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CHEAP THEATRE — SATURDAY NIGHT. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL 
 TRAVELLER 
 
 CHARLES DICKENS. 
 
 WITH JLLUSTBATIONS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., 
 
 46 East Fourteenth St. 
 
BERWICK A SMITH, PRINTERS, BOSTON. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. 
 
 Ills General Line of Business . 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 II. 
 
 The Shipwreck .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 III. 
 
 Wapping Workhouse 
 
 
 
 
 
 17 
 
 w . 
 
 Two Yiews of a Cheap Theatre . 
 
 
 
 
 
 29 
 
 Y. 
 
 Poor Mercantile Jack . 
 
 
 
 
 
 41 
 
 YI. 
 
 Refreshments for Travellers . 
 
 
 
 
 
 54 
 
 YII. 
 
 Tp.avelling Abroad 
 
 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 YIII. 
 
 The Great Tasmania’s Cargo 
 
 
 
 
 
 77 
 
 IX. 
 
 City of London Churches 
 
 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 X. 
 
 Shy Neighborhoods ... 
 
 
 
 
 
 99 
 
 XI. 
 
 Tramps 
 
 
 
 
 
 110 
 
 XII. 
 
 Dullborough Town .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 123 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Night Walks 
 
 
 
 
 
 135 
 
 XIY. 
 
 Chambers 
 
 
 
 
 
 145 
 
 XY. 
 
 Nurse’s Stories .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 158 
 
 XYI. 
 
 Arcadian London . 
 
 
 
 
 
 170 
 
 XYII. 
 
 The Calais Night-Mail . 
 
 
 
 
 
 180 
 
 XYIII. 
 
 Some Recollections of Mortality 
 
 
 
 
 
 189 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Birthday Celebrations 
 
 
 
 
 
 200 
 
 XX. 
 
 Bound for the Great Salt Lake 
 
 
 
 
 
 211 
 
 XXI. 
 
 The City of the Absent 
 
 
 
 
 
 225 
 
 /"^XII.X^N Old Stage-coaching House . 
 
 
 
 
 
 234 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 The Boiled Beef of New England 
 
 
 
 
 
 243 
 
 
IV 
 
 CONTENTS . 
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTEPw 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXIY. 
 
 Chatham Dockyard .... 
 
 
 
 . 253 
 
 XXY. 
 
 In the French-Flemish Country 
 
 
 
 . 263 
 
 XXVL 
 
 Medicine-Men of Civilization . 
 
 
 
 . 275 
 
 XXYII. 
 
 Titbull’s Almshouses .... 
 
 
 
 . 285 
 
 XXYIIL 
 
 The Italian Prisoner .... 
 
 
 
 . 297 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 The Short-Timers .... 
 
 
 
 . 308 
 
 XXX. 
 
 A Small Star in the East . 
 
 
 
 . 320 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 Aboard Ship 
 
 
 
 . 333 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 A Little Dinner in an Hour 
 
 
 
 . 344 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 Mr. Barlow 
 
 
 
 . 352 
 
 XXXIY.X On AN Amateur Beat .... 
 
 
 
 . 359 
 
 XXXY. 
 
 A Plea for Total Abstinence . 
 
 
 
 . 368 
 
 XXXYI. 
 
 The Ruffian 
 
 
 
 . 373 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Cheap Theatre — Saturday Night . c . Frontispiece 
 
 A City Personage 94 
 
 This is a Sweet Spot, ain’t it ? A Lovelly Spot ! ” , . Ill 
 
 Laundresses 146 
 
 Leaving the Morgue 194 
 
 Time and his Wife 227 
 
 A Phenomenon at Titbull’s ........ 295 
 
 Poodles going the Round 363 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAYELLER. 
 
 I. 
 
 HIS GENERAL LINE OF BUSINESS. 
 
 Allow me to introduce myself — first negatively. 
 
 'No landlord is iny friend and brother, no chambermaid 
 loves me, no waiter worships me, no boots admires and 
 envies me. No round of beef or tongue or ham is expressly 
 cooked for me, no pigeon-pie is especially made for me, no 
 hotel-advertisement is personally addressed to me, no hotel- 
 room tapestried with great-coats and railway wrappers is set 
 apart for me, no house of public entertainment in the United 
 Kingdom greatly cares for my opinion of its brandy or sherry. 
 When I go upon my journeys, I am not usually rated at a 
 low figure in the bill ; when I come home from my journeys, 
 I never get any commission. I know nothing about prices, 
 and should have no idea, if I were put to it, how to wheedle 
 a man into ordering something he doesn’t want. As a town 
 traveller, I am never to be seen driving a vehicle externally 
 like a young and volatile pianoforte van, and internally like 
 an oven in which a number of flat boxes are baking in layers. 
 As a country traveller, I am rarely to be found in a gig, and 
 am never to be encountered by a pleasure train, waiting on 
 the platform of a branch station, quite a Druid in the midst 
 of a light Stonehenge of samples. 
 
 And yet — proceeding now, to introduce myself positively 
 — I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am 
 always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the 
 great House of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a 
 large connection in the fancy goods way. Literally speaking, 
 
2 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 I am always wandering here and there from my rooms in 
 Covent-garden, London — now about the city streets : now, 
 about the country by-roads — seeing many little things, and 
 some great things, which, because they interest me, I think 
 may interest others. 
 
 These are my brief credentials as the Uncommercial 
 Traveller. 
 
THE UJSCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLEE. 
 
 3 
 
 II. 
 
 THE SHIPWRECK. 
 
 Never had I seen a year going out, or going on, under 
 quieter circumstances. Eighteen hundred and fifty-nine had 
 but another day to live, and truly its end was Peace on that 
 seashore that morning. 
 
 So settled and orderly was everything seaward, in the 
 bright light of the sun and under the transparent shadows 
 of the clouds, that it was hard to imagine the bay otherwise, 
 for years past or to come, than it was that very day. The 
 Tug-steamer lying a little off the shore, the Lighter lying 
 still nearer to the shore, the boat alongside the Lighter, the 
 regularly turning windlass aboard the Lighter, the methodical 
 figures at work, all slowly and regularly heaving up and down 
 with the breathing of the sea, all seemed as much a part of 
 the nature of the place as the tide itself. The tide was on 
 the flow, and had been for some two hours and a half ; there 
 was a slight obstruction in the sea within a few yards of my 
 feet : as if the stump of a tree, with earth enough about it to 
 keep it from lying horizontally on the water, had slipped a 
 little from the land — and as I stood upon the beach and 
 observed it dimpling the light swell that was coming in, I 
 cast a stone over it. 
 
 So orderly, so quiet, so regular — the rising and falling of 
 the Tug-steamer, the Lighter, and the boat — the turning of 
 the windlass — the coming-in of the tide — that I myself 
 seemed, to my own thinking, anything but new to the spot. 
 Yet I had never seen it in my life, a minute before, and had 
 traversed two hundred miles to get at it. That very morning 
 I had come bowling down, and struggling up, hill-country 
 roads ; looking back at snowy summits ; meeting courteous 
 peasants well-to-do, driving fat pigs and cattle to market : 
 
4 THH tJNCOMMEBCIAL TEAVELLEB. 
 
 noting the neat and thrifty dwellings, with their unusual 
 quantity of clean wdiite linen, drying on the bushes ; having 
 windy weather suggested by every cotter’s little rick, with its 
 thatch straw-ridged and extra straw-ridged ijito overlapping 
 compartments like the back of a rhinoceros. Had I not given 
 a lift of fourteen miles to the Coast-guardsman (kit and all), 
 who was coming to his spell of duty there, and had we not 
 just now parted company? So it was; but the journey 
 seemed to glide down into the placid sea, with other chafe 
 and trouble, and for the moment nothing was so calmly and 
 monotonously real under the sunlight as the gentle rising and 
 falling of the water with its freight, the regular turning of 
 the windlass aboard the Lighter, and the slight obstruction so 
 very near my feet. 
 
 0 reader, haply turning this page by the fireside at Home, 
 and hearing the night wind rumble in the chimney, that slight 
 obstruction was the uppermost fragment of the Wreck of the 
 Eoyal Charter, Australian trader and passenger ship. Home- 
 ward bound, that struck here on the terrible morning of the 
 twenty-sixth of this October, broke into three parts, went 
 down with her treasure of at least five hundred human lives, 
 and has never stirred since ! 
 
 From which point, or from which, she drove ashore, stern 
 foremost ; on which side, or on which, she passed the little 
 Island in the bay, for ages henceforth to be aground certain 
 yards outside her ; these are rendered bootless questions by 
 the darkness of that night and tlie darkness of death. Here 
 she went down. 
 
 Even as I stood on the beach with the words Here she 
 went down ! ” in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, 
 dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, 
 and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the water’s edge, 
 was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other 
 divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they 
 had kept Christmas Day with rum and roast beef, to the de- 
 struction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the stones 
 and bowlders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel, 
 and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the 
 strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLEB. 
 
 o 
 
 rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevail- 
 ing air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the 
 same for years and years. 
 
 Yet, only two„ short months had gone, since a man, living 
 on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out 
 of bed at about daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip 
 his roof off, and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neigh- 
 bor to construct some temporary device for keeping his 
 house over his head, saw from the ladder’s elevation as he 
 looked down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled 
 object close in with the land. And he and the other, descend- 
 ing to the beach, and finding the sea mercilessly beating 
 over a great broken ship, had clambered up the stony ways, 
 like staircases without stairs, on which the wild village hangs 
 in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given the 
 alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, 
 and down the gullies where the land drains off into the 
 ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting 
 that part of Wales had come running to the dismal sight — 
 their clergyman among them. And as they stood in the 
 leaden morning stricken with pity, leaning hard against the 
 wind, their breath and vision often failing as the sleet and 
 spray rushed at them from the ever forming and dissolving 
 mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the 
 vessel’s cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained upon 
 the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship’s life-boat 
 put off from one of the heaps of wreck ; and first, there were 
 three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there 
 were but two ; and again, she was struck by a vast mass of 
 water, and there was but one ; and again, she was thrown 
 bottom upward, and that one, with his arm struck through 
 the broken planks and waving as if for the help that could 
 never reach him, went down into the deep. 
 
 It was the clergyman himself from whom I heard this, 
 while I stood on the shore, looking in his kind wholesome 
 face as it turned to the spot where the boat had been. The 
 divers were down then, and busy. They were lifting ” 
 to-day the gold found yesterday — some five and twenty thou- 
 sand pounds. Of three hundred and fifty thousand pounds’ 
 
6 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 worth of gold, three hundred thousand pounds’ worth, in 
 round numbers, was at that time recovered. The great bulk 
 of the remainder was surely and steadily coming up. Some 
 loss of sovereigns there would be, of course ; indeed, at first 
 sovereigns had drifted in with the sand, and been scattered 
 far and wide over the beach, like sea-shells ; but most other 
 golden treasure would be found. As it was brought up, it 
 went aboard the Tug-steamer, where good account was taken 
 of it. So tremendous had the force of the sea been when it 
 broke the ship, that it had beaten one great ingot of gold, 
 deep into a strong and heavy piece of her solid iron-work ; 
 in which, also, several loose sovereigns that the ingot had 
 swept in before it, had been found, as firmly embedded as 
 though the iron had been liquid when they were forced there. 
 It had been remarked of such bodies come ashore, too, as had 
 been seen by scientific men, that they had been stunned to 
 death, and not suffocated. Observation, both of the internal 
 change that had been wrought in them, and of their external 
 expression, showed death to have been thus merciful and 
 easy. The report was brought, while I was holding such 
 discourse on the beach, that no more bodies had come ashore 
 since last night. It began to be very doubtful whether many 
 more would be thrown up, until the north-east winds of the 
 early spring set in. Moreover, a great number of the pas- 
 sengers, and particularly the second-class women-passengers, 
 were known to have been in the middle of the ship when she 
 parted, and thus the collapsing wreck would have fallen u^oon 
 them after yawning open, and would keep them down. A 
 diver made known, even then, that he had come upon the 
 body of a man, and had sought to release it from a great 
 superincumbent weight ; but that, finding he could not do so 
 without mutilating the remains, he had left it where it was. 
 
 It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of 
 as being then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, 
 when I left home for Wales. I had heard of that clergyman, 
 as having buried many scores of the shipwrecked people ; 
 of his having opened his house and heart to their agonized 
 friends; of his having used a most sweet and patient diligence 
 for weeks and weeks, in the performance of the forlornest 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 7 
 
 offices that Man can render to his kind ; of his having most 
 tenderly and thoroughly devoted himself to the dead, and to 
 those who were sorrowing for the dead. I had said to myself, 
 
 In the Christmas season of the year, I should like to see that 
 man ! And he had swung the gate of his little garden in 
 coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago. 
 
 So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true 
 practical Christianity ever is ! I read more of the New 
 Testament in the fresh frank face going up the village 
 beside me, in five minutes, than I have read in anathematizing 
 discourses (albeit but to press with enormous flourishing of 
 trumpets), in all my life. I heard more of the Sacred Book 
 in the cordial voice that had nothing to say about its owner, 
 than in all the would-be celestial pairs of bellows that have 
 ever blown conceit at me. 
 
 We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, 
 among the loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, 
 the outlying water, and other obstructions from which frost 
 and snow had lately thawed. It was a mistake (my friend 
 was glad to tell me on the way) to suppose that the peasantry 
 had shown any superstitious avoidance of the drowned ; on 
 the whole, they had done very well, and had assisted readily. 
 Ten shillings had been paid for the bringing of each body up 
 to the church, but the way was steep, and a horse and cart 
 (in which it was wrapped in a sheet) were necessary, and 
 three or four men, and, all things considered, it was not a 
 great price. The people were none the richer for the wreck, 
 for it was the season of the herring shoal — and who could 
 cast nets for fish, and find dead men and women in the 
 draught ? 
 
 He had the chnrch keys in his hand, and opened the 
 churchyard gate, arid opened the church door ; and we went 
 in. 
 
 It is a little church of great antiquity ; there is reason to 
 believe that some church has occupied the spot, these thou- 
 sand years or more. The pulpit was gone, and other things 
 usually belonging to the church were gone, owing to its 
 living congregation having deserted it for the neighboring 
 schoolroom, and yielded it up to the dead. The very Com- 
 
8 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 mandments had been shouldered out of their places, in the 
 bringing in of the dead ; the black wooden tables on which 
 they were painted, were askew, and on the stone pavement 
 below them, and on the stone pavement all over the church, 
 were the marks and stains where the drowned had been laid 
 down. The eye, with little or no aid from the imagination, 
 could yet see how the bodies had been turned, and where the 
 head had been and where the feet. Some faded traces of the 
 wreck of the Australian ship may be discernible on the stone 
 pavement of this little church hundreds of years hence, when 
 the digging for gold in Australia shall have long and long 
 ceased out of the land. 
 
 Forty-four shipwrecked men and women lay here at one 
 time, awaiting burial. Here, with Iveeping and wailing in 
 every room of his house, my companion worked alone for 
 hours, solemnly surrounded by eyes that could not see him, 
 and by lips that could not speak to him, patiently examining 
 the tattered clothing, cutting off buttons, hair, marks from 
 linen, anything that might lead to subsequent identification, 
 studying faces, looking for a scar, a bent finger, a crooked toe, 
 comparing letters sent to him with the ruin about him. ^^My 
 dearest brother had bright gray eyes and a pleasant smile,’’ 
 one sister wrote. 0 poor sister ! well for you to be far from 
 here, and keep that as your last remembrance of him ! 
 
 The ladies of the clergyman’s family, his wife and two 
 sisters-in-law, came in among the bodies often. It grew to 
 be the business of their lives to do so. Any new arrival of a 
 bereaved woman would stimulate their pity to compare the 
 description brought, with the dead realities. Sometimes, 
 they would go back able to say, ^‘1 have found him,” or 
 think she lies there.” Perhaps, the mourner, unable to 
 bear the sight of all that lay in the church, would be led 
 in blindfold. Conducted to the spot with many compassionate 
 words, and encouraged to look, she would say, with a piercing 
 cry, This is my boy ! ” and drop insensible on the insensible 
 figure. 
 
 He soon observed that in some cases of women, the identifi- 
 cation of persons, though complete, was quite at variance with 
 the marks upon the linen ; this led him to notice that even 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 9 
 
 the marks upon the linen were sometimes inconsistent with 
 one another ; and thus he came to understand that they had 
 dressed in great haste and agitation^ and that their clothes 
 had become mixed together. The identification of men by 
 their dress, was rendered extremely difficult, in consequence 
 of a large proportion of them being dressed alike — in clothes 
 of one kind, that is to say, supplied by slopsellers and out- 
 fitters, and not made by single garments but by hundreds. 
 Many of the men were bringing over parrots, and had receipts 
 upon them for the price of the birds ; others had bills of 
 exchange in their pockets, or in belts. Some of these docu- 
 ments, carefully unwrinkled and dried, were little less fresh in 
 appearance that day, than the present page will be under 
 ordinary circumstances, after having been opened three or 
 four times. 
 
 In that lonely place, it had not been easy to obtain even 
 such common commodities in towns, as ordinary disinfectants. 
 Pitch had been burnt in the church, as the readiest thing at 
 hand, and the frying-pan in which it had bubbled over a 
 brazier of coals was still there, with its ashes. Hard by the 
 Communion-Table, were some boots that had been taken off 
 the drowned and preserved — a gold-diggePs boot, cut down 
 the leg for its removal — a trodden-down man’s ankle-boot 
 with a buff cloth top — and others — soaked and sandy, weedy 
 salt. 
 
 From the church, we passed out into the churchyard. Here, 
 there lay, at that time, one hundred and forty-five bodies, that 
 had come ashore from the wreck. He had buried them, when 
 not identified, in graves containing four each. He had num- 
 bered each body in a register describing it, and had placed a 
 corresponding number on each coffin, and over each grave. 
 Identified bodies he had buried singly, in private graves, in 
 another part of the churchyard. Several bodies had been 
 exhumed from the graves of four, as relatives had come from 
 a distance and seen his register ; and, when recognized, these 
 have been reburied in private graves, so that the mourners 
 might erect separate headstones over the remains. In all such 
 cases he had performed the funeral service a second time, and 
 the ladies of his house had attended. There had been no 
 
10 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 offence in the poor ashes when they were brought again to 
 the light of day ; the beneficent Earth had already absorbed 
 it. The drowned were buried in their clothes. To supply the 
 great sudden demand for coffins, he had got all the neighbor- 
 ing people handy at tools, to work the livelong day, and Sun- 
 day likewise. The coffins were neatly formed; I had seen 
 two, waiting for occupants, under the lee of the ruined walls 
 of a stone hut on the beach, within call of the tent where the 
 Christmas Eeast was held. Similarly, one of the graves for 
 four was lying open and ready, here, in the churchyard. So 
 much of the scanty space was already devoted to the wrecked 
 people, that the villagers had begun to express uneasy doubts 
 whether they themselves could lie in their own ground,'%ith 
 their forefathers and descendants, by and by. The churchyard 
 being but a step from the clergyman’s dwelling-house, we 
 crossed to the latter ; the white surplice was hanging up near 
 the door ready to be put on at any time', for a funeral service. 
 
 The cheerful earnestness of this good Christian minister 
 was as consolatory, as the circumstances out of which it shone 
 were sad. I never have seen anything more delightfully 
 genuine than the calm dismissal by himself and his household 
 of all they had undergone, as a simple duty that was quietly 
 done and ended. In speaking of it, they spoke of it with 
 great compassion for the bereaved; but laid no stress upon 
 their own hard share in those weary weeks, except as it had 
 attached many people to them as friends, and elicited many 
 touching expressions of gratitude. This clergyman’s brother 
 — himself the clergyman of two adjoining parishes, who had 
 buried thirty-four of the bodies in his own churchyard, and 
 who had done to them all that his brother had done as to the 
 larger number — must be understood as included in the family. 
 He was there, with his neatly arranged papers, and made no 
 more account of his trouble than anybody else did. Down to 
 yesterday’s post outward, my clergyman alone had written one 
 thousand and seventy-five letters to relatives and friends of 
 the lost people. In the absence of self-assertion, it was only 
 through my now and then delicately putting a question as the 
 occasion arose, that I became informed of these things. It was 
 only when I had remarked again and again, in the church on 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 11 
 
 the awful nature of the scene of death he had been required 
 so closely to familiarize himself with for the soothing of the 
 living, that he had casually said, without the least abatement 
 of his cheerfulness, indeed, it had rendered him unable for a 
 time to eat or drink more than a little coffee now and then, 
 and a piece of bread.^’ 
 
 In this noble modesty dn this beautiful simplicity, in this 
 serene avoidance of the least attempt to improve ’’ an occa- 
 sion which might be supposed to have sunk of its own weight 
 into my heart, I seemed to have happily come, in a few steps, 
 from the churchyard with its open grave, which was the type 
 of Death, to the Christian dwelling side by side with it, which 
 was the type of Eesurrection. I never shall think of the 
 former, without the latter. The two will always rest side by 
 side in my memory. If I had lost any one dear to me in this 
 unfortunate ship, if I had made a voyage from Australia to 
 look at the grave in the churchyard, I should go away, thank- 
 ful to God that that house was so close to it, and that its 
 shadow by day and its domestic lights by night fell upon the 
 earth in which its Master had so tenderly laid my dear one’s 
 head. 
 
 The references that naturally rose out of our conversation, 
 to the descriptions sent down of shipwrecked persons, and to 
 the gratitude of relations and friends, made me very anxious 
 to see some of those letters. I was presently seated before a 
 shipwreck of papers, all bordered with black, and from them 
 I made the following few extracts. 
 
 A mother writes : — 
 
 Reverend Sir, — Amongst the many who perished on your shore 
 was numbered my beloved son. I was only just recovering from a severe 
 illness, and this fearful affliction ha^ caused a relapse, so that I am unable 
 at present to go to identify the remains of the loved and lost. My darling 
 son would have been sixteen on Christmas Day next. He was a most 
 amiable and obedient child, early taught the way of salvation. We fondly 
 hoped that as a British seaman he might be an ornament to his profession, 
 but, ‘Tt is well;’’ I feel assured my dear boy is now with the redeemed. 
 Oh, he did not wish to go this last voyage! On the fifteenth of October, 
 I received a letter from him from Melbourne, date August twelfth; he 
 wrote in high spirits, and in conclusion he says; Pray for a fair breeze, 
 mamma, and I’ll not forget to whistle for it! and, God permitting, I shall 
 see you and all my little pets again. Good-by, dear mother — good-by. 
 
