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on the slightest

provocation, getting himself blown into this same Surrey Canal. Will SIR

RICHARD MAYNE see to it, and restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied

constable?

To resume the consideration of the curious question of Refreshment. I am

a Briton, and, as such, I am aware that I never will be a slave—and yet I

have latent suspicion that there must be some slavery of wrong custom in

this matter.

I travel by railroad. I start from home at seven or eight in the

morning, after breakfasting hurriedly. What with skimming over the open

landscape, what with mining in the damp bowels of the earth, what with

banging, booming and shrieking the scores of miles away, I am hungry when

I arrive at the ‘Refreshment’ station where I am expected. Please to

observe, expected. I have said, I am hungry; perhaps I might say, with

greater point and force, that I am to some extent exhausted, and that I

need—in the expressive French sense of the word—to be restored. What is

provided for my restoration? The apartment that is to restore me is a

wind-trap, cunningly set to inveigle all the draughts in that

country-side, and to communicate a special intensity and velocity to them

as they rotate in two hurricanes: one, about my wretched head: one, about

my wretched legs. The training of the young ladies behind the counter

who are to restore me, has been from their infancy directed to the

assumption of a defiant dramatic show that I am _not_ expected. It is in

vain for me to represent to them by my humble and conciliatory manners,

that I wish to be liberal. It is in vain for me to represent to myself,

for the encouragement of my sinking soul, that the young ladies have a

pecuniary interest in my arrival. Neither my reason nor my feelings can

make head against the cold glazed glare of eye with which I am assured

that I am not expected, and not wanted. The solitary man among the

bottles would sometimes take pity on me, if he dared, but he is powerless

against the rights and mights of Woman. (Of the page I make no account,

for, he is a boy, and therefore the natural enemy of Creation.) Chilling

fast, in the deadly tornadoes to which my upper and lower extremities are

exposed, and subdued by the moral disadvantage at which I stand, I turn

my disconsolate eyes on the refreshments that are to restore me. I find

that I must either scald my throat by insanely ladling into it, against

time and for no wager, brown hot water stiffened with flour; or I must

make myself flaky and sick with Banbury cake; or, I must stuff into my

delicate organisation, a currant pincushion which I know will swell into

immeasurable dimensions when it has got there; or, I must extort from an

iron-bound quarry, with a fork, as if I were farming an inhospitable

soil, some glutinous lumps of gristle and grease, called pork-pie. While

thus forlornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the table

is, in every phase of its profoundly unsatisfactory character, so like

the banquet at the meanest and shabbiest of evening parties, that I begin

to think I must have ‘brought down’ to supper, the old lady unknown, blue

with cold, who is setting her teeth on edge with a cool orange at my

elbow—that the pastrycook who has compounded for the company on the

lowest terms per head, is a fraudulent bankrupt, redeeming his contract

with the stale stock from his window—that, for some unexplained reason,

the family giving the party have become my mortal foes, and have given it

on purpose to affront me. Or, I fancy that I am ‘breaking up’ again, at

the evening conversazione at school, charged two-and-sixpence in the

half-year’s bill; or breaking down again at that celebrated evening party

given at Mrs. Bogles’s boarding-house when I was a boarder there, on

which occasion Mrs. Bogles was taken in execution by a branch of the

legal profession who got in as the harp, and was removed (with the keys

and subscribed capital) to a place of durance, half an hour prior to the

commencement of the festivities.

Take another case.

Mr. Grazinglands, of the Midland Counties, came to London by railroad one

morning last week, accompanied by the amiable and fascinating Mrs.

Grazinglands. Mr. G. is a gentleman of a comfortable property, and had a

little business to transact at the Bank of England, which required the

concurrence and signature of Mrs. G. Their business disposed of, Mr. and

Mrs. Grazinglands viewed the Royal Exchange, and the exterior of St.

Paul’s Cathedral. The spirits of Mrs. Grazinglands then gradually

beginning to flag, Mr. Grazinglands (who is the tenderest of husbands)

remarked with sympathy, ‘Arabella’, my dear, ‘fear you are faint.’ Mrs.

Grazing-lands replied, ‘Alexander, I am rather faint; but don’t mind me,

I shall be better presently.’ Touched by the feminine meekness of this

answer, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a pastrycook’s window, hesitating

as to the expediency of lunching at that establishment. He beheld

nothing to eat, but butter in various forms, slightly charged with jam,

and languidly frizzling over tepid water. Two ancient turtle-shells, on

which was inscribed the legend, ‘SOUPS,’ decorated a glass partition

within, enclosing a stuffy alcove, from which a ghastly mockery of a

marriage-breakfast spread on a rickety table, warned the terrified

traveller. An oblong box of stale and broken pastry at reduced prices,

mounted on a stool, ornamented the doorway; and two high chairs that

looked as if they were performing on stilts, embellished the counter.

Over the whole, a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she

surveyed the street, announced a deep-seated grievance against society,

and an implacable determination to be avenged. From a beetle-haunted

kitchen below this institution, fumes arose, suggestive of a class of

soup which Mr. Grazinglands knew, from painful experience, enfeebles the

mind, distends the stomach, forces itself into the complexion, and tries

to ooze out at the eyes. As he decided against entering, and turned

away, Mrs. Grazinglands becoming perceptibly weaker, repeated, ‘I am

rather faint, Alexander, but don’t mind me.’ Urged to new efforts by

these words of resignation, Mr. Grazinglands looked in at a cold and

floury baker’s shop, where utilitarian buns unrelieved by a currant,

consorted with hard biscuits, a stone filter of cold water, a hard pale

clock, and a hard little old woman with flaxen hair, of an

undeveloped-farinaceous aspect, as if she had been fed upon seeds. He

might have entered even here, but for the timely remembrance coming upon

him that Jairing’s was but round the corner.

Now, Jairing’s being an hotel for families and gentlemen, in high repute

among the midland counties, Mr. Grazinglands plucked up a great spirit

when he told Mrs. Grazinglands she should have a chop there. That lady,

likewise felt that she was going to see Life. Arriving on that gay and

festive scene, they found the second waiter, in a flabby undress,

cleaning the windows of the empty coffee-room; and the first waiter,

denuded of his white tie, making up his cruets behind the Post-Office

Directory. The latter (who took them in hand) was greatly put out by

their patronage, and showed his mind to be troubled by a sense of the

pressing necessity of instantly smuggling Mrs. Grazinglands into the

obscurest corner of the building. This slighted lady (who is the pride

of her division of the county) was immediately conveyed, by several dark

passages, and up and down several steps, into a penitential apartment at

the back of the house, where five invalided old plate-warmers leaned up

against one another under a discarded old melancholy sideboard, and where

the wintry leaves of all the dining-tables in the house lay thick. Also,

a sofa, of incomprehensible form regarded from any sofane point of view,

murmured ‘Bed;’ while an air of mingled fluffiness and heeltaps, added,

‘Second Waiter’s.’ Secreted in this dismal hold, objects of a mysterious

distrust and suspicion, Mr. Grazinglands and his charming partner waited

twenty minutes for the smoke (for it never came to a fire), twenty-five

minutes for the sherry, half an hour for the tablecloth, forty minutes

for the knives and forks, three-quarters of an hour for the chops, and an

hour for the potatoes. On settling the little bill—which was not much

more than the day’s pay of a Lieutenant in the navy—Mr. Grazinglands took

heart to remonstrate against the general quality and cost of his

reception. To whom the waiter replied, substantially, that Jairing’s

made it a merit to have accepted him on any terms: ‘for,’ added the

waiter (unmistakably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her

division of the county), ‘when indiwiduals is not staying in the ’Ouse,

their favours is not as a rule looked upon as making it worth Mr.

Jairing’s while; nor is it, indeed, a style of business Mr. Jairing

wishes.’ Finally, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands passed out of Jairing’s

hotel for Families and Gentlemen, in a state of the greatest depression,

scorned by the bar; and did not recover their self-respect for several

days.

Or take another case. Take your own case.

You are going off by railway, from any Terminus. You have twenty minutes

for dinner, before you go. You want your dinner, and like Dr. Johnson,

Sir, you like to dine. You present to your mind, a picture of the

refreshment-table at that terminus. The conventional shabby

evening-party supper—accepted as the model for all termini and all

refreshment stations, because it is the last repast known to this state

of existence of which any human creature would partake, but in the direst

extremity—sickens your contemplation, and your words are these: ‘I cannot

dine on stale sponge-cakes that turn to sand in the mouth. I cannot dine

on shining brown patties, composed of unknown animals within, and

offering to my view the device of an indigestible star-fish in leaden

pie-crust without. I cannot dine on a sandwich that has long been pining

under an exhausted receiver. I cannot dine on barley-sugar. I cannot

dine on Toffee.’ You repair to the nearest hotel, and arrive, agitated,

in the coffee-room.

It is a most astonishing fact that the waiter is very cold to you.

Account for it how you may, smooth it over how you will, you cannot deny

that he is cold to you. He is not glad to see you, he does not want you,

he would much rather you hadn’t come. He opposes to your flushed

condition, an immovable composure. As if this were not enough, another

waiter, born, as it would seem, expressly to look at you in this passage

of your life, stands at a little distance, with his napkin under his arm

and his hands folded, looking at you with all his might. You impress on

your waiter that you have ten minutes for dinner, and he proposes that

you shall begin with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That

proposal declined, he suggests—as a neat originality—‘a weal or mutton

cutlet.’ You close with either cutlet, any cutlet, anything. He goes,

leisurely, behind a door and calls down some unseen shaft. A

ventriloquial dialogue ensues, tending finally to the effect that weal

only, is available on the spur of the moment. You anxiously call out,

‘Veal, then!’ Your waiter having settled that point, returns to array

your tablecloth, with a table napkin folded cocked-hat-wise (slowly, for

something out of window engages his eye), a white wine-glass, a green

wine-glass, a blue finger-glass, a tumbler, and a powerful field battery

of fourteen casters with nothing in them; or at all events—which is

enough for your purpose—with nothing in them that will come out. All

this time, the other waiter looks at you—with an air of mental comparison

and curiosity, now, as if it had occurred to him that you are rather like

his brother. Half your time gone, and nothing come but the jug of ale

and the bread, you implore your waiter to ‘see after that cutlet, waiter;

pray do!’ He cannot go at once, for he is carrying in seventeen pounds

of American cheese for you to finish with, and a small Landed Estate of

celery and water-cresses. The other waiter changes his leg, and takes a

new view of you, doubtfully, now, as if he had rejected the resemblance

to his brother, and had begun to think you more like his aunt or his

grandmother. Again you beseech your waiter with pathetic indignation, to

‘see after that cutlet!’ He steps out to see after it, and by-and-by,

when you are going away without it, comes back with it. Even then, he

will not take the sham silver cover off, without a pause for a flourish,

and a look at the musty cutlet as if he were surprised to see it—which

cannot possibly be the case, he must have seen it so often before. A

sort of fur has been produced upon its surface by the cook’s art, and in

a sham silver vessel staggering on two feet instead of three, is a

cutaneous kind of sauce of brown pimples and pickled cucumber. You order

the bill, but your waiter cannot bring your bill yet, because he is

bringing, instead, three flinty-hearted potatoes and two grim head of

broccoli, like the occasional ornaments on area railings, badly boiled.

