WHEN Don Diego de—I forget his name—the inventor of the last new Flying
Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more for
gentlemen—when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax and his noble
band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen’s dominions, and shall
have opened a commodious Warehouse in an airy situation; and when all
persons of any gentility will keep at least a pair of wings, and be seen
skimming about in every direction; I shall take a flight to Paris (as I
soar round the world) in a cheap and independent manner. At present, my
reliance is on the South-Eastern Railway Company, in whose Express Train
here I sit, at eight of the clock on a very hot morning, under the very
hot roof of the Terminus at London Bridge, in danger of being ‘forced’
like a cucumber or a melon, or a pine-apple. And talking of pine-apples,
I suppose there never were so many pine-apples in a Train as there appear
to be in this Train.
Whew! The hot-house air is faint with pine-apples. Every French citizen
or citizeness is carrying pine-apples home. The compact little
Enchantress in the corner of my carriage (French actress, to whom I
yielded up my heart under the auspices of that brave child, ‘MEAT-CHELL,’
at the St. James’s Theatre the night before last) has a pine-apple in her
lap. Compact Enchantress’s friend, confidante, mother, mystery, Heaven
knows what, has two pine-apples in her lap, and a bundle of them under
the seat. Tobacco-smoky Frenchman in Algerine wrapper, with peaked hood
behind, who might be Abd-el-Kader dyed rifle-green, and who seems to be
dressed entirely in dirt and braid, carries pine-apples in a covered
basket. Tall, grave, melancholy Frenchman, with black Vandyke beard, and
hair close-cropped, with expansive chest to waistcoat, and compressive
waist to coat: saturnine as to his pantaloons, calm as to his feminine
boots, precious as to his jewellery, smooth and white as to his linen:
dark-eyed, high-foreheaded, hawk-nosed—got up, one thinks, like Lucifer
or Mephistopheles, or Zamiel, transformed into a highly genteel
Parisian—has the green end of a pine-apple sticking out of his neat
valise.
Whew! If I were to be kept here long, under this forcing-frame, I wonder
what would become of me—whether I should be forced into a giant, or
should sprout or blow into some other phenomenon! Compact Enchantress is
not ruffled by the heat—she is always composed, always compact. O look
at her little ribbons, frills, and edges, at her shawl, at her gloves, at
her hair, at her bracelets, at her bonnet, at everything about her! How
is it accomplished? What does she do to be so neat? How is it that
every trifle she wears belongs to her, and cannot choose but be a part of
her? And even Mystery, look at _her_! A model. Mystery is not young,
not pretty, though still of an average candle-light passability; but she
does such miracles in her own behalf, that, one of these days, when she
dies, they’ll be amazed to find an old woman in her bed, distantly like
her. She was an actress once, I shouldn’t wonder, and had a Mystery
attendant on herself. Perhaps, Compact Enchantress will live to be a
Mystery, and to wait with a shawl at the side-scenes, and to sit opposite
to Mademoiselle in railway carriages, and smile and talk subserviently,
as Mystery does now. That’s hard to believe!
Two Englishmen, and now our carriage is full. First Englishman, in the
monied interest—flushed, highly respectable—Stock Exchange, perhaps—City,
certainly. Faculties of second Englishman entirely absorbed in hurry.
Plunges into the carriage, blind. Calls out of window concerning his
luggage, deaf. Suffocates himself under pillows of great-coats, for no
reason, and in a demented manner. Will receive no assurance from any
porter whatsoever. Is stout and hot, and wipes his head, and makes
himself hotter by breathing so hard. Is totally incredulous respecting
assurance of Collected Guard, that ‘there’s no hurry.’ No hurry! And a
flight to Paris in eleven hours!
It is all one to me in this drowsy corner, hurry or no hurry. Until Don
Diego shall send home my wings, my flight is with the South-Eastern
Company. I can fly with the South-Eastern, more lazily, at all events,
than in the upper air. I have but to sit here thinking as idly as I
please, and be whisked away. I am not accountable to anybody for the
idleness of my thoughts in such an idle summer flight; my flight is
provided for by the South-Eastern and is no business of mine.
The bell! With all my heart. It does not require me to do so much as
even to flap my wings. Something snorts for me, something shrieks for
me, something proclaims to everything else that it had better keep out of
my way,—and away I go.