12 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 dearest parents. Good-by, dear brother.’’ Oh, it was indeed an eternal 
 farewell. I do not apologize for thus writing you, for oh, my heart is so 
 very sorrowful. 
 
 A husband writes : — 
 
 My dear kind Sir, — Will you kindly inform me whether there are 
 any initials upon the ring and guard you have in possession, found, as 
 the Standard says, last Tuesday ? Believe me, my dear sir, when I say 
 that I cannot express my deep gratitude in words sufficiently for your 
 kindness to me on that fearful and appalling day. Will you tell me what 
 I can do for you, and will you write me a consoling letter to prevent my 
 mind from going astray ? 
 
 A widow writes : — 
 
 Left in such a state as I am, my friends and I thought it best that my 
 dear husband should be buried where he lies, and, much as I should have 
 liked to have had it otherwise, I must submit. I feel, from all I have 
 heard of you, that you will see it done decently and in order. Little does 
 it signify to us, when the soul has departed, where this poor body lies, 
 but we who are left behind would do all we can to show how we loved 
 them. This is denied me, but it is God’s hand that afflicts us, and I try 
 to submit. Some day I may be able to visit the spot, and see where he 
 lies, and erect a simple stone to his memory. Oh ! it will be long, long 
 before I forget that dreadful night! Is there such a thing in the vicinity, 
 or any shop in Bangor, to which I could send for a small picture of 
 Moelfra or Llanallgo church, a spot now sacred to me ? 
 
 Another widow writes : — 
 
 I have received your letter this morning, and do thank you most kindly 
 for the interest you have taken about my dear husband, as well for the 
 sentiments yours contains, evincing the spirit of a Christian who can 
 sympathize with those who, like myself, are broken down with grief. 
 
 May God bless and sustain you, and all in connection with you, in this 
 great trial. Time may roll on and bear all its sons away, but your name 
 as a disinterested person will stand in history, and, as successive years 
 pass, many a widow will think of your noble conduct, and the tears of 
 gratitude flow down many a cheek, the tribute of a thankful heart, when 
 other things are forgotten forever. 
 
 A father writes : — 
 
 I am at a loss to find words to sufficiently express my gratitude to you 
 for your kindness to my son Richard upon the melancholy occasion of his 
 visit to his dear brother’s body, and also for your ready attention in pro- 
 nouncing our beautiful burial service over my poor unfortunate son’s 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 13 
 
 remains. God grant that your prayers over him may reach the Mercy 
 Seat, and that his soul may be received (through Christ’s intercession) 
 into heaven! 
 
 His dear mother begs me to convey to you her heartfelt thanks. 
 
 Those who were received at the clergyman’s house, write 
 thus, after leaving it : — 
 
 Dear and never-to-be-forgotten Friends, — I arrived here 
 yesterday morning without accident, and am about to proceed to my 
 home by railway. 
 
 I am overpowered when I think of you and your hospitable home. No 
 words could speak language suited to my heart. I refrain. God reward 
 you with the same measure you have meted with ! 
 
 I enumerate no names, but embrace you all. 
 
 My beloved Friends, — This is the first day that I have been able 
 to leave my bedroom since I returned, which will explain the reason of 
 my not writing sooner. 
 
 If I could only have had my last melancholy hope realized in recover- 
 ing the body of my beloved and lamented son, I should have returned 
 home somewhat comforted, and I think I could then have been compara- 
 tively resigned. 
 
 I fear now there is but little prospect, and I mourn as one without 
 hope. 
 
 The only consolation to my distressed mind is in having been so feel- 
 ingly allowed by you to leave the matter in your hands, by whom I well 
 know that everything will be done that can be, according to arrange- 
 ments made before I left the scene of the awful catastrophe, both as to 
 the identification of my dear son, and also his interment. 
 
 I feel most anxious to hear whether anything fresh has transpired since 
 I left you; will you add another to the many deep obligations I am under 
 to you by writing to me ? And should the body of my dear and unfortu- 
 nate son be identified, let me hear from you immediately, and I will come 
 again. 
 
 Words cannot express the gratitude I feel I owe to you all for your 
 benevolent aid, your kindness, and your sympathy. 
 
 My dearly beloved Friends, — I arrived in safety at my house 
 yesterday, and a night’s rest has restored and tranquillized me. I must 
 again repeat, that language has no words by which I can express my sense 
 of obligation to you. You are enshrined in my heart of hearts. 
 
 I have seen him! and can now realize my misfortune more than I have 
 hitherto been able to do. Oh, the bitterness of the cup I drink! But I 
 bow submissive. God must have done right. I do not want to feel less, 
 but to acquiesce more simply. 
 
14 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 There were some Jewish passengers on board the Eoyal 
 Charter, and the gratitude of the Jewish people is feelingly 
 expressed in the following letter bearing date from ^Hhe 
 office of the Chief Eabbi : — 
 
 Keverend Sir, — I cannot refrain from expressing to you my heart- 
 felt thanks on behalf of those of my flock whose relatives have unfortu- 
 nately been among those who perished at the late wreck of the Eoyal 
 Charter. You have, indeed, like Boaz, ‘‘not left off your kindness to 
 the living and the dead/’ 
 
 You have not alone acted kindly towards the living by receiving them 
 hospitably at your house, and energetically assisting then/in theif mourn- 
 ful duty, but also towards the dead, by exerting yourself to have our 
 co-religionists buried in our ground, and according to our rites. May our 
 heavenly Father reward you for your acts of humanity and true philan- 
 thropy ! 
 
 The Old Hebrew congregation of Liverpool thus express 
 themselves through their secretary : — 
 
 Keverend Sir, — The wardens of this congregation have learned 
 with great pleasure that, in addition to those indefatigable exertions, at 
 the scene of the late disaster to the Eoyal Charter, which have received 
 universal recognition, you have very benevolently employed your valuable 
 efforts to assist such members of our faith as have sought the bodies of 
 lost friends to give them burial in our consecrated grounds, with the 
 observances and rites prescribed by the ordinances of our religion. 
 
 The wardens desire me to take the earliest available opportunity to 
 offer to you, on behalf of our community, the expression of their warm 
 acknowledgments and grateful thanks, and their sincere wishes for your 
 continued welfare and prosperity. 
 
 A Jewish gentleman Avrites : — 
 
 Eeverend and dear Sir, — I take ’the opportunity of thanking 
 you right earnestly for the promptness you displayed in answering my 
 note with full particulars concerning my much lamented brother, and I 
 also herein beg to express my sincere regard for the willingness you dis- 
 played and for the facility you afforded for getting the remains of my 
 poor brother exhumed. It has been to us a most sorrowful and painful 
 event, but when we meet with such friends as yourself, it in a measure, 
 somehow or other, abates that mental anguish, and makes the suffering 
 so much easier to be borne. Considering the circumstances connected 
 with my poor brother’s fate, it does, indeed, appear a hard one. He had 
 been away in all seven years ; he returned four years ago to see his family. 
 He was then engaged to a very amiable young lady. He had been very 
 successful abroad, and was now returning to fulfil his sacred vow; he 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 15 
 
 brought all his property with him in gold uninsured. We heard from him 
 when the ship stopped at Queenstown, wdien he was in the highest of 
 hope, and in a few short hours afterwards all w^as washed aw^ay. 
 
 Mournful in the deepest degree, but too sacred for quotation 
 here, were the numerous references to those miniatures of 
 women worn round the necks of rough men (and found there 
 after death), those locks of hair, those scraps of letters, those 
 many many slight memorials of hidden tenderness. One man 
 cast up by the sea bore about him, printed on a perforated 
 lace card, the following singular (and unavailing) charm : — 
 
 A Blessing. 
 
 May the blessing of God await thee. May the sun of glory shine 
 around thy bed ; and may the gates of plenty, honor, and happiness be 
 ever open to thee. May no sorrow distress thy days ; may no grief dis- 
 turb thy nights. May the pillow of peace kiss thy cheek, and the pleas- 
 ures of imagination attend thy dreams; and when length of years makes 
 thee tired of earthly joys, and the curtain of death gently closes around 
 thy last sleep of human existence, may the Angel of God attend thy bed, 
 and take care that the expiring lamp of life shall not receive one rude 
 blast to hasten on its extinction. 
 
 A sailor had these devices on his right arm. Our Saviour 
 on the Cross, the forehead of the Crucifix and the vesture 
 stained red ; on the lower part of the arm, a man and woman ; 
 on one side of the Cross, the appearance of a half-moon, with 
 a face ; on the other side, the sun ; on the top of the Cross, the 
 letters I.H.S. ; on the left arm, a man and woman dancing, 
 with an effort to delineate the female’s dress, under which, 
 initials.” Another seaman ^^had, on the lower part of the right 
 arm, the device of a sailor and a female ; the man holding the 
 Union Jack v/ith a streamer, the folds of which waved over her 
 head, and the end of it was held in her hand. On the upper 
 part of the arm, a device of Our Lord on the Cross, with stars 
 surrounding the head of the Cross, and one large star on the 
 side in Indian ink. On the left arm,, a flag, a true lover’s 
 knot, a face, and initials. This tattooing was found still 
 plain, below the discolored outer surface of a mutilated arm, 
 when such surface was carefully scraped away with a knife. 
 It is not improbable that the perpetuation of this marking 
 
16 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 custom among seamen, may be referred back to their desire to 
 be identified, if drowned and flung ashore. 
 
 It was some time before I could sever myself from the 
 many interesting papers on the table, and then I broke bread * 
 and drank wine with the kind family before I left them. As 
 I brought the Coast-guard down, so I took the Postman back 
 with his leathern wallet, walking-stick, bugle, and terrier-dog. 
 Many a heart-broken letter had he brought to the diectory 
 House within two months ; many a benignantly painstaking 
 answer had he carried back. 
 
 As I rode along, I thought of the many people, inhabitants 
 of this mother country, who would make pilgrimages to the 
 little churchyard in the years to come ; I thought of the many 
 people in Australia, who would have an interest in such a 
 shipwreck, and would find their way here when they visit. the 
 Old World ; I thought of the writers of all the wreck of letters 
 I had left upon the table ; and I resolved to place this little 
 record where it stands. Convocations, Conferences, Diocesan 
 Epistles, and the like, will do a great deal for Religion, I dare 
 say, and Heaven send they may ! but I doubt if they will 
 ever do their Master’s service half so well, in all the time they 
 last, as the Heavens have seen it done in this bleak spot upon 
 the rugged coast of Wales. 
 
 Had I lost the friend of my life, in the wreck of the Royal 
 Charter; had I lost my betrothed, the more than friend of 
 my life ; had I lost my maiden daughter, had I lost my hope- 
 ful boy, had I lost my little child ; I would kiss the hands 
 that worked so busily and gently in the church, and say. 
 None better could have touched the form, though it had lain 
 at home.” I could be sure of it, I could be thankful for it : I 
 could be content to leave the grave near the house the good 
 family pass in and out of every day, undisturbed, in the little 
 churchyard where so many are so strangely brought together. 
 
 Without the name of the clergyman to whom — I hope, 
 not without carrying comfort to some heart at some time — I 
 have referred, my reference would be as nothing. He is the 
 Reverend Stephen Roose Hughes, of Llanallgo, near Moelfra, 
 Anglesey. His brother is the Reverend Hugh Robert Hughes, 
 of Penrhos, Alligwy, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 17 
 
 III. 
 
 WAPPING WORKHOUSE. 
 
 My day’s no-business beckoning me to the East end of 
 London, I had turned my face to that point of the metropoli- 
 tan compass on leaving Covent-garden, and had got past 
 the India House, thinking in my idle manner of Tippoo- 
 Sahib and Charles Lamb, and had got past my little wooden 
 midshipman, after affectionately patting him on one leg of 
 his knee-shorts for old acquaintance’ sake, and had got past 
 Aldgate Pump, and had got past the Saracen’s Head (with an 
 ignominious rash of posting bills disfiguring his swarthy 
 countenance), and had strolled up the empty yard of his 
 ancient neighbor the Black or Blue Boar, or Bull, who 
 departed this life I don’t know when, and whose coaches are 
 all gone I don’t know where ; and I had come out again into 
 the age of railways, and I had got past Whitechapel Church, 
 and was — rather inappropriately for an Uncommercial Trav- 
 eller — in the Commercial Boad. Pleasantly wallowing in the 
 abundant mud of that thoroughfare, and greatly enjoying 
 the huge piles of building belonging to the sugar refiners, 
 the little masts and vanes in small back gardens in back 
 streets, the neighboring canals and docks, the India vans 
 lumbering along their stone tramway, and the pawnbrokers’ 
 shops where hard-up Mates had pawned so many sextants 
 and quadrants that I should have bought a few cheap if I 
 had the least notion how to use them^ I at last began to file 
 off to the right, towards Wapping. 
 
 Hot that I intended to take boat at Wapping Old Stairs, or 
 that I was going to look at the locality, because I believe 
 (for I don’t) in the constancy of the young woman who told 
 her sea-going lover, to such a beautiful old tune, that she had 
 ever continued the same, since she gave him the ’baccer-box 
 
18 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 marked with his name ; I am afraid he usually got the worst 
 of those transactions, and was frightfully taken in. No, I was 
 going to Wapping, because an Eastern police magistrate had 
 said through the morning papers, that there was no classi- 
 fication at the Wapping workhouse for women, and that it 
 was a disgrace and a shame, and divers other hard names, 
 and because I wished to see how the fact really stood. Eor, 
 that Eastern police magistrates are not always the wisest men 
 of the East, may be inferred from their course of procedure 
 respecting the fancy-dressing, and pantomime posturing at 
 St. George’s in that quarter : which is usually, to discuss the 
 matter at issue, in a state of mind betokening the weakest 
 perplexity, with all parties concerned and unconcerned, and 
 for a final expedient, to consult the complainant as to what 
 he thinks ought to be done with the defendant, and take the 
 defendant’s opinion as to what he would recommend to be 
 done with himself. 
 
 Long before I reached Wapping, I gave myself up as 
 having lost my way, and, abandoning myself to the narrow 
 streets in a Turkish frame of mind, relied on predestination 
 to bring me somehow or other to the place I wanted if I 
 were ever to get there. When I had ceased for an hour or 
 so to take any trouble about the matter, I found myself on a 
 swing-bridge looking down at some dark locks in some dirty 
 water. Over against me, stood a creature remotely in the 
 likeness of a young man, with a puffed sallow face, and a 
 figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have been ' 
 the youngest son of his filthy old father, Thames, or the 
 drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite 
 post like a large thimble, that stood between us. 
 
 I asked this apparition what it called the place ? Unto 
 which, it replied, with a ghastly grin and a sound like 
 gurgling water in its throat, — 
 
 Mr. Baker’s trap.” 
 
 As it is a point of great sensitiveness with me on such 
 occasions to be equal to the intellectual pressure of the con- 
 versation, I deeply considered the meaning of this speech, 
 while I eyed the apparition — then engaged in hugging and 
 sucking a horizontal iron bar at the top of the locks. Inspira- 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 19 
 
 tion suggested to me that Mr. Baker was the acting coroner 
 of that neighborhood. 
 
 A common place for suicide/^ said I, looking down at the 
 locks. 
 
 ^^Sue?’’ returned the ghost, with a stare. ^^Yes! And 
 Poll. Likewise Emily. And IN'ancy. And Jane;’^ he sucked 
 the iron between each name; ^^and all the bileing. Ketches 
 off their bonnets or shorls, takes a run, and headers down 
 here, they doos. Always a-headerin’ down here, they is. 
 Like one o’clock.^’ 
 
 And about that hour of the morning, I suppose ? ’’ 
 
 Ah ! ’’ said the apparition. They ain’t partickler Two 
 ’ull do for them. Three. All times o’ night. On’y mind 
 you ! ” Here the apparition rested his profile on the bar, and 
 gurgled in a sarcastic manner. There must be somebody 
 cornin’. They don’t go a-headerin’ down here, wen there 
 ain’t no Bobby nor gen’ral Cove, fur to hear the splash.” 
 
 According to my interpretation of these words, I was myself 
 a General Cove, or member of the miscellaneous public. In 
 which modest character I remarked, — 
 
 They are often taken out, are they, and restored ? ” 
 
 I dunno about restored,” said the apparition, who, for 
 some occult reason, very much objected to that word ; they’re 
 carried into the werkiss and put into a ’ot bath, and brought 
 round. But I dunno about restored,” said the apparition ; 
 blow that ! ” — and vanished. 
 
 As it had shown a desire to become offensive, I was not 
 sorry to find myself alone, especially as the werkiss” it had 
 indicated with a twist of its matted head, was close at hand. 
 So I left Mr. Baker’s terrible trap (baited with a scum that 
 was like the soapy rinsing of sooty chimneys), and made bold 
 to ring at tlib workhouse gate, where I was wholly unexpected 
 and quite unknown. 
 
 A very bright and nimble little matron, with a bunch of 
 keys in her hand, responded to my request to see the House. 
 I began to doubt whether the police magistrate was quite 
 right in his facts, when I noticed her quick active little figure 
 and her intelligent eyes. 
 
 The Traveller (the matron intimated) should see the worst 
 
20 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 first. He was welcome to see everything. Such as it was, 
 there it all was. 
 
 This was the only preparation for our entering the Foul 
 wards. They were in an old building squeezed away in 
 a corner of a paved yard, quite detatched from the more 
 modern and spacious main body of the workhouse. They 
 were in a building most monstrously behind the time — a 
 mere series of garrets or lofts, with every inconvenient and 
 objectionable circumstance in their construction, and only 
 accessible by steep and narrow staircases, infamously ill- 
 adapted for the passage up-stairs of the sick or down-stairs of 
 the dead. 
 
 Abed in these miserable rooms, here on bedsteads, there 
 (for a change, as I understood it) on the floor, were women in 
 every stage of distress and disease. Hone but those who 
 have attentively observed such scenes, can conceive the ex- 
 traordinary variety of expression still latent under the general 
 monotony and uniformity of color, attitude, and condition. 
 The form a little coiled up and turned away, as though it had 
 turned its back on this world forever ; the uninterested face 
 at once lead-colored and yellow, looking passively upward 
 from the pillow; the haggard mouth a little dropped, the 
 hand outside the coverlet, so dull and indifferent, so light, 
 and yet so heavy ; these were on every pallet ; but when I 
 stopped beside a bed, and said ever so slight a word to the 
 figure lying there, the ghost of the old character came into 
 the face, and made the Foul ward as various as the fair world. 
 Ho one appeared to care to live, but no one complained ; all 
 who could speak, said that as much was done for them as 
 could be done there, that the attendance was kind and patient, 
 that their suffering was very heavy, but they had nothing to 
 ask for. The wretched rooms were as clean and sweet as it 
 is possible for such rooms to be ; they would become a pest- 
 house in a single week, if they were ill-kept. 
 
 I aceompanied the brisk matron up another barbarous stair- 
 case, into a better kind of loft devoted to the idiotic and im- 
 becile. There was at least Light in it, whereas the windows 
 in the former wards had been like sides of schoolboys^ bird- 
 cages. There was a strong grating over the fire here, and, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 21 
 
 holding a kind of state on either side of the hearth^ separated 
 by the breadth of this grating, were two old ladies in a con- 
 dition of feeble dignity, which was surely the very last and 
 lowest reduction of self-complacency, to be found in this 
 wonderful humanity of ours. They were evidently jealous 
 of each other, and passed their whole time (as some people 
 do, whose fires are not grated) in mentally disparaging each 
 other, and contemptuously w^atching their neighbors. One of 
 these parodies on provincial gentlewomen was extremely talk- 
 ative, and expressed a strong desire to attend the service on 
 Sundays, from which she represented herself to have derived 
 the greatest interest and consolation when allowed that privi- 
 lege. She gossiped so well, and looked altogether so cheery 
 and harmless, that I began to think this a case for the Eastern 
 magistrate, until I found that on the last occasion of her 
 attending chapel she had secreted a small stick, and had 
 caused some confusion in the responses by suddenly producing 
 it and belaboring the congregation. 
 
 So, these two old ladies, separated by the breadth of the 
 grating — otherwise they would fly at one another’s caps — sat 
 all day long, suspecting one another, and contemplating a world 
 of fits. For, everybody else in the room had fits, except the 
 wards-woman ; an elderly, able-bodied pauperess, with a large 
 upper lip, and an air of repressing and saving her strength, 
 as she stood with her hands folded before her, and her eyes 
 slowly rolling, biding her time for catching or holding some- 
 body. This civil personage (in whom I regretted to identify 
 a reduced member of my honorable friend Mrs. Gamp’s 
 family) said, ^^They has ’em continiwal, sir. They drops 
 without no more notice than if they was coach-horses dropped 
 from the moon, sir. And when one drops, another drops, and 
 sometimes there’ll be as many as four or five on ’em at once, 
 dear me, a-rolling and a-tearin’, bless you ! — this young 
 woman, now, has ’em dreadful bad.” 
 
 She turned up this young woman’s face with her hand as 
 she said it. This young woman was seated on the floor, pon- 
 dering in the foreground of the afflicted. There was nothing 
 repellent either in her face or head. Many, apparently worse, 
 varieties of epilepsy and hysteria were about her, but she was 
 
22 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 said to be the worst here. When I had spoken to her a little, 
 she still sat with her face turned up, pondering, and a gleam 
 of the midday sun shone in upon her. 
 
 — Whether this young woman, and the rest of these so 
 sorely troubled, as they sit or lie pondering in their confused 
 dull way, ever get mental glimpses among the motes in the 
 sunlight, of healthy people and healthy things ? Whether 
 this young woman, brooding like this in the summer season, 
 ever thinks that somewhere there are trees and flowers, even 
 mountains and the great sea? Whether, not to go so far, 
 this young woman ever has any dim revelation of that young 
 woman — that young woman who is not here and never will 
 come here ; who is courted, and caressed, and loved, and has 
 a husband, and bears children, and lives in a home, and who 
 never knows what it is to have this lashing and tearing coming 
 upon her ? And whether this young woman, God help her, 
 gives herself up then and drops like a coach-horse from the 
 moon ? 
 
 I hardly knew whether the voices of infant children, pene- 
 trating into so hopeless a place, made a sound that was pleas- 
 ant or painful to me. It was something to be reminded that 
 the weary world was not all aweary, and was ever renewing 
 itself ; but, this young woman was a child not long ago, and a 
 child not long hence might be such as she. Howbeit, the 
 active step and eye of the vigilant matron conducted me past 
 the two provincial gentlewomen (whose dignity was ruffled by 
 the children), and into the adjacent nursery. 
 