You know that you will never come to this pass, any more than to the

cheese and celery, and you imperatively demand your bill; but, it takes

time to get, even when gone for, because your waiter has to communicate

with a lady who lives behind a sash-window in a corner, and who appears

to have to refer to several Ledgers before she can make it out—as if you

had been staying there a year. You become distracted to get away, and

the other waiter, once more changing his leg, still looks at you—but

suspiciously, now, as if you had begun to remind him of the party who

took the great-coats last winter. Your bill at last brought and paid, at

the rate of sixpence a mouthful, your waiter reproachfully reminds you

that ‘attendance is not charged for a single meal,’ and you have to

search in all your pockets for sixpence more. He has a worse opinion of

you than ever, when you have given it to him, and lets you out into the

street with the air of one saying to himself, as you cannot again doubt

he is, ‘I hope we shall never see _you_ here again!’

Or, take any other of the numerous travelling instances in which, with

more time at your disposal, you are, have been, or may be, equally ill

served. Take the old-established Bull’s Head with its old-established

knife-boxes on its old-established sideboards, its old-established flue

under its old-established four-post bedsteads in its old-established

airless rooms, its old-established frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs,

its old-established cookery, and its old-established principles of

plunder. Count up your injuries, in its side-dishes of ailing

sweetbreads in white poultices, of apothecaries’ powders in rice for

curry, of pale stewed bits of calf ineffectually relying for an

adventitious interest on forcemeat balls. You have had experience of the

old-established Bull’s Head stringy fowls, with lower extremities like

wooden legs, sticking up out of the dish; of its cannibalic boiled

mutton, gushing horribly among its capers, when carved; of its little

dishes of pastry—roofs of spermaceti ointment, erected over half an apple

or four gooseberries. Well for you if you have yet forgotten the

old-established Bull’s Head fruity port: whose reputation was gained

solely by the old-established price the Bull’s Head put upon it, and by

the old-established air with which the Bull’s Head set the glasses and

D’Oyleys on, and held that Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny

wax-candle, as if its old-established colour hadn’t come from the dyer’s.

Or lastly, take to finish with, two cases that we all know, every day.

We all know the new hotel near the station, where it is always gusty,

going up the lane which is always muddy, where we are sure to arrive at

night, and where we make the gas start awfully when we open the front

door. We all know the flooring of the passages and staircases that is

too new, and the walls that are too new, and the house that is haunted by

the ghost of mortar. We all know the doors that have cracked, and the

cracked shutters through which we get a glimpse of the disconsolate moon.

We all know the new people, who have come to keep the new hotel, and who

wish they had never come, and who (inevitable result) wish _we_ had never

come. We all know how much too scant and smooth and bright the new

furniture is, and how it has never settled down, and cannot fit itself

into right places, and will get into wrong places. We all know how the

gas, being lighted, shows maps of Damp upon the walls. We all know how

the ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus, goes up to

bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom chimney, and prevents the smoke

from following. We all know how a leg of our chair comes off at

breakfast in the morning, and how the dejected waiter attributes the

accident to a general greenness pervading the establishment, and informs

us, in reply to a local inquiry, that he is thankful to say he is an

entire stranger in that part of the country and is going back to his own

connexion on Saturday.

We all know, on the other hand, the great station hotel belonging to the

company of proprietors, which has suddenly sprung up in the back

outskirts of any place we like to name, and where we look out of our

palatial windows at little back yards and gardens, old summer-houses,

fowl-houses, pigeon-traps, and pigsties. We all know this hotel in which

we can get anything we want, after its kind, for money; but where nobody

is glad to see us, or sorry to see us, or minds (our bill paid) whether

we come or go, or how, or when, or why, or cares about us. We all know

this hotel, where we have no individuality, but put ourselves into the

general post, as it were, and are sorted and disposed of according to our

division. We all know that we can get on very well indeed at such a

place, but still not perfectly well; and this may be, because the place

is largely wholesale, and there is a lingering personal retail interest

within us that asks to be satisfied.

To sum up. My uncommercial travelling has not yet brought me to the

conclusion that we are close to perfection in these matters. And just as

I do not believe that the end of the world will ever be near at hand, so

long as any of the very tiresome and arrogant people who constantly

predict that catastrophe are left in it, so, I shall have small faith in

the Hotel Millennium, while any of the uncomfortable superstitions I have

glanced at remain in existence.

VII

TRAVELLING ABROAD

I GOT into the travelling chariot—it was of German make, roomy, heavy,

and unvarnished—I got into the travelling chariot, pulled up the steps

after me, shut myself in with a smart bang of the door, and gave the

word, ‘Go on!’

Immediately, all that W. and S.W. division of London began to slide away

at a pace so lively, that I was over the river, and past the Old Kent

Road, and out on Blackheath, and even ascending Shooter’s Hill, before I

had had time to look about me in the carriage, like a collected

traveller.

I had two ample Imperials on the roof, other fitted storage for luggage

in front, and other up behind; I had a net for books overhead, great

pockets to all the windows, a leathern pouch or two hung up for odds and

ends, and a reading lamp fixed in the back of the chariot, in case I

should be benighted. I was amply provided in all respects, and had no

idea where I was going (which was delightful), except that I was going

abroad.

So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and so

fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the

widening river was bearing the ships, white sailed or black-smoked, out

to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.

‘Holloa!’ said I, to the very queer small boy, ‘where do you live?’

‘At Chatham,’ says he.

‘What do you do there?’ says I.

‘I go to school,’ says he.

I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very queer

small boy says, ‘This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went

out to rob those travellers, and ran away.’

‘You know something about Falstaff, eh?’ said I.

‘All about him,’ said the very queer small boy. ‘I am old (I am nine),

and I read all sorts of books. But _do_ let us stop at the top of the

hill, and look at the house there, if you please!’

‘You admire that house?’ said I.

‘Bless you, sir,’ said the very queer small boy, ‘when I was not more

than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to

look at it. And now, I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And

ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often

said to me, “If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard,

you might some day come to live in it.” Though that’s impossible!’ said

the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the

house out of window with all his might.

I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy; for that

house happens to be _my_ house, and I have reason to believe that what he

said was true.

Well! I made no halt there, and I soon dropped the very queer small boy

and went on. Over the road where the old Romans used to march, over the

road where the old Canterbury pilgrims used to go, over the road where

the travelling trains of the old imperious priests and princes used to

jingle on horseback between the continent and this Island through the mud

and water, over the road where Shakespeare hummed to himself, ‘Blow,

blow, thou winter wind,’ as he sat in the saddle at the gate of the inn

yard noticing the carriers; all among the cherry orchards, apple

orchards, corn-fields, and hop-gardens; so went I, by Canterbury to

Dover. There, the sea was tumbling in, with deep sounds, after dark, and

the revolving French light on Cape Grinez was seen regularly bursting out

and becoming obscured, as if the head of a gigantic light-keeper in an

anxious state of mind were interposed every half-minute, to look how it

was burning.

Early in the morning I was on the deck of the steam-packet, and we were

aiming at the bar in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar was aiming

at us in the usual intolerable manner, and the bar got by far the best of

it, and we got by far the worst—all in the usual intolerable manner.

But, when I was clear of the Custom House on the other side, and when I

began to make the dust fly on the thirsty French roads, and when the

twigsome trees by the wayside (which, I suppose, never will grow leafy,

for they never did) guarded here and there a dusty soldier, or field

labourer, baking on a heap of broken stones, sound asleep in a fiction of

shade, I began to recover my travelling spirits. Coming upon the breaker

of the broken stones, in a hard, hot, shining hat, on which the sun

played at a distance as on a burning-glass, I felt that now, indeed, I

was in the dear old France of my affections. I should have known it,

without the well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast

fowl, the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched with

unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed pockets of the chariot.

I must have fallen asleep after lunch, for when a bright face looked in

at the window, I started, and said:

‘Good God, Louis, I dreamed you were dead!’

My cheerful servant laughed, and answered:

‘Me? Not at all, sir.’

‘How glad I am to wake! What are we doing Louis?’

‘We go to take relay of horses. Will you walk up the hill?’

‘Certainly.’

Welcome the old French hill, with the old French lunatic (not in the most

distant degree related to Sterne’s Maria) living in a thatched dog-kennel

half-way up, and flying out with his crutch and his big head and extended

nightcap, to be beforehand with the old men and women exhibiting crippled

children, and with the children exhibiting old men and women, ugly and

blind, who always seemed by resurrectionary process to be recalled out of

the elements for the sudden peopling of the solitude!

‘It is well,’ said I, scattering among them what small coin I had; ‘here

comes Louis, and I am quite roused from my nap.’

We journeyed on again, and I welcomed every new assurance that France

stood where I had left it. There were the posting-houses, with their

archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean post-masters’ wives, bright women

of business, looking on at the putting-to of the horses; there were the

postilions counting what money they got, into their hats, and never

making enough of it; there were the standard population of grey horses of

Flanders descent, invariably biting one another when they got a chance;

there were the fleecy sheepskins, looped on over their uniforms by the

postilions, like bibbed aprons when it blew and rained; there were their

Jack-boots, and their cracking whips; there were the cathedrals that I

got out to see, as under some cruel bondage, in no wise desiring to see

them; there were the little towns that appeared to have no reason for

being towns, since most of their houses were to let and nobody could be

induced to look at them, except the people who couldn’t let them and had

nothing else to do but look at them all day. I lay a night upon the road

and enjoyed delectable cookery of potatoes, and some other sensible

things, adoption of which at home would inevitably be shown to be fraught

with ruin, somehow or other, to that rickety national blessing, the

British farmer; and at last I was rattled, like a single pill in a box,

over leagues of stones, until—madly cracking, plunging, and flourishing

two grey tails about—I made my triumphal entry into Paris.

At Paris, I took an upper apartment for a few days in one of the hotels

of the Rue de Rivoli; my front windows looking into the garden of the

Tuileries (where the principal difference between the nursemaids and the

flowers seemed to be that the former were locomotive and the latter not):

my back windows looking at all the other back windows in the hotel, and

deep down into a paved yard, where my German chariot had retired under a

tight-fitting archway, to all appearance for life, and where bells rang

all day without anybody’s minding them but certain chamberlains with

feather brooms and green baize caps, who here and there leaned out of

some high window placidly looking down, and where neat waiters with trays

on their left shoulders passed and repassed from morning to night.