Ah! The fresh air is pleasant after the forcing-frame, though it does
blow over these interminable streets, and scatter the smoke of this vast
wilderness of chimneys. Here we are—no, I mean there we were, for it has
darted far into the rear—in Bermondsey where the tanners live. Flash!
The distant shipping in the Thames is gone. Whirr! The little streets
of new brick and red tile, with here and there a flagstaff growing like a
tall weed out of the scarlet beans, and, everywhere, plenty of open sewer
and ditch for the promotion of the public health, have been fired off in
a volley. Whizz! Dust-heaps, market-gardens, and waste grounds.
Rattle! New Cross Station. Shock! There we were at Croydon.
Bur-r-r-r! The tunnel.
I wonder why it is that when I shut my eyes in a tunnel I begin to feel
as if I were going at an Express pace the other way. I am clearly going
back to London now. Compact Enchantress must have forgotten something,
and reversed the engine. No! After long darkness, pale fitful streaks
of light appear. I am still flying on for Folkestone. The streaks grow
stronger—become continuous—become the ghost of day—become the living
day—became I mean—the tunnel is miles and miles away, and here I fly
through sunlight, all among the harvest and the Kentish hops.
There is a dreamy pleasure in this flying. I wonder where it was, and
when it was, that we exploded, blew into space somehow, a Parliamentary
Train, with a crowd of heads and faces looking at us out of cages, and
some hats waving. Monied Interest says it was at Reigate Station.
Expounds to Mystery how Reigate Station is so many miles from London,
which Mystery again develops to Compact Enchantress. There might be
neither a Reigate nor a London for me, as I fly away among the Kentish
hops and harvest. What do _I_ care?
Bang! We have let another Station off, and fly away regardless.
Everything is flying. The hop-gardens turn gracefully towards me,
presenting regular avenues of hops in rapid flight, then whirl away. So
do the pools and rushes, haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious
to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry-orchards, apple-orchards,
reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little
angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and then a church. Bang, bang!
A double-barrelled Station! Now a wood, now a bridge, now a landscape,
now a cutting, now a—Bang! a single-barrelled Station—there was a
cricket-match somewhere with two white tents, and then four flying cows,
then turnips—now the wires of the electric telegraph are all alive, and
spin, and blurr their edges, and go up and down, and make the intervals
between each other most irregular: contracting and expanding in the
strangest manner. Now we slacken. With a screwing, and a grinding, and
a smell of water thrown on ashes, now we stop!
Demented Traveller, who has been for two or three minutes watchful,
clutches his great-coats, plunges at the door, rattles it, cries ‘Hi!’
eager to embark on board of impossible packets, far inland. Collected
Guard appears. ‘Are you for Tunbridge, sir?’ ‘Tunbridge? No. Paris.’
‘Plenty of time, sir. No hurry. Five minutes here, sir, for
refreshment.’ I am so blest (anticipating Zamiel, by half a second) as
to procure a glass of water for Compact Enchantress.
Who would suppose we had been flying at such a rate, and shall take wing
again directly? Refreshment-room full, platform full, porter with
watering-pot deliberately cooling a hot wheel, another porter with equal
deliberation helping the rest of the wheels bountifully to ice cream.
Monied Interest and I re-entering the carriage first, and being there
alone, he intimates to me that the French are ‘no go’ as a Nation. I ask
why? He says, that Reign of Terror of theirs was quite enough. I
ventured to inquire whether he remembers anything that preceded said
Reign of Terror? He says not particularly. ‘Because,’ I remark, ‘the
harvest that is reaped, has sometimes been sown.’ Monied Interest
repeats, as quite enough for him, that the French are revolutionary,—‘and
always at it.’
Bell. Compact Enchantress, helped in by Zamiel (whom the stars
confound!), gives us her charming little side-box look, and smites me to
the core. Mystery eating sponge-cake. Pine-apple atmosphere faintly
tinged with suspicions of sherry. Demented Traveller flits past the
carriage, looking for it. Is blind with agitation, and can’t see it.
Seems singled out by Destiny to be the only unhappy creature in the
flight, who has any cause to hurry himself. Is nearly left behind. Is
seized by Collected Guard after the Train is in motion, and bundled in.
Still, has lingering suspicions that there must be a boat in the
neighbourhood, and will look wildly out of window for it.