 There were many babies here, and more than one handsome 
 young mother. There were ugly young mothers also, and 
 sullen young mothers, and callous young mothers. But, the 
 babies had not appropriated to themselves any bad expres- 
 sion yet, and might have been, for anything that appeared to 
 the contrary in their soft faces. Princes Imperial, and Prin- 
 cesses Eoyal. I had the pleasure of giving a poetical com- 
 mission to the bakePs man to make a cake with all despatch, 
 and toss it into the oven for one red-headed young pauper 
 and myself, and felt much the better for it. Without that 
 refreshment, I doubt if I should have been in a condition for 
 ^Hhe Eefractories,^^ towards whom my quick little matron — 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 23 
 
 for whose adaptation to her office I had by this time conceived 
 a genuine respect — drew me next^ and marshalled me the 
 way that I was going. 
 
 The Eefractories were picking oakum, in a small room 
 giving on a yard. They sat in line on a form, with their 
 backs to a window ; before them, a table, and their work. 
 The oldest Eefractory was, say twenty ; youngest Eefractory, 
 say sixteen. I have never yet ascertained in the course of 
 my uncommercial travels, why a Eefractory habit should 
 affect the tonsils and uvula; but, I have always observed 
 that Eefractories of both sexes and every grade, between a 
 Eagged School and the Old Bailey, have one voice, in which 
 the tonsils and uvula gain a diseased ascendency. 
 
 Five pound indeed ! I liainT a-going fur to pick five 
 pound,’’ said the Chief of the Eefractories, keeping time to 
 herself with her head and chin. More than enough to pick 
 what we picks now, in sich a place as this, and on wot we 
 gets here ! ” 
 
 (This was in acknowledgment of a delicate intimation that 
 the amount of work was likely to be increased. It certainly 
 was not heavy then, for one Eefractory had already done her 
 day’s task — it was barely two o’clock — and was sitting 
 behind it, with a head exactly matching it.) 
 
 A pretty Ouse this is, matron, ain’t it ? ” said Eefrac- 
 tory Two, where a pleeseman’s called in, if a gal says a 
 word ! ” 
 
 And wen you’re sent to prison for nothink or less ! ” said 
 the Chief, tugging at her oakum as if it were the matron’s 
 hair. But any place is better than this ; that’s one thing, 
 and be thankful ! ” 
 
 A laugh of Eefractories led by Oakum Head with folded 
 arms — who originated nothing, but who was in command of 
 the skirmishers outside the conversation. 
 
 ^Mf any place is better than this,” said my brisk guide, in 
 the calmest manner, it is a pity you left a good place when 
 you had one.” 
 
 Ho, no, I didn’t, matron,” returned the Chief, with another 
 pull at her oakum, and a very expressive look at the enemy’s 
 forehead. Don’t say that, matron, cos it’s lies ! ” 
 
24 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 Oakum Head brought up the skirmishers again, skirmished, 
 and retired. 
 
 ^^And I warn’t a-going,’’ exclaimed Eefractory Two, 
 ^‘though I was in one place for as long as four year — I 
 warn’t a-going fur to stop in a place that warn’t fit for me ~ 
 there! And. where the family warn’t ’spectable characters — 
 there ! And where I fort’nately or hunfort’nately, found that 
 the people warn’t what they pretended to make theirselves 
 out to be — there ! And where it wasn’t their faults, by 
 chalks, if I warn’t made bad and ruinated — Hah 1 ” 
 
 During this speech. Oakum Head had again made a diver- 
 sion with the skirmishers, and had again withdrawn. 
 
 The Uncommercial Traveller ventured to remark that he 
 supposed Chief Eefractory and Humber Two, to be the two 
 young women who had been taken before the magistrate ? 
 
 Yes ! ” said the Chief, we har ! and the wonder is, that 
 a pleeseman ain’t ’ad in now, and we took off agen. You 
 can’t open your lips here, without a pleeseman.” 
 
 Humber Two laughed (very uvularly), and the skirmishers 
 followed suit. 
 
 ^H’m sure I’d be thankful,” protested the Chief, looking 
 sideways at the Uncommercial, ^^if I could be got into a 
 place, or got abroad. I’m sick and tired of this precious 
 Ouse, I am, with reason.” 
 
 So would be, and so was, Humber Two. So would be, and 
 so was. Oakum Head. So would be, and so were. Skirmishers. 
 
 The Uncommercial took the liberty of hinting that he 
 hardly thought it probable that any lady or gentleman in 
 want of a likely young domestic of retiring manners, would 
 be tempted into the engagement of either of the two leading 
 Eefractories, on her own presentation of herself as per sample. 
 
 It ain’t no good being nothink else here,” said the Chief. 
 
 The Uncommercial thought it might be worth trying. 
 
 Oh no it ain’t,” said the Chief. 
 
 ^^Hot a bit of good,” said Humber Two. 
 
 And I’m sure I’d be very thankful to be got into a place, 
 or got abroad,” said the Chief. 
 
 <^And so should I,” said Humber Two. Truly thankful, 
 I should.” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 25 
 
 Oakufti Head then rose, and announced as an entirely new 
 idea, the mention of which profound novelty might be natu- 
 rally expected to startle her unprepared hearers, that she 
 would be very thankful to be got into a place, or got 
 abroad. And, as if she had then said, Chorus, ladies ! ’’ 
 all the Skirmishers struck up to the same purpose. We left 
 tliem, thereupon, and began a long walk among the women 
 who were simply old and infirm ; but whenever, in the course 
 of this same walk, I looked out of any . high window that 
 commanded the yard, I saw Oakum Head and all the other 
 Refractories looking out at their low window for me, and 
 never failing to catch me, the moment I showed my head. 
 
 In ten minutes I had ceased to believe in such fables of a 
 golden time as youth, the prime of life, or a hale old age. In 
 ten minutes, all the lights of womankind seemed to have 
 been blown out, and nothing in that way to be left this vault 
 to brag of, but the flickering and expiring snuffs. 
 
 And what was very curious, was, that these dim old women 
 had one company notion which was the fashion of the place. 
 Every old woman who became aware of a visitor and was 
 not in bed hobbled over a form into her accustomed seat, and 
 became one of a line of dim old women confronting another 
 line of dim old women across a narrow table. There was no 
 obligation whatever upon them to range themselves in this 
 way ; it was their manner of receiving.’’ As a rule, they 
 made no attempt to talk to one another, or to look at the 
 visitor, or to look at anything, but sat silently working their 
 mouths, like a sort of poor old Cows. In some of these 
 wards, it was good to see a few green plants ; in others, an 
 isolated Refractory acting as nurse, who did well enough in 
 that capacity, when separated from her compeers ; every one 
 of these wards, day room, night room, or both combined, was 
 scrupulously clean and fresh. I have seen as many such 
 places as most travellers in my line, and I never saw one 
 such, better kept. 
 
 Among the bedridden there was great patience, great reli- 
 ance on the books under the pillow, great faith in God. All 
 cared for sympathy, but none much cared to be encouraged 
 with hope of recovery ; on the whole, I should say, it was 
 
26 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 considered rather a distinction to have a complicatioA of dis- 
 orders, and to be in a worse way than the rest. From some 
 of the windows, the river could be seen with all its life and 
 movement ; the day was bright, but I came upon no one who 
 was looking out. 
 
 In one large ward, sitting by the fire in arm-chairs of dis- 
 tinction, like the President and Vice of the good company, 
 were two old women, upwards of ninety years of age. The 
 younger of the two, just turned ninety, was deaf, but not 
 very, and could easily be made to hear. In her early time 
 she had nursed a child, who was now. another old woman, 
 more infirm than herself, inhabiting the very same chamber. 
 She perfectly understood this when the matron told it, and, 
 with. sundry nods and motions of her forefinger, pointed out 
 the woman in question. The elder of this pair, ninety-three, 
 seated before an illustrated newspaper (but not reading it), 
 was a bright-eyed old soul, really not deaf, wonderfully pre- 
 served, and amazingly conversational. She had not long lost 
 her husband, and had been in that place little more than a 
 year. At Boston, in the State of Massachusetts, this poor 
 creature would have been individually addressed, would have 
 been tended in her own room, and would have had her life 
 gently assimilated to a comfortable life out of doors. Would 
 that be much to do in England for a woman who has kept 
 herself out of a workhouse more than ninety rough long 
 years ? When Britain first, at Heaven’s command, arose, 
 with a great deal of allegorical confusion, from out the azure 
 main, did her guardian angels positively forbid it in the 
 Charter which has been so much besung ? 
 
 The object of my journey was accomplished when the 
 nimble matron had no more to show me. As I shook hands 
 with her at the gate, I told her that I thought Justice had 
 not used her very well, and that the wise men of the East 
 were not infallible. 
 
 Now, I reasoned with myself, as I made my journey home 
 again, concerning those Foul wards. They ought not to 
 exist; no person of common decency and humanity can see 
 them and doubt it. But what is this Union to do ? The 
 necessary alteration would cost several thousands of pounds ; 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 27 
 
 it has already to support three workhouses ; its inhabitants 
 work hard for their bare lives, and are already rated for the 
 relief of the Poor to the utmost extent of reasonable endur- 
 ance. One poor parish in this very Union is rated to the 
 amount of Five and sixpence in the pound, at the very same 
 time when the rich parish of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, 
 is rated at about Sevenpence in the pound, Paddington 
 at about Fourpence, Saint James’s, Westminster, at about 
 Tenpence ! It is only through the equalization of Poor Eates 
 that what is left undone in this wise, can be done. Much 
 more is left undone, or is ill-done, than I have space to sug- 
 gest in these notes of a single uncommercial journey ; but, 
 the wise men of the East, before they can reasonably hold 
 forth about it, must look to the North and South and West ; 
 let them also, any morning before taking the seat of Solomon, 
 look into the shops and dwellings all around the Temple, and 
 first ask themselves How much more can these poor people 
 — many of whom keep themselves with difficulty enough out 
 of the workhouse — bear ? ” 
 
 I had yet other matter for reflection as I journeyed home, 
 inasmuch as, before I altogether departed from the neighbor- 
 hood of Mr. Baker’s trap, I had knocked at the gate of the 
 workhouse of St. George’s-in-the-East, and had found it to be 
 an establishment highly creditable to those parts, and thor- 
 oughly well administered by a most intelligent master. I 
 remarked in it an instance of the collateral harm that obsti- 
 nate vanity and folly can do. This was the Hall where 
 those old paupers, male and female, whom I had just seen, 
 met for the Church service, was it ? ” — Yes.” — Did 
 they sing the Psalms to any instrument ? ” — They would 
 like to, very much ; they would have an extraordinary inter- 
 est in doing so.” — And could none be got ? ” — Well, a 
 piano could even have been got for nothing, but these unfor- 
 tunate dissensions ” — Ah ! better far better, my Christian 
 friend in the beautiful garment, to have let the singing boys 
 alone, and left the multitude to sing for themselves ! You 
 should know better than I, but I think I have reaj that they 
 did so, once upon a time, and that when they had sung an 
 hymn,” Some one (not in a beautiful garment) went up unto 
 the Mount of Olives. 
 
28 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLER, 
 
 It made my heart ache to think of this miserable trifling 
 in the streets of a city where every stone seemed to call to 
 me, as I walked along, “ Turn this way, man, and see what 
 waits to be done ! So I decoyed myself into another train 
 of thought to ease my heart. But, I don’t know that I did it, 
 for I was so full of paupers, that it was, after all, only a 
 change to a single pauper, who took possession of my remem- 
 brance instead of a thousand. 
 
 I beg your pardon, sir,” he had said, in a confidential 
 manner, on another occasion, taking me aside ; but I have 
 seen better days.” 
 
 I am very sorry to hear it.” 
 
 Sir, I have a complaint to make against the master.” 
 
 I have no power here, I assure you. And if I had ” — 
 
 But allow me, sir, to mention it, as between yourself and 
 a man who has seen better days, sir. The master and myself 
 are both masons, sir, and I make him the sign continually ; 
 but, because I am in this unfortunate position, sir, he won’t 
 give me the countersign ! ” 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 29 
 
 IV. 
 
 TWO VIEWS OF A CHEAP THEATRE. 
 
 As I shut the door of my lodging behind me, and came out 
 into the streets at six on a drizzling Saturday evening in the 
 last past month of January, all that neighborhood of Covent 
 Garden looked very desolate. It is so essentially a neighbor- 
 hood which has seen better days, that bad weather affects it 
 sooner than another place which has not come down in the 
 world. In its present reduced condition it bears a thaw 
 almost worse than any place I know. It gets so dreadfully 
 low-spirited when damp breaks forth. Those wonderful houses 
 about Drury-lane Threatre, which in the palmy days of theatres 
 were prosperous and long-settled places of business, and which 
 now change hands every week, but never change their charac- 
 ter of being divided and subdivided on the ground floor into 
 mouldy dens of shops where an orange and half a dozen nuts, 
 or a pomatum pot, one cake of fancy soap, and a cigar box, 
 are offered for sale and never sold, were most ruefully contem- 
 plated that evening, by the statue of Shakespeare, with the 
 rain-drops coursing one another down its innocent nose. Those 
 inscrutable pigeon-hole offices, wdth nothing in them (not so 
 much as an inkstand) but a model of a theatre before the cur- 
 tain, where, in the Italian Opera season, tickets at reduced 
 prices are kept on sale by nomadic gentlemen in smeary hats 
 too tall for them, whom one occasionally seems to have seen 
 on race-courses, not wholly unconnected with strips of cloth 
 of various colors and a rolling ball — those Bedouin establish- 
 ments, deserted by the tribe, and tenantless, except when 
 sheltering in one corner an irregular row of ginger-beer 
 bottles, which w^ould have made one shudder on such a 
 night, but for its being plain that they had nothing in them, 
 shrunk from the shrill cries of the newsboys at their Exchange 
 in the kennel of Catherine Street, like guilty things upon a 
 
30 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 fearful summons. At the pipe-shop in Great Kussell Street, 
 the Death’s-head pipes were like theatrical memento mori, 
 admonishing beholders of the decline of the playhouse as an 
 Institution. I walked up Bow Street, disposed to be angry 
 with the shops there, that were letting out theatrical secrets 
 by exhibiting to work-a-day humanity the stuff of which dia- 
 dems and robes of kings are made. I noticed that some shops 
 which had once been in the dramatic line, and had struggled 
 out of it, were not getting on prosperously — like some actors 
 I have known, who took to business and failed to make it 
 answer. In a word, those streets looked so dull, and, consid- 
 ered as theatrical streets, so broken and bankrupt, that the 
 Found Dead on the blackboard at the police station might 
 have announced the decease of the Drama, and the pools of 
 water outside the fire-engine maker’s at the corner of Long 
 Acre might have been occasioned by his having brought out 
 the whole of his stock to play upon its last smouldering ashes. 
 
 And yet, on such a night in so degenerate a time, the object 
 of my journey w'as theatrical. And yet within half an hour 
 I was in an immense theatre, capable of holding nearly five 
 thousand people. 
 
 What Theatre ? Her Majesty’s ? Far better. Koyal 
 Italian Opera ? Far better, infinitely superior to the latter 
 for hearing in ; infinitely superior to both, for seeing in. To 
 every part of this Theatre, spacious fire-proof ways of ingress 
 and egress. For every part of it, convenient places of refresh- 
 ment and retiring rooms. Everything to eat and drink care- 
 fully supervised as to quality, and sold at an appointed price ; 
 respectable female attendants ready for the commonest women 
 in the audience ; a general air of consideration, decorum, and 
 supervision, most commendable ; an unquestionably humaniz- 
 ing influence in all the social arrangements of the place. 
 
 Surely a dear Theatre, then ? Because there were in London 
 (not very long ago) Theatres with entrance prices up to half 
 a guinea a head, whose arrangements were not half so civilized. 
 Surely, therefore, a dear Theatre ? Not very dear. A gallery 
 at threepence, another gallery at fourpence, a pit at sixpence, 
 boxes and pit-stalls at a shilling, and a few private boxes at 
 half a crown. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 31 
 
 My uncommercial curiosity induced me to go into every 
 nook of this great place, and among every class of the audi- 
 ence assembled in it — amounting that evening, as I calculated, 
 to about two thousand and odd hundreds. Magnificently 
 lighted by a firmament of sparkling chandeliers, the building 
 was ventilated to perfection. My sense of smell, without 
 being particularly delicate, has been so offended in some of 
 the commoner places of public resort, that I have often been 
 obliged to leave them when I have made an uncommercial 
 journey expressly to look on. The air of this Theatre was 
 fresh, cool, and wholesome. To help towards this end, very 
 sensible precautions had been used, ingeniously combining the 
 experience of hospitals and railway stations. Asphalt pave- 
 ments substituted for wooden floors, honest bare walls of 
 glazed brick and tile — even at the back of the boxes — for 
 plaster and paper, no benches stuffed, and no carpeting or 
 baize used ; a cool material with a light glazed surface, being 
 the covering of the seats. 
 
 These various contrivances are as well considered in the 
 place in question as if it were a Fever Hospital ; the result is, 
 that it is sweet and healthful. It has been constructed from 
 the ground to the roof, with a careful reference to sight and 
 sound in every corner ; the result is, that its form is beautiful, 
 and that the appearance of the audience, as seen from the 
 proscenium — with every face in it commanding the stage, and 
 the whole so admirably raked and turned to that centre, that 
 a hand can scarcely move in the great assemblage without the 
 movement being seen from thence — is highly remarkable in 
 its union of vastness with compactness. The stage itself, 
 and all its appurtenances of machinery, cellarage, height, and 
 breadth, are on a scale more like the Scala at Milan, or the 
 San Carlo at Naples, or the Grand Opera at Paris, than any 
 notion a stranger would be likely to form of the Britannia 
 Theatre at Hoxton, a mile north of St. Luke’s Hospital in 
 the Old Street Koad, London. The Forty Thieves might be 
 played here, and every thief ride his real horse, and the dis- 
 guised captain bring in his oil jars on a train of real camels, 
 and nobody be put out of the way. This really extraordinary 
 place is the achievement of one man’s enterprise, and was 
 
32 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 erected on the ruins of an inconvenient old building in less 
 than five months, at a round cost of five and twenty thousand 
 pounds. To dismiss this part of my subject, and still to ren- 
 der to the proprietor the credit that is strictly his due, I must 
 add that his sense of the responsibility upon him to make the 
 best of his audience, and to do his best for them, is a highly 
 agreeable sign of these times. 
 
 As the spectators at this theatre, for a reason I will presently 
 show, were the object of my journey, I entered on the play of 
 the night as one of the two thousand and odd hundreds, by 
 looking about me at my neighbors. We were a motley assem- 
 blage of people, and we had a good many boys and young men 
 among us ; we had also many girls and young women. To rep- 
 resent, however, that we did not include a very great number, 
 and a very fair proportion of family groups, would be to make 
 a gross misstatement. Such groups were to be seen in all 
 parts of the house ; in the boxes and stalls particularly, they 
 were composed of persons of very decent appearance, who had 
 many children with them. Among our dresses there were 
 most kinds of shabby and greasy wear, and much fustian and 
 corduroy that was neither sound nor fragrant. The caps of our 
 young men were mostly of a limp character, and we who wore 
 them, slouched, high-shouldered, into our places with our hands 
 in our pockets, and occasionally twisted our cravats about our 
 necks like eels, and occasionally tied them down our breasts 
 like links of sausages, and occasionally had a screw in our hair 
 over each cheek-bone with a slight Thief flavor in it. Besides 
 prowlers and idlers, we were mechanics, dock-laborers, coster- 
 mongers, petty tradesmen, sjnall clerks, milliners, stay-makers, 
 shoe-binders, slop workers, poor workers in a hundred high- 
 ways and byways. Many of us — on the whole, the majority 
 — were not at all clean, and not at all choice in our lives or 
 conversation. But we had all come together in a place where 
 our convenience was well consulted, and where we were well 
 looked after, to enjoy an evening’s entertainment in common. 
 We were not going to lose any part of what we had paid for 
 through anybody’s caprice, and as a community we had a char- 
 acter to lose. So, we were closely attentive, and kept excel- 
 lent order ; and let the man or boy who did otherwise instantly 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 33 
 
 get out from this place, or we would put him out with the 
 greatest expedition. 
 
 We began at half-past six with a pantomime — with a pan- 
 tomime so long, that before it was over I felt as if I had been 
 travelling for six weeks — going to India, say by the Overland 
 Mail. The Spirit of Liberty was the principal personage in 
 the Introduction and the Four Quarters of the World came out 
 of the globe, glittering, and discoursed with the Spirit, who 
 sang charmingly. We were delighted to understand that there 
 was no liberty anywhere but among ourselves, and we highly 
 applauded the agreeable fact. In an allegorical way, which 
 did as well as any other way, we and the Spirit of Liberty got 
 into a kingdom of Needles and Pins, and found them at war 
 with a potentate who called in to his aid their old arch enemy 
 Kust, and who would have got the better of them if the 
 Spirit of Liberty had not in the nick of time transformed the 
 leaders into Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin, Columbine, Harle- 
 quina, and a whole family of Sprites, consisting of a remarka- 
 bly stout father and three spineless sons. We all knew what 
 was coming when the Spirit of Liberty addressed the king with 
 a big face, and His Majesty backed to the side-scenes and 
 began untying himself behind, with his big face all on one 
 side. Our excitement at that crisis was great, and our delight 
 unbounded. After this era in our existence, we went through 
 all the incidents of a pantomime ; it was not by any means a 
 savage pantomime, in the way of burning or boiling people, or 
 throwing them out of window, or cutting them up ; was often 
 very droll ; was always liberally got up, and cleverly presented. 
 I noticed that the people who kept the shops, and who repre- 
 sented the passengers in the thoroughfares, and so forth, had 
 no conventionality in them, but were unusually like the real 
 thing — from which I infer that you may take that audience 
 in (if you wish to) concerning Knights and Ladies, Fairies, 
 Angels, or such like, but they are not to be done as to any- 
 thing in the streets. I noticed, also, that when two young 
 men, dressed in exact imitation of the eel-and-sausage-cravated 
 portion of the audience, were chased by policemen, and, find- 
 ing themselves in danger of being caught, dropped so suddenly 
 as to oblige the policeman to tumble over them, there was 
 
34 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 great rejoicing among the caps — as though it were a delicate 
 reference to something they had heard of before. 
 
 The Pantomime was succeeded by a Melodrama. Through- 
 out the evening I was pleased to observe Virtue quite as tri- 
 umphant as she usually is out of doors, and indeed I thought 
 rather more so. We all agreed (for the time) that honesty 
 was the best policy, and we were as hard as iron upon Vice, 
 and we wouldnT hear of Villany getting on in the world — 
 no, not on any consideration whatever. 
 
