Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a
Traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope
to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of explanation is due
at once, for what says the inscription over the quaint old door?
RICHARD WATTS, Esq.
by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,
founded this Charity
for Six poor Travellers,
who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,
May receive gratis for one Night,
Lodging, Entertainment,
and Fourpence each.
It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the good
days in the year upon a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this
inscription over the quaint old door in question. I had been wandering
about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of Richard Watts,
with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's
figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger
his fee, than inquire the way to Watts's Charity. The way being very
short and very plain, I had come prosperously to the inscription and the
quaint old door.
"Now," said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, "I know I am not a
Proctor; I wonder whether I am a Rogue!"
Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces
which might have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath than they had
had for me, who am but a Tom Thumb in that way, I came to the conclusion
that I was not a Rogue. So, beginning to regard the establishment as in
some sort my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-legatees, share and
share alike, by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped backward
into the road to survey my inheritance.
I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with
the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door),
choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The
silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and
timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer
old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick
building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign.
Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old
days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans; and down to the
times of King John, when the rugged castle--I will not undertake to say
how many hundreds of years old then--was abandoned to the centuries of
weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the
ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.
I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. While
I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one of the
upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly
appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to mine. They said
so plainly, "Do you wish to see the house?" that I answered aloud, "Yes,
if you please." And within a minute the old door opened, and I bent my
head, and went down two steps into the entry.
"This," said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room on the
right, "is where the Travellers sit by the fire, and cook what bits of
suppers they buy with their fourpences."
"O! Then they have no Entertainment?" said I. For the inscription over
the outer door was still running in my head, and I was mentally
repeating, in a kind of tune, "Lodging, entertainment, and fourpence
each."
"They have a fire provided for 'em," returned the matron--a mighty civil
person, not, as I could make out, overpaid; "and these cooking utensils.
And this what's painted on a board is the rules for their behaviour. They
have their fourpences when they get their tickets from the steward over
the way,--for I don't admit 'em myself, they must get their tickets
first,--and sometimes one buys a rasher of bacon, and another a herring,
and another a pound of potatoes, or what not. Sometimes two or three of
'em will club their fourpences together, and make a supper that way. But
not much of anything is to be got for fourpence, at present, when
provisions is so dear."
"True indeed," I remarked. I had been looking about the room, admiring
its snug fireside at the upper end, its glimpse of the street through the
low mullioned window, and its beams overhead. "It is very comfortable,"
said I.
"Ill-conwenient," observed the matronly presence.
I liked to hear her say so; for it showed a commendable anxiety to
execute in no niggardly spirit the intentions of Master Richard Watts.
But the room was really so well adapted to its purpose that I protested,
quite enthusiastically, against her disparagement.
"Nay, ma'am," said I, "I am sure it is warm in winter and cool in summer.
It has a look of homely welcome and soothing rest. It has a remarkably
cosey fireside, the very blink of which, gleaming out into the street
upon a winter night, is enough to warm all Rochester's heart. And as to
the convenience of the six Poor Travellers--"
"I don't mean them," returned the presence. "I speak of its being an ill-
conwenience to myself and my daughter, having no other room to sit in of
a night."
This was true enough, but there was another quaint room of corresponding
dimensions on the opposite side of the entry: so I stepped across to it,
through the open doors of both rooms, and asked what this chamber was
for.
"This," returned the presence, "is the Board Room. Where the gentlemen
meet when they come here."
Let me see. I had counted from the street six upper windows besides
these on the ground-story. Making a perplexed calculation in my mind, I
rejoined, "Then the six Poor Travellers sleep upstairs?"
My new friend shook her head. "They sleep," she answered, "in two little
outer galleries at the back, where their beds has always been, ever since
the Charity was founded. It being so very ill-conwenient to me as things
is at present, the gentlemen are going to take off a bit of the
back-yard, and make a slip of a room for 'em there, to sit in before they
go to bed."
"And then the six Poor Travellers," said I, "will be entirely out of the
house?"
"Entirely out of the house," assented the presence, comfortably smoothing
her hands. "Which is considered much better for all parties, and much
more conwenient."
I had been a little startled, in the Cathedral, by the emphasis with
which the effigy of Master Richard Watts was bursting out of his tomb;
but I began to think, now, that it might be expected to come across the
High Street some stormy night, and make a disturbance here.
Howbeit, I kept my thoughts to myself, and accompanied the presence to
the little galleries at the back. I found them on a tiny scale, like the
galleries in old inn-yards; and they were very clean.
While I was looking at them, the matron gave me to understand that the
prescribed number of Poor Travellers were forthcoming every night from
year's end to year's end; and that the beds were always occupied. My
questions upon this, and her replies, brought us back to the Board Room
so essential to the dignity of "the gentlemen," where she showed me the
printed accounts of the Charity hanging up by the window. From them I
gathered that the greater part of the property bequeathed by the
Worshipful Master Richard Watts for the maintenance of this foundation
was, at the period of his death, mere marsh-land; but that, in course of
time, it had been reclaimed and built upon, and was very considerably
increased in value. I found, too, that about a thirtieth part of the
annual revenue was now expended on the purposes commemorated in the
inscription over the door; the rest being handsomely laid out in
Chancery, law expenses, collectorship, receivership, poundage, and other
appendages of management, highly complimentary to the importance of the
six Poor Travellers. In short, I made the not entirely new discovery
that it may be said of an establishment like this, in dear old England,
as of the fat oyster in the American story, that it takes a good many men
to swallow it whole.
"And pray, ma'am," said I, sensible that the blankness of my face began
to brighten as the thought occurred to me, "could one see these
Travellers?"
"Well!" she returned dubiously, "no!"
"Not to-night, for instance!" said I.
"Well!" she returned more positively, "no. Nobody ever asked to see
them, and nobody ever did see them."
As I am not easily balked in a design when I am set upon it, I urged to
the good lady that this was Christmas-eve; that Christmas comes but once
a year,--which is unhappily too true, for when it begins to stay with us
the whole year round we shall make this earth a very different place;
that I was possessed by the desire to treat the Travellers to a supper
and a temperate glass of hot Wassail; that the voice of Fame had been
heard in that land, declaring my ability to make hot Wassail; that if I
were permitted to hold the feast, I should be found conformable to
reason, sobriety, and good hours; in a word, that I could be merry and
wise myself, and had been even known at a pinch to keep others so,
although I was decorated with no badge or medal, and was not a Brother,
Orator, Apostle, Saint, or Prophet of any denomination whatever. In the
end I prevailed, to my great joy. It was settled that at nine o'clock
that night a Turkey and a piece of Roast Beef should smoke upon the
board; and that I, faint and unworthy minister for once of Master Richard
Watts, should preside as the Christmas-supper host of the six Poor
Travellers.
I went back to my inn to give the necessary directions for the Turkey and
Roast Beef, and, during the remainder of the day, could settle to nothing
for thinking of the Poor Travellers. When the wind blew hard against the
windows,--it was a cold day, with dark gusts of sleet alternating with
periods of wild brightness, as if the year were dying fitfully,--I
pictured them advancing towards their resting-place along various cold
roads, and felt delighted to think how little they foresaw the supper
that awaited them. I painted their portraits in my mind, and indulged in
little heightening touches. I made them footsore; I made them weary; I
made them carry packs and bundles; I made them stop by finger-posts and
milestones, leaning on their bent sticks, and looking wistfully at what
was written there; I made them lose their way; and filled their five wits
with apprehensions of lying out all night, and being frozen to death. I
took up my hat, and went out, climbed to the top of the Old Castle, and
looked over the windy hills that slope down to the Medway, almost
believing that I could descry some of my Travellers in the distance.
After it fell dark, and the Cathedral bell was heard in the invisible
steeple--quite a bower of frosty rime when I had last seen it--striking
five, six, seven, I became so full of my Travellers that I could eat no
dinner, and felt constrained to watch them still in the red coals of my
fire. They were all arrived by this time, I thought, had got their
tickets, and were gone in.--There my pleasure was dashed by the
reflection that probably some Travellers had come too late and were shut
out.
After the Cathedral bell had struck eight, I could smell a delicious
savour of Turkey and Roast Beef rising to the window of my adjoining
bedroom, which looked down into the inn-yard just where the lights of the
kitchen reddened a massive fragment of the Castle Wall. It was high time
to make the Wassail now; therefore I had up the materials (which,
together with their proportions and combinations, I must decline to
impart, as the only secret of my own I was ever known to keep), and made
a glorious jorum. Not in a bowl; for a bowl anywhere but on a shelf is a
low superstition, fraught with cooling and slopping; but in a brown
earthenware pitcher, tenderly suffocated, when full, with a coarse cloth.
It being now upon the stroke of nine, I set out for Watts's Charity,
carrying my brown beauty in my arms. I would trust Ben, the waiter, with
untold gold; but there are strings in the human heart which must never be
sounded by another, and drinks that I make myself are those strings in
mine.
The Travellers were all assembled, the cloth was laid, and Ben had
brought a great billet of wood, and had laid it artfully on the top of
the fire, so that a touch or two of the poker after supper should make a
roaring blaze. Having deposited my brown beauty in a red nook of the
hearth, inside the fender, where she soon began to sing like an ethereal
cricket, diffusing at the same time odours as of ripe vineyards, spice
forests, and orange groves,--I say, having stationed my beauty in a place
of security and improvement, I introduced myself to my guests by shaking
hands all round, and giving them a hearty welcome.
I found the party to be thus composed. Firstly, myself. Secondly, a
very decent man indeed, with his right arm in a sling, who had a certain
clean agreeable smell of wood about him, from which I judged him to have
something to do with shipbuilding. Thirdly, a little sailor-boy, a mere
child, with a profusion of rich dark brown hair, and deep womanly-looking
eyes. Fourthly, a shabby-genteel personage in a threadbare black suit,
and apparently in very bad circumstances, with a dry suspicious look; the
absent buttons on his waistcoat eked out with red tape; and a bundle of
extraordinarily tattered papers sticking out of an inner breast-pocket.
Fifthly, a foreigner by birth, but an Englishman in speech, who carried
his pipe in the band of his hat, and lost no time in telling me, in an
easy, simple, engaging way, that he was a watchmaker from Geneva, and
travelled all about the Continent, mostly on foot, working as a
journeyman, and seeing new countries,--possibly (I thought) also
smuggling a watch or so, now and then. Sixthly, a little widow, who had
been very pretty and was still very young, but whose beauty had been
wrecked in some great misfortune, and whose manner was remarkably timid,
scared, and solitary. Seventhly and lastly, a Traveller of a kind
familiar to my boyhood, but now almost obsolete,--a Book-Pedler, who had
a quantity of Pamphlets and Numbers with him, and who presently boasted
that he could repeat more verses in an evening than he could sell in a
twelvemonth.
All these I have mentioned in the order in which they sat at table. I
presided, and the matronly presence faced me. We were not long in taking
our places, for the supper had arrived with me, in the following
procession:
Myself with the pitcher.
Ben with Beer.
Inattentive Boy with hot plates. Inattentive Boy with hot plates.
THE TURKEY.
Female carrying sauces to be heated on the spot.
THE BEEF.
Man with Tray on his head, containing Vegetables and Sundries.
Volunteer Hostler from Hotel, grinning,
And rendering no assistance.
As we passed along the High Street, comet-like, we left a long tail of
fragrance behind us which caused the public to stop, sniffing in wonder.
We had previously left at the corner of the inn-yard a wall-eyed young
man connected with the Fly department, and well accustomed to the sound
of a railway whistle which Ben always carries in his pocket, whose
instructions were, so soon as he should hear the whistle blown, to dash
into the kitchen, seize the hot plum-pudding and mince-pies, and speed
with them to Watts's Charity, where they would be received (he was
further instructed) by the sauce-female, who would be provided with
brandy in a blue state of combustion.
All these arrangements were executed in the most exact and punctual
manner. I never saw a finer turkey, finer beef, or greater prodigality
of sauce and gravy;--and my Travellers did wonderful justice to
everything set before them. It made my heart rejoice to observe how
their wind and frost hardened faces softened in the clatter of plates and
knives and forks, and mellowed in the fire and supper heat. While their
hats and caps and wrappers, hanging up, a few small bundles on the ground
in a corner, and in another corner three or four old walking-sticks, worn
down at the end to mere fringe, linked this smug interior with the bleak
outside in a golden chain.
When supper was done, and my brown beauty had been elevated on the table,
there was a general requisition to me to "take the corner;" which
suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here made of a
fire,--for when had _I_ ever thought so highly of the corner, since the
days when I connected it with Jack Horner? However, as I declined, Ben,
whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table
apart, and instructing my Travellers to open right and left on either
side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and
my chair, and preserved the order we had kept at table. He had already,
in a tranquil manner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they
had been by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room; and he now
rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the High Street, disappeared,
and softly closed the door.
This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of wood. I
tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a brilliant host
of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the chimney,--rushing
up the middle in a fiery country dance, and never coming down again.
Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which threw our lamp into the shade,
I filled the glasses, and gave my Travellers, CHRISTMAS!--CHRISTMAS-EVE,
my friends, when the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their
way, heard the Angels sing, "On earth, peace. Good-will towards men!"
I don't know who was the first among us to think that we ought to take
hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one of us
anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. We then drank to
the memory of the good Master Richard Watts. And I wish his Ghost may
never have had worse usage under that roof than it had from us.
It was the witching time for Story-telling. "Our whole life,
Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,--generally
less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for
one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce
know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story as
we sit here?"
They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but I was bound by my
own proposal. Therefore, after looking for awhile at the spiral column
of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, through which I could have
almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master Richard Watts less startled than
usual, I fired away.