THE INTERNAL NAVIGATION
The London world, visitors as well as residents, are well acquainted
also with Somerset House; and it is moreover tolerably well known that
Somerset House is a nest of public offices, which are held to be of less
fashionable repute than those situated in the neighbourhood of Downing
Street, but are not so decidedly plebeian as the Custom House, Excise,
and Post Office.
But there is one branch of the Civil Service located in Somerset House,
which has little else to redeem it from the lowest depths of official
vulgarity than the ambiguous respectability of its material position.
This is the office of the Commissioners of Internal Navigation. The
duties to be performed have reference to the preservation of canal
banks, the tolls to be levied at locks, and disputes with the Admiralty
as to points connected with tidal rivers. The rooms are dull and dark,
and saturated with the fog which rises from the river, and their only
ornament is here and there some dusty model of an improved barge.
Bargees not unfrequently scuffle with hobnailed shoes through the
passages, and go in and out, leaving behind them a smell of tobacco, to
which the denizens of the place are not unaccustomed.
Indeed, the whole office is apparently infected with a leaven of
bargedom. Not a few of the men are employed from time to time in the
somewhat lethargic work of inspecting the banks and towing-paths of the
canals which intersect the country. This they generally do seated on a
load of hay, or perhaps of bricks, in one of those long, ugly, shapeless
boats, which are to be seen congregating in the neighbourhood of
Brentford. So seated, they are carried along at the rate of a mile and
a half an hour, and usually while away the time in gentle converse with
the man at the rudder, or in silent abstraction over a pipe.
But the dullness of such a life as this is fully atoned for by the
excitement of that which follows it in London. The men of the Internal
Navigation are known to be fast, nay, almost furious in their pace of
living; not that they are extravagant in any great degree, a fault which
their scale of salaries very generally forbids; but they are one and all
addicted to Coal Holes and Cider Cellars; they dive at midnight hours
into Shades, and know all the back parlours of all the public-houses
in the neighbourhood of the Strand. Here they leave messages for one
another, and call the girl at the bar by her Christian name. They are a
set of men endowed with sallow complexions, and they wear loud clothing,
and spend more money in gin-and-water than in gloves.
The establishment is not unusually denominated the 'Infernal
Navigation', and the gentlemen employed are not altogether displeased at
having it so called. The 'Infernal Navvies', indeed, rather glory in the
name. The navvies of Somerset House are known all over London, and there
are those who believe that their business has some connexion with the
rivers or railroads of that bourne from whence no traveller returns.
Looking, however, from their office windows into the Thames, one might
be tempted to imagine that the infernal navigation with which they
are connected is not situated so far distant from the place of their
labours.
The spirit who guards the entrance into this elysium is by no means so
difficult to deal with as Mr. Hardlines. And it was well that it was
so some few years since for young Charley Tudor, a cousin of our friend
Alaric; for Charley Tudor could never have passed muster at the Weights
and Measures. Charles Tudor, the third of the three clerks alluded to in
our title-page, is the son of a clergyman, who has a moderate living on
the Welsh border, in Shropshire. Had he known to what sort of work he
was sending his son, he might probably have hesitated before he accepted
for him a situation in the Internal Navigation Office. He was, however,
too happy in getting it to make many inquiries as to its nature. We none
of us like to look a gift-horse in the mouth. Old Mr. Tudor knew that
a clerkship in the Civil Service meant, or should mean, a respectable
maintenance for life, and having many young Tudors to maintain himself,
he was only too glad to find one of them provided for.
Charley Tudor was some few years younger than his cousin Alaric when he
came up to town, and Alaric had at that time some three or four years'
experience of London life. The examination at the Internal Navigation
was certainly not to be so much dreaded as that at the Weights and
Measures; but still there was an examination; and Charley, who had not
been the most diligent of schoolboys, approached it with great dread
after a preparatory evening passed with the assistance of his cousin and
Mr. Norman.
Exactly at ten in the morning he walked into the lobby of his future
workshop, and found no one yet there but two aged seedy messengers. He
was shown into a waiting-room, and there he remained for a couple of
hours, during which every clerk in the establishment came to have a look
at him. At last he was ushered into the Secretary's room.