Flight resumed. Corn-sheaves, hop-gardens, reapers, gleaners,
apple-orchards, cherry-orchards, Stations single and double-barrelled,
Ashford. Compact Enchantress (constantly talking to Mystery, in an
exquisite manner) gives a little scream; a sound that seems to come from
high up in her precious little head; from behind her bright little
eyebrows. ‘Great Heaven, my pine-apple! My Angel! It is lost!’
Mystery is desolated. A search made. It is not lost. Zamiel finds it.
I curse him (flying) in the Persian manner. May his face be turned
upside down, and jackasses sit upon his uncle’s grave!
Now fresher air, now glimpses of unenclosed Down-land with flapping crows
flying over it whom we soon outfly, now the Sea, now Folkestone at a
quarter after ten. ‘Tickets ready, gentlemen!’ Demented dashes at the
door. ‘For Paris, sir? No hurry.’
Not the least. We are dropped slowly down to the Port, and sidle to and
fro (the whole Train) before the insensible Royal George Hotel, for some
ten minutes. The Royal George takes no more heed of us than its namesake
under water at Spithead, or under earth at Windsor, does. The Royal
George’s dog lies winking and blinking at us, without taking the trouble
to sit up; and the Royal George’s ‘wedding party’ at the open window (who
seem, I must say, rather tired of bliss) don’t bestow a solitary glance
upon us, flying thus to Paris in eleven hours. The first gentleman in
Folkestone is evidently used up, on this subject.
Meanwhile, Demented chafes. Conceives that every man’s hand is against
him, and exerting itself to prevent his getting to Paris. Refuses
consolation. Rattles door. Sees smoke on the horizon, and ‘knows’ it’s
the boat gone without him. Monied Interest resentfully explains that
_he_ is going to Paris too. Demented signifies, that if Monied Interest
chooses to be left behind, he don’t.
‘Refreshments in the Waiting-Room, ladies and gentlemen. No hurry,
ladies and gentlemen, for Paris. No hurry whatever!’
Twenty minutes’ pause, by Folkestone clock, for looking at Enchantress
while she eats a sandwich, and at Mystery while she eats of everything
there that is eatable, from pork-pie, sausage, jam, and gooseberries, to
lumps of sugar. All this time, there is a very waterfall of luggage,
with a spray of dust, tumbling slantwise from the pier into the
steamboat. All this time, Demented (who has no business with it) watches
it with starting eyes, fiercely requiring to be shown his luggage. When
it at last concludes the cataract, he rushes hotly to refresh—is shouted
after, pursued, jostled, brought back, pitched into the departing steamer
upside down, and caught by mariners disgracefully.
A lovely harvest-day, a cloudless sky, a tranquil sea. The piston-rods
of the engines so regularly coming up from below, to look (as well they
may) at the bright weather, and so regularly almost knocking their iron
heads against the cross beam of the skylight, and never doing it!
Another Parisian actress is on board, attended by another Mystery.
Compact Enchantress greets her sister artist—Oh, the Compact One’s pretty
teeth!—and Mystery greets Mystery. _My_ Mystery soon ceases to be
conversational—is taken poorly, in a word, having lunched too
miscellaneously—and goes below. The remaining Mystery then smiles upon
the sister artists (who, I am afraid, wouldn’t greatly mind stabbing each
other), and is upon the whole ravished.
And now I find that all the French people on board begin to grow, and all
the English people to shrink. The French are nearing home, and shaking
off a disadvantage, whereas we are shaking it on. Zamiel is the same
man, and Abd-el-Kader is the same man, but each seems to come into
possession of an indescribable confidence that departs from us—from
Monied Interest, for instance, and from me. Just what they gain, we
lose. Certain British ‘Gents’ about the steersman, intellectually
nurtured at home on parody of everything and truth of nothing, become
subdued, and in a manner forlorn; and when the steersman tells them (not
exultingly) how he has ‘been upon this station now eight year, and never
see the old town of Bullum yet,’ one of them, with an imbecile reliance
on a reed, asks him what he considers to be the best hotel in Paris?