Whenever I am at Paris, I am dragged by invisible force into the Morgue.

I never want to go there, but am always pulled there. One Christmas Day,

when I would rather have been anywhere else, I was attracted in, to see

an old grey man lying all alone on his cold bed, with a tap of water

turned on over his grey hair, and running, drip, drip, drip, down his

wretched face until it got to the corner of his mouth, where it took a

turn, and made him look sly. One New Year’s Morning (by the same token,

the sun was shining outside, and there was a mountebank balancing a

feather on his nose, within a yard of the gate), I was pulled in again to

look at a flaxen-haired boy of eighteen, with a heart hanging on his

breast—‘from his mother,’ was engraven on it—who had come into the net

across the river, with a bullet wound in his fair forehead and his hands

cut with a knife, but whence or how was a blank mystery. This time, I

was forced into the same dread place, to see a large dark man whose

disfigurement by water was in a frightful manner comic, and whose

expression was that of a prize-fighter who had closed his eyelids under a

heavy blow, but was going immediately to open them, shake his head, and

‘come up smiling.’ Oh what this large dark man cost me in that bright

city!

It was very hot weather, and he was none the better for that, and I was

much the worse. Indeed, a very neat and pleasant little woman with the

key of her lodging on her forefinger, who had been showing him to her

little girl while she and the child ate sweetmeats, observed monsieur

looking poorly as we came out together, and asked monsieur, with her

wondering little eyebrows prettily raised, if there were anything the

matter? Faintly replying in the negative, monsieur crossed the road to a

wine-shop, got some brandy, and resolved to freshen himself with a dip in

the great floating bath on the river.

The bath was crowded in the usual airy manner, by a male population in

striped drawers of various gay colours, who walked up and down arm in

arm, drank coffee, smoked cigars, sat at little tables, conversed

politely with the damsels who dispensed the towels, and every now and

then pitched themselves into the river head foremost, and came out again

to repeat this social routine. I made haste to participate in the water

part of the entertainments, and was in the full enjoyment of a delightful

bath, when all in a moment I was seized with an unreasonable idea that

the large dark body was floating straight at me.

I was out of the river, and dressing instantly. In the shock I had taken

some water into my mouth, and it turned me sick, for I fancied that the

contamination of the creature was in it. I had got back to my cool

darkened room in the hotel, and was lying on a sofa there, before I began

to reason with myself.

Of course, I knew perfectly well that the large dark creature was stone

dead, and that I should no more come upon him out of the place where I

had seen him dead, than I should come upon the cathedral of Notre-Dame in

an entirely new situation. What troubled me was the picture of the

creature; and that had so curiously and strongly painted itself upon my

brain, that I could not get rid of it until it was worn out.

I noticed the peculiarities of this possession, while it was a real

discomfort to me. That very day, at dinner, some morsel on my plate

looked like a piece of him, and I was glad to get up and go out. Later

in the evening, I was walking along the Rue St. Honoré, when I saw a bill

at a public room there, announcing small-sword exercise, broad-sword

exercise, wrestling, and other such feats. I went in, and some of the

sword-play being very skilful, remained. A specimen of our own national

sport, The British Boaxe, was announced to be given at the close of the

evening. In an evil hour, I determined to wait for this Boaxe, as became

a Briton. It was a clumsy specimen (executed by two English grooms out

of place), but one of the combatants, receiving a straight right-hander

with the glove between his eyes, did exactly what the large dark creature

in the Morgue had seemed going to do—and finished me for that night.

There was rather a sickly smell (not at all an unusual fragrance in

Paris) in the little ante-room of my apartment at the hotel. The large

dark creature in the Morgue was by no direct experience associated with

my sense of smell, because, when I came to the knowledge of him, he lay

behind a wall of thick plate-glass as good as a wall of steel or marble

for that matter. Yet the whiff of the room never failed to reproduce

him. What was more curious, was the capriciousness with which his

portrait seemed to light itself up in my mind, elsewhere. I might be

walking in the Palais Royal, lazily enjoying the shop windows, and might

be regaling myself with one of the ready-made clothes shops that are set

out there. My eyes, wandering over impossible-waisted dressing-gowns and

luminous waistcoats, would fall upon the master, or the shopman, or even

the very dummy at the door, and would suggest to me, ‘Something like

him!’—and instantly I was sickened again.

This would happen at the theatre, in the same manner. Often it would

happen in the street, when I certainly was not looking for the likeness,

and when probably there was no likeness there. It was not because the

creature was dead that I was so haunted, because I know that I might have

been (and I know it because I have been) equally attended by the image of

a living aversion. This lasted about a week. The picture did not fade

by degrees, in the sense that it became a whit less forcible and

distinct, but in the sense that it obtruded itself less and less

frequently. The experience may be worth considering by some who have the

care of children. It would be difficult to overstate the intensity and

accuracy of an intelligent child’s observation. At that impressible time

of life, it must sometimes produce a fixed impression. If the fixed

impression be of an object terrible to the child, it will be (for want of

reasoning upon) inseparable from great fear. Force the child at such a

time, be Spartan with it, send it into the dark against its will, leave

it in a lonely bedroom against its will, and you had better murder it.

On a bright morning I rattled away from Paris, in the German chariot, and

left the large dark creature behind me for good. I ought to confess,

though, that I had been drawn back to the Morgue, after he was put

underground, to look at his clothes, and that I found them frightfully

like him—particularly his boots. However, I rattled away for

Switzerland, looking forward and not backward, and so we parted company.

Welcome again, the long, long spell of France, with the queer country

inns, full of vases of flowers and clocks, in the dull little town, and

with the little population not at all dull on the little Boulevard in the

evening, under the little trees! Welcome Monsieur the Curé, walking

alone in the early morning a short way out of the town, reading that

eternal Breviary of yours, which surely might be almost read, without

book, by this time! Welcome Monsieur the Curé, later in the day, jolting

through the highway dust (as if you had already ascended to the cloudy

region), in a very big-headed cabriolet, with the dried mud of a dozen

winters on it. Welcome again Monsieur the Curé, as we exchange

salutations; you, straightening your back to look at the German chariot,

while picking in your little village garden a vegetable or two for the

day’s soup: I, looking out of the German chariot window in that delicious

traveller’s trance which knows no cares, no yesterdays, no to-morrows,

nothing but the passing objects and the passing scents and sounds! And

so I came, in due course of delight, to Strasbourg, where I passed a wet

Sunday evening at a window, while an idle trifle of a vaudeville was

played for me at the opposite house.

How such a large house came to have only three people living in it, was

its own affair. There were at least a score of windows in its high roof

alone; how many in its grotesque front, I soon gave up counting. The

owner was a shopkeeper, by name Straudenheim; by trade—I couldn’t make

out what by trade, for he had forborne to write that up, and his shop was

shut.

At first, as I looked at Straudenheim’s, through the steadily falling

rain, I set him up in business in the goose-liver line. But, inspection

of Straudenheim, who became visible at a window on the second floor,

convinced me that there was something more precious than liver in the

case. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, and looked usurious and rich. A

large-lipped, pear-nosed old man, with white hair, and keen eyes, though

near-sighted. He was writing at a desk, was Straudenheim, and ever and

again left off writing, put his pen in his mouth, and went through

actions with his right hand, like a man steadying piles of cash.

Five-franc pieces, Straudenheim, or golden Napoleons? A jeweller,

Straudenheim, a dealer in money, a diamond merchant, or what?

Below Straudenheim, at a window on the first floor, sat his

housekeeper—far from young, but of a comely presence, suggestive of a

well-matured foot and ankle. She was cheerily dressed, had a fan in her

hand, and wore large gold earrings and a large gold cross. She would

have been out holiday-making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent

rain. Strasbourg had given up holiday-making for that once, as a bad

job, because the rain was jerking in gushes out of the old roof-spouts,

and running in a brook down the middle of the street. The housekeeper,

her arms folded on her bosom and her fan tapping her chin, was bright and

smiling at her open window, but otherwise Straudenheim’s house front was

very dreary. The housekeeper’s was the only open window in it;

Straudenheim kept himself close, though it was a sultry evening when air

is pleasant, and though the rain had brought into the town that vague

refreshing smell of grass which rain does bring in the summer-time.

The dim appearance of a man at Straudenheim’s shoulder, inspired me with

a misgiving that somebody had come to murder that flourishing merchant

for the wealth with which I had handsomely endowed him: the rather, as it

was an excited man, lean and long of figure, and evidently stealthy of

foot. But, he conferred with Straudenheim instead of doing him a mortal

injury, and then they both softly opened the other window of that

room—which was immediately over the housekeeper’s—and tried to see her by

looking down. And my opinion of Straudenheim was much lowered when I saw

that eminent citizen spit out of window, clearly with the hope of

spitting on the housekeeper.

The unconscious housekeeper fanned herself, tossed her head, and laughed.

Though unconscious of Straudenheim, she was conscious of somebody else—of

me?—there was nobody else.

After leaning so far out of the window, that I confidently expected to

see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the lean man drew their heads

in and shut the window. Presently, the house door secretly opened, and

they slowly and spitefully crept forth into the pouring rain. They were

coming over to me (I thought) to demand satisfaction for my looking at

the housekeeper, when they plunged into a recess in the architecture

under my window and dragged out the puniest of little soldiers, begirt

with the most innocent of little swords. The tall glazed head-dress of

this warrior, Straudenheim instantly knocked off, and out of it fell two

sugar-sticks, and three or four large lumps of sugar.

The warrior made no effort to recover his property or to pick up his

shako, but looked with an expression of attention at Straudenheim when he

kicked him five times, and also at the lean man when _he_ kicked him five

times, and again at Straudenheim when he tore the breast of his (the

warrior’s) little coat open, and shook all his ten fingers in his face,

as if they were ten thousand. When these outrages had been committed,

Straudenheim and his man went into the house again and barred the door.

A wonderful circumstance was, that the housekeeper who saw it all (and

who could have taken six such warriors to her buxom bosom at once), only

fanned herself and laughed as she had laughed before, and seemed to have

no opinion about it, one way or other.

But, the chief effect of the drama was the remarkable vengeance taken by

the little warrior. Left alone in the rain, he picked up his shako; put

it on, all wet and dirty as it was; retired into a court, of which

Straudenheim’s house formed the corner; wheeled about; and bringing his

two forefingers close to the top of his nose, rubbed them over one

another, cross-wise, in derision, defiance, and contempt of Straudenheim.

Although Straudenheim could not possibly be supposed to be conscious of

this strange proceeding, it so inflated and comforted the little

warrior’s soul, that twice he went away, and twice came back into the

court to repeat it, as though it must goad his enemy to madness. Not

only that, but he afterwards came back with two other small warriors, and

they all three did it together. Not only that—as I live to tell the

tale!—but just as it was falling quite dark, the three came back,

bringing with them a huge bearded Sapper, whom they moved, by recital of

the original wrong, to go through the same performance, with the same

complete absence of all possible knowledge of it on the part of

Straudenheim. And then they all went away, arm in arm, singing.

I went away too, in the German chariot at sunrise, and rattled on, day

after day, like one in a sweet dream; with so many clear little bells on

the harness of the horses, that the nursery rhyme about Banbury Cross and

the venerable lady who rode in state there, was always in my ears. And

now I came to the land of wooden houses, innocent cakes, thin butter

soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a family likeness to Dairies.

And now the Swiss marksmen were for ever rifle-shooting at marks across

gorges, so exceedingly near my ear, that I felt like a new Gesler in a

Canton of Tells, and went in highly-deserved danger of my tyrannical

life. The prizes at these shootings, were watches, smart handkerchiefs,

hats, spoons, and (above all) tea-trays; and at these contests I came

upon a more than usually accomplished and amiable countryman of my own,

who had shot himself deaf in whole years of competition, and had won so

many tea-trays that he went about the country with his carriage full of

them, like a glorified Cheap-Jack.

In the mountain-country into which I had now travelled, a yoke of oxen

were sometimes hooked on before the post-horses, and I went lumbering up,

up, up, through mist and rain, with the roar of falling water for change

of music. Of a sudden, mist and rain would clear away, and I would come

down into picturesque little towns with gleaming spires and odd towers;

and would stroll afoot into market-places in steep winding streets, where

a hundred women in bodices, sold eggs and honey, butter and fruit, and

suckled their children as they sat by their clean baskets, and had such

enormous goîtres (or glandular swellings in the throat) that it became a

science to know where the nurse ended and the child began. About this

time, I deserted my German chariot for the back of a mule (in colour and

consistency so very like a dusty old hair trunk I once had at school,

that I half expected to see my initials in brass-headed nails on his

backbone), and went up a thousand rugged ways, and looked down at a

thousand woods of fir and pine, and would on the whole have preferred my

mule’s keeping a little nearer to the inside, and not usually travelling

with a hoof or two over the precipice—though much consoled by explanation

that this was to be attributed to his great sagacity, by reason of his

carrying broad loads of wood at other times, and not being clear but that

I myself belonged to that station of life, and required as much room as

they. He brought me safely, in his own wise way, among the passes of the

Alps, and here I enjoyed a dozen climates a day; being now (like Don

Quixote on the back of the wooden horse) in the region of wind, now in

the region of fire, now in the region of unmelting ice and snow. Here, I

passed over trembling domes of ice, beneath which the cataract was

roaring; and here was received under arches of icicles, of unspeakable

beauty; and here the sweet air was so bracing and so light, that at

halting-times I rolled in the snow when I saw my mule do it, thinking

that he must know best. At this part of the journey we would come, at

mid-day, into half an hour’s thaw: when the rough mountain inn would be

found on an island of deep mud in a sea of snow, while the baiting

strings of mules, and the carts full of casks and bales, which had been

in an Arctic condition a mile off, would steam again. By such ways and

means, I would come to the cluster of châlets where I had to turn out of

the track to see the waterfall; and then, uttering a howl like a young

giant, on espying a traveller—in other words, something to eat—coming up

the steep, the idiot lying on the wood-pile who sunned himself and nursed

his goître, would rouse the woman-guide within the hut, who would stream

out hastily, throwing her child over one of her shoulders and her goître

over the other, as she came along. I slept at religious houses, and

bleak refuges of many kinds, on this journey, and by the stove at night

heard stories of travellers who had perished within call, in wreaths and

drifts of snow. One night the stove within, and the cold outside,

awakened childish associations long forgotten, and I dreamed I was in

Russia—the identical serf out of a picture-book I had, before I could

read it for myself—and that I was going to be knouted by a noble

personage in a fur cap, boots, and earrings, who, I think, must have come

out of some melodrama.

Commend me to the beautiful waters among these mountains! Though I was

not of their mind: they, being inveterately bent on getting down into the

level country, and I ardently desiring to linger where I was. What

desperate leaps they took, what dark abysses they plunged into, what

rocks they wore away, what echoes they invoked! In one part where I

went, they were pressed into the service of carrying wood down, to be

burnt next winter, as costly fuel, in Italy. But, their fierce savage

nature was not to be easily constrained, and they fought with every limb

of the wood; whirling it round and round, stripping its bark away,

dashing it against pointed corners, driving it out of the course, and

roaring and flying at the peasants who steered it back again from the

bank with long stout poles. Alas! concurrent streams of time and water

carried _me_ down fast, and I came, on an exquisitely clear day, to the

Lausanne shore of the Lake of Geneva, where I stood looking at the bright

blue water, the flushed white mountains opposite, and the boats at my

feet with their furled Mediterranean sails, showing like enormous

magnifications of this goose-quill pen that is now in my hand.

—The sky became overcast without any notice; a wind very like the March

east wind of England, blew across me; and a voice said, ‘How do you like

it? Will it do?’

I had merely shut myself, for half a minute, in a German travelling

chariot that stood for sale in the Carriage Department of the London

Pantechnicon. I had a commission to buy it, for a friend who was going

abroad; and the look and manner of the chariot, as I tried the cushions

and the springs, brought all these hints of travelling remembrance before

me.

‘It will do very well,’ said I, rather sorrowfully, as I got out at the

other door, and shut the carriage up.

VIII

THE GREAT TASMANIA’S CARGO

I TRAVEL constantly, up and down a certain line of railway that has a

terminus in London. It is the railway for a large military depôt, and

for other large barracks. To the best of my serious belief, I have never

been on that railway by daylight, without seeing some handcuffed

deserters in the train.

It is in the nature of things that such an institution as our English

army should have many bad and troublesome characters in it. But, this is

a reason for, and not against, its being made as acceptable as possible

to well-disposed men of decent behaviour. Such men are assuredly not

tempted into the ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural laws, and the

compulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness. Accordingly, when any

such Circumlocutional embellishments of the soldier’s condition have of

late been brought to notice, we civilians, seated in outer darkness

cheerfully meditating on an Income Tax, have considered the matter as

being our business, and have shown a tendency to declare that we would

rather not have it misregulated, if such declaration may, without

violence to the Church Catechism, be hinted to those who are put in

authority over us.

Any animated description of a modern battle, any private soldier’s letter

published in the newspapers, any page of the records of the Victoria

Cross, will show that in the ranks of the army, there exists under all

disadvantages as fine a sense of duty as is to be found in any station on

earth. Who doubts that if we all did our duty as faithfully as the

soldier does his, this world would be a better place? There may be

greater difficulties in our way than in the soldier’s. Not disputed.

But, let us at least do our duty towards _him_.

I had got back again to that rich and beautiful port where I had looked

after Mercantile Jack, and I was walking up a hill there, on a wild March

morning. My conversation with my official friend Pangloss, by whom I was

accidentally accompanied, took this direction as we took the up-hill

direction, because the object of my uncommercial journey was to see some

discharged soldiers who had recently come home from India. There were

men of HAVELOCK’S among them; there were men who had been in many of the

great battles of the great Indian campaign, among them; and I was curious

to note what our discharged soldiers looked like, when they were done

with.

I was not the less interested (as I mentioned to my official friend

Pangloss) because these men had claimed to be discharged, when their

right to be discharged was not admitted. They had behaved with

unblemished fidelity and bravery; but, a change of circumstances had

arisen, which, as they considered, put an end to their compact and

entitled them to enter on a new one. Their demand had been blunderingly

resisted by the authorities in India: but, it is to be presumed that the

men were not far wrong, inasmuch as the bungle had ended in their being

sent home discharged, in pursuance of orders from home. (There was an

immense waste of money, of course.)

Under these circumstances—thought I, as I walked up the hill, on which I

accidentally encountered my official friend—under these circumstances of

the men having successfully opposed themselves to the Pagoda Department

of that great Circumlocution Office on which the sun never sets and the

light of reason never rises, the Pagoda Department will have been

particularly careful of the national honour. It will have shown these

men, in the scrupulous good faith, not to say the generosity, of its

dealing with them, that great national authorities can have no small

retaliations and revenges. It will have made every provision for their

health on the passage home, and will have landed them, restored from

their campaigning fatigues by a sea-voyage, pure air, sound food, and

good medicines. And I pleased myself with dwelling beforehand, on the

great accounts of their personal treatment which these men would carry

into their various towns and villages, and on the increasing popularity

of the service that would insensibly follow. I almost began to hope that

the hitherto-never-failing deserters on my railroad would by-and-by

become a phenomenon.

In this agreeable frame of mind I entered the workhouse of

Liverpool.—For, the cultivation of laurels in a sandy soil, had brought

the soldiers in question to _that_ abode of Glory.

Before going into their wards to visit them, I inquired how they had made

their triumphant entry there? They had been brought through the rain in

carts it seemed, from the landing-place to the gate, and had then been

carried up-stairs on the backs of paupers. Their groans and pains during

the performance of this glorious pageant, had been so distressing, as to

bring tears into the eyes of spectators but too well accustomed to scenes

of suffering. The men were so dreadfully cold, that those who could get

near the fires were hard to be restrained from thrusting their feet in

among the blazing coals. They were so horribly reduced, that they were

awful to look upon. Racked with dysentery and blackened with scurvy, one

hundred and forty wretched soldiers had been revived with brandy and laid

in bed.

My official friend Pangloss is lineally descended from a learned doctor

of that name, who was once tutor to Candide, an ingenious young gentleman

of some celebrity. In his personal character, he is as humane and worthy

a gentleman as any I know; in his official capacity, he unfortunately

preaches the doctrines of his renowned ancestor, by demonstrating on all

occasions that we live in the best of all possible official worlds.

‘In the name of Humanity,’ said I, ‘how did the men fall into this

deplorable state? Was the ship well found in stores?’

‘I am not here to asseverate that I know the fact, of my own knowledge,’

answered Pangloss, ‘but I have grounds for asserting that the stores were

the best of all possible stores.’

A medical officer laid before us, a handful of rotten biscuit, and a

handful of split peas. The biscuit was a honeycombed heap of maggots,

and the excrement of maggots. The peas were even harder than this filth.

A similar handful had been experimentally boiled six hours, and had shown

no signs of softening. These were the stores on which the soldiers had

been fed.

‘The beef—’ I began, when Pangloss cut me short.

‘Was the best of all possible beef,’ said he.

But, behold, there was laid before us certain evidence given at the

Coroner’s Inquest, holden on some of the men (who had obstinately died of

their treatment), and from that evidence it appeared that the beef was

the worst of possible beef!

‘Then I lay my hand upon my heart, and take my stand,’ said Pangloss, ‘by

the pork, which was the best of all possible pork.’

‘But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so misuse the word,’

said I. ‘Would any Inspector who did his duty, pass such abomination?’

‘It ought not to have been passed,’ Pangloss admitted.

‘Then the authorities out there—’ I began, when Pangloss cut me short

again.

‘There would certainly seem to have been something wrong somewhere,’ said

he; ‘but I am prepared to prove that the authorities out there, are the

best of all possible authorities.’

I never heard of any impeached public authority in my life, who was not

the best public authority in existence.

‘We are told of these unfortunate men being laid low by scurvy,’ said I.

‘Since lime-juice has been regularly stored and served out in our navy,

surely that disease, which used to devastate it, has almost disappeared?

Was there lime-juice aboard this transport?’

My official friend was beginning ‘the best of all possible—’ when an

inconvenient medical forefinger pointed out another passage in the

evidence, from which it appeared that the lime-juice had been bad too.

Not to mention that the vinegar had been bad too, the vegetables bad too,

the cooking accommodation insufficient (if there had been anything worth

mentioning to cook), the water supply exceedingly inadequate, and the

beer sour.

‘Then the men,’ said Pangloss, a little irritated, ‘Were the worst of all

possible men.’

‘In what respect?’ I asked.

‘Oh! Habitual drunkards,’ said Pangloss.

But, again the same incorrigible medical forefinger pointed out another

passage in the evidence, showing that the dead men had been examined

after death, and that they, at least, could not possibly have been

habitual drunkards, because the organs within them which must have shown

traces of that habit, were perfectly sound.

‘And besides,’ said the three doctors present, ‘one and all, habitual

drunkards brought as low as these men have been, could not recover under

care and food, as the great majority of these men are recovering. They

would not have strength of constitution to do it.’

‘Reckless and improvident dogs, then,’ said Pangloss. ‘Always are—nine

times out of ten.’

I turned to the master of the workhouse, and asked him whether the men

had any money?

‘Money?’ said he. ‘I have in my iron safe, nearly four hundred pounds of

theirs; the agents have nearly a hundred pounds more and many of them

have left money in Indian banks besides.’

‘Hah!’ said I to myself, as we went up-stairs, ‘this is not the best of

all possible stories, I doubt!’

We went into a large ward, containing some twenty or five-and-twenty

beds. We went into several such wards, one after another. I find it

very difficult to indicate what a shocking sight I saw in them, without

frightening the reader from the perusal of these lines, and defeating my

object of making it known.

O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows of beds,

or—worse still—that glazedly looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing

and cared for nothing! Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly

covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy was

clothed, and I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in my finger and

thumb. Here, lay a man with the black scurvy eating his legs away, his

gums gone, and his teeth all gaunt and bare. This bed was empty, because

gangrene had set in, and the patient had died but yesterday. That bed

was a hopeless one, because its occupant was sinking fast, and could only

be roused to turn the poor pinched mask of face upon the pillow, with a

feeble moan. The awful thinness of the fallen cheeks, the awful

brightness of the deep set eyes, the lips of lead, the hands of ivory,

the recumbent human images lying in the shadow of death with a kind of

solemn twilight on them, like the sixty who had died aboard the ship and

were lying at the bottom of the sea, O Pangloss, GOD forgive you!

In one bed, lay a man whose life had been saved (as it was hoped) by deep

incisions in the feet and legs. While I was speaking to him, a nurse

came up to change the poultices which this operation had rendered

necessary, and I had an instinctive feeling that it was not well to turn

away, merely to spare myself. He was sorely wasted and keenly

susceptible, but the efforts he made to subdue any expression of

impatience or suffering, were quite heroic. It was easy to see, in the

shrinking of the figure, and the drawing of the bed-clothes over the

head, how acute the endurance was, and it made me shrink too, as if I

were in pain; but, when the new bandages were on, and the poor feet were

composed again, he made an apology for himself (though he had not uttered

a word), and said plaintively, ‘I am so tender and weak, you see, sir!’

Neither from him nor from any one sufferer of the whole ghastly number,

did I hear a complaint. Of thankfulness for present solicitude and care,

I heard much; of complaint, not a word.

I think I could have recognised in the dismalest skeleton there, the

ghost of a soldier. Something of the old air was still latent in the

palest shadow of life I talked to. One emaciated creature, in the

strictest literality worn to the bone, lay stretched on his back, looking

so like death that I asked one of the doctors if he were not dying, or

dead? A few kind words from the doctor, in his ear, and he opened his

eyes, and smiled—looked, in a moment, as if he would have made a salute,

if he could. ‘We shall pull him through, please God,’ said the Doctor.

‘Plase God, surr, and thankye,’ said the patient. ‘You are much better

to-day; are you not?’ said the Doctor. ‘Plase God, surr; ’tis the slape

I want, surr; ’tis my breathin’ makes the nights so long.’ ‘He is a

careful fellow this, you must know,’ said the Doctor, cheerfully; ‘it was

raining hard when they put him in the open cart to bring him here, and he

had the presence of mind to ask to have a sovereign taken out of his

pocket that he had there, and a cab engaged. Probably it saved his

life.’ The patient rattled out the skeleton of a laugh, and said, proud

of the story, ‘’Deed, surr, an open cairt was a comical means o’ bringin’

a dyin’ man here, and a clever way to kill him.’ You might have sworn to

him for a soldier when he said it.

One thing had perplexed me very much in going from bed to bed. A very

significant and cruel thing. I could find no young man but one. He had

attracted my notice, by having got up and dressed himself in his

soldier’s jacket and trousers, with the intention of sitting by the fire;

but he had found himself too weak, and had crept back to his bed and laid

himself down on the outside of it. I could have pronounced him, alone,

to be a young man aged by famine and sickness. As we were standing by

the Irish soldier’s bed, I mentioned my perplexity to the Doctor. He

took a board with an inscription on it from the head of the Irishman’s

bed, and asked me what age I supposed that man to be? I had observed him

with attention while talking to him, and answered, confidently, ‘Fifty.’

The Doctor, with a pitying glance at the patient, who had dropped into a

stupor again, put the board back, and said, ‘Twenty-four.’

All the arrangements of the wards were excellent. They could not have

been more humane, sympathising, gentle, attentive, or wholesome. The

owners of the ship, too, had done all they could, liberally. There were

bright fires in every room, and the convalescent men were sitting round

them, reading various papers and periodicals. I took the liberty of

inviting my official friend Pangloss to look at those convalescent men,

and to tell me whether their faces and bearing were or were not,

generally, the faces and bearing of steady respectable soldiers? The

master of the workhouse, overhearing me, said he had had a pretty large

experience of troops, and that better conducted men than these, he had

never had to do with. They were always (he added) as we saw them. And

of us visitors (I add) they knew nothing whatever, except that we were

there.

It was audacious in me, but I took another liberty with Pangloss.

Prefacing it with the observation that, of course, I knew beforehand that

there was not the faintest desire, anywhere, to hush up any part of this

dreadful business, and that the Inquest was the fairest of all possible

Inquests, I besought four things of Pangloss. Firstly, to observe that

the Inquest _was not held in that place_, but at some distance off.

Secondly, to look round upon those helpless spectres in their beds.

Thirdly, to remember that the witnesses produced from among them before

that Inquest, could not have been selected because they were the men who

had the most to tell it, but because they happened to be in a state

admitting of their safe removal. Fourthly, to say whether the coroner

and jury could have come there, to those pillows, and taken a little

evidence? My official friend declined to commit himself to a reply.

There was a sergeant, reading, in one of the fireside groups. As he was

a man of very intelligent countenance, and as I have a great respect for

non-commissioned officers as a class, I sat down on the nearest bed, to

have some talk with him. (It was the bed of one of the grisliest of the

poor skeletons, and he died soon afterwards.)

‘I was glad to see, in the evidence of an officer at the Inquest,

sergeant, that he never saw men behave better on board ship than these

men.’

‘They did behave very well, sir.’

‘I was glad to see, too, that every man had a hammock.’ The sergeant

gravely shook his head. ‘There must be some mistake, sir. The men of my

own mess had no hammocks. There were not hammocks enough on board, and

the men of the two next messes laid hold of hammocks for themselves as

soon as they got on board, and squeezed my men out, as I may say.’

‘Had the squeezed-out men none then?’

‘None, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used by other men, who

wanted hammocks; but many men had none at all.’

‘Then you don’t agree with the evidence on that point?’

‘Certainly not, sir. A man can’t, when he knows to the contrary.’

‘Did any of the men sell their bedding for drink?’

‘There is some mistake on that point too, sir. Men were under the

impression—I knew it for a fact at the time—that it was not allowed to

take blankets or bedding on board, and so men who had things of that sort

came to sell them purposely.’

‘Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink?’

‘They did, sir.’ (I believe there never was a more truthful witness than

the sergeant. He had no inclination to make out a case.)

‘Many?’

‘Some, sir’ (considering the question). ‘Soldier-like. They had been

long marching in the rainy season, by bad roads—no roads at all, in

short—and when they got to Calcutta, men turned to and drank, before

taking a last look at it. Soldier-like.’

‘Do you see any men in this ward, for example, who sold clothes for drink

at that time?’

The sergeant’s wan eye, happily just beginning to rekindle with health,

travelled round the place and came back to me. ‘Certainly, sir.’

‘The marching to Calcutta in the rainy season must have been severe?’

‘It was very severe, sir.’

‘Yet what with the rest and the sea air, I should have thought that the

men (even the men who got drunk) would have soon begun to recover on

board ship?’

‘So they might; but the bad food told upon them, and when we got into a

cold latitude, it began to tell more, and the men dropped.’

‘The sick had a general disinclination for food, I am told, sergeant?’

‘Have you seen the food, sir?’

‘Some of it.’

‘Have you seen the state of their mouths, sir?’

If the sergeant, who was a man of a few orderly words, had spoken the

amount of this volume, he could not have settled that question better. I

believe the sick could as soon have eaten the ship, as the ship’s

provisions.

I took the additional liberty with my friend Pangloss, when I had left

the sergeant with good wishes, of asking Pangloss whether he had ever

heard of biscuit getting drunk and bartering its nutritious qualities for

putrefaction and vermin; of peas becoming hardened in liquor; of hammocks

drinking themselves off the face of the earth; of lime-juice, vegetables,

vinegar, cooking accommodation, water supply, and beer, all taking to

drinking together and going to ruin? ‘If not (I asked him), what did he

say in defence of the officers condemned by the Coroner’s jury, who, by

signing the General Inspection report relative to the ship Great

Tasmania, chartered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all that

bad and poisonous dunghill refuse, to be good and wholesome food?’ My

official friend replied that it was a remarkable fact, that whereas some

officers were only positively good, and other officers only comparatively

better, those particular officers were superlatively the very best of all

possible officers.

My hand and my heart fail me, in writing my record of this journey. The

spectacle of the soldiers in the hospital-beds of that Liverpool

workhouse (a very good workhouse, indeed, be it understood), was so

shocking and so shameful, that as an Englishman I blush to remember it.

It would have been simply unbearable at the time, but for the

consideration and pity with which they were soothed in their sufferings.

No punishment that our inefficient laws provide, is worthy of the name

when set against the guilt of this transaction. But, if the memory of it

die out unavenged, and if it do not result in the inexorable dismissal

and disgrace of those who are responsible for it, their escape will be

infamous to the Government (no matter of what party) that so neglects its

duty, and infamous to the nation that tamely suffers such intolerable

wrong to be done in its name.

IX

CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES

IF the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent Garden

lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who never travel

on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my adding that the

journeys in question were made to churches.

Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers. Time was, when

I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to hear too many.

On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree, and bird, might have

better addressed my soft young heart, I have in my day been caught in the

palm of a female hand by the crown, have been violently scrubbed from the

neck to the roots of the hair as a purification for the Temple, and have

then been carried off highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be

steamed like a potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful

Boanerges Boiler and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was

quite steamed out of me. In which pitiable plight I have been haled out

of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and

catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly, and his

seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in the light of a

most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time was, when I was carried off to

platform assemblages at which no human child, whether of wrath or grace,

could possibly keep its eyes open, and when I felt the fatal sleep

stealing, stealing over me, and when I gradually heard the orator in

possession, spinning and humming like a great top, until he rolled,

collapsed, and tumbled over, and I discovered to my burning shame and

fear, that as to that last stage it was not he, but I. I have sat under

Boanerges when he has specifically addressed himself to us—us, the

infants—and at this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity

(which never amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I

behold his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched

coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I hate him

with an unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through such means did it come

to pass that I knew the powerful preacher from beginning to end, all over

and all through, while I was very young, and that I left him behind at an

early period of life. Peace be with him! More peace than he brought to

me!

Now, I have heard many preachers since that time—not powerful; merely

Christian, unaffected, and reverential—and I have had many such preachers

on my roll of friends. But, it was not to hear these, any more than the

powerful class, that I made my Sunday journeys. They were journeys of

curiosity to the numerous churches in the City of London. It came into

my head one day, here had I been cultivating a familiarity with all the

churches of Rome, and I knew nothing of the insides of the old churches

of London! This befell on a Sunday morning. I began my expeditions that

very same day, and they lasted me a year.

I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went, and to

this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at least

nine-tenths of them. Indeed, saying that I know the church of old

GOWER’S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his books) to be the

church of Saint Saviour’s, Southwark; and the church of MILTON’S tomb to

be the church of Cripplegate; and the church on Cornhill with the great

golden keys to be the church of Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a

competitive examination in any of the names. No question did I ever ask

of living creature concerning these churches, and no answer to any

antiquarian question on the subject that I ever put to books, shall

harass the reader’s soul. A full half of my pleasure in them arose out

of their mystery; mysterious I found them; mysterious they shall remain

for me.

Where shall I begin my round of hidden and forgotten old churches in the

City of London?

It is twenty minutes short of eleven on a Sunday morning, when I stroll

down one of the many narrow hilly streets in the City that tend due south

to the Thames. It is my first experiment, and I have come to the region

of Whittington in an omnibus, and we have put down a fierce-eyed, spare

old woman, whose slate-coloured gown smells of herbs, and who walked up

Aldersgate-street to some chapel where she comforts herself with

brimstone doctrine, I warrant. We have also put down a stouter and

sweeter old lady, with a pretty large prayer-book in an unfolded

pocket-handkerchief, who got out at a corner of a court near Stationers’

Hall, and who I think must go to church there, because she is the widow

of some deceased old Company’s Beadle. The rest of our freight were mere

chance pleasure-seekers and rural walkers, and went on to the Blackwall

railway. So many bells are ringing, when I stand undecided at a street

corner, that every sheep in the ecclesiastical fold might be a

bell-wether. The discordance is fearful. My state of indecision is

referable to, and about equally divisible among, four great churches,

which are all within sight and sound, all within the space of a few

square yards.

As I stand at the street corner, I don’t see as many as four people at

once going to church, though I see as many as four churches with their

steeples clamouring for people. I choose my church, and go up the flight

of steps to the great entrance in the tower. A mouldy tower within, and

like a neglected washhouse. A rope comes through the beamed roof, and a

man in the corner pulls it and clashes the bell—a whity-brown man, whose

clothes were once black—a man with flue on him, and cobweb. He stares at

me, wondering how I come there, and I stare at him, wondering how he

comes there. Through a screen of wood and glass, I peep into the dim

church. About twenty people are discernible, waiting to begin.

Christening would seem to have faded out of this church long ago, for the

font has the dust of desuetude thick upon it, and its wooden cover

(shaped like an old-fashioned tureen-cover) looks as if it wouldn’t come

off, upon requirement. I perceive the altar to be rickety and the

Commandments damp. Entering after this survey, I jostle the clergyman in

his canonicals, who is entering too from a dark lane behind a pew of

state with curtains, where nobody sits. The pew is ornamented with four

blue wands, once carried by four somebodys, I suppose, before somebody

else, but which there is nobody now to hold or receive honour from. I

open the door of a family pew, and shut myself in; if I could occupy

twenty family pews at once I might have them. The clerk, a brisk young

man (how does _he_ come here?), glances at me knowingly, as who should

say, ‘You have done it now; you must stop.’ Organ plays. Organ-loft is

in a small gallery across the church; gallery congregation, two girls. I

wonder within myself what will happen when we are required to sing.

There is a pale heap of books in the corner of my pew, and while the

organ, which is hoarse and sleepy, plays in such fashion that I can hear

more of the rusty working of the stops than of any music, I look at the

books, which are mostly bound in faded baize and stuff. They belonged in

1754, to the Dowgate family; and who were they? Jane Comport must have

married Young Dowgate, and come into the family that way; Young Dowgate

was courting Jane Comport when he gave her her prayer-book, and recorded

the presentation in the fly-leaf; if Jane were fond of Young Dowgate, why

did she die and leave the book here? Perhaps at the rickety altar, and

before the damp Commandments, she, Comport, had taken him, Dowgate, in a

flush of youthful hope and joy, and perhaps it had not turned out in the

long run as great a success as was expected?

The opening of the service recalls my wandering thoughts. I then find,

to my astonishment, that I have been, and still am, taking a strong kind

of invisible snuff, up my nose, into my eyes, and down my throat. I

wink, sneeze, and cough. The clerk sneezes; the clergyman winks; the

unseen organist sneezes and coughs (and probably winks); all our little

party wink, sneeze, and cough. The snuff seems to be made of the decay

of matting, wood, cloth, stone, iron, earth, and something else. Is the

something else, the decay of dead citizens in the vaults below? As sure

as Death it is! Not only in the cold, damp February day, do we cough and

sneeze dead citizens, all through the service, but dead citizens have got

into the very bellows of the organ, and half choked the same. We stamp

our feet to warm them, and dead citizens arise in heavy clouds. Dead

citizens stick upon the walls, and lie pulverised on the sounding-board

over the clergyman’s head, and, when a gust of air comes, tumble down

upon him.

In this first experience I was so nauseated by too much snuff, made of

the Dowgate family, the Comport branch, and other families and branches,

that I gave but little heed to our dull manner of ambling through the

service; to the brisk clerk’s manner of encouraging us to try a note or

two at psalm time; to the gallery-congregation’s manner of enjoying a

shrill duet, without a notion of time or tune; to the whity-brown man’s

manner of shutting the minister into the pulpit, and being very

particular with the lock of the door, as if he were a dangerous animal.

But, I tried again next Sunday, and soon accustomed myself to the dead

citizens when I found that I could not possibly get on without them among

the City churches.

Another Sunday.

After being again rung for by conflicting bells, like a leg of mutton or

a laced hat a hundred years ago, I make selection of a church oddly put

away in a corner among a number of lanes—a smaller church than the last,

and an ugly: of about the date of Queen Anne. As a congregation, we are

fourteen strong: not counting an exhausted charity school in a gallery,

which has dwindled away to four boys, and two girls. In the porch, is a

benefaction of loaves of bread, which there would seem to be nobody left

in the exhausted congregation to claim, and which I saw an exhausted

beadle, long faded out of uniform, eating with his eyes for self and

family when I passed in. There is also an exhausted clerk in a brown

wig, and two or three exhausted doors and windows have been bricked up,

and the service books are musty, and the pulpit cushions are threadbare,

and the whole of the church furniture is in a very advanced stage of

exhaustion. We are three old women (habitual), two young lovers

(accidental), two tradesmen, one with a wife and one alone, an aunt and

nephew, again two girls (these two girls dressed out for church with

everything about them limp that should be stiff, and _vice versâ_, are an

invariable experience), and three sniggering boys. The clergyman is,

perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company; he has the moist and vinous

look, and eke the bulbous boots, of one acquainted with ’Twenty port, and

comet vintages.

We are so quiet in our dulness that the three sniggering boys, who have

got away into a corner by the altar-railing, give us a start, like

crackers, whenever they laugh. And this reminds me of my own village

church where, during sermon-time on bright Sundays when the birds are

very musical indeed, farmers’ boys patter out over the stone pavement,

and the clerk steps out from his desk after them, and is distinctly heard

in the summer repose to pursue and punch them in the churchyard, and is

seen to return with a meditative countenance, making believe that nothing

of the sort has happened. The aunt and nephew in this City church are

much disturbed by the sniggering boys. The nephew is himself a boy, and

the sniggerers tempt him to secular thoughts of marbles and string, by

secretly offering such commodities to his distant contemplation. This

young Saint Anthony for a while resists, but presently becomes a

backslider, and in dumb show defies the sniggerers to ‘heave’ a marble or

two in his direction. Here in he is detected by the aunt (a rigorous

reduced gentlewoman who has the charge of offices), and I perceive that

worthy relative to poke him in the side, with the corrugated hooked

handle of an ancient umbrella. The nephew revenges himself for this, by

holding his breath and terrifying his kinswoman with the dread belief

that he has made up his mind to burst. Regardless of whispers and

shakes, he swells and becomes discoloured, and yet again swells and

becomes discoloured, until the aunt can bear it no longer, but leads him

out, with no visible neck, and with his eyes going before him like a

prawn’s. This causes the sniggerers to regard flight as an eligible

move, and I know which of them will go out first, because of the

over-devout attention that he suddenly concentrates on the clergyman. In

a little while, this hypocrite, with an elaborate demonstration of

hushing his footsteps, and with a face generally expressive of having

until now forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, is gone. Number

two gets out in the same way, but rather quicker. Number three getting

safely to the door, there turns reckless, and banging it open, flies

forth with a Whoop! that vibrates to the top of the tower above us.

The clergyman, who is of a prandial presence and a muffled voice, may be

scant of hearing as well as of breath, but he only glances up, as having

an idea that somebody has said Amen in a wrong place, and continues his

steady jog-trot, like a farmer’s wife going to market. He does all he

has to do, in the same easy way, and gives us a concise sermon, still

like the jog-trot of the farmer’s wife on a level road. Its drowsy

cadence soon lulls the three old women asleep, and the unmarried

tradesman sits looking out at window, and the married tradesman sits

looking at his wife’s bonnet, and the lovers sit looking at one another,

so superlatively happy, that I mind when I, turned of eighteen, went with

my Angelica to a City church on account of a shower (by this special

coincidence that it was in Huggin-lane), and when I said to my Angelica,

‘Let the blessed event, Angelica, occur at no altar but this!’ and when

my Angelica consented that it should occur at no other—which it certainly

never did, for it never occurred anywhere. And O, Angelica, what has

become of you, this present Sunday morning when I can’t attend to the

sermon; and, more difficult question than that, what has become of Me as

I was when I sat by your side!

But, we receive the signal to make that unanimous dive which surely is a

little conventional—like the strange rustlings and settlings and

clearings of throats and noses, which are never dispensed with, at

certain points of the Church service, and are never held to be necessary

under any other circumstances. In a minute more it is all over, and the

organ expresses itself to be as glad of it as it can be of anything in

its rheumatic state, and in another minute we are all of us out of the

church, and Whity-brown has locked it up. Another minute or little more,

and, in the neighbouring churchyard—not the yard of that church, but of

another—a churchyard like a great shabby old mignonette box, with two

trees in it and one tomb—I meet Whity-brown, in his private capacity,

fetching a pint of beer for his dinner from the public-house in the

corner, where the keys of the rotting fire-ladders are kept and were

never asked for, and where there is a ragged, white-seamed,

out-at-elbowed bagatelle board on the first floor.

In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an individual who

might have been claimed as expressly a City personage. I remember the

church, by the feature that the clergyman couldn’t get to his own desk

without going through the clerk’s, or couldn’t get to the pulpit without

going through the reading-desk—I forget which, and it is no matter—and by

the presence of this personage among the exceedingly sparse congregation.

I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted charity school to

help us out. The personage was dressed in black of square cut, and was

stricken in years, and wore a black velvet cap, and cloth shoes. He was

of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied aspect. In his hand, he conducted

to church a mysterious child: a child of the feminine gender. The child

had a beaver hat, with a stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to

any bird of the air. The child was further attired in a nankeen frock

and spencer, brown boxing-gloves, and a veil. It had a blemish, in the

nature of currant jelly, on its chin; and was a thirsty child. Insomuch

that the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which, when

the first psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed. At all

other times throughout the service it was motionless, and stood on the

seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the corner, like a rain-water

pipe.

[Picture: The City Personage]

The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the clergyman.

He never sat down either, but stood with his arms leaning on the top of

the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded with his right hand, always

looking at the church door. It was a long church for a church of its

size, and he was at the upper end, but he always looked at the door.

That he was an old bookkeeper, or an old trader who had kept his own

books, and that he might be seen at the Bank of England about Dividend

times, no doubt. That he had lived in the City all his life and was

disdainful of other localities, no doubt. Why he looked at the door, I

never absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he lived in expectation

of the time when the citizens would come back to live in the City, and

its ancient glories would be renewed. He appeared to expect that this

would occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would first appear, in

the deserted churches, penitent and humbled. Hence, he looked at the

door which they never darkened. Whose child the child was, whether the

child of a disinherited daughter, or some parish orphan whom the

personage had adopted, there was nothing to lead up to. It never played,

or skipped, or smiled. Once, the idea occurred to me that it was an

automaton, and that the personage had made it; but following the strange

couple out one Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, ‘Thirteen

thousand pounds;’ to which it added in a weak human voice, ‘Seventeen and

fourpence.’ Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I ever

heard or saw them say. One Sunday, I followed them home. They lived

behind a pump, and the personage opened their abode with an exceeding

large key. The one solitary inscription on their house related to a

fire-plug. The house was partly undermined by a deserted and closed

gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and it stood with its face

disconsolately turned to a wall. Five great churches and two small ones

rang their Sunday bells between this house and the church the couple

frequented, so they must have had some special reason for going a quarter

of a mile to it. The last time I saw them, was on this wise. I had been

to explore another church at a distance, and happened to pass the church

they frequented, at about two of the afternoon when that edifice was

closed. But, a little side-door, which I had never observed before,

stood open, and disclosed certain cellarous steps. Methought ‘They are

airing the vaults to-day,’ when the personage and the child silently

arrived at the steps, and silently descended. Of course, I came to the

conclusion that the personage had at last despaired of the looked-for

return of the penitent citizens, and that he and the child went down to

get themselves buried.

In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church which had

broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with various tawdry

decorations, much after the manner of the extinct London may-poles.

These attractions had induced several young priests or deacons in black

bibs for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that holy

order (the proportion being, as I estimated, seventeen young ladies to a

deacon), to come into the City as a new and odd excitement. It was

wonderful to see how these young people played out their little play in

the heart of the City, all among themselves, without the deserted City’s

knowing anything about it. It was as if you should take an empty

counting-house on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries there. They

had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don’t know) to

assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice frantic

garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing those poor

innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher. There was a

remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this congregation.

But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the

uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all

displeasing, was the staple character of the neighbourhood. In the

churches about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of wheat;

and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an aged hassock

in one of them. From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and thereabouts, there

was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes, of tea. One church near

Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist’s drawer. Behind the Monument the

service had a flavour of damaged oranges, which, a little further down

towards the river, tempered into herrings, and gradually toned into a

cosmopolitan blast of fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the

church in the Rake’s Progress where the hero is being married to the

horrible old lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ

shook a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.

Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality in the

people. There were never enough of them to represent any calling or

neighbourhood. They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and the few

stragglers in the many churches languished there inexpressively.

Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this year of

Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest. Whether I

think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats in the river

almost flapped against the windows, or of the church where the railroad

made the bells hum as the train rushed by above the roof, I recall a

curious experience. On summer Sundays, in the gentle rain or the bright

sunshine—either, deepening the idleness of the idle City—I have sat, in

that singular silence which belongs to resting-places usually astir, in

scores of buildings at the heart of the world’s metropolis, unknown to

far greater numbers of people speaking the English tongue, than the

ancient edifices of the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt. The dark

vestries and registries into which I have peeped, and the little

hemmed-in churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions

on my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way received.

In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating, there is not a

line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow, in their day. Still

and dry now, still and dry! and the old tree at the window with no room

for its branches, has seen them all out. So with the tomb of the old

Master of the old Company, on which it drips. His son restored it and

died, his daughter restored it and died, and then he had been remembered

long enough, and the tree took possession of him, and his name cracked

out.

There are few more striking indications of the changes of manners and

customs that two or three hundred years have brought about, than these

deserted churches. Many of them are handsome and costly structures,

several of them were designed by WREN, many of them arose from the ashes

of the great fire, others of them outlived the plague and the fire too,

to die a slow death in these later days. No one can be sure of the

coming time; but it is not too much to say of it that it has no sign in

its outsetting tides, of the reflux to these churches of their

congregations and uses. They remain like the tombs of the old citizens

who lie beneath them and around them, Monuments of another age. They are

worth a Sunday-exploration, now and then, for they yet echo, not

unharmoniously, to the time when the City of London really was London;

when the ’Prentices and Trained Bands were of mark in the state; when

even the Lord Mayor himself was a Reality—not a Fiction conventionally

be-puffed on one day in the year by illustrious friends, who no less

conventionally laugh at him on the remaining three hundred and sixty-four

days.

X

SHY NEIGHBOURHOODS

SO much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cherished betting

propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting

newspapers under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all

eleven stone mankind to competition in walking. My last special feat was

turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise,

and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast. The road was so

lonely in the night, that I fell asleep to the monotonous sound of my own

feet, doing their regular four miles an hour. Mile after mile I walked,

without the slightest sense of exertion, dozing heavily and dreaming

constantly. It was only when I made a stumble like a drunken man, or

struck out into the road to avoid a horseman close upon me on the

path—who had no existence—that I came to myself and looked about. The

day broke mistily (it was autumn time), and I could not disembarrass

myself of the idea that I had to climb those heights and banks of cloud,

and that there was an Alpine Convent somewhere behind the sun, where I

was going to breakfast. This sleepy notion was so much stronger than

such substantial objects as villages and haystacks, that, after the sun

was up and bright, and when I was sufficiently awake to have a sense of

pleasure in the prospect, I still occasionally caught myself looking

about for wooden arms to point the right track up the mountain, and

wondering there was no snow yet. It is a curiosity of broken sleep that

I made immense quantities of verses on that pedestrian occasion (of

course I never make any when I am in my right senses), and that I spoke a

certain language once pretty familiar to me, but which I have nearly

forgotten from disuse, with fluency. Of both these phenomena I have such

frequent experience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I

sometimes argue with myself that I know I cannot be awake, for, if I

were, I should not be half so ready. The readiness is not imaginary,

because I often recall long strings of the verses, and many turns of the

fluent speech, after I am broad awake.

My walking is of two kinds: one, straight on end to a definite goal at a

round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely vagabond. In the

latter state, no gipsy on earth is a greater vagabond than myself; it is

so natural to me, and strong with me, that I think I must be the

descendant, at no great distance, of some irreclaimable tramp.

One of the pleasantest things I have lately met with, in a vagabond

course of shy metropolitan neighbourhoods and small shops, is the fancy

of a humble artist, as exemplified in two portraits representing Mr.

Thomas Sayers, of Great Britain, and Mr. John Heenan, of the United

States of America. These illustrious men are highly coloured in fighting

trim, and fighting attitude. To suggest the pastoral and meditative

nature of their peaceful calling, Mr. Heenan is represented on emerald

sward, with primroses and other modest flowers springing up under the

heels of his half-boots; while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the

administration of his favourite blow, the Auctioneer, by the silent

eloquence of a village church. The humble homes of England, with their

domestic virtues and honeysuckle porches, urge both heroes to go in and

win; and the lark and other singing birds are observable in the upper

air, ecstatically carolling their thanks to Heaven for a fight. On the

whole, the associations entwined with the pugilistic art by this artist

are much in the manner of Izaak Walton.

But, it is with the lower animals of back streets and by-ways that my

present purpose rests. For human notes we may return to such

neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.

Nothing in shy neighbourhoods perplexes my mind more, than the bad

company birds keep. Foreign birds often get into good society, but

British birds are inseparable from low associates. There is a whole

street of them in St. Giles’s; and I always find them in poor and immoral

neighbourhoods, convenient to the public-house and the pawnbroker’s.

They seem to lead people into drinking, and even the man who makes their

cages usually gets into a chronic state of black eye. Why is this?

Also, they will do things for people in short-skirted velveteen coats

with bone buttons, or in sleeved waistcoats and fur caps, which they

cannot be persuaded by the respectable orders of society to undertake.

In a dirty court in Spitalfields, once, I found a goldfinch drawing his

own water, and drawing as much of it as if he were in a consuming fever.

That goldfinch lived at a bird-shop, and offered, in writing, to barter

himself against old clothes, empty bottles, or even kitchen stuff.

Surely a low thing and a depraved taste in any finch! I bought that

goldfinch for money. He was sent home, and hung upon a nail over against

my table. He lived outside a counterfeit dwelling-house, supposed (as I

argued) to be a dyer’s; otherwise it would have been impossible to

account for his perch sticking out of the garret window. From the time

of his appearance in my room, either he left off being thirsty—which was

not in the bond—or he could not make up his mind to hear his little

bucket drop back into his well when he let it go: a shock which in the

best of times had made him tremble. He drew no water but by stealth and

under the cloak of night. After an interval of futile and at length

hopeless expectation, the merchant who had educated him was appealed to.

The merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat and cushiony nose,

like the last new strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of

the velveteen race, velveteeny. He sent word that he would ‘look round.’

He looked round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly cocked

up his evil eye at the goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset that

bird; when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary buckets of

water; and finally, leaped about his perch and sharpened his bill, as if

he had been to the nearest wine vaults and got drunk.

Donkeys again. I know shy neighbourhoods where the Donkey goes in at the

street door, and appears to live up-stairs, for I have examined the

back-yard from over the palings, and have been unable to make him out.

Gentility, nobility, Royalty, would appeal to that donkey in vain to do

what he does for a costermonger. Feed him with oats at the highest

price, put an infant prince and princess in a pair of panniers on his

back, adjust his delicate trappings to a nicety, take him to the softest

slopes at Windsor, and try what pace you can get out of him. Then,

starve him, harness him anyhow to a truck with a flat tray on it, and see

him bowl from Whitechapel to Bayswater. There appears to be no

particular private understanding between birds and donkeys, in a state of

nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall see them always in

the same hands and always developing their very best energies for the

very worst company. I have known a donkey—by sight; we were not on

speaking terms—who lived over on the Surrey side of London-bridge, among

the fastnesses of Jacob’s Island and Dockhead. It was the habit of that

animal, when his services were not in immediate requisition, to go out

alone, idling. I have met him a mile from his place of residence,

loitering about the streets; and the expression of his countenance at

such times was most degraded. He was attached to the establishment of an

elderly lady who sold periwinkles, and he used to stand on Saturday

nights with a cartful of those delicacies outside a gin-shop, pricking up

his ears when a customer came to the cart, and too evidently deriving

satisfaction from the knowledge that they got bad measure. His mistress

was sometimes overtaken by inebriety. The last time I ever saw him

(about five years ago) he was in circumstances of difficulty, caused by

this failing. Having been left alone with the cart of periwinkles, and

forgotten, he went off idling. He prowled among his usual low haunts for

some time, gratifying his depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart

into his calculations, he endeavoured to turn up a narrow alley, and

became greatly involved. He was taken into custody by the police, and,

the Green Yard of the district being near at hand, was backed into that

place of durance. At that crisis, I encountered him; the stubborn sense

he evinced of being—not to compromise the expression—a blackguard, I

never saw exceeded in the human subject. A flaring candle in a paper

shade, stuck in among his periwinkles, showed him, with his ragged

harness broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his mouth

and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have

seen boys being taken to station-houses, who were as like him as his own

brother.

The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, I observe to avoid play, and to be

conscious of poverty. They avoid work, too, if they can, of course; that

is in the nature of all animals. I have the pleasure to know a dog in a

back street in the neighbourhood of Walworth, who has greatly

distinguished himself in the minor drama, and who takes his portrait with

him when he makes an engagement, for the illustration of the play-bill.

His portrait (which is not at all like him) represents him in the act of

dragging to the earth a recreant Indian, who is supposed to have

tomahawked, or essayed to tomahawk, a British officer. The design is

pure poetry, for there is no such Indian in the piece, and no such

incident. He is a dog of the Newfoundland breed, for whose honesty I

would be bail to any amount; but whose intellectual qualities in

association with dramatic fiction, I cannot rate high. Indeed, he is too

honest for the profession he has entered. Being at a town in Yorkshire

last summer, and seeing him posted in the bill of the night, I attended

the performance. His first scene was eminently successful; but, as it

occupied a second in its representation (and five lines in the bill), it

scarcely afforded ground for a cool and deliberate judgment of his

powers. He had merely to bark, run on, and jump through an inn window,

after a comic fugitive. The next scene of importance to the fable was a

little marred in its interest by his over-anxiety; forasmuch as while his

master (a belated soldier in a den of robbers on a tempestuous night) was

feelingly lamenting the absence of his faithful dog, and laying great

stress on the fact that he was thirty leagues away, the faithful dog was

barking furiously in the prompter’s box, and clearly choking himself

against his collar. But it was in his greatest scene of all, that his

honesty got the better of him. He had to enter a dense and trackless

forest, on the trail of the murderer, and there to fly at the murderer

when he found him resting at the foot of a tree, with his victim bound

ready for slaughter. It was a hot night, and he came into the forest

from an altogether unexpected direction, in the sweetest temper, at a

very deliberate trot, not in the least excited; trotted to the

foot-lights with his tongue out; and there sat down, panting, and amiably

surveying the audience, with his tail beating on the boards, like a Dutch

clock. Meanwhile the murderer, impatient to receive his doom, was

audibly calling to him ‘CO-O-OME here!’ while the victim, struggling with

his bonds, assailed him with the most injurious expressions. It happened

through these means, that when he was in course of time persuaded to trot

up and rend the murderer limb from limb, he made it (for dramatic

purposes) a little too obvious that he worked out that awful retribution

by licking butter off his blood-stained hands.

In a shy street, behind Long-acre, two honest dogs live, who perform in

Punch’s shows. I may venture to say that I am on terms of intimacy with

both, and that I never saw either guilty of the falsehood of failing to

look down at the man inside the show, during the whole performance. The

difficulty other dogs have in satisfying their minds about these dogs,

appears to be never overcome by time. The same dogs must encounter them

over and over again, as they trudge along in their off-minutes behind the

legs of the show and beside the drum; but all dogs seem to suspect their

frills and jackets, and to sniff at them as if they thought those

articles of personal adornment, an eruption—a something in the nature of

mange, perhaps. From this Covent-garden window of mine I noticed a

country dog, only the other day, who had come up to Covent-garden Market

under a cart, and had broken his cord, an end of which he still trailed

along with him. He loitered about the corners of the four streets

commanded by my window; and bad London dogs came up, and told him lies

that he didn’t believe; and worse London dogs came up, and made proposals

to him to go and steal in the market, which his principles rejected; and

the ways of the town confused him, and he crept aside and lay down in a

doorway. He had scarcely got a wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with

Toby. He was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the

frill, and stopped, in the middle of the street, appalled. The show was

pitched, Toby retired behind the drapery, the audience formed, the drum

and pipes struck up. My country dog remained immovable, intently staring

at these strange appearances, until Toby opened the drama by appearing on

his ledge, and to him entered Punch, who put a tobacco-pipe into Toby’s

mouth. At this spectacle, the country dog threw up his head, gave one

terrible howl, and fled due west.

We talk of men keeping dogs, but we might often talk more expressively of

dogs keeping men. I know a bull-dog in a shy corner of Hammersmith who

keeps a man. He keeps him up a yard, and makes him go to public-houses

and lay wagers on him, and obliges him to lean against posts and look at

him, and forces him to neglect work for him, and keeps him under rigid

coercion. I once knew a fancy terrier who kept a gentleman—a gentleman

who had been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog kept the gentleman

entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never talked about

anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy neighbourhood,

and is a digression consequently.

There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, who keep boys. I have

my eye on a mongrel in Somerstown who keeps three boys. He feigns that

he can bring down sparrows, and unburrow rats (he can do neither), and he

takes the boys out on sporting pretences into all sorts of suburban

fields. He has likewise made them believe that he possesses some

mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider themselves

incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and

wide-mouthed bottle, unless he is with them and barking tremendously.

There is a dog residing in the Borough of Southwark who keeps a blind

man. He may be seen, most days, in Oxford-street, haling the blind man

away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the

man: wholly of the dog’s conception and execution. Contrariwise, when

the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded thoroughfare and

meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing the money-tray like an easy

collar, instead of offering it to the public, taking the man against his

will, on the invitation of a disreputable cur, apparently to visit a dog

at Harrow—he was so intent on that direction. The north wall of

Burlington House Gardens, between the Arcade and the Albany, offers a shy

spot for appointments among blind men at about two or three o’clock in

the afternoon. They sit (very uncomfortably) on a sloping stone there,

and compare notes. Their dogs may always be observed at the same time,

openly disparaging the men they keep, to one another, and settling where

they shall respectively take their men when they begin to move again. At

a small butcher’s, in a shy neighbourhood (there is no reason for

suppressing the name; it is by Notting-hill, and gives upon the district

called the Potteries), I know a shaggy black and white dog who keeps a

drover. He is a dog of an easy disposition, and too frequently allows

this drover to get drunk. On these occasions, it is the dog’s custom to

sit outside the public-house, keeping his eye on a few sheep, and

thinking. I have seen him with six sheep, plainly casting up in his mind

how many he began with when he left the market, and at what places he has

left the rest. I have seen him perplexed by not being able to account to

himself for certain particular sheep. A light has gradually broken on

him, he has remembered at what butcher’s he left them, and in a burst of

grave satisfaction has caught a fly off his nose, and shown himself much

relieved. If I could at any time have doubted the fact that it was he

who kept the drover, and not the drover who kept him, it would have been

abundantly proved by his way of taking undivided charge of the six sheep,

when the drover came out besmeared with red ochre and beer, and gave him

wrong directions, which he calmly disregarded. He has taken the sheep

entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with respectful

firmness, ‘That instruction would place them under an omnibus; you had

better confine your attention to yourself—you will want it all;’ and has

driven his charge away, with an intelligence of ears and tail, and a

knowledge of business, that has left his lout of a man very, very far

behind.