'Ah!' said the Secretary, 'your name is Tudor, isn't it?'
Charley confessed to the fact.
'Yea,' said the Secretary, 'I have heard about you from Sir Gilbert de
Salop.' Now Sir Gilbert de Salop was the great family friend of this
branch of the Tudors. But Charley, finding that no remark suggested
itself to him at this moment concerning Sir Gilbert, merely said, 'Yes,
sir.'
'And you wish to serve the Queen?' said the Secretary.
Charley, not quite knowing whether this was a joke or not, said that he
did.
'Quite right--it is a very fair ambition,' continued the great official
functionary--'quite right--but, mind you, Mr. Tudor, if you come to us
you must come to work. I hope you like hard work; you should do so, if
you intend to remain with us.'
Charley said that he thought he did rather like hard work. Hereupon
a senior clerk standing by, though a man not given to much laughter,
smiled slightly, probably in pity at the unceasing labour to which the
youth was about to devote himself.
'The Internal Navigation requires great steadiness, good natural
abilities, considerable education, and--and--and no end of application.
Come, Mr. Tudor, let us see what you can do.' And so saying, Mr.
Oldeschole, the Secretary, motioned him to sit down at an office table
opposite to himself.
Charley did as he was bid, and took from the hands of his future master
an old, much-worn quill pen, with which the great man had been signing
minutes.
'Now,' said the great man, 'just copy the few first sentences of that
leading article--either one will do,' and he pushed over to him a huge
newspaper.
To tell the truth, Charley did not know what a leading article was, and
so he sat abashed, staring at the paper.
'Why don't you write?' asked the Secretary.
'Where shall I begin, sir?' stammered poor Charley, looking piteously
into the examiner's face.
'God bless my soul! there; either of those leading articles,' and
leaning over the table, the Secretary pointed to a particular spot.
Hereupon Charley began his task in a large, ugly, round hand, neither
that of a man nor of a boy, and set himself to copy the contents of
the paper. 'The name of Pacifico stinks in the nostril of the British
public. It is well known to all the world how sincerely we admire the
vers_i_tility of Lord Palmerston's genius; how cordially we s_i_mpathize
with his patriotic energies. But the admiration which even a Palmerston
inspires must have a bound, and our s_i_mpathy may be called on too far.
When we find ourselves asked to pay--'. By this time Charley had half
covered the half-sheet of foolscap which had been put before him, and
here at the word 'pay' he unfortunately suffered a large blot of ink to
fall on the paper.
'That won't do, Mr. Tudor, that won't do--come, let us look,' and
stretching over again, the Secretary took up the copy.
'Oh dear! oh dear! this is very bad; versatility with an 'i!'--sympathy
with an 'i!' sympathize with an 'i!' Why, Mr. Tudor, you must be very
fond of 'i's' down in Shropshire.'
Charley looked sheepish, but of course said nothing.
'And I never saw a viler hand in my life. Oh dear, oh dear, I must send
you back to Sir Gilbert. Look here, Snape, this will never do--never do
for the Internal Navigation, will it?'
Snape, the attendant senior clerk, said, as indeed he could not help
saying, that the writing was very bad.
'I never saw worse in my life,' said the Secretary. 'And now, Mr. Tudor,
what do you know of arithmetic?'
Charley said that he thought he knew arithmetic pretty well;--'at least
some of it,' he modestly added.
'Some of it!' said the Secretary, slightly laughing. 'Well, I'll tell
you what--this won't do at all;' and he took the unfortunate manuscript
between his thumb and forefinger. 'You had better go home and endeavour
to write something a little better than this. Mind, if it is not
very much better it won't do. And look here; take care that you do it
yourself. If you bring me the writing of any one else, I shall be sure
to detect you. I have not any more time now; as to arithmetic, we'll
examine you in 'some of it' to-morrow.'
So Charley, with a faint heart, went back to his cousin's lodgings and
waited till the two friends had arrived from the Weights and Measures.
The men there made a point of staying up to five o'clock, as is the case
with all model officials, and it was therefore late before he could get
himself properly set to work. But when they did arrive, preparations
for calligraphy were made on a great scale; a volume of Gibbon was taken
down, new quill pens, large and small, and steel pens by various makers
were procured; cream-laid paper was provided, and ruled lines were put
beneath it. And when this was done, Charley was especially cautioned to
copy the spelling as well as the wording.
He worked thus for an hour before dinner, and then for three hours in
the evening, and produced a very legible copy of half a chapter of the
'Decline and Fall.'
'I didn't think they examined at all at the Navigation,' said Norman.
'Well, I believe it's quite a new thing,' said Alaric Tudor. 'The
schoolmaster must be abroad with a vengeance, if he has got as far as
that.'
And then they carefully examined Charley's work, crossed his t's, dotted
his i's, saw that his spelling was right, and went to bed.
Again, punctually at ten o'clock, Charley presented himself at the
Internal Navigation; and again saw the two seedy old messengers warming
themselves at the lobby fire. On this occasion he was kept three hours
in the waiting-room, and some of the younger clerks ventured to come and
speak to him. At length Mr. Snape appeared, and desired the acolyte
to follow him. Charley, supposing that he was again going to the awful
Secretary, did so with a palpitating heart. But he was led in another
direction into a large room, carrying his manuscript neatly rolled in
his hand. Here Mr. Snape introduced him to five other occupants of the
chamber; he, Mr. Snape himself, having a separate desk there, being, in
official parlance, the head of the room. Charley was told to take a
seat at a desk, and did so, still thinking that the dread hour of his
examination was soon to come. His examination, however, was begun and
over. No one ever asked for his calligraphic manuscript, and as to his
arithmetic, it may be presumed that his assurance that he knew 'some of
it,' was deemed to be adequate evidence of sufficient capacity. And in
this manner, Charley Tudor became one of the Infernal Navvies.
He was a gay-hearted, thoughtless, rollicking young lad, when he came up
to town; and it may therefore be imagined that he easily fell into the
peculiar ways and habits of the office. A short bargee's pilot-coat, and
a pipe of tobacco, were soon familiar to him; and he had not been six
months in London before he had his house-of-call in a cross lane running
between Essex Street and Norfolk Street. 'Mary, my dear, a screw of
bird's-eye!' came quite habitually to his lips; and before his fist year
was out, he had volunteered a song at the Buckingham Shades.
The assurance made to him on his first visit to the office by Mr.
Secretary Oldeschole, that the Internal Navigation was a place of
herculean labours, had long before this time become matter to him of
delightful ridicule. He had found himself to be one of six young men,
who habitually spent about five hours a day together in the same room,
and whose chief employment was to render the life of the wretched Mr.
Snape as unendurable as possible. There were copies to be written,
and entries to be made, and books to be indexed. But these things
were generally done by some extra hand, as to the necessity of whose
attendance for such purpose Mr. Snape was forced to certify. But poor
Snape knew that he had no alternative. He rule six unruly young navvies!
There was not one of them who did not well know how to make him tremble
in his shoes.
Poor Mr. Snape had selected for his own peculiar walk in life a
character for evangelical piety. Whether he was a hypocrite--as all the
navvies averred--or a man sincere as far as one so weak could accomplish
sincerity, it is hardly necessary for us to inquire. He was not by
nature an ill-natured man, but he had become by education harsh to
those below him, and timid and cringing with those above. In the
former category must by no means be included the six young men who were
nominally under his guidance. They were all but acknowledged by him as
his superiors. Ignorant as they were, they could hardly be more so than
he. Useless as they were, they did as much for the public service as
he did. He sometimes complained of them; but it was only when their
misconduct had been so loud as to make it no longer possible that he
should not do so.
Mr. Snape being thus by character and predilection a religious man,
and having on various occasions in olden days professed much horror
at having his ears wounded by conversation which was either immoral or
profane, it had of course become the habitual practice of the navvies to
give continual utterance to every description of ribaldry and blasphemy
for his especial edification. Doubtless it may be concluded from the
habits of the men, that even without such provocation, their talk would
have exceeded the yea, yea, and nay, nay, to which young men should
confine themselves. But they especially concerted schemes of blasphemy
and dialogues of iniquity for Mr. Snape's particular advantage; and
continued daily this disinterested amusement, till at last an idea
got abroad among them that Mr. Snape liked it. Then they changed their
tactics and canted through their noses in the manner which they imagined
to be peculiar to methodist preachers. So on the whole, Mr. Snape had an
uneasy life of it at the Internal Navigation.
Into all these malpractices Charley Tudor plunged headlong. And how
should it have been otherwise? How can any youth of nineteen or twenty
do other than consort himself with the daily companions of his usual
avocations? Once and again, in one case among ten thousand, a lad may
be found formed of such stuff, that he receives neither the good nor the
bad impulses of those around him. But such a one is a _lapsus naturae_.
He has been born without the proper attributes of youth, or at any rate,
brought up so as to have got rid of them.
Such, a one, at any rate, Charley Tudor was not. He was a little shocked
at first by the language he heard; but that feeling soon wore off. His
kind heart, also, in the first month of his novitiate, sympathized with
the daily miseries of Mr. Snape; but he also soon learnt to believe that
Mr. Snape was a counterfeit, and after the first half year could torture
him with as much gusto as any of his brethren. Alas! no evil tendency
communicates itself among young men more quickly than cruelty. Those
infernal navvies were very cruel to Mr. Snape.
And yet young Tudor was a lad of a kindly heart, of a free, honest, open
disposition, deficient in no proportion of mind necessary to make an
estimable man. But he was easily malleable, and he took at once the full
impression of the stamp to which he was subjected. Had he gone into
the Weights and Measures, a hypothesis which of course presumes a total
prostration of the intellects and energy of Mr. Hardlines, he would have
worked without a groan from ten till five, and have become as good a
model as the best of them. As it was, he can be hardly said to have
worked at all, soon became _facile princeps_ in the list of habitual
idlers, and was usually threatened once a quarter with dismissal, even
from that abode of idleness, in which the very nature of true work was
unknown.
Some tidings of Charley's doings in London, and non-doings at the
Internal Navigation, of course found their way to the Shropshire
parsonage. His dissipation was not of a very costly kind; but £90 per
annum will hardly suffice to afford an ample allowance of gin-and-water
and bird's-eye tobacco, over and above the other wants of a man's life.
Bills arrived there requiring payment; and worse than this, letters also
came through Sir Gilbert de Salop from Mr. Oldeschole, the Secretary,
saying that young Tudor was disgracing the office, and lowering the
high character of the Internal Navigation; and that he must be removed,
unless he could be induced to alter his line of life, &c.
Urgent austere letters came from the father, and fond heart-rending
appeals from the mother. Charley's heart was rent. It was, at any rate,
a sign in him that he was not past hope of grace, that he never laughed
at these monitions, that he never showed such letters to his companions,
never quizzed his 'governor's' lectures, or made merry over the grief of
his mother. But if it be hard for a young man to keep in the right
path when he has not as yet strayed out of it, how much harder is it to
return to it when he has long since lost the track! It was well for
the father to write austere letters, well for the mother to make tender
appeals, but Charley could not rid himself of his companions, nor of his
debts, nor yet even of his habits. He could not get up in the morning
and say that he would at once be as his cousin Alaric, or as his
cousin's friend, Mr. Norman. It is not by our virtues or our vices that
we are judged, even by those who know us best; but by such credit for
virtues or for vices as we may have acquired. Now young Tudor's credit
for virtue was very slight, and he did not know how to extend it.
At last papa and mamma Tudor came up to town to make one last effort to
save their son; and also to save, on his behalf, the valuable official
appointment which he held. He had now been three years in his office,
and his salary had risen to £110 per annum. £110 per annum was worth
saving if it could be saved. The plan adopted by Mrs. Tudor was that of
beseeching their cousin Alaric to take Charley under his especial wing.
When Charley first arrived in town, the fact of Alaric and Norman living
together had given the former a good excuse for not offering to share
his lodgings with his cousin. Alaric, with the advantage in age of
three or four years--at that period of life the advantage lies in that
direction--with his acquired experience of London life, and also with
all the wondrous éclat of the Weights and Measures shining round him,
had perhaps been a little too unwilling to take by the hand a rustic
cousin who was about to enter life under the questionable auspices of
the Internal Navigation. He had helped Charley to transcribe the chapter
of Gibbon, and had, it must be owned, lent him from time to time a
few odd pounds in his direst necessities. But their course in life had
hitherto been apart. Of Norman, Charley had seen less even than of his
cousin.
And now it became a difficult question with Alaric how he was to answer
the direct appeal made to him by Mrs. Tudor;--'Pray, pray let him live
with you, if it be only for a year, Alaric,' the mother had said, with
the tears running down her cheeks. 'You are so good, so discreet, so
clever--you can save him.' Alaric promised, or was ready to promise,
anything else, but hesitated as to the joint lodgings. 'How could he
manage it,' said he, 'living, as he was, with another man? He feared
that Mr. Norman would not accede to such an arrangement. As for himself,
he would do anything but leave his friend Norman.' To tell the truth,
Alaric thought much, perhaps too much, of the respectability of those
with whom he consorted. He had already begun to indulge ambitious
schemes, already had ideas stretching even beyond the limits of the
Weights and Measures, and fully intended to make the very most of
himself.
Mrs. Tudor, in her deep grief, then betook herself to Mr. Norman, though
with that gentleman she had not even the slightest acquaintance. With
a sulking heart, with a consciousness of her unreasonableness, but with
the eloquence of maternal sorrow, she made her request. Mr. Norman heard
her out with all the calm propriety of the Weights and Measures, begged
to have a day to consider, and then acceded to the request.
'I think we ought to do it,' said he to Alaric. The mother's tears
had touched his heart, and his sense of duty had prevailed. Alaric, of
course, could now make no further objection, and thus Charley the Navvy
became domesticated with his cousin Alaric and Harry Norman.
The first great question to be settled, and it is a very great question
with a young man, was that of latch-key or no latch-key. Mrs. Richards,
the landlady, when she made ready the third bedroom for the young
gentleman, would, as was her wont in such matters, have put a latch-key
on the toilet-table as a matter of course, had she not had some little
conversation with Mamma Tudor regarding her son. Mamma Tudor had
implored and coaxed, and probably bribed Mrs. Richards to do something
more than 'take her son in and do for him'; and Mrs. Richards, as her
first compliance with these requests, had kept the latch-key in her own
pocket. So matters went on for a week; but when Mrs. Richards found that
her maidservant was never woken by Mr. Charley's raps after midnight,
and that she herself was obliged to descend in her dressing-gown, she
changed her mind, declared to herself that it was useless to attempt to
keep a grown gentleman in leading-strings, and put the key on the table
on the second Monday morning.
As none of the three men ever dined at home, Alaric and Norman having
clubs which they frequented, and Charley eating his dinner at some
neighbouring dining-house, it may be imagined that this change of
residence did our poor navvy but little good. It had, however, a
salutary effect on him, at any rate at first. He became shamed into a
quieter and perhaps cleaner mode of dressing himself; he constrained
himself to sit down to breakfast with his monitors at half-past eight,
and was at any rate so far regardful of Mrs. Richards as not to smoke
in his bedroom, and to come home sober enough to walk upstairs without
assistance every night for the first month.
But perhaps the most salutary effect made by this change on young Tudor
was this, that he was taken by his cousin one Sunday to the Woodwards.
Poor Charley had had but small opportunity of learning what are the
pleasures of decent society. He had gone headlong among the infernal
navvies too quickly to allow of that slow and gradual formation of
decent alliances which is all in all to a young man entering life. A boy
is turned loose into London, and desired to choose the good and eschew
the bad. Boy as he is, he might probably do so if the opportunity came
in his way. But no such chance is afforded him. To eschew the bad is
certainly possible for him; but as to the good, he must wait till he
be chosen. This it is, that is too much for him. He cannot live without
society, and so he falls.
Society, an ample allowance of society, this is the first requisite
which a mother should seek in sending her son to live alone in London;
balls, routs, picnics, parties; women, pretty, well-dressed, witty,
easy-mannered; good pictures, elegant drawing rooms, well got-up books,
Majolica and Dresden china--these are the truest guards to protect a
youth from dissipation and immorality.
These are the books, the arts, the academes
That show, contain, and nourish all the world,
if only a youth could have them at his disposal. Some of these things,
though by no means all, Charley Tudor encountered at the Woodwards.