Now, I tread upon French ground, and am greeted by the three charming
words, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, painted up (in letters a little too
thin for their height) on the Custom-house wall—also by the sight of
large cocked hats, without which demonstrative head-gear nothing of a
public nature can be done upon this soil. All the rabid Hotel population
of Boulogne howl and shriek outside a distant barrier, frantic to get at
us. Demented, by some unlucky means peculiar to himself, is delivered
over to their fury, and is presently seen struggling in a whirlpool of
Touters—is somehow understood to be going to Paris—is, with infinite
noise, rescued by two cocked hats, and brought into Custom-house bondage
with the rest of us.
Here, I resign the active duties of life to an eager being, of
preternatural sharpness, with a shelving forehead and a shabby
snuff-coloured coat, who (from the wharf) brought me down with his eye
before the boat came into port. He darts upon my luggage, on the floor
where all the luggage is strewn like a wreck at the bottom of the great
deep; gets it proclaimed and weighed as the property of ‘Monsieur a
traveller unknown;’ pays certain francs for it, to a certain functionary
behind a Pigeon Hole, like a pay-box at a Theatre (the arrangements in
general are on a wholesale scale, half military and half theatrical); and
I suppose I shall find it when I come to Paris—he says I shall. I know
nothing about it, except that I pay him his small fee, and pocket the
ticket he gives me, and sit upon a counter, involved in the general
distraction.
Railway station. ‘Lunch or dinner, ladies and gentlemen. Plenty of time
for Paris. Plenty of time!’ Large hall, long counter, long strips of
dining-table, bottles of wine, plates of meat, roast chickens, little
loaves of bread, basins of soup, little caraffes of brandy, cakes, and
fruit. Comfortably restored from these resources, I begin to fly again.
I saw Zamiel (before I took wing) presented to Compact Enchantress and
Sister Artist, by an officer in uniform, with a waist like a wasp’s, and
pantaloons like two balloons. They all got into the next carriage
together, accompanied by the two Mysteries. They laughed. I am alone in
the carriage (for I don’t consider Demented anybody) and alone in the
world.
Fields, windmills, low grounds, pollard-trees, windmills, fields,
fortifications, Abbeville, soldiering and drumming. I wonder where
England is, and when I was there last—about two years ago, I should say.
Flying in and out among these trenches and batteries, skimming the
clattering drawbridges, looking down into the stagnant ditches, I become
a prisoner of state, escaping. I am confined with a comrade in a
fortress. Our room is in an upper story. We have tried to get up the
chimney, but there’s an iron grating across it, imbedded in the masonry.
After months of labour, we have worked the grating loose with the poker,
and can lift it up. We have also made a hook, and twisted our rugs and
blankets into ropes. Our plan is, to go up the chimney, hook our ropes
to the top, descend hand over hand upon the roof of the guard-house far
below, shake the hook loose, watch the opportunity of the sentinels
pacing away, hook again, drop into the ditch, swim across it, creep into
the shelter of the wood. The time is come—a wild and stormy night. We
are up the chimney, we are on the guard-house roof, we are swimming in
the murky ditch, when lo! ‘Qui v’là?’ a bugle, the alarm, a crash! What
is it? Death? No, Amiens.
More fortifications, more soldiering and drumming, more basins of soup,
more little loaves of bread, more bottles of wine, more caraffes of
brandy, more time for refreshment. Everything good, and everything
ready. Bright, unsubstantial-looking, scenic sort of station. People
waiting. Houses, uniforms, beards, moustaches, some sabots, plenty of
neat women, and a few old-visaged children. Unless it be a delusion born
of my giddy flight, the grown-up people and the children seem to change
places in France. In general, the boys and girls are little old men and
women, and the men and women lively boys and girls.
Bugle, shriek, flight resumed. Monied Interest has come into my
carriage. Says the manner of refreshing is ‘not bad,’ but considers it
French. Admits great dexterity and politeness in the attendants. Thinks
a decimal currency may have something to do with their despatch in
settling accounts, and don’t know but what it’s sensible and convenient.
Adds, however, as a general protest, that they’re a revolutionary
people—and always at it.
Ramparts, canals, cathedral, river, soldiering and drumming, open
country, river, earthenware manufactures, Creil. Again ten minutes. Not
even Demented in a hurry. Station, a drawing-room with a verandah: like
a planter’s house. Monied Interest considers it a band-box, and not made
to last. Little round tables in it, at one of which the Sister Artists
and attendant Mysteries are established with Wasp and Zamiel, as if they
were going to stay a week.
Anon, with no more trouble than before, I am flying again, and lazily
wondering as I fly. What has the South-Eastern done with all the
horrible little villages we used to pass through, in the _Diligence_?
What have they done with all the summer dust, with all the winter mud,
with all the dreary avenues of little trees, with all the ramshackle
postyards, with all the beggars (who used to turn out at night with bits
of lighted candle, to look in at the coach windows), with all the
long-tailed horses who were always biting one another, with all the big
postilions in jack-boots—with all the mouldy cafés that we used to stop
at, where a long mildewed table-cloth, set forth with jovial bottles of
vinegar and oil, and with a Siamese arrangement of pepper and salt, was
never wanting? Where are the grass-grown little towns, the wonderful
little market-places all unconscious of markets, the shops that nobody
kept, the streets that nobody trod, the churches that nobody went to, the
bells that nobody rang, the tumble-down old buildings plastered with
many-coloured bills that nobody read? Where are the two-and-twenty weary
hours of long, long day and night journey, sure to be either
insupportably hot or insupportably cold? Where are the pains in my
bones, where are the fidgets in my legs, where is the Frenchman with the
nightcap who never _would_ have the little coupé-window down, and who
always fell upon me when he went to sleep, and always slept all night
snoring onions?
A voice breaks in with ‘Paris! Here we are!’
I have overflown myself, perhaps, but I can’t believe it. I feel as if I
were enchanted or bewitched. It is barely eight o’clock yet—it is
nothing like half-past—when I have had my luggage examined at that
briskest of Custom-houses attached to the station, and am rattling over
the pavement in a hackney-cabriolet.
Surely, not the pavement of Paris? Yes, I think it is, too. I don’t
know any other place where there are all these high houses, all these
haggard-looking wine shops, all these billiard tables, all these
stocking-makers with flat red or yellow legs of wood for signboard, all
these fuel shops with stacks of billets painted outside, and real billets
sawing in the gutter, all these dirty corners of streets, all these
cabinet pictures over dark doorways representing discreet matrons nursing
babies. And yet this morning—I’ll think of it in a warm-bath.
Very like a small room that I remember in the Chinese baths upon the
Boulevard, certainly; and, though I see it through the steam, I think
that I might swear to that peculiar hot-linen basket, like a large wicker
hour-glass. When can it have been that I left home? When was it that I
paid ‘through to Paris’ at London Bridge, and discharged myself of all
responsibility, except the preservation of a voucher ruled into three
divisions, of which the first was snipped off at Folkestone, the second
aboard the boat, and the third taken at my journey’s end? It seems to
have been ages ago. Calculation is useless. I will go out for a walk.
The crowds in the streets, the lights in the shops and balconies, the
elegance, variety, and beauty of their decorations, the number of the
theatres, the brilliant cafés with their windows thrown up high and their
vivacious groups at little tables on the pavement, the light and glitter
of the houses turned as it were inside out, soon convince me that it is
no dream; that I am in Paris, howsoever I got there. I stroll down to
the sparkling Palais Royal, up the Rue de Rivoli, to the Place Vendôme.
As I glance into a print-shop window, Monied Interest, my late travelling
companion, comes upon me, laughing with the highest relish of disdain.
‘Here’s a people!’ he says, pointing to Napoleon in the window and
Napoleon on the column. ‘Only one idea all over Paris! A monomania!’
Humph! I THINK I have seen Napoleon’s match? There was a statue, when I
came away, at Hyde Park Corner, and another in the City, and a print or
two in the shops.
I walk up to the Barrière de l’Etoile, sufficiently dazed by my flight to
have a pleasant doubt of the reality of everything about me; of the
lively crowd, the overhanging trees, the performing dogs, the
hobby-horses, the beautiful perspectives of shining lamps: the hundred
and one enclosures, where the singing is, in gleaming orchestras of azure
and gold, and where a star-eyed Houri comes round with a box for
voluntary offerings. So, I pass to my hotel, enchanted; sup, enchanted;
go to bed, enchanted; pushing back this morning (if it really were this
morning) into the remoteness of time, blessing the South-Eastern Company
for realising the Arabian Nights in these prose days, murmuring, as I
wing my idle flight into the land of dreams, ‘No hurry, ladies and
gentlemen, going to Paris in eleven hours. It is so well done, that
there really is no hurry!’