 Between the pieces, we almost all of us went out and re- 
 freshed. Many of us went the length of drinking beer at the 
 bar of the neighboring public-house, some of us drank spirits, 
 crowds of us had sandwiches and ginger-beer at the refresh- 
 ment-bars established for us in the Theatre. The sandwich 
 — as substantial as was consistent with portability, and as 
 cheap as possible — we hailed as one of our greatest institutions. 
 It forced its way among us at all stages of the entertainment, 
 and we were always delighted to see it ; its adaptability to the 
 varying moods of our nature was surprising ; we could never 
 weep so comfortably as when our tears fell on our sandwich ; 
 we could never laugh so heartily as when we choked with sand- 
 wich ; Virtue never looked so beautiful or Vice so deformed as 
 when we paused, sandwich in hand, to consider what would 
 come of that resolution of Wickedness in boots, to sever Inno- 
 cence in flowered chintz from Honest Industry in striped 
 stockings. When the curtain fell for the night, we still fell 
 back upon sandwich, to help us through the rain and mire, 
 and home to bed. 
 
 This, as I have mentioned, was Saturday night. Being 
 Saturday night, I had accomplished but the half of my uncom- 
 mercial journey; for, its object was to compare the play on 
 Saturday evening with the preaching in the same Theatre on 
 Sunday evening. 
 
 Therefore, at the same hour of half-past six on the similarly 
 damp and muddy Sunday evening, I returned to this Theatre. 
 I drove up to the entrance (fearful of being late, or I should 
 have come on foot), and found myself in a large crowd of 
 people who, I am happy to state, were put into excellent 
 spirits by my arrival. Having nothing to look at but the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 35 
 
 mud and the closed doors^ they looked at me, and highly 
 enjoyed the comic spectacle. My modesty inducing me to 
 draw off, some hundreds of yards, into a dark corner, they at 
 once forgot me, and applied themselves to their former occu- 
 pation of looking at the mud and looking in at the closed 
 doors : which, being of grated ironwork, allowed the lighted 
 passage within to be seen. They were chiefly people of respect- 
 able appearance, odd and impulsive as most crowds are, and 
 making a joke of being there as most crowds do. 
 
 In the dark corner I might have sat a long while, but that a 
 very obliging passer-by informed me that the Theatre was 
 already full, and that the people whom I saw in the street 
 were all shut out for want of room. After that, I lost no time 
 in worming myself into the building, and creeping to a place 
 in a Proscenium box that had been kept for me. 
 
 There must have been full four thousand people present. 
 Carefully estimating the pit alone, I could bring it out as 
 holding little less than fourteen hundred. Every part of the 
 house was well filled, and I had not found it easy to make my 
 way along the back of the boxes to where I sat. The chande- 
 liers in the ceiling were lighted ; there was no light on the 
 stage.; the orchestra was empty. The green curtain was down, 
 and, packed pretty closely on chairs on the small space of 
 stage before it, were some thirty gentlemen, and two or three 
 ladies. In the centre of these, in a desk or pulpit covered 
 with red baize, was the presiding minister. The kind of ros- 
 trum he occupied will be very well understood, if I liken it to 
 a boarded-up fireplace turned towards the audience, with a 
 gentleman in a black surtout standing in the stove and leaning 
 forward over the mantel-piece. 
 
 A portion of Scripture was being read when I went in. It 
 was followed by a discourse, to which the congregation listened 
 with most exemplary attention and uninterrupted silence and 
 decorum. My own attention comprehended both the auditory 
 and the speaker, and shall turn to both in this recalling of the 
 scene, exactly as it did at the time. 
 
 ^^A very difficult thing,’^ I thought, when the discourse 
 began, speak appropriately to so large an audience, and 
 to speak with tact. Without it, better not to speak at all. 
 
36 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Infinitely better, to read the New Testament well, and to let 
 that speak. In this congregation there is indubitably one 
 pulse ; but I doubt if any power short of genius can touch it 
 as one, and make it answer as one.’^ 
 
 I could not possibly say to myself as the discourse proceeded, 
 that the minister was a good speaker. I could not possibly 
 say to myself that he expressed an understanding of the 
 general mind and character of his audience. There was a 
 supposititious working-man introduced into the homily, to 
 make supposititious objections to our Christian religion and 
 be reasoned down, who was not only a very disagreeable 
 person, but remarkably unlike life — very much more unlike 
 it than anything I had seen in the pantomime. The native 
 independence of character this artisan was supposed to possess, 
 was represented by a suggestion of a dialect that I certainly 
 never heard in my uncommercial travels, and with a coarse 
 swing of voice and manner anything but agreeable to his feel- 
 ings I should conceive, considered in the light of a portrait, 
 and as far away from the fact as a Chinese Tartar. There 
 was a model pauper introduced in like manner, who appeared 
 to me to be the most intolerably arrogant pauper ever relieved, 
 and to show himself in absolute want and dire necessity of a 
 course of Stone Yard. For, how did this pauper testify to his 
 having received the gospel of humility ? A gentleman met 
 him in the workhouse, and said (which I myself really thought 
 good-natured of him), ^^Ah, John? I am sorry to see you 
 here. I am sorry to see you so poor.’’ — ^^Poor, sir!” replied 
 that man, drawing himself up, am the son of a Prince! 
 Jfy father is the King of Kings. Mt/ father is the Lord of 
 Lords. Ml/ father is the ruler of all the Princes of the 
 Earth ! ” etc. And this was what all the preacher’s fellow- 
 sinners might come to, if they would embrace this blessed 
 book — which I must say it did some violence to my own 
 feelings of reverence, to see held out at arm’s length at fre- 
 quent intervals and soundingly slapped, like a slow lot at a 
 sale. Now, could I help asking myself the question, whether 
 the mechanic before me, who must detect the preacher as 
 being wrong about the visible manner of himself and the like 
 of himself, and about such a noisy lip-server as that pauper. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 37 
 
 might not, most unhappily for the usefulness of the occasion, 
 doubt that preacher’s being right about things not visible to 
 human senses ? 
 
 Again. Is it necessary or advisable to address such an 
 audience continually as fellow-sinners ” ? Is it not enough 
 to be fellow-creatures, born yesterday, suffering and striving 
 to-day, dying to-morrow ? By our common humanity, my 
 brothers and sisters, by our common capacities for pain and 
 pleasure, by our common laughter and our common tears, by 
 our common aspiration to reach something better than our- 
 selves, by our common tendency to believe in something good, 
 and to invest whatever we love or whatever we lose with some 
 qualities that are superior to our own failings and weak- 
 nesses as we know them in our own poor hearts — by these. 
 Hear me ! — Surely, it is enough to be fellow-creatures. 
 Surely, it includes the other designation, and some touching 
 meanings over and above. 
 
 Again. There was a personage introduced into the dis- 
 course (not an absolute novelty, to the best of my remem- 
 brance of my reading), who had been personally known to 
 the preacher, and had been quite a Crichton in all the ways 
 of philosophy, but had been an infidel. Many a time had 
 the preacher talked with him on that subject, and many a 
 time had he failed to convince that intelligent man. But he 
 fell ill, and died, and before he died he recorded his con- 
 version — in words which the preacher had taken down, my 
 fellow-sinners, and would read to you from this piece of 
 paper. I must confess that to me, as one of an uninstructed 
 audience, they did not appear particularly edifying. I thought 
 their tone extremely selfish, and I thought they had a 
 spiritual vanity in them which was of the before-mentioned 
 refractory pauper’s family. 
 
 All slangs and twangs are objectionable everywhere, but 
 the slang and twang of the conventicle — as bad in its way 
 as that of the House of Commons, and nothing worse can 
 be said of it — should be studiously avoided under such cir- 
 cumstances as I describe. The avoidance was not complete 
 on this occasion. ISTor was it quite agreeable to see the 
 preacher addressing his pet points ” to his backers on the 
 
38 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 stage, as if appealing to those disciples to show him up, and 
 testify to the multitude that each of those points was a 
 clincher. 
 
 But, in respect of the large Christianity of his general 
 tone; of his renunciation of all priestly authority; of his 
 earnest and reiterated assurance to the people that the com- 
 monest among them could work out their own salvation if 
 they would, by simply, lovingly, and dutifully following Our 
 Saviour, and that they needed the mediation of no erring 
 man ; in these particulars, this gentleman deserved all praise. 
 Nothing could be better than the spirit, or the plain em- 
 phatic words of his discourse in these respects. And it was 
 a most significant and encouraging circumstance that when- 
 ever he struck that chord, or whenever he described anything 
 which Christ himself had done, the array of faces before him 
 was very much more earnest, and very much more expressive 
 of emotion, than at any other time. 
 
 And now, I am brought to the fact, that the lowest part 
 of the audience of the previous night, zvas not there. There is 
 no doubt about it. There was no such thing in that building, 
 that Sunday evening. I have been told since, that the lowest 
 part of the audience of the Victoria Theatre has been 
 attracted to its Sunday services. I have been very glad to 
 hear it, but on this occasion of which I write, the lowest 
 part of the usual audience of the Britannia Theatre, de- 
 cidedly and unquestionably stayed away. When I first took 
 my seat and looked at the house, my surprise at the change 
 in its occupants was as great as my disappointment. To the 
 most respectable class of the previous evening, was added a 
 great number of respectable strangers attracted by curiosity, 
 and drafts from the regular congregations of various chapels. 
 It was impossible to fail in identifying the character of these 
 last, and they were very numerous. I came out in a strong, 
 slow tide of them setting from the boxes. Indeed, while the 
 discourse was in progress, the respectable character of the 
 auditory was so manifest in their appearance, that when the 
 minister addressed a supposititious outcast,’^ one really felt a 
 little impatient of it, as a figure of speech not justified by 
 anything the eye could discover. 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLEB. 
 
 39 
 
 The time appointed for the conclusion of the proceedings 
 was eight o’clock. The address having lasted until full that 
 time, and it being the custom to conclude with a hymn, the 
 preacher intimated in a few sensible words that the clock 
 had struck the hour, and that those who desired to go before 
 the hymn was sung, could go now, without giving offence. 
 ISTo one stirred. The hymn was then sung, in good time and 
 tune and unison, and its effect was very striking. A compre- 
 hensive benevolent prayer dismissed the throng, and in seven 
 or eight minutes there was nothing left in the Theatre but a 
 light cloud of dust. 
 
 That these Sunday meetings in Theatres are good things, 
 I do not doubt. Nor do I doubt that they will work lower 
 and lower down in the social scale, if those who preside over 
 them will be very careful on two heads : firstly, not to dis- 
 parage the places in which they speak, or the intelligence of 
 their hearers ; secondly, not to sit themselves in antagonism 
 to the natural inborn desire of the mass of maidiind to 
 recreate themselves and to be amused. 
 
 There is a third head, taking precedence of all others, to 
 which my remarks on the discourse I heard, have tended. In 
 the New Testament there is the most beautiful and affecting 
 history conceivable by man, and there are the terse models 
 for all prayer and for all preaching. As to the models, 
 imitate them, Sunday preachers — else why are they there, 
 consider ? As to the history, tell it. Some people cannot 
 read, some people will not read, many people (this especially 
 holds among the young and ignorant) find it hard to pursue 
 the verse-form in which the book is presented to them, and 
 imagine that those breaks imply gaps and want of continuity. 
 Help them over that first stumbling-block, by setting forth 
 the history in narrative, with no fear of exhausting it. You 
 will never preach so well, you will never move them so pro- 
 foundly, you will never send them away with half so much to 
 think of. Which is the better interest : Christ’s choice of 
 twelve poor men to help in those merciful wonders among 
 the poor and rejected; or the pious bullying of a whole 
 Union-full of paupers ? What is your changed philosopher 
 to wretched me, peeping in at the door out of the mud of 
 
40 
 
 THE UNCOMMEUCIAL travellee. 
 
 the streets and of my life, when you have the widow’s son to 
 tell me about, the ruler’s daughter, the other figure at the 
 door when the brother of the two sisters was dead, and one 
 of the two ran to the mourner, crying, The Master is come 
 and calleth for thee ? ” — Let the preacher who will thoroughly 
 forget himself and remember no individuality but one, and 
 no eloquence but one, stand up before four thousand men 
 and women at the Britannia Theatre any Sunday night, 
 recounting that narrative to them as fellow-creatures, and he 
 shall see a sight ! 
 
THE UJSfCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLEB. 
 
 41 
 
 V. 
 
 POOR MERCANTILE JACK. 
 
 Is the sweet little cherub who sits smiling aloft and keeps 
 watch on the life of poor Jack, commissioned to take charge 
 of Mercantile Jack, as well as Jack of the national navy ? 
 If not, who is ? What is the cherub about, and what are we 
 all about, when poor Mercantile Jack is having his brains 
 slowly knocked out by pennyweights aboard the brig 
 Beelzebub, or the bark Bowie-knife — when he looks his 
 last at that infernal craft, with the first officer’s iron boot-heel 
 in his remaining eye, or Avith his dying body towed over- 
 board in the ship’s wake, while the cruel wounds in it do 
 the multitudinous seas incarnadine ” ? 
 
 Is it unreasonable to entertain a belief that if, aboard the 
 brig Beelzebub or the bark Bowie-knife, the first officer 
 did half the damage to cotton that he does to men, there 
 would presently arise from both sides of the Atlantic so 
 vociferous an invocation of the sweet little cherub who sits 
 calculating aloft, keeping watch on the markets that pay, 
 that such vigilant cherub would, with a winged sword, have 
 that gallant officer’s organ of destructiveness out of his head 
 in the space of a flash of lightning ? 
 
 If it be unreasonable, then am I the most unreasonable of 
 men, for I believe it with all my soul. 
 
 This was my thought as I walked the dock-quays at 
 Liverpool, keeping watch on poor Mercantile Jack. Alas for 
 me ! I have long outgrown the state of sweet little cherub ; 
 but there I was, and there Mercantile Jack was, and very 
 busy he was, and very cold he was ; the snow yet lying in 
 the frozen furroAvs of the land, and the north-east winds 
 snipping off the tops of the little waves in the Mersey, and 
 rolling them into hailstones to pelt him with. Mercantile 
 Jack was hard at it, in the hard weather : as he mostly is in 
 
42 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 all weathers, poor J ack. He was girded to ships’ masts and 
 funnels of steamers, like a forester to a great oak, scraping 
 and painting; he was lying out on yards, furling sails that 
 tried to beat him oft ; he was dimly discernible up in a 
 world of giant cobwebs, reefing and splicing ; he was faintly 
 audible down in holds, stowing and unshipping cargo ; he 
 was winding round and round at capstans melodious, monoto- 
 nous, and drunk ; he was of a diabolical aspect, with coaling 
 for the Antipodes ; he was washing decks barefoot, with the 
 breast of his red shirt open to the blast, though it was sharper 
 than the knife in his leathern girdle ; he was looking over 
 bulwarks, all eyes and hair ; he was standing by at the shoot 
 of the Cunard steamer, off to-morrow, as the stocks in trade 
 of several butchers, poulterers, and fishmongers, poured down 
 into the ice-house ; he was coming aboard of other vessels, 
 with his kit in a tarpaulin bag, attended by plunderers to the 
 very last moment of his shore-going existence. As though 
 his senses, when released from the uproar of the elements, 
 were under obligation to be confused by other turmoil, there 
 was a rattling of wheels, a clattering of hoofs, a clashing of 
 iron, a jolting of cotton and hides and casks and timber, an 
 incessant deafening disturbance on the quays, that was the 
 very madness of sound. And as, in the midst of it, he stood 
 swaying about, with his hair blown all manner of wild ways, 
 rather crazedly taking leave of his plunderers, all the rigging 
 in the docks was shrill in the wind, and every little steamer 
 coming and going across the Mersey was sharp in its blowing 
 off, and every buoy in the river bobbed spitefully up and 
 down, as if there were a general taunting chorus of Come 
 along. Mercantile Jack! Ill-lodged, ill-fed, ill-used, hocussed, 
 entrapped, anticipated, cleaned out. Come along. Poor 
 Mercantile Jack, and be tempest-tossed till you are 
 drowned ! ” 
 
 The uncommercial transaction which had brought me and 
 Jack together, was this : — I had entered the Liverpool police- 
 force, that I might have a look at the various unlawful traps 
 which are every night set for Jack. As my term of service 
 in that distinguished corps was short, and as my personal 
 bias in the capacity of one of its members has ceased, no 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 43 
 
 suspicion will attach to my evidence that it is an admirable 
 force. Besides that it is composed, without favor, of the 
 best men that can be picked, it is directed by an unusual 
 intelligence. Its organization against Fires, I take to be 
 much better than the metropolitan system, and in all respects 
 it tempers its remarkable vigilance with a still more remark- 
 able discretion. 
 
 Jack had knocked off work in the docks some hours, and I 
 had taken, for purposes of identification, a photograph-like- 
 ness of a thief, in the portrait-room at our head police office 
 (on the whole, he seemed rather complimented by the pro- 
 ceeding), and I had been on police parade, and the small hand 
 of the clock was moving on to ten, when I took up my lantern 
 to follow Mr. Superintendent to the traps that were set for 
 Jack. In Mr. Superintendent I saw, as anybody might, a tall 
 well-looking well-set-up man of a soldierly bearing, with a 
 cavalry air, a good chest, and a resolute but not by any 
 means ungentle face. He carried in his hand a plain black 
 walking-stick of hard wood : and whenever and wherever, at 
 any after-time of the night, he struck it on the pavement with 
 a ringing sound, it instantly produced a whistle out of the 
 darkness, and a policeman. To this remarkable stick, I refer 
 an air of mystery and magic which pervaded the whole of my 
 perquisition among the traps that were set for Jack. 
 
 We began by diving into the obscurest streets and lanes of 
 the port. Suddenly pausing in a flow of cheerful discourse, 
 before a dead wall, apparently some ten miles long, Mr. 
 Superintendent struck upon the ground, and the wall opened 
 and shot out, with military salute of hand to temple, two 
 policemen — not in the least surprised themselves, not in the 
 least surprising Mr. Superintendent. 
 
 All right, Sharpeye ? 
 
 ^^All right, sir.’’ 
 
 All right, Trampfoot ? ” 
 
 All right, sir.” 
 
 Is Quickear there ? ” 
 
 Here am I, sir.” 
 
 Come with us.” 
 
 ‘^Yes, sir.” 
 
44 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 So Sharpeye went before, and Mr. Superintendent and I 
 went next, and Trampfoot and Quickear marched as rear- 
 guard. Sharpeye, I soon had occasion to remark, had a skilful 
 and quite professional way of opening doors — touched latches 
 delicately, as if they were keys of musical instruments — 
 opened every door he touched, as if he were perfectly con- 
 fident that there was stolen property behind it — instantly 
 insinuated himself, to prevent its being shut. 
 
 Sharpeye opened several doors of traps that were set for 
 Jack, but Jack did not happen to be in any of them. They 
 were all such miserable places that really, Jack, if I were 
 you, I would give them a wider birth. In every trap, some- 
 body was sitting over a fire, waiting for Jack. Now, it was 
 a crouching old woman, like the picture of the Norwood 
 Gypsy in the old sixpenny dream-books ; now, it was a crimp 
 of the male sex, in a checked shirt and without a coat, reading 
 a newspaper ; now, it was a man crimp and a woman crimp, 
 who always introduced themselves as united in holy matri- 
 mony; now, it was Jack’s delight, his (un) lovely Nan ; but 
 they were all waiting for Jack, and were all frightfully dis- 
 appointed to see us. 
 
 Who have you got up-stairs here ? ” says Sharpeye, 
 generally. (In the Move-on tone.) 
 
 Nobody, surr ; sure not a blessed sowl ! ” (Irish feminine 
 reply.) 
 
 What do you mean by nobody ? Didn’t I hear a woman’s 
 step go up-stairs when my hand was on the latch ? ” 
 
 Ah ! sure thin you’re right, surr, I forgot her. ’Tis on’y 
 Betsy White, surr. Ah ! you know Betsy, surr. Come down, 
 Betsy darlin’, and say the gintlemin.” 
 
 Generally, Betsy looks over the banisters (the steep stair- 
 case is in the room) with a forcible expression in her protest- 
 ing face, of an intention to compensate herself for the present 
 trial by grinding Jack finer than usual when he does come. 
 Generally, Sharpeye turns to Mr. Superintendent, and says, 
 as if the subjects of his remarks were wax- work, — 
 
 One of the worst, sir, this house is. This woman has been 
 indicted three times. This man’s a regular bad one likewise. 
 His real name is Pegg. Gives himself out as Waterhouse.” 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLEB. 
 
 45 
 
 Never had sich a name as Pegg near me back, thin, since 
 I was in this house, bee the good Lard ! ’’ says the woman. 
 
 Generally, the man says nothing at all, but becomes ex- 
 ceedingly round-shouldered, and pretends to read his paper 
 with rapt attention. Generally, Sharpeye directs our observa- 
 tion with a look, to the prints and pictures that are invariably 
 numerous on the walls. Always, Trampfoot and Quickear 
 are taking notice on the doorstep. In default of Sharpeye 
 being acquainted with the exact individuality of any gentle- 
 man encountered, one of these two is sure to proclaim from 
 the outer air, like a gruff spectre, that Jackson is not Jackson, 
 but knows himself to be Fogle ; or that Canlon is Walker’s 
 brother, against whom there was not sufficient evidence ; or 
 that the man who says he never was at sea since he was a 
 boy, came ashore from a voyage last Thursday, or sails to- 
 morrow morning. And that is a bad class of man, you 
 see,” says Mr. Superintendent, when he got out into the 
 dark again, and very difficult to deal with, who, when he 
 has made this place too hot to hold him, enters himself for a 
 voyage as steward or cook, and is out of knowledge for months, 
 and then turns up again worse than ever.” 
 
 When we had gone into many such houses, and had come 
 out (always leaving everybody relapsing into waiting for 
 Jack), we started off to a singing-house where Jack was 
 expected to muster strong. 
 
 The vocalization was taking place in a long low room 
 up-stairs ; at one end, an orchestra of two performers, and a 
 small platform ; across the room, a series of open pews for 
 Jack, with an aisle down the middle ; at the other end a 
 larger pew than the rest, entitled Snug, and reserved for 
 mates and similar good company. About the room, some 
 amazing coffee-colored pictures varnished an inch deep, and 
 some stuffed creatures in cases ; dotted among the audience, 
 in Snug and out of Snug, the Professionals ; ” among them, 
 the celebrated comic favorite, Mr. Banjo Bones, looking very 
 hideous with his blackened face and limp sugar-loaf hat; 
 beside him, sipping rum and water, Mrs. Banjo Bones, in her 
 natural colors — a little heightened. 
 
 It was a Friday night, and Friday night was considered 
 
46 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 not a good night for Jack. At any rate, Jack did not show 
 in very great force even here, though the house was one to 
 which he much resorts, and where a good deal of money is 
 taken. There was British Jack, a little maudlin and sleepy, 
 lolling over his empty glass, as if he were trying to read 
 his fortune at the bottom ; there was loafing Jack of the Stars 
 and Stripes, rather an unpromising customer, with his long 
 nose, lank cheek, high cheek-bones, and nothing soft about 
 him but his cabbage-leaf hat; there was Spanish Jack, with 
 curls of black hair, rings in his ears, and a knife not far 
 from his hand, if you got into trouble with him ; there were 
 Maltese Jack, and Jack of Sweden, and Jack the Finn, loom- 
 ing through the smoke of their pipes, and turning faces that 
 looked as if they were carved out of dark wood, towards the 
 young lady dancing the hornpipe ; who found the platform so 
 exceedingly small for it, that I had a nervous expectation 
 of seeing her, in the backwards steps, disappear through the 
 window. Still, if all hands had been got together, they would 
 not have more than half filled the room. Observe, however, 
 said Mr. Licensed Victualler, the host, that it was Friday 
 night, and, besides, it was getting on for twelve, and Jack 
 had gone aboard. A sharp and watchful man, Mr. Licensed 
 Victualler, the host, with tight lips and a complete edition 
 of Cocker’s arithmetic in each eye. Attended to his business 
 himself, he said. Always on the spot. Vt^hen he heard of 
 talent, trusted nobody’s account of it, but went off by rail to 
 see it. If true talent, engaged it. Pounds a week for talent 
 — four pound — five pound. Banjo Bones was undoubted 
 talent. Hear this instrument that was going to play — it was 
 real talent ! In truth it was very good ; a kind of piano- 
 accordion, played by a young girl of a delicate prettiness of 
 face, figure, and dress, that made the audience look coarser. 
 She sang to the instrument, too ; first, a song about village 
 bells, and how they chimed ; then a song about how I went to 
 sea; winding up with an imitation of the bagpipes, which 
 Mercantile Jack seemed to understand much the best. A good 
 girl, said Mr. Licensed Victualler. Kept herself select. Sat 
 in Snug, not listening to the blandishments of Mates. Lived 
 with mother. Father dead. Once a merchant well to do, but 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 47 
 
 over-speculated himself. On delicate inquiry as to salary 
 paid for item of talent under consideration, Mr. Victualler’s 
 pounds dropped suddenly to shillings — still it was a very 
 comfortable thing for a young person like that, you know ; 
 she only went on six times a night, and was only required to 
 be there from six at night to twelve. What was more con- 
 clusive was, Mr. Victualler’s assurance that he never allowed 
 any language, and never suffered any disturbance.” Sharpeye 
 confirmed the statement, and the order that prevailed was the 
 best proof of it that could have been cited. So, I came to 
 the conclusion that poor Mercantile Jack might do (as I am 
 afraid he does) much worse than trust himself to Mr. Vic- 
 tualler, and pass his evenings here. 
 
 But we had not yet looked, Mr. Superintendent — said 
 Trampfoot, receiving us in the street again with military 
 salute — for Dark Jack. True, Trampfoot. Eing the wonder- 
 ful stick, rub the wonderful lantern, and cause the spirits of 
 the stick and lantern to convey us to the Darkies. 
 
 There was no disappointment in the matter of Dark Jack ; 
 he was producible. The Genii set us down in the little first 
 floor of a little public-house, and there, in a stiflingly close 
 atmosphere, were Dark Jack, and Dark Jack’s delight, his 
 white unlovely Nan, sitting against the wall all round the 
 room. More than that: Dark Jack’s delight was the least 
 unlovely Nan, both morally and physically, that I saw that 
 night. 
 
 As a Addle and tambourine band were sitting among the 
 company, Quickear suggested why not strike up? ^^Ah, 
 la’ads!” said a negro sitting by the door, ^^gib the jebblem 
 a darnse. Tak’ yah pardlers, jebblem, for ’um quAD-rill.” 
 
 This was the landlord, in a Greek cap, and a dress half 
 Greek and half English. As master of the ceremonies, he 
 called all the figures, and occasionally addressed himself 
 parenthetically — after this manner. When he was very loud, 
 I use capitals. 
 
 Now den! Hoy! One. Eight and left. (Put a steam 
 on, gib ^um powder.) LA-dies’ chail. BAL-loon say. Lemom 
 ade ! Two. Ao-warnse and go back (gib ’ell a breakdown, 
 shake it out o’ yorselbs, keep a-movil). SwiNG-corners, Bal- 
 
48 
 
 THE ITNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 loon say, and Lemonade ! (Hoy !) Three. Gent come forward 
 with a lady and go back, hoppersite come forward and do what 
 yer can. (Aeiohoy ! ) BAL-loon say, and leetle lemonade. 
 (Dat hair nigger by ’um fireplace ’hind a’ time, shake it out 
 o’ yerselbs, gib ’ell a breakdown.) Now den ! Hoy ! Four ! 
 Lemonade. BAL-loon say, and swing. Four ladies meets in 
 ’um middle, four gents goes round ’um ladies, four gents 
 passes out under um’ ladies’ arms, swing — and Lemonade till 
 ’a moosic can’t play no more ! (Hoy, Hoy !) ” 
 
 The male dancers were all blacks, and one was an unusually 
 powerful man of six feet three or four. The sound of their 
 flat feet on the floor was as unlike the sound of white feet as 
 their faces were unlike white faces. They toed and heeled, 
 shuffled, double-shuffled, double-double-shuffled, covered the 
 buckle, and beat the time out, rarely, dancing with a great 
 show of teeth, and with a childish good-humored enjoyment 
 that was very prepossessing. They generally kept together, 
 these poor fellows, said Mr. Superintendent, because they 
 were at a disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the 
 neighboring streets. But, if I were Light Jack, I should 
 be very slow to interfere oppressively with Dark Jack, for, 
 whenever I have had to do with him I have found him a 
 simple and gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his 
 friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wish- 
 ing him good-night, and thus it fell out that the last words I 
 heard him say as I blundered down the worn stairs, were, 
 Jebblem’s elth ! Ladies drinks fust ! ” 
 
 The night was now well on into the morning, but, for miles 
 and hours we explored a strange world, where nobody ever 
 goes to bed, but everybody is eternally sitting up, waiting 
 for Jack. This exploration was among a labyrinth of dismal 
 courts and blind alleys, called Entries, kept in wonderful 
 order by the police, and in much better order than by the 
 corporation : the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and 
 infamous of these places being quite unworthy of so spirited 
 a town. I need describe but two or three of the houses in 
 which Jack was waited for as specimens of the rest. Many 
 we attained by noisome passages so profoundly dark that we 
 felt our way with our hands. Not one of the whole number 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TUAVELLER. 
 
 49 
 
 we visited, was without its show of prints and ornamental 
 crockery ; the quantity of the latter set forth on little shelves 
 and in little cases, in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating 
 that Mercantile Jack must have an extraordinary fondness 
 for crockery, to necessitate so much of that bait in his traps. 
 
 Among such garniture, in one front parlor in the dead of 
 the night, four women were sitting by a fire. One of them 
 had a male child in her arms. On a stool among them was 
 a swarthy youth with a guitar, who had evidently stopped 
 playing when our footsteps were heard. 
 
 “Well ! how do you do ? says Mr. Superintendent, looking 
 about him. 
 
 “Pretty well, sir, and hope you gentlemen are going to 
 treat us ladies, now you have come to see us.^’ 
 
 “ Order there ! says Sharpeye. 
 
 “ None of that ! ’’ says Quickear. 
 
 Trampfoot outside, is heard to confide to himself, “ Meggis- 
 son’s lot this is. And a bad ’un ! ’’ 
 
 “Well ! ’’ says Mr. Superintendent, laying his hand on the 
 shoulder of the swarthy youth, “ and who’s this ? 
 
 “Antonio, sir.” 
 
 “ And what does he do here ? ” 
 
 “Come to give us a bit of music. No harm in that, I 
 suppose ? ” 
 
 “ A young foreign sailor ? ” 
 
 “Yes. He’s a Spaniard. You’re a Spaniard, ain’t you, 
 Antonio ? ” 
 
 “ Me Spanish.” 
 
 “ And he don’t know a word you say, not he ; not if you 
 was to talk to him till doomsday.” (Triumphantly, as if it 
 redounded to the credit of the house.) 
 
 “ Will he play something ? ” 
 
 “Oh, yes, if you like. Play something, Antonio. You 
 ain’t ashamed to play something ; are you ? ” 
 
 The cracked guitar raises the feeblest ghost of a tune, and 
 three of the women keep time to it with their heads, and the 
 fourth with the child. If Antonio has brought any money in 
 with him, I am afraid he will never take it out, and it even 
 strikes me that his jacket and guitar may be in a bad way. 
 
60 
 
 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLER. 
 
 But, the look of the young man and the tinkling of the 
 instrument so change the place in a moment to a leaf out of 
 Don Quixote, that I wonder where his mule is stabled, until 
 he leaves off. 
 
 I am bound to acknowledge (as it tends rather to my un- 
 commercial confusion), that I occasioned a difficulty in this 
 establishment, by having taken the child in my arms. For, 
 on my offering to restore it to a ferocious joker not unstim- 
 ulated by rum, who claimed to be its mother, that unnatural 
 parent put her hands behind her, and declined to accept it ; 
 backing into the fireplace, and very shrilly declaring, regard- 
 less of remonstrance from her friends, that she knowed it 
 to be Law, that whoever took a child from its mother of his 
 own will, was bound to stick to it. The uncommercial sense 
 of being in a rather ridiculous position with the poor little 
 child beginning to be frightened, was relieved by my worthy 
 friend and fellow-constable, Trampfoot ; who, laying hands 
 on the article as if it were a Bottle, passed it on to the nearest 
 woman, and bade her take hold of that.’’ As we came out 
 the Bottle was passed to the ferocious joker, and they all sat 
 down as before, including Antonio and the guitar. It was 
 clear that there was no such thing as a nightcap to this baby’s 
 head, and that even he never went to bed, but was always 
 kept up — and would grow up, kept up — waiting for Jack. 
 
 Later still in the night, we came (by the court where the 
 man was murdered,” and by the other court across the street, 
 into which his body was dragged) to another parlor in another 
 Entry, where several people were sitting round a fire in just 
 the same way. It was a dirty and offensive place, with some 
 ragged clothes drying in it ; but there was a high shelf over 
 the entrance-door (to be out of the reach of marauding hands, 
 possibly) with two large white loaves on it, and a great piece 
 of Cheshire cheese. 
 
 Well ! ” says Mr. Superintendent, with a comprehensive 
 look all round. How do you do ? ” 
 
 ^^Not much to boast of, sir.” From the courtesying woman 
 of the house. That is my good man, sir.” 
 
 You are not registered as a common Lodging House ?” 
 
 No, sir.” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 51 
 
 Sharpeye (in the move-on tone) puts in the pertinent in- 
 quiry, Then why ainT you ? 
 
 AinT got no one here, Mr. Sharpeye,’’ rejoin the woman 
 and my good man together, but our own family.” 
 
 How many are you in family ? ” 
 
 The woman takes time to count, under the pretence of 
 coughing, and adds, as one scant of breath, Seven, sir.” 
 
 But she has missed one, so Sharpeye, who knows all about 
 it, says, — 
 
 Here’s a young man here makes eight, who ain’t of your 
 family ? ” 
 
 No, Mr. Sharpeye, he’s a weekly lodger.” 
 
 What does he do for a living ? ” 
 
 The young man here, takes the reply upon himself, and 
 shortly answers, Ain’t got nothing to do.” 
 
 The young man here, is modestly brooding behind a damp 
 apron pendent from a clothes-line. As I glance at him I 
 become — but I don’t know why — vaguely reminded of Wool- 
 wich, Chatham, Portsmouth, and Hover. When we get out, 
 my respected fellow-constable Sharpeye, addressing Mr. 
 Superintendent, says, — 
 
 ‘Won noticed that young man, sir, in at Darby’s ?” 
 
 Yes. What is he ? ” 
 
 Deserter, sir.” 
 
 Mr. Sharpeye further intimates that when we have done 
 with his services, he will step back and take that young man. 
 Which in course of time he does ; feeling at perfect ease about 
 finding him, and knowing for a moral certainty that nobody in 
 that region will be gone to bed. 
 
 Later still in the night, we came to another parlor up a 
 step or two from the street, which was very cleanly, neatly, 
 even tastefully, kept, and in which, set forth on a draped 
 chest of drawers masking the staircase, was such a profusion 
 of ornamental crockery, that it would have furnished forth a 
 handsome sale-booth at a fair. It backed up a stout old 
 lady — Hogarth drew her exact likeness more than once 
 — and a boy who was carefully writing a copy in a copy- 
 book. 
 
 ^^Well, ma’am, how do you do ?” 
 
52 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentleman, sweetly. 
 Charmingly, charmingly. And overjoyed to see us ! 
 
 Why, this is a strange time for this boy to be writing his 
 copy. In the middle of the night ! 
 
 So it is, dear gentlemen. Heaven bless your welcome faces 
 and send ye prosperous, but he has been to the Play with a 
 young friend for his diversion, and he combinates his improve- 
 ment with entertainment, by doing his school-writing after- 
 wards, God be good to ye ! 
 
 The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire 
 of every fierce desire. One might have thought it recom- 
 mended stirring the fire, the old lady so approved it. There 
 she sat, rosily beaming at the copy-book and the boy, and 
 invoking showers of blessings on our heads, when we left her 
 in the middle of the night, waiting for Jack. 
 
 Later still in the night, we came to a nauseous room with an 
 earth floor, into which the refuse scum of an alley trickled. 
 The stench of this habitation was abominable ; the seeming 
 poverty of it, diseased and dire. Yet, here again, was visitor 
 or lodger — a man sitting before the fire, like the rest of them 
 elsewhere, and apparently not distasteful to the mistress’s 
 niece, who was also before the fire. The mistress herself had 
 the misfortune of being in jail. 
 
 Three weird old women of transcendent ghastliness, were 
 at needlework at a table in this room. Says Trampfoot to 
 First Witch, What are you making ? ” Says she, ^^Money- 
 bags.” 
 
 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 red 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 odor of 
 devilry. 
 
 Trampfoot wishes to be informed what First Witch has got 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 53 
 
 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 dust-heap 
 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 fora charmed winding-sheet. Some grim .discourse 
 ensues, referring to the mistress of the cave, who will be re- 
 leased 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 were 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 
 J uck 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. 
 
64 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 live 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 de- 
 gree) 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 ; 
 Beckham suffers more than a virtuous Beckham might be 
 supposed to deserve ; the howling neighborhood 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 Wal- 
 worth 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 phe- 
 nomenon 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 55 
 
 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 Kegent’s Canal, instead of always saddling Surrey 
 for the field. Soi .e nameless policeman, too, is constantly, on 
 the slightest provocation, getting himself blown into this 
 same Surrey Canal. Will Sir Eichard Mayne see to it, and 
 restrain that weak-minded and feeble-bodied constable ? 
 
 To resume the consideration of the curious question of 
 Eefreshment. 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 Eefreshment 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 pro- 
 vided 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 as- 
 sumption 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 
 
56 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 extrem- 
 ities are exposed, and subdued by the moral disadvantage 
 at which I stand, I turn my disconsolate eyes on the refresh- 
 ments 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 organization, 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 for- 
 lornly occupied, I find that the depressing banquet on the 
 table is, in every phrase 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 occa- 
 sion 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 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 57 
 
 by railroad one morning last week, accompanied by the 
 amiable and fascinating Mrs. Grazinglands. Mr. G. is a gen- 
 tleman of a comfortable property, and had a little business to 
 transact at the Bank of England, which required the con- 
 currence and signature of Mrs. G. Their business disposed 
 of, Mr. and Mrs. Grazinglands viewed the Eoyal Exchange, 
 and the exterior of St. Pauhs Cathedral. The spirits of Mrs. 
 Grazinglands then gradually beginning to flag, Mr. Grazing- 
 lands (who is the tenderest of husbands) remarked with 
 sympathy, Arabella, my dear, I fear you are faint.^’ Mrs. 
 Grazinglands 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 ex- 
 pediency 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 door- 
 way ; and two high chairs that looked as if they were per- 
 forming on stilts, embellished the counter. Over the whole, 
 a young lady presided, whose gloomy haughtiness as she sur- 
 veyed 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’m 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 
 
58 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 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. Grazing- 
 lands plucked up a great spirit when he told Mrs. Grazing- 
 lands 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 coflee-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 
 table-cloth, 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 re- 
 plied, substantially, that Jairing’s made it a merit to have 
 accepted him on any terms: ^Hor,” added the waiter (unmis- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 59 
 
 takably coughing at Mrs. Grazinglands, the pride of her 
 division of the county), when indiwiduals is not staying in 
 the ^Ouse, their favors 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 re- 
 freshment stations, because it is the last repast known to this 
 state of existence of which any human creature would par- 
 take, but in the direst extremity — sickens your contempla- 
 tion, 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 w^ould 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 
 
60 
 
 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 with a bit of fish which will be ready in twenty. That pro- 
 posal declined, he suggests — as a neat originality — a weal 
 or mutton cutlet.’^ You close with either cutlet, any cutlet, any- 
 thing. 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 table-cloth, 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 j^our 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 re- 
 jected 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 
 wdth 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. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 61 
 
 You know that you will never come to this pass, any more 
 than to the cheese and the 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 dis- 
 tracted 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 re- 
 minds 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 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 frowziness up-stairs and down-stairs, 
 its old-established cookery, and its old-established principles 
 of plunder. Count up 3"Our 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 stringjr 
 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 pastr}^ — 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 
 
62 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 which the Bulhs 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 color 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 bed- 
 room 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 in- 
 forms 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 connection 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 63 
 
 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 divis- 
 ion. 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 super- 
 stitions I have glanced at remain in existence. 
 
64 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 Eoad, 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 Eochester, 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. 
 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.” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 65 
 
 You know something about Falstaff, eh ? ’’ said I. 
 
 ^^All about him/^ said the very queer small boy. 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 
 Komans used to march, over the road where the old Canter- 
 bury 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 inter- 
 posed 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. 
 
66 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLEB, 
 
 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 laborer, 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 
 affection. I should have known it, without the well-remem- 
 bered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl, the 
 loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched with unspeak- 
 able satisfaction, from one of the stuffed pockets of the 
 charioto 
 
 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 assur- 
 ance that France stood where I had left it. There were the 
 posting-houses, with their archways, dirty stable-yards, and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 67 
 
 clean postmasters’ 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 
 gray 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 desir- 
 ing 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 gray 
 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 Pue 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 gray man 
 
68 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 lying all alone on his cold bed, with a tap of water turned on 
 over his gray 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 Morn- 
 ing (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 fore- 
 head 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 any- 
 thing 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 colors, 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. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 69 
 
 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. Honore, when I saw a bill at a public room there, 
 announcing small-sword exercise, broad-sword exercise, wrest- 
 ling, 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 fra- 
 grance 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 repro- 
 duce 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 
 
70 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 with one of the ready-made clothes shops that are set out 
 there. My eye, 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 streets, 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 intel- 
 ligent 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 — par- 
 ticularly 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 fiowers and clocks, in the dull 
 little towns, and with the little population not at all dull on 
 the little Boulevard in the evening, under the little trees ! 
 Welcome Monsieur the Cure walking alone in the early morn- 
 ing a short way out of the town, reading that eternal Breviary 
 of yours, which surely might be almost read, without book, by 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 71 
 
 this time ! Welcome Monsieur the Cure, later in the day, jolt- 
 ing 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 Cure, 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 ISTapoleons ? A jeweller, Strauden- 
 heim, 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, sug- 
 gestive 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- 
 
72 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 making (as I settled it) but for the pestilent rain. Straus- 
 bourg 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 window, that I confidently 
 expected to see their heels tilt up, Straudenheim and the 
 lean man drew their heads in and shut the window. Pres- 
 ently, 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 UNCOMMEliCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 73 
 
 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 ven- 
 geance 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, 
 crosswise, 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 com- 
 forted 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. ISTot only that, but he afterwards 
 came back with two other small warriors, and they all three 
 did it together. hTot 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, Avas always in my ears. And now I 
 came to the land of wooden houses, innocent cakes, thin butter 
 
74 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCTAL TBAVELLER, 
 
 soup, and spotless little inn bedrooms with a family likeness 
 to Dairies. And now the Swiss marksmen were forever 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 chil- 
 dren as they sat by their clean baskets, and had such enormous 
 goitres (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 color 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 3 being now (like Don Quixote pn the back of the wooden 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 75 
 
 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 roar- 
 ing; and here was received under arches of icicles, of un- 
 speakable 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 midday, 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 
 chalets where I had to turn out of the track to see the water- 
 fall ; 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 woodpile who sunned himself 
 and nursed his goitre, would rouse the woman-guide within 
 the hut, who would stream out hastily, throwing her child 
 over one of her shoulders and her goitre 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 Kussia — 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 melo- 
 drama. 
 
 Commend me to the beautiful waters among these moun- 
 tains ! Though I was not of their mind : they, being invet- 
 erately 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 
 
76 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 Depart- 
 ment 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. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 77 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE GREAT TASMANIANS 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 depot, and for other large barracks. To the best of 
 my serious belief, I have never been on that railway by day- 
 light, 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 charac- 
 ters in it. But, this is a reason for, and not against, its being 
 made as acceptable as possible to well-disposed men of decent 
 behavior. Such men are assuredly not tempted into the 
 ranks, by the beastly inversion of natural laws, and the com- 
 pulsion to live in worse than swinish foulness. Accordingly, 
 when any such Circumlocutional embellishments of the sol- 
 dier’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 busi- 
 ness, 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 
 
78 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 np-hill direc- 
 tion, 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 dis- 
 charged, 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 
 hi^l, 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 honor. 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 pas- 
 sage 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 79 
 
 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 dread- 
 fully cold, that those who could get near the fires were hard 
 to be restrained from thrusting their feet in among the blaz- 
 ing coals. They were so horribly reduced, that they were 
 awful to look upon. Backed 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 demon- 
 strating on all occasions that we live in the best of all possi- 
 ble 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 pease. The biscuit was a honeycombed 
 heap of maggots, and the excrement of maggots. The pease 
 were even harder than this filth. A similar handful had been 
 
80 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 evi- 
 dence 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 pos- 
 sible pork.” 
 
 But look at this food before our eyes, if one may so 
 misuse the word,” said 1. 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 Pan- 
 gloss 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 pos- 
 sible ” — 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 inade- 
 quate, and the beer sour. 
 
 Then the men,” said Pangloss, a little irritated, were 
 the worst of all possible men.” 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 81 
 
 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.” 
 
 Eeckless 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. 
 
 0 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 wfith 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 enitpy, because gangrene had set in, 
 and the patient had died but yesterday. That bed was a 
 
82 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 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, 0 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 im- 
 patience 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 thank- 
 fulness for present solicitude and care, I heard much ; of 
 complaint, not a word. 
 
 I think I could have recognized 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.” 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 83 
 
 — 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 in- 
 scription on it from the head of the Irishman’s bed, and 
 asked me what age I supposed that man to be ? I had ob- 
 served 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, sympathizing, 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 
 
84 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TBAVELLER, 
 
 saw them. And of ns 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 pro- 
 duced 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.” 
 
 ‘^1 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 ham- 
 mocks. There were not hammocks enough on board, and the 
 men of the two next messes laid hold of hammocks for them- 
 selves as soon as they got on board, and squeezed my men 
 out, as I may say.” 
 
 Had the squeezed-out men none then ? ” 
 
 ^^ISTone, sir. As men died, their hammocks were used by 
 other men, who wanted hammocks ; but many men had none 
 at all.” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 85 
 
 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 pur- 
 posely.” 
 
 Did any of the men sell their clothes for drink ? ” 
 
 They did, sir.” (I believe there never was a more truth- 
 ful 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 Cal- 
 cutta, 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 
 
86 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 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 pease 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 con- 
 demned by the Coroner’s Jury, who, by signing the General 
 Inspection report relative to the ship Great Tasmania, char- 
 tered for these troops, had deliberately asserted all that bad 
 and poisonous dung-hill 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. 
 
THE UNCOMMEliCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 87 
 
 IX. 
 
 CITY OF LONDON CHUKCHES. 
 
 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 un- 
 ventilated 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 hauled out 
 of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, 
 and catechized 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 
 
88 
 
 THE UNC0M3fERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 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 Eome, 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, saving 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 89 
 
 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-colored gown smells of herbs, and who 
 walked up Aldersgate Street to some chapel where she com- 
 forts 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 dis- 
 cordance 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 clamoring 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 
 wash-house. A rope comes through the beamed roof, and a 
 man in the corner pulls it and clashes the bell — a whitey- 
 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. Enter- 
 ing 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 
 
90 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 with four blue wands, once carried by four somebody’s, I sup- 
 pose, before somebody else, but which there is nobody now to 
 hold or receive honor 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 con- 
 gregation, 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 
 
THE UNC03IMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 91 
 
 arise in heavy clouds. Dead citizens stick upon the walls, 
 and lie pulverized 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 whitey- 
 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 uni- 
 form, 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 the church with every- 
 thing about them limp that should be stiff, and vice versa^ 
 are an invariable experience), and three sniggering boys. The 
 
92 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 clergyman, is, perhaps, the chaplain of a civic company ; he 
 has the moist and vinous look, 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 medi- 
 tative 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 him- 
 self 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. Herein he is detected by the aunt (a rigor- 
 ous 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 discolored, and yet again swells 
 and becomes discolored, 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 hush- 
 ing his footsteps, and with a face generally expressive of 
 having until now forgotten a religious appointment elsewhere, 
 is gone. Humber two gets out in the same way, but rather 
 quicker. Humber three getting safely to the door, there turns 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 93 
 
 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 coin- 
 cidence 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 0, 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 be- 
 come 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 rust- 
 lings and settlings and clearings of throats and noses, which 
 are never dispensed with, at certain points of the Church ser- 
 vice, 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 Whitey -brown has locked it up. An- 
 other minute or little more, and, in the neighboring church- 
 yard — 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 Whitey-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 
 
94 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 is a ragged; white-seamed; out-at-elbowed bagatelle board on 
 the first floor. 
 
 In one of these City churcheS; and only in onO; 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 goiug 
 through the reading-desk — I forget which; and it is no matter 
 — and by the presence of this personage among the exceed- 
 ingly sparse congregation. I doubt if we were a dozeri; 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. 
 
 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 expecta- 
 tion of the time when the citizens would come back to live in 
 
A CITY PERSONAGE. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 95 
 
 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 per- 
 sonage had made it; but following the strange couple out 
 one Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, Thirteen thou- 
 sand pounds ; to which it added in a Aveak 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 Avith 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 windoAvs were blind Avith dirt ; and it 
 stood with its face disconsolately turned to a wall. Five 
 great churches and tAvo 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, Avas on this Avise. 
 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,’’ Avhen 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 Avent 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 Avith various taAvdry decorations, much after the 
 manner of the extinct London may-poles. These attractions 
 
96 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 had induced several young priests or deacons in black bibs 
 for waistcoats, and several young ladies interested in that 
 noble 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 neighborhood 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 neighborhood. In the churches about Mark La.ne, 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 Eood Lane to Tower Street, and there- 
 abouts, there was often a subtle flavor of wine : sometimes, 
 of tea. One church near Mincing Lane smelt like a druggist’s 
 drawer. Behind the Monument the service had a flavor 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 counter- 
 part of the church in the Lake’s Progress where the hero is 
 being married to the horrible old lady, there was no spe- 
 cialty 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 specialty 
 in the people. There were never enough of them to represent 
 any calling or neighborhood. They had all gone elsewhere 
 over night, and the few stragglers in the many churches 
 languished there inexpressibly. 
 
 Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have en- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVEL LEE. 
 
 97 
 
 gaged, 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 win- 
 dow 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. Ho 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 un- 
 harmoniously, to the time when the City of London really was 
 
98 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 London ; when the ’Prentices and Trained Bands were of 
 mark in the state ; when even the Lord Mayor himself was a 
 Keality — not a Fiction conventionally be-pulfed 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. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 99 
 
 X. 
 
 SHY NEIGHBORHOODS. 
 
 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 com- 
 petition 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 monot- 
 onous 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 clouds, 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 oc- 
 casionally 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 ex- 
 perience in the state between sleeping and waking, that I 
 
100 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 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 gypsy 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 neighborhoods 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 colored in fight- 
 ing 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 favorite 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 en- 
 twined 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 neighborhoods when leisure and oppor- 
 tunity serve. 
 
 FTothing in shy neighborhoods 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 neighborhoods, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 101 
 
 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 ap- 
 pealed 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 neighborhoods 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, 
 
102 
 
 THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLEB, 
 
 nobility, Eoyalty, 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 don- 
 keys, in a state of nature ; but in the shy neighborhood state, 
 you shall see them always in the same hands and always devel- 
 oping 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 Surry 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 peri- 
 winkles, 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 endeavored 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 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 103 
 
 broken and his cart extensively shattered, twitching his mouth 
 and shaking his hanging head, a picture of disgrace and obdu- 
 racy. I have seen boys being taken to station-houses, who 
 were as like him as his own brother. 
 
 The dogs of shy neighborhoods, 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 
 neighborhood 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) repre- 
 sents 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 in- 
 terest 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 
 
104 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 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 fooot-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 oft 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. Prom this Covent-garden 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 com- 
 manded 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 wunk of sleep, when up 
 comes Punch with Toby. He was darting to Toby for con- 
 solation and advice, when he saw the frill, and stopped, in the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 105 
 
 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 any- 
 thing but the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy neigh- 
 borhood, and is a digression consequently. 
 
 There are a great many dogs in shy neighborhoods, 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 mys- 
 terious knowledge of the art of fishing, and they consider 
 themselves incompletely equipped for the Hampstead ponds, 
 with a pickle-jar and a 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, hauling the blind man 
 away on expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintel- 
 ligible to, the man : wholly of the dog’s conception and exe- 
 cution. 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 
 
106 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLER, 
 
 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 appointment 
 among blind men at about two or three o’clock in the after- 
 noon. 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 neighborhood (there is no reason for suppressing 
 the name ; it is by Netting 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 oc- 
 casions, 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 satisfac- 
 tion 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. 
 
 As the dogs of shy neighborhoods usually betray a slink- 
 ing consciousness of being in poor circumstances — for the 
 most part manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkward- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 107 
 
 ness in their play, and a misgiving that somebody is going 
 to harness them to something, to pick up a living — so the 
 cats of shy neighborhoods exhibit a strong tendency to 
 relapse into barbarism. Not only are they made selfishly 
 ferocious by ruminating on the surplus population around 
 them, and on the densely crowded state of all the avenues to 
 cat’s meat ; not only is there a moral and politico-economical 
 haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections ; but they 
 evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean, and 
 is wretchedly got up ; their black turns rusty, like old mourn- 
 ing ; they wear very indifferent fur ; and take to the shabbiest 
 cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of recog- 
 nition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk in 
 Saint George’s Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwell- 
 green, and also in the back settlements of Drury Lane. In 
 appearance, they are very like the women among whom they 
 live. They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into 
 the street, without any preparation. They leave their young 
 families to stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they 
 frowzily quarrel and swear and scratch and spit, at street 
 corners. In particular, I remark that when they are about 
 to increase their families (an event of frequent occurrence) 
 the resemblance is strongly expressed in a certain dusty 
 dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and general giving up 
 of things. I cannot honestly report that I have ever seen a 
 feline matron of this class washing her face when in an inter- 
 esting condition. 
 
 Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among 
 the lower animals of shy neighborhoods, by dwelling at 
 length upon the exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and 
 their resemblance in many respects to a man and a brother, I 
 will come to a close with a word on the fowls of the same 
 localities 
 
 That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, 
 should have got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a 
 ladder into a cellar, and calls that going home, is a circum- 
 stance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this connec- 
 tion to wonder at. Otherwise I might wonder at the com- 
 pleteness with which these fowls have become separated from 
 
108 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 all the birds of the air — have taken to grovelling in bricks 
 and mortar and mud — have forgotten all about live trees^ and 
 make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, 
 bulkheads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing con- 
 cerning them, and take them as they are. I accept as pro- 
 ducts of Nature and things of course a reduced Bantam family 
 of my acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are incessantly 
 at the pawnbroker’s. I cannot say that they enjoy them- 
 selves, for they are of a melancholy temperament ; but what 
 enjoyment they are capable of, they derive from crowding 
 together in the pawnbroker’s side-entry. Here, they are 
 always to be found in a feeble flutter, as if they were newly 
 come down in the world, and were afraid of being identified. 
 I know a low fellow, originally of a good family from Dorking, 
 who takes his whole establishment of wives, in single file, in 
 at the door of the Jug Department of a disorderly tavern near 
 the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company’s legs, 
 emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his 
 life : seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in 
 the morning. Over Waterloo Bridge, there is a shabby old 
 speckled couple (they belong to the wooden French-bedstead, 
 washing-stand, and towel-horsemaking trade), who are always 
 trying to get in at the door of a chapel. Whether the old 
 lady, under a delusion reminding one of Mrs. Southcott, has 
 an idea of intrusting an egg to that particular denomination, 
 or merely understands that she has no business in the build- 
 ing and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot determine ; 
 but she is constantly endeavoring to undermine the principal 
 door : while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs, walks 
 up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe. 
 But, the family I have been best acquainted with, since the 
 removal from this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brent- 
 ford, reside in the densest part of Bethnal Green. Their 
 abstractioiv from the objects among which they live, or rather 
 their conviction that those objects have all come into existence 
 in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted me, that I 
 have made them the subject of many journeys at divers hours. 
 After careful observation of the two lords and the ten ladies 
 of whom this family consists, I have come to the conclusion 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 109 
 
 that their opinions are represented by the leading lord and 
 leading lady : the latter, as I judge, an aged personage, 
 afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of quill, that 
 gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens. When a 
 railway goods van that would crush an elephant comes round 
 the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed 
 from under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush 
 was a passing property in the air, which may have left some- 
 thing to eat behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of 
 kettles and saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of 
 meteoric discharge, for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops 
 they account, I think, as a sort of hail ; shuttlecocks, as rain, 
 or dew. Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any 
 other light ; and I have more than a suspicion that, in the 
 minds of the two lords, the early public-house at the corner 
 has superseded the sun. I have established it as a certain 
 fact, that they always begin to crow when the public-house 
 shutters begin to be taken down, and that they salute the 
 potboy, the instant he appears to perform that duty, as if he 
 were Phoebus in person. 
 
110 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XI. 
 
 TRAMPS. 
 
 The chance use of the word Tramp ’’ in . my last paper, 
 brought that numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind’s 
 eye, that I had no sooner laid down my pen than a compul- 
 sion was upon me to take it up again, and make notes of the 
 Tramps whom I perceived on all the summer roads in all 
 directions. • 
 
 Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits 
 with his legs in a dry ditch ; and whenever he goes to sleep 
 (which is very often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back. 
 Yonder, by the high road, glaring white in the bright sun- 
 shine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf under the bramble-bush 
 that fences the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the 
 order savage, fast asleep. He lies on the broad of his back, 
 with his face turned up to the sky, and one of his ragged arms 
 loosely thrown across his face. His bundle (what can be the 
 contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it worth his while 
 to carry it about ?) is thrown down beside him, and the waking 
 woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her back 
 to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the 
 front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, 
 and she ties her skirts round her in conventionally tight 
 tramp-fashion with a sort of apron. You can seldom catch 
 sight of her, resting thus, without seeing her in a despondently 
 defiant manner doing something to her hair or her bonnet, and 
 glancing at you between her fingers. She does not often go 
 to sleep herself in the daytime, but will sit for any length 
 of time beside the man. And his slumberous propensities 
 would not seem to be referable to the fatigue of carrying the 
 bundle, for she carries it much oftener and further than he. 
 When they are afoot, you will mostly find him slouching on 
 ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily behind with 
 
THIS IS A SWEET SPOT, AIN’T IT? A LOVELY SPOT! 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Ill 
 
 the burden. He is given to personally correcting her, too 
 — which phase of his character develops itself oftenest, on 
 benches outside alehouse doors — and she appears to become 
 strongly attached to him for these reasons ; it may usually 
 be noticed that when the poor creature has a bruised face, 
 she is the most affectionate. He has no occupation what- 
 ever, this order of tramp, and has no object whatever in 
 going anywhere. He will sometimes call himself a brick- 
 maker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an imaginative 
 flight. He generally represents himself, in a vague way, as 
 looking out for a job of work ; but he never did work, he 
 never does, and he never will. It is a favorite fiction with 
 him, however (as if he were the most industrious character on 
 earth), that you never work ; and as he goes past your garden 
 and sees you looking at your flowers, you will overhear him 
 growl with a strong sense of contrast, You are a lucky hidle 
 devil, you are ! 
 
 The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has 
 the same injured conviction on him that you were born to 
 whatever you possess, and never did anything to get it : but 
 he is of a less audacious disposition. He will stop before 
 your gate, and say to his female companion with an air of 
 constitutional humility and propitiation — to edify any one 
 who may be within hearing behind a blind or a bush — This 
 is a sweet spot, ainT it ? A lovelly spot ! And I wonder if 
 they’d give two poor footsore travellers like me and you, a 
 drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib ? We’d 
 take it wery koind on ’em, wouldn’t us ? Wery koind, upon 
 my word, us would ? ” He has a quick sense of a dog in the 
 vicinity, and will extend his modestly injured propitiation to 
 the dog chained up in your yard ; remarking as he slinks at 
 the yard gate, Ah ! You are a foine breed o’ dog, too, and 
 you ain’t kep for nothink ! I’d take it wery koind o’ your 
 master if he’d elp a traveller and his woife as envies no gen- 
 tlefolk their good fortun, wi’ a bit o’ your broken wittles. 
 He’d never know the want of it, nor more would you. Don’t 
 bark like that, at poor persons as never done you no arm ; 
 the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without that ; 0 
 don’t ! ” He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving 
 
112 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and 
 up the road and down the road, before going on. 
 
 Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; 
 let the hard-working laborer at whose cottage-door they 
 prowl and beg, have the ague never so badly, these tramps 
 are sure to be in good health. 
 
 There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this 
 bright summer day — say, on a road with the sea-breeze 
 making its dust lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance 
 beyond the slope of down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you 
 descry in the perspective at the bottom of a steep hill up which 
 your way lies, a figure that appears to be sitting airily on a 
 gate, whistling in a cheerful and disengaged manner. As you 
 approach nearer to it, you observe the figure to slide down 
 from the gate, to desist from whistling, to uncock its hat, to 
 become tender of foot, to depress its head and elevate its 
 shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of profound 
 despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and coming 
 close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a shabby 
 young man. He is moving painfully forward, in the direction 
 in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with 
 his misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until 
 you are close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of 
 you, you discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young 
 man, and a remarkably well-spoken young man. You know 
 him to be well-behaved, by his respectful manner of touching 
 his hat : you know him to be well-spoken, by his smooth 
 manner of expressing himself. He says in a flowing confi- 
 dential voice, and without punctuation, I ask your pardon 
 Sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so addressed 
 upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags 
 though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own 
 but through ill elth in his family and many unmerited suffer- 
 ings it would be a great- obligation sir to know the time.’’ 
 You give the well-spoken young man the time. The well- 
 spoken young man, keeping well up with you, resumes : I 
 am aware Sir that it is a liberty to intrude a further question 
 on a gentleman walking for his entertainment but might I 
 make so bold as ask the favor of the way to Dover Sir and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 113 
 
 about the distance ? ’’ You inform the well-spoken young 
 man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the distance 
 some eighteen miles. The well-spoken young man becomes 
 greatly agitated. In the condition to which I am reduced/’ 
 says he, I could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if 
 my shoes were in a state to take me there or my feet were in 
 a state to old out over the flinty road and were not on the 
 bare ground of which any gentleman has the means to satisfy 
 himself by looking Sir may I take the liberty of speaking to 
 you ? ” As the well-spoken young man keeps so well up with 
 you that you can’t prevent his taking the liberty of speaking 
 to you, he goes on, with fluency : Sir, it is not begging that 
 is my intention for I was brought up by the best of mothers 
 and begging is not my trade I should not know Sir how to 
 follow it as a trade as if such were my shameful wishes for the 
 best of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes 
 though now reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway 
 Sir my business was the law-stationering and I was favorably 
 known to the Solicitor-General the Attorney-General the 
 majority of the Judges and the ole of the legal profession but 
 through ill elth in my family and the treachery of a friend for 
 whom I became security and he no other than my own wife’s 
 brother the brother of my own wife I was cast forth with my 
 tender partner and three young children not to beg for I will 
 sooner die of deprivation but to make my way to the seaport 
 town of Dover where i have a relative ; in respect not only 
 that will assist me but that would trust me with untold gold 
 Sir in appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me I 
 made for my amusement when I little thought that I should 
 ever need it excepting for my air this ” — here the well-spoken 
 young man put his hand into his breast — this comb ! Sir I 
 implore you in the name of charity to purchase a tortoise-shell 
 comb which is a genuine article at any price that your 
 humanity may put upon it and may the blessings of a ouseless 
 family awaiting with beating arts the return of a husband 
 and a father from Dover upon the cold stone seats of London, 
 bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty of speaking 
 to you I implore you to buy this comb ! ” By this time, being 
 a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for 
 
114 
 
 TEE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express 
 his disgust and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as 
 you leave him behind. 
 
 Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright 
 summer day, at the corner of the next little town or village, 
 you may find another kind of tramp, embodied in the persons 
 of a most exemplary couple whose only improvidence appears 
 to have been, that they spent the last of their little All on 
 soap. They are a man and woman, spotless to behold — John 
 Anderson, with the frost on his short smock-frock instead of 
 his ^^pow,’^ attended by Mrs. Anderson. John is over-osten- 
 tatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a curious and 
 you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of girdle 
 of white linen wound about his waist — a girdle, snowy as 
 Mrs. Anderson’s apron. This cleanliness was the expiring 
 effort of the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to 
 Mr. Anderson but to get chalked upon his spade in snow- 
 white copy-book characters, hungry ! and to sit down here. 
 Yes; one thing more remained to Mr. Anderson — his char- 
 acter ; Monarchs could not deprive him of his hard-earned 
 character. Accordingly, as you come up with this spectacle 
 of virtue in distress, Mrs. Anderson rises, and with a decent 
 courtesy presents for your consideration a certificate from a 
 Doctor of Divinity, the reverend the Vicar of Upper Dodg- 
 ington, who informs his Christian friends and all whom it may 
 concern that the bearers, John Anderson and lawful wife, are 
 persons to whom you cannot be too liberal. This benevolent 
 pastor omitted no work of his hands to fit the good couple 
 out, for with half an eye you can recognize his autograph on 
 the spade. 
 
 Another class of tramp is a man, the most valuable part of 
 whose stock-in-trade is a highly perplexed demeanor. He is 
 got up like a countryman, and you will often come upon 
 the poor fellow, while he is endeavoring to decipher the in- 
 scription on a milestone — quite a fruitless endeavor, for he 
 cannot read. He asks your pardon, he truly does (he is very 
 slow of speech, this tramp, and he looks in a bewildered way 
 all round the prospect w^hile he talks to you), but all of us 
 shold do as we wold be done by, and he’ll take it kind, if 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 115 
 
 you’ll put a power man in the right road fur to jine his eldest 
 son as has broke his leg bad in the masoning, and is in this 
 heere Orspit’l as is wrote down by Squire Pouncerby’s own 
 hand as wold not tell a lie fur no man. He then produces 
 from under his dark frock (being always very slow and per- 
 plexed) a neat but worn old leathern purse, from which he 
 takes a scrap of paper. On this scrap of paper is written, by 
 Squire Pouncerby, of The Grove, Please to direct the Bearer, 
 a poor but very worthy man, to the Sussex County Hospital, 
 near Brighton ” — a matter of some difficulty at the moment, 
 seeing that the request comes suddenly upon you in the depths 
 of Hertfordshire. The more you endeavor to indicate where 
 Brighton is — when you have with the greatest difficulty 
 remembered — the less the devoted father can be made to 
 comprehend, and the more obtusely he stares at the prospect ; 
 whereby, being reduced to extremity, you recommend the 
 faithful parent to begin by going to St. Albans, and present 
 him with half a crown. It does him good, no doubt, but 
 scarcely helps him forward, since you find him lying drunk 
 that same evening in the wheelwright’s sawpit under the shed 
 where the felled trees are, opposite the sign of the Three 
 Jolly Hedgers. 
 
 But, the most vicious, by far, of all the idle tramps, is the 
 tramp who pretends to have been a gentleman. Edu- 
 cated,” he writes, from the village beer-shop in pale ink of 
 a ferruginous complexion ; educated at Trin. Coll. Cam. 
 — nursed in the lap of affluence — once in my small way 
 the patron of the Muses,” etc., — surely a sympathetic mind 
 will not withhold a trifle, to help him on to the market-town 
 where he thinks of giving a Lecture to the fruges consumer e 
 nati, on things in general ? This shameful creature lolling 
 about hedge tap-rooms in his ragged clothes, now so far 
 from being black that they look as if they never can have 
 been black, is more selfish and insolent than even the savage 
 tramp. He would sponge on the poorest boy for a farthing, 
 and spurn him when he had got it ; he would interpose (if 
 he could get anything by it) between the baby and the 
 mother’s breast. So much lower than the company he keeps, 
 for his maudlin assumption of being higher, this pitiless rascal 
 
116 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 blights the summer road as he maunders on between the 
 luxuriant hedges : where (to my thinking) even the wild 
 convolvulus and rose and sweetbrier, are the worse for his 
 going by, and need time to recover from the taint of him in 
 the air. 
 
 The young fellows who trudge along barefoot, five or six 
 together, their boots slung over their shoulders, their shabby 
 bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut from some 
 roadside wood, are not eminently prepossessing, but are much 
 less objectionable. There is a tramp-fellowship among them. 
 They pick one another up at resting stations, and go on in 
 companies. They always go at a fast swing — though they 
 generally limp too — and there is invariably one of the com- 
 pany who has much ado to keep up with the rest. They 
 generally talk about horses, and any other means of locomo- 
 tion than wmlking : or, one of the company relates some re- 
 cent experiences of the road — which are always disputes and 
 difficulties. As for example. So as I’m a-standing at the 
 pump in the market, blest if there don’t come up a Beadle, 
 and he ses, ^ Mustn’t stand here,’ he ses. ^ Why not ? ’ I ses. 
 ^ No beggars allowed in this town,’ he ses. ‘ Who’s a beggar ? ’ 
 I ses. ^ You are,’ he ses. ^ Who ever see me beg ? Did 
 you ? ’ I ses. ^ Then you’re a tramp,’ he ses. ^ I’d rather be 
 that than a Beadle,’ I ses.” (The company express great 
 approval.) Would you,’ he ses to me. ^Yes I would,’ I 
 ses to him. ^Well,’ he ses, ^anyhow, get out of this town.’ 
 — ‘ Why, blow your little towm ! ’ I ses, ^ who wants to be in 
 it ? Wot does your dirty little town mean by cornin’ and 
 stickin’ itself in the road to anywhere ? Why don’t you get 
 a shovel and a barrer, and clear your town out o’ people’s 
 way ? ’ ” (The company expressing the highest approval and 
 laughing aloud, they all go down the hill.) 
 
 Then, there are the tramp handicraft men. Are they not 
 all over England, in this Midsummer time ? Where does 
 the lark sing, the corn grow, the mill turn, the river run, 
 and they are not among the lights and shadows, tinkering, 
 chair-mending, umbrella-mending, clock-mending, knife-grind- 
 ing ? Surely, a pleasant thing, if we were in that condi- 
 tion of life, to grind our way through Kent, Sussex, and 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 117 
 
 Surrey. For the first six weeks or so, we should see the 
 sparks we ground off, fiery bright against a background of 
 green wheat and green leaves. A little later, and the ripe 
 harvest would pale our sparks from red to yellow, until we 
 got the dark newly turned land for a background again, and 
 they were red once more. By that time, we should have 
 ground our way to the sea cliffs, and the whir of our wheel 
 would be lost in the breaking of the waves. Our next variety 
 in sparks would be derived from contrast with the gorgeous 
 medley of colors in the autumn woods, and, by the time we 
 had ground our way round to the heathy lands between 
 Keigate and Croydon, doing a prosperous stroke of business 
 all along, we should show like a little firework in the light 
 frosty air, and be the next best thing to the blacksmith’s forge. 
 Very agreeable, too, to go on a chair-mending tour. What 
 judges we should be of rushes, and how knowingly (with a 
 sheaf and a bottomless chair at our back) we should lounge 
 on bridges, looking over at osier-beds. Among all the in- 
 numerable occupations that cannot possibly be transacted 
 without the assistance of lookers-on, chair-mending may take 
 a station in the first rank. When we sat down with our backs 
 against the barn or the public-house, and began to mend, 
 what a sense of popularity would grow upon us. When all 
 the children came to look at us, and the tailor, and the general 
 •dealer, and the farmer who had been giving a small order at 
 the little saddler’s, and the groom from the great house, and 
 the publican, and even the two skittle-players (and here note 
 that howsoever busy all the rest of village human-kind may 
 be, there will always be two people with leisure to play at 
 skittles, wherever village skittles are), what encouragement 
 would be on us to plait and weave ! No one looks at us w^hile 
 we plait and weave these words. Clock-mending again. 
 Except for the slight inconvenience of carrying a clock under 
 our arm, and the monotony of making the bell go, whenever 
 we came to a human habitation, what a pleasant privilege to 
 give a voice to the dumb cottage clock, and set it talking to 
 the cottage family again. Likewise we foresee great interest 
 in going round by the park plantations, under the overhanging 
 boughs (hares, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants, scudding 
 
118 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 like mad across and across the checkered ground before us), 
 and so over the park ladder, and through the wood, until we 
 came to the Keeper’s lodge. Then, would the Keeper be 
 discoverable at his door, in a deep nest of leaves, smoking his 
 pipe. Then, on our accosting him in the way of our trade, 
 would he call to Mrs. Keeper, respecting t’ould clock ’’ in 
 the kitchen. Then, would Mrs. Keeper ask us into the lodge, 
 and on due examination we should offer to make a good job 
 of it for eighteen-pence ; which offer, being accepted, would 
 set us tinkling and clinking among the chubby awe-struck 
 little Keepers for an hour and more. So completely to the 
 family’s satisfaction would we achieve our work, that the 
 Keeper would mention how that there was something wrong 
 with the bell of the turret stable-clock up at the Hall, and 
 that if we thought good of going up to the housekeeper on 
 the chance of that job too, why he would take us. Then, 
 should we go, among the branching oaks and the deep fern, 
 by silent ways of mystery known to the Keeper, seeing the 
 herd glancing here and there as we went along, until we 
 came to the old Hall, solemn and grand. Under the Terrace 
 Flower Garden, and round by the stables, would the Keeper 
 take us in, and as we passed we should observe how spacious 
 and stately the stables, and how fine the painting of the 
 horses’ names over their stalls, and how solitary all : the 
 family being in London. Then, should we find ourselves 
 presented to the housekeeper, sitting, in hushed state, at 
 needlework, in a bay window looking out upon a mighty 
 grim red-brick quadrangle, guarded by stone lions disrespect- 
 fully throwing somersaults over the escutcheons of the noble 
 family. Then, our services accepted and we insinuated with 
 a candle into the stable-turret, we should find it to be a mere 
 question of pendulum, but one that would hold us until dark. 
 Then, should we fall to work, with a general impression of 
 Ghosts being about, and of pictures in-doors that of a certainty 
 came out of their frames and ^^Avalked,” if the family would 
 only own it. Then, should we work and work, until the day 
 gradually turned to dusk, and even until the dusk gradually 
 turned to dark. Our task at length accomplished, we should 
 be taken into an enormous servants’ hall, and there regaled 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 119 
 
 with beef and bread, and powerful ale. Then, paid freely, 
 we should be at liberty to go, and should be told by a point- 
 ing helper to keep round over yinder by the blasted ash, and 
 so straight through the woods, till we should see the town- 
 lights right afore us. Then, feeling lonesome, should we 
 desire upon the whole, that the ash had not been blasted, or 
 that the helper had had the manners not to mention it. 
 However, we should keep on, all right, till suddenly the 
 stable bell would strike ten in the dolefullest way, quite 
 chilling our blood, though we had so lately taught him how 
 to acquit himself. Then, as we went on, should we recall 
 old stories, and dimly consider what it would be most 
 advisable to do, in the event of a tall figure, all in white, 
 with saucer eyes, coming up and saying, I want you to 
 come to a churchyard and mend a church clock. Follow 
 me ! Then, should we make a burst to get clear of the 
 trees, and should soon find ourselves in the open, with the 
 town-lights bright ahead of us. So should we lie that night 
 at the ancient sign of the Crispin and Crispanus, and rise 
 early next morning to be betimes on tramp again. 
 
 Bricklayers often tramp, in twos and threes, lying by night 
 at their ^Hodges,’^ which are scattered all over the country. 
 Bricklaying is another of the occupations that can by no 
 means be transacted in rural parts, without the assistance of 
 spectators — of as many as can be convened. In thinly peopled 
 spots, I have known bricklayers on tramp, coming up with 
 bricklayers at work, to be so sensible of the indispensability 
 of lookers-on, that they themselves have set up in that capa- 
 city, and have been unable to subside into the acceptance of 
 a proffered share in the job, for two or three days together. 
 Sometimes the navvy,’^ on tramp, with an extra pair of half- 
 boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and a can, will take a 
 similar part in a job of excavation, and will look at it without 
 engaging in it, until all his money is gone. The current of 
 my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer to 
 want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a 
 pleasant part of the country ; and I was at one time honored 
 with the attendance of as many as seven and twenty, who 
 were looking at six. 
 
120 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer- 
 time, without storing up knowledge of the many tramps who 
 go from one oasis of town or village to another, to sell a stock- 
 in-trade, apparently not worth a shilling when sold ? Shrimps 
 are a favorite commodity for this kind of speculation, and so 
 are cakes of a soft and spongy character, coupled with Spanish 
 nuts and brandy balls. The stock is carried on the head in a 
 basket, and, between the head and the basket, are the trestles 
 on which the stock is displayed at trading times. Meet of 
 foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly ; with a cer- 
 tain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious balancing 
 of baskets ; and also with a long Chinese sort of eye, which 
 an overweighted forehead would seem to have squeezed into 
 that form. 
 
 On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, 
 behold the tramping Soldier. And if you should happen never 
 to have asked yourself whether his uniform is suited to his 
 work, perhaps the poor fellow’s appearance as he comes dis- 
 tressfully towards you, with his absurdly tight jacket unbut- 
 toned, his neck-gear in his hand, and his legs well chafed by 
 his trousers of baize, may suggest the personal inquiry, how 
 you think you would like it. Much better the tramping Sailor, 
 although his cloth is somewhat too thick for land service. But, 
 why the tramping merchant-mate should put on a black velvet 
 waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dog-days, is one of the 
 great secrets of nature that will never be discovered. 
 
 I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on 
 either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the 
 road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild 
 flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and 
 airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean, 
 like a man’s life. To gain the milestone here, which the 
 moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon 
 render illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside 
 with the sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which 
 way you may. So, all the tramps with carts or caravans — 
 the Gypsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack — And it 
 impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all turn 
 the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLEB. 
 
 121 
 
 the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have 
 scorched its grass ! What tramp children do I see here, attired 
 in a handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the 
 cart, making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making 
 a toy of the hobbled old horse who is not much more like a 
 horse than any cheap toy would be ! Here, do I encounter the 
 cart of mats and brooms and baskets — with all thoughts of 
 business given to the evening wind — with the stew made and 
 being served out — with Cheap Jack and Dear Gill striking 
 soft music out of the plates that are rattled like warlike cym- 
 bals when put up for auction at fairs and markets — their 
 minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the nightin- 
 gales as they begin to sing in the woods behind them, that if 
 I were to propose to deal, they would sell me anything at cost 
 price. On this hallowed ground has it been my happy privilege 
 (let me whisper it), to behold the White-haired Lady with the 
 pink eyes, eating meat-pie with the Giant : while, by the hedge- 
 side, on the box of blankets v/hich I knew contained the snakes, 
 were set forth the cups and saucers and the teapot. It was 
 on an evening in August, that I chanced upon this ravishing 
 spectacle, and I noticed that, whereas the Giant reclined half 
 concealed beneath the overhanging boughs and seemed indif- 
 ferent to Nature, the white hair of the gracious Lady streamed 
 free in the breath of evening, and her pink eyes found pleas- 
 ure in the landscape. I heard only a single sentence of her 
 uttering, yet it bespoke a talent for modest repartee. The ill- 
 mannered Giant — accursed be his evil race! — had interrupted 
 the Lady in some remark, and, as I passed that enchanted 
 corner of the wood, she gently reproved him, with the words. 
 Now, Cobby ; — Cobby ! so short a name ! — ain’t one fool 
 enough to talk at a time ? ” 
 
 Within appropriate distance of this magic ground, though 
 not so near it as that the song trolled from tap or bench at 
 door, can invade its woodland silence, is a little hostelry which 
 no man possessed of a penny was ever know to pass in warm 
 weather. Before its entrance, are certain pleasant trimmed 
 limes ; likewise a cool well, with so musical a bucket-handle 
 that its fall upon the bucket rim will make a horse prick up 
 his ears and neigh, upon the droughty road half a mile off. 
 
122 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 This is a house of great resort for haymaking tramps and har- 
 vest tramps, insomuch that as they sit within, drinking their 
 mugs of beer, their relinquished scythes and reaping-hooks 
 glare out of the open windows, as if the whole establishment 
 were a family war-coach of Ancient Britons. Later in the 
 season, the whole country-side, for miles and miles, will swarm 
 with hopping tramps. They come in families, men, women, 
 and children, every family provided with a bundle of bedding, 
 an iron pot, a number of babies, and too often with some poor 
 sick creature quite unfit for the rough life, for whom they 
 suppose the smell of the fresh hop to be a sovereign remedy. 
 Many of these hoppers are Irish, but many come from Lon- 
 don. They crowd all the roads, and camp under all the 
 hedges and on all the scraps of common land, and live among 
 and upon hops until they are all picked, and the hop-gardens, 
 so beautiful through the summer, look as if they had been 
 laid waste by an invading army. Then, there is a vast exodus 
 of tramps out of the country ; and if you ride or drive round 
 any turn of any road, at more than a foot pace, you will be 
 bewildered to find that you have charged into the bosom of 
 fifty families, and that there are splashing up all around you, 
 in the utmost prodigality of confusion, bundles of bedding, 
 babies, iron pots, and a good-humored multitude of both sexes 
 and all ages, equally divided between perspiration and intoxi- 
 cation. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 123 
 
 XII. 
 
 DULLBOROUGH TOWN. 
 
 It lately happened that I found myself rambling about the 
 scenes among which my earliest days were passed ; scenes 
 from which I departed when I was a child, and which I did 
 not revisit until I was a man. This is no uncommon chance, 
 but one that befalls some of us any day ; perhaps it may 
 not be quite uninteresting to compare notes with the reader 
 respecting an experience so familiar and a journey so uncom- 
 mercial. 
 
 I call my boyhood^s home (and I feel like a Tenor in an 
 English Opera when I mention it) Dullborough. Most of us 
 come from Dullborough who come from a country town. 
 
 As I left Dullborough in the days when there were no rail- 
 roads in the land, I left it in a stage-coach. Through all the 
 years that have since passed, have I ever lost the smell of the 
 damp straw in which I was packed — like game — and for- 
 warded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheap- 
 side, London ? There was no other inside passenger, and I 
 consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it 
 rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I 
 had expected to find it. 
 
 With this tender remembrance upon me, I was cavalierly 
 shunted back into Dullborough the other day, by train. My 
 ticket had been previously collected, like my taxes, and my 
 shining new portmanteau had had a great plaster stuck upon 
 it, and I had been defied by Act of Parliament to offer an 
 objection to anything that was done to it, or me, under a 
 penalty of not less than forty shillings or more than five 
 pounds, compoundable for a term of imprisonment. When I 
 had sent my disfigured property on to the hotel, I began to 
 look about me ; and the first discovery I made, was, that the 
 Station had swallowed up the playing-field. 
 
124 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn trees, the hedge, 
 the turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place 
 to the stoniest of jolting-roads : while, beyond the Station, an 
 ugly dark monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had 
 swallowed them and were ravenous for more destruction. 
 The coach that had carried me away, was melodiously called 
 Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid, and belonged to Timpson, at the 
 coach-office up-street ; the locomotive engine that had brought 
 me back, was called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.E., 
 and was spitting ashes and hot water over the blighted ground. 
 
 When I had been let out at the platform door, like a 
 prisoner whom his turnkey grudgingly released, I looked in 
 again over the low wall, at the scene of departed glories. 
 Here, in the haymaking time, had I been delivered from the 
 dungeons of Seringapatam, an immense pile (of haycock), by 
 my countrymen, the victorious British (boy next door and 
 his two cousins), and had been recognized with ecstasy by my 
 affianced one (Miss Green), who had come all the way from 
 England (second house in the terrace) to ransom me, and 
 marry me. Here, had I first heard in confidence, from one 
 whose father was greatly connected, being under Government, 
 of the existence of a terrible banditti, called The Kadicals,’ ’ 
 whose principles were, that the Prince Eegent wore stays, and 
 that nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and 
 navy ought to be put down — horrors at which I trembled in 
 my bed, after supplicating that the Eadicals might be speedily 
 taken and hanged. Here, too, had we, the small boys of 
 Boles’s, had that cricket match against the small boys of 
 Coles’s, when Boles and Coles had actually met upon the 
 ground, and when, instead of instantly hitting out at one 
 another with the utmost fury, as we had all hoped and ex- 
 pected, those sneaks had said respectively, ‘^1 hope Mrs. 
 Boles is well,” and I hope Mrs. Coles and the baby are 
 doing charmingly.” Could it be that, after all this, and much 
 more, the playing-field was a Station, and No. 97 expectorated 
 boiling water and red-hot cinders on it, and the whole belonged 
 by Act of Parliament to S.E.E. ? 
 
 As it could be, and was, I left the place with a heavy heart 
 for a walk all over the town. And first of Timpson’s up- 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 125 
 
 street. When I departed from Dullborough in the strawy 
 arms of Timpson^s Blue-Eyed Maid, Timpsoids was a moder- 
 ate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little coach-office), with an 
 oval transparency in the window, which looked beautiful by 
 night, representing one of Timpson’s coaches in the act of 
 passing a milestone on the London road with great velocity, 
 completely full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed 
 in the first style of fashion, and enjoying themselves tre- 
 mendously. I found no such place as Timpsoids now — no 
 such bricks and rafters, not to mention the name — no such 
 edifice on the teeming earth. Bickford had come and knocked 
 Timpson’s down. Bickford had not only knocked Timpsoids 
 down, but had knocked two or three houses down on each 
 side of Timpsoffis, and then had knocked the whole into one 
 great establishment with a pair of big gates, in and out of 
 which, his (Bickford^s) wagons are, in these days, always rat- 
 tling, with their drivers sitting up so high, that they look in 
 at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned houses in the 
 High Street as they shake the town. I have not the honor of 
 Bickford’s acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me an 
 injury, not to say committed an act of boyslaughter, in run- 
 ning over my childhood in this rough manner ; and if ever I 
 meet Bickford driving one of his own monsters, and smoking 
 a pipe the while (which is the custom of his men), he shall 
 know by the expression of my eye, if it catches his, that there 
 is something wrong between us. 
 
 Moreover, I felt that Bickford had no right to come rushing 
 into Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture. 
 He is not ISTapoleon Bonaparte. When he took down the 
 transparent stage-coach, he ought to have given the town a 
 transparent van. With a gloomy conviction that Bickford is 
 wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I proceeded on my way. 
 
 It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night- 
 bell at my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so 
 many lyings-in that I wonder I escaped becoming a profes- 
 sional martyr to them in after-life. I suppose I had a very 
 sympathetic nurse, with a large circle of married acquaintance. 
 However that was, as I continued my walk through Dull- 
 borough, I found many houses to be solely associated in my 
 
126 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 mind with this particular interest. At one little green- 
 grocer’s shop^ down certain steps from the street, I remember 
 to have waited on a lady who had had four children (I am 
 afraid to write five, though I fully believe it was five) at a 
 birth. This meritorious woman held quite a reception in her 
 room on the morning when I was introduced there, and the 
 sight of the house brought vividly to my mind how the four 
 (five) deceased young people lay, side by side, on a clean cloth 
 on a chest of drawers ; reminding me by a homely association, 
 which I suspect their complexion to have assisted, of pigs’ 
 feet as they are usually displayed at a neat tripe-shop. Hot 
 caudle was handed round on the occasion, and I further 
 remembered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer’s, that 
 a subscription was entered into among the company, which 
 became extremely alarming to my consciousness of having 
 pocket-money on my person. This fact being known to my 
 conductress, whoever she was, I was earnestly exhorted to 
 contribute, but resolutely declined : therein disgusting the 
 company, who gave me to understand that I must dismiss all 
 expectations of going to Heaven. 
 
 How does it happen that when all else is change wherever 
 one goes, there yet seem, in every place, to be some few peo- 
 ple who never alter ? As the sight of the greengrocer’s 
 house recalled these trivial incidents of long ago, the identi- 
 cal greengrocer appeared on the steps, with his hands in his 
 pockets, and leaning his shoulder against the doorpost, as 
 my childish eyes had seen him many a time ; indeed, there 
 was his old mark on the door-post yet, as if his shadow had 
 become a fixture there. It was he himself ; he might formerly 
 . have been an old-looking young man, or he might now be a 
 young-looking old man, but there he was. In walking along 
 the street, I had as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or 
 even a transmitted face : here was the very greengrocer who 
 had been weighing and handling baskets on the morning of 
 the reception. As he brought with him a dawning remem- 
 brance that he had had no proprietary interest in those babies, 
 I crossed the road, and accosted him on the subject. He was 
 not in the least excited or gratified, or in any way roused, by 
 the accuracy of my recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 127 
 
 the common — he didn’t remember how many it was (as if 
 half a dozen babes either way made no difference) — had hap- 
 pened to a Mrs. What’s-her-name, as once lodged there — but 
 he didn’t call it to mind, particular. Settled by this phleg- 
 matic conduct^ I informed him that I had left the town when 
 I was a child. He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, and not 
 without a sarcastic kind of complacency. Had I ? Ah ! And 
 did I find it had got on tolerably well without me ? Such is 
 the difference (I thought, when I had left him a few hundred 
 yards behind, and was by so much in a better temper) 
 between going away from a place and remaining in it. I had 
 no right, I reflected, to be angry with the greengrocer for his 
 want of interest, I was nothing to him : whereas he was the 
 town, the cathedral, the bridge, the river, my childhood, and 
 a large slice of my life, to me. 
 
 Of course the town had shrunk fearfully, since I was a 
 child there. I had entertained the impression that the High 
 Street was at least as wide as Regent Street, London, or the 
 Italian Boulevard at Paris. I found it little better than a 
 lane. There was a public clock in it, which I had supposed 
 to be the finest clock in the world : whereas it now turned 
 out to be as inexpressive, moon-faced, and weak a clock as 
 ever I saw. It belonged to a Town Hall, where I had seen 
 an Indian (who I now suppose wasn’t an Indian) swallow a 
 sword (which I now suppose he didn’t). The edifice had 
 appeared to me in those days so glorious a structure, that I 
 had set it up in my mind as the model on which the Genie of 
 the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin. A mean little brick 
 heap, like a demented chapel, with a few yawning persons in 
 leather gaiters, and in the last extremity for something to do, 
 lounging at the door with their hands in their pockets, and 
 calling themselves a Corn Exchange ! 
 
 The Theatre was in existence, I found, on asking the fish- 
 monger, who had a compact show of stock in his window, 
 consisting of a sole and a quart of shrimps — and I resolved 
 to comfort my mind by going to look at it. Richard the 
 Third, in a very uncomfortable cloak, had first appeared to 
 me there, and had made my heart leap with terror by backing 
 up against the stage-box in which I was posted, while strug- 
 
128 
 
 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TBAVELLEB, 
 
 gling for life against the virtuous Eichmond. It was within 
 those walls that I had learned as from a page of English 
 history, how that wicked King slept in war-time on a sofa 
 much too short for him, and how fearfully his conscience 
 troubled his boots. There, too, had I first seen the funny 
 countryman, but countryman of noble principles, in a flowered 
 waistcoat, crunch up his little hat and throw it on the ground, 
 and pull off his coat, saying Dom thee, squire, coom on with 
 thy fistes then ! At which the lovely young woman who 
 kept company with him (and who went out gleaning, in a 
 narrow white muslin apron with five beautiful bars of five 
 different colored ribbons across it) was so frightened for his 
 sake, that she fainted away. Many wondrous secrets of 
 Nature had I come to the knowledge of in that sanctuary: 
 of which not the least terrific were, that the witches in Mac- 
 beth bore an awful resemblance to the Thanes and others 
 proper inhabitants of Scotland ; and that the good King 
 Duncan couldnT rest in his grave, but was constantly coming 
 out of it, and calling himself somebody else. To the Theatre, 
 therefore, I repaired for consolation. But I found very little, 
 for it was in a bad and declining way. A dealer in wine and 
 bottled beer had already squeezed his trade into the box-office, 
 and the theatrical money was taken — when it came — in a 
 kind of meat-safe in the passage. The dealer in wine and 
 bottled beer must have insinuated himself under the stage 
 too; for he announced that he had various descriptions of 
 alcoholic drinks in the wood,’^ and there was no possible 
 stowage for the wood anywhere else. Evidently, he was by 
 degrees eating the establishment away to the core, and would 
 soon have sole possession of it. It was To Let, and hope- 
 lessly so, for its old purposes ; and there had been no enter- 
 tainment within its walls for a long time except a Panorama ; 
 and even that had been announced as pleasingly instructive,’’ 
 and I know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden import 
 of those terrible expressions. No, there was no comfort in 
 the Theatre. It was mysteriously gone, like my own youth. 
 Unlike my own youth, it might be coming back some day; 
 but there was little promise of it. 
 
 As the town was placarded with references to the Dull- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 129 
 
 borough Mechanics’ Institution, I thought I would go and 
 look at that establishment next. There had been no such 
 thing in the town, in my young day, and it occurred to me 
 that its extreme prosperity might have brought adversity 
 upon the Drama. I found the Institution with some difficulty, 
 and should scarcely have known that I had found it if I had 
 judged from its external appearance only ; but this was attrib- 
 utable to its never having been finished, and having no 
 front : consequently, it led a modest and retired existence up 
 a stable-yard. It was (as I learned, on inquiry) a most flour- 
 ishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the town : 
 two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all 
 impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics be- 
 longed to it, and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney- 
 pots. It had a large room, which was approached by an 
 infirm step-ladder: the builder having declined to construct 
 the intended staircase, without a present payment in cash, 
 which Dullborough (though profoundly appreciative of the 
 Institution) seemed unaccountably bashful about subscribing. 
 The large room had cost — or would, when paid for — five 
 hundred pounds ; and it had more mortar in it and more 
 echoes, than one might have expected to get for the money. 
 It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools, 
 including a large blackboard of a menacing appearance. On 
 referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been 
 given in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in 
 admitting that human nature when at leisure has any desire 
 whatever to be relieved and diverted ; and a furtive sliding in 
 of any poor make-weight piece of amusement, shamefacedly 
 and edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was necessary for the 
 members to be knocked on the head with Gas, Air, Water, 
 Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods. Criticism on 
 Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-Headed 
 Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those unaccount- 
 able choristers, the negro singers in the court costume of the 
 reign of George the Second. Likewise, that they must be 
 stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal 
 evidence in Shakespeare’s works, to prove that his uncle by 
 the mother’s side lived for some years at Stoke Newington, 
 
130 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 before they were brought-to by a Miscellaneous Concert. 
 But, indeed the masking of entertainment, and pretending it 
 was something else — as people mask bedsteads when they 
 are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms, and make believe 
 that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of drawers, anything 
 rather than bedsteads — was manifest even in the pretence of 
 dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves felt 
 obliged in decency to put forth when they came here. One 
 very agreeable professional singer who travelled with two pro- 
 fessional ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those 
 ladies to sing the ballad -^Coinin’ through the Bye’’ without 
 prefacing it himself, with some general remarks on wheat and 
 clover ; and even then, he dared not for his life call the song, 
 a song, but disguised it in the bill as an ^^Illustration.” In 
 the library also — fitted with shelves for three thousand 
 books, and containing upwards of one hundred and seventy 
 (presented copies mostly), seething their edges in damp 
 plaster — there was such a painfully apologetic return of 62 
 offenders who had read Travels, Popular Biography, and mere 
 Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the hearts and souls 
 of mere human creatures like themselves ; and such an elabo- 
 rate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid 
 after the day’s occupation and confinement ; and 3 who had 
 had down Metaphysics after ditto; and one who had had 
 down Theology after ditto; and 4 who had worried Grammar, 
 Political Economy, Botany, and Logarithms all at once after 
 ditto ; that I suspected the boasted class to be one man, who 
 had been hired to do it. 
 
 Emerging from the Mechanics’ Institution and continuing 
 my walk about the town, I still noticed everywhere the preva- 
 lence, to an extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting 
 the natural demand for amusement out of sight, as some un- 
 tidy housekeepers put dust, and pretending that it was swept 
 away. And yet it was ministered to, in a dull and abortive 
 manner, by all who made this feint. Looking in at what is 
 called in Dullborough ^^the serious bookseller’s,” where, in 
 my childhood, I had studied the faces of numbers of gentle- 
 men depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each side of 
 them, and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLElt, 
 
 131 
 
 printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at 
 jocosity and dramatic effect, even in them — yes, verily, even 
 on the part of one very wrathful expounder who bitterly 
 anathematized a poor little Circus. Similarly, in the reading 
 provided for the young people enrolled in the Lasso of Love, 
 and other excellent unions, I found the writers generally 
 under a distressing sense that they must start (at all events) 
 like story-tellers, and delude the young persons into the belief 
 that they were going to be interesting. As I looked in at 
 this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am in a posi- 
 tion to offer a friendly remonstrance — not bearing on this 
 particular point — to the designers and engravers of the pic- 
 tures in those publications. Have they considered the awful 
 consequences likely to flow from their representations of 
 Virtue ? Have they asked themselves the question, whether 
 the terrific prospect of acquiring that fearful chubbiness of 
 head, unwieldiness of arm, feeble dislocation of leg, crispi- 
 ness of hair, and enormity of shirt-collar, which they repre- 
 sent as inseparable from Goodness, may not tend to confirm 
 sensitive waverers, in evil ? A most impressive example (if 
 I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a Sailor may come 
 to, when they mend their ways, was presented to me in this 
 same shop window. When they were leaning (they were 
 intimate friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with sur- 
 passingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, 
 they were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be 
 agreeable men, if they would not be beasts. But, when they 
 had got over their bad propensities, and when, as a conse- 
 quence, their heads had swelled alarmingly, their hair had got 
 so curly that it lifted their blown-out cheeks up, their coat- 
 cuffs were so long that they never could do any work, and 
 their eyes were so wide open that they never could do any 
 sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to plunge a timid 
 nature into the depths of Infamy. 
 
 But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last, 
 admonished me that I had stayed here long enough ; and I 
 resumed my walk. 
 
 I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was sud- 
 denly brought up by the sight of a man who got out of a 
 
132 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 little phaeton at the doctor’s door, and went into the doctor’s 
 house. Immediately, the air was filled with the scent of 
 trodden grass, and the perspective of years opened, and at 
 the end of it was a little likeness of this man keeping a 
 wicket, and I said, God bless my soul! Joe Specks!” 
 
 Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a 
 tenderness for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made 
 the acquaintance of Eoderick Eandoni together, and had be- 
 lieved him to be no ruffian, but an ingenuous and engaging 
 hero. Scorning to ask the boy left in the phaeton whether it 
 was really Joe, and scorning even to read the brass plate on 
 the door — so sure was I — I rang the bell and informed the 
 servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr. Specks. 
 Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to await 
 his coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate accidents, 
 bestrewn with testimonies to Joe. Portrait of Mr. Specks, 
 bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful patient to Mr. 
 Specks, presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication 
 poem from local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract 
 on balance of power from local refugee, inscribed Hommage 
 de V auteur a Specks. 
 
 When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him 
 with a smile that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a 
 loss to perceive any reason for smiling in connection with that 
 fact, and inquired to what was he to attribute the honor ? I 
 asked him, with another smile, could he remember me at all ? 
 He had not (he said) that pleasure. I was beginning to have 
 but a poor opinion of Mr. Specks, when he said reflectively, 
 ^^And yet there’s a something too.” Upon that, I saw a 
 boyish light in his eyes that looked well, and I asked him if 
 he could inform me, as a stranger who desired to know and 
 had not the means of reference at hand, what the name of 
 the young lady was, who married Mr. Eandoni ? Upon that, 
 he said, ^^Harcissa,” and, after staring fora moment, called 
 me by my name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a 
 roar of laughter. ^^Why, of course, you’ll remember Lucy 
 Green,” he said, after we had talked a little. Of course,” 
 said I. ^’Whoin do you think she married?” said he. 
 ‘^You?” I hazarded. ^^Me,” said Specks, ^‘and you shall 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 133 
 
 see her/^ So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay 
 in the world had been heaped upon her, it could scarcely have 
 altered her face more than Time had altered it from my 
 remembrance of the face that had once looked down upon me 
 into the fragrant dungeons of Seringapatam. But when her 
 youngest child came in after dinner (for I dined with them, 
 and we had no other company than Specks, Junior, Barrister- 
 at-law, who went away as soon as the cloth was removed, to 
 look after the young lady to whom he was going to be mar- 
 ried next week), I saw again, in that little daughter, the 
 little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it quite touched 
 my foolish heart. We talked immensely, Specks and Mrs. 
 Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our 
 old selves were dead and gone, and indeed indeed they were 
 — dead and gone as the playing-field that had become a wilder- 
 ness of rusty iron, and the property of S.E.B. 
 
 Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of 
 interest that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, 
 and linked its present to its past, with a highly agreeable 
 chain. And in Specks’s society I had new occasion to ob- 
 serve what I had before noticed in similar communications 
 among other men. All the schoolfellows and others of old, 
 whom I inquired about, had either done superlatively well or 
 superlatively ill — had either become uncertificated bankrupts, 
 or been felonious, and got themselves transported ; or had 
 made great hits in life, and done wonders. And this is so 
 commonly the case, that I never can imagine what becomes 
 of all the mediocre people of people’s youth — especially con- 
 sidering that we find no lack of the species in our maturity. 
 But, I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no 
 pause in the conversation gave me an occasion. Nor, could I 
 discover one single flaw in the good doctor — when he reads 
 this, he will receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant 
 record — except that he had forgotten his Boderick Kandoni, 
 and that he confounded Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; 
 who never knew Eandom, howsoever intimate with Pickle. 
 
 When I went alone to the Kailway to catch my train at 
 night (Specks had meant to go with me, but was inoppor- 
 tunely called out), I was in a more charitable mood with 
 
134 
 
 TEE UNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Diillborough than I had been all day ; and yet in my heart I 
 had loved it all day too. Ah ! who was I that I should quarrel 
 with the town for being changed to me, when I myself had 
 come back, so changed to it ! All my early readings and 
 early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them 
 away so full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and 
 I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and 
 so much the worse ! 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 135 
 
 XIIL 
 
 NIGHT WALKS. 
 
 Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to 
 a distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets 
 all night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might 
 have taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly 
 experimented on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the 
 brisk treatment of getting up directly after lying down, and 
 going out, and coming home tired at sunrise. 
 
 In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a 
 fair amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object 
 being to get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me 
 into sympathetic relations with people who have no other 
 object every night in the year. 
 
 The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and 
 cold. The sun not rising before half-past five, the night per- 
 spective looked sufficiently long at half-past twelve : which 
 was about my time for confronting it. 
 
 The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it 
 tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of 
 the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us 
 houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great 
 deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned 
 their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawl- 
 ing drunkards into the street ; but stray vehicles and stray 
 people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a 
 policeman’s rattle sprang and a fray turned up ; but, in 
 general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. 
 Except in the Hay market, which is the worst kept part of 
 London, and about Kent Street in the Borough, and along a 
 portion of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace wms 
 seldom violently broken. But, it was always 'the case that 
 London, as if in imitation of individual citizens belonging to 
 
136 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 it, had expiring fits and starts of restlessness. After all 
 seemed quiet, if one cab rattled by, half a dozen would surely 
 follow; and Houselessness even observed that intoxicated 
 people appeared to be magnetically attracted towards each 
 other; so that we knew when we saw one drunken object 
 staggering against the shutters of a shop, that another drunken 
 object would stagger up before five minutes were out, to 
 fraternize or fight with it. When we made a divergence from 
 the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced, 
 leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of 
 a more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was 
 dressed in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the 
 night, so the street experience in the day ; the common folk 
 who come unexpectedly into a little property, come unex- 
 pectedly into a deal of liquor. 
 
 At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out 
 — the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some 
 late pieman or hot-potato man — and London would sink to 
 rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind would be 
 for any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement, 
 anything suggestive of any one being up — nay, even so much 
 as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in 
 windows. 
 
 Walking the streets under the pattering rain. Houseless- 
 ness would walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but 
 the interminable tangle of streets, save at a corner, here and 
 there, two policemen in conversation, or the sergeant or in- 
 spector looking after his men. Now and then in the night — 
 but rarely — Houselessness Avould become aware of a furtive 
 head peering out of a doorway a few yards before him, and, 
 coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt 
 upright to keep within the doorway’s shadow, and evidently 
 intent upon no particular service to society. Under a kind of 
 fascination, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time. 
 Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another 
 from head to foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, 
 mutually suspicious. Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, 
 splash from pipes and water-spouts, and by and by the house- 
 less shadow would fall upon the stones that pave the way to 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 137 
 
 Waterloo Bridge ; it being in the houseless mind to have a 
 halfpenny worth of excuse for saying Good-night to the 
 toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of his fire. A good fire 
 and a good great-coat and a good woollen neck-shawl, were 
 comfortable things to see in conjunction with the toll-keeper ; 
 also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when he 
 rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table 
 of liis, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful 
 thoughts, and didn’t care for the coming of dawn. There 
 was need of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, 
 for the bridge was dreary. The chopped-up murdered man 
 had not been lowered with a rope over the parapet when those 
 nights were ; he was alive, and slept then quietly enough 
 most likely, and undisturbed by any dream of where he was 
 to come. But the river had an awful look, the buildings on 
 the banks were mufiled in black shrouds, and the reflected 
 lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the spectres 
 of suicides were holding them to show where they went down. 
 The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil conscience 
 in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity of 
 London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river. 
 
 Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was 
 but the distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came 
 next. Grim and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, 
 and lonesome to imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, 
 the lights extinguished, and the seats all empty. One would 
 think that nothing in them knew itself at such a time but 
 Yorick’s skull. In one of my night walks, as the church 
 steeples were shaking the March winds and rain with the 
 strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of these 
 great deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my 
 hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked 
 over the orchestra — which was like a great grave dug for a 
 time of pestilence — into the void beyond. A dismal cavern 
 of an immense aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like 
 everything else, and nothing visible through mist and fog and 
 space, but tiers of winding-sheets. The ground at my feet, 
 where, when last there, I had seen the peasantry of Naples 
 dancing among the vines, reckless of the burning mountain 
 
138 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 which threatened to overwhelm them, was now in possession 
 of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying in wait 
 for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed its 
 forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint 
 corpse candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted 
 away. Eetiring within the proscenium, and holding my light 
 above my head towards the rolled-up curtain — green no more, 
 but black as ebony — my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, 
 showing faint indications in it of a shipwreck of canvas and 
 cordage. Methought I felt much as a diver might, at the 
 bottom of the sea. 
 
 In those small hours when there was no movement in the 
 streets, it afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in 
 the way, and, touching its rough stone, to think of the prison- 
 ers in their sleep, and then to glance in at the lodge over the 
 spiked wicket, and see the fire and light of the watching 
 turnkeys, on the white wall. Not an inappropriate time 
 either, to linger by that wicked little Debtor’s Door — shut- 
 ting tighter than any other door one ever saw — which has 
 been Death’s Door to so many. In the days of the uttering 
 of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the 
 country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both 
 sexes — many quite innocent — swung out of a pitiless and 
 inconsistent world, with the tower of yonder Christian church 
 of Saint Sepulchre monstrously before their eyes ! Is there 
 any haunting of the Bank Parlor, by the remorseful souls 
 of old directors, in the nights of these later days, I wonder, 
 or is it as quiet as this degenerate Aceldama of an Old Bailey ? 
 
 To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and 
 bemoaning the present evil period, would be an easy next 
 step, so I would take it, and would make my houseless circuit 
 of the Bank, and give a thought to the treasure within ; like- 
 wise to the guard of soldiers passing the night there, and 
 nodding over the fire. Next, I went to Billingsgate, in some 
 hope of market-people, but it proving as yet too early, crossed 
 London Bridge and got down by the water-side on the Surrey 
 shore among the buildings of the great brewery. There was 
 plenty going on at the brewery ; and the reek, and the smell 
 of grains, and the rattling pf the plump dray horses at their 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 139 
 
 mangers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having 
 mingled with this good society, I made a new start with a 
 new heart, setting the old King’s Bench prison before me for 
 my next object, and resolving, when I should come to the 
 wall, to think of poor Horace Kinch, and the Dry Bot in 
 men. 
 
 A very curious disease the Dry Bot in men, and difficult to 
 detect the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch inside 
 the wall of the old King’s Bench prison, and it had carried 
 him out with his feet foremost. He was a likely man to look 
 at, in the prime of life, well-to-do, as clever as he needed 
 to be, and popular among many friends. He was suitably 
 married, and had healthy and pretty children. But, like 
 some fair-looking houses or fair-looking ships, he took the 
 Dry Bot. The first strong external revelation of the Dry 
 Bot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge ; to be at street 
 corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere 
 when met ; to be about many places rather than at any ; to 
 do nothing tangible, but to have an intention of performing 
 a variety of intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. 
 When this manifestation of the disease is observed, the 
 observer will usually connect it with a vague impression once 
 formed or received, that the patient was living a little too 
 hard. He will scarcely have had leisure to turn it over in 
 his mind and form the terrible suspicion Dry Bot,” when 
 he will notice a change for the worse in the patient’s appear- 
 ance: a certain slovenliness and deterioration, which is not 
 poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication, nor ill-health, but simply 
 Dry Bot. To this, succeeds a smell as of strong waters, in 
 the morning ; to that, a looseness respecting money ; to that, 
 a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times ; to that, a 
 looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of the 
 limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is 
 in wood, so it is in men. Dry Bot advances at a compound 
 usury quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with it, 
 and the whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been with 
 the unhappy Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscrip- 
 tion. Those who knew him had not nigh done saying, So 
 well off, so comfortably established, with such hope before 
 
140 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 him — and yet, it is feared, with a slight touch of Dry Rot ! 
 when lo ! the man was all Dry Rot and dust. 
 
 From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights 
 with this too common story, I chose next to wander by Beth- 
 lehem Hospital ; partly, because it lay on my road round to 
 Westminster; partly, because I had a night fancy in my 
 head which could be best pursued within sight of its walls 
 and dome. And the fancy was this : Are not the sane and 
 insane equal at night as the sane lie a-dreaming ? Are not 
 all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more or less in the 
 condition of those inside it, every night of our lives ? Are we 
 not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we associate 
 preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and em- 
 presses, and notabilities of all sorts ? Do we not nightly 
 jumble events and personages and times and places, as these 
 do daily ? Are we not sometimes troubled by our own sleep- 
 ing inconsistencies, and do we not vexedly try to account for 
 them or excuse them, just as these do sometimes in respect of 
 their waking delusions ? Said an afflicted man to me, when I 
 was last in a hospital like this, Sir, I can frequently fly.’’ 
 I was half ashamed to reflect that so could I — by night. 
 Said a woman to me on the same occasion, Queen Victoria 
 frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I 
 dine off peaches and macaroni in our nightgowns, and his 
 Royal Highness the Prince Consort does us the honor to 
 make a third on horseback in a Field-Marshal’s uniform.” 
 Could I refrain from reddening with consciousness when I 
 remembered the amazing royal parties I myself had given 
 (at night), the unaccountable viands I had put on table, and 
 my extraordinary manner of conducting myself on those dis- 
 tinguished occasions ? I wonder that the great master who 
 knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each 
 day’s life, did not call Dreams the insanitv of each day’s 
 sanity. 
 
 By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was 
 again setting towards the river ; and in a short breathing 
 space I was on Westminster Bridge, regaling my houseless 
 eyes with the external walls of the British Parliament — the 
 perfection of a stupendous institution, I know, and the ad- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 141 
 
 miration of all surrounding nations and succeeding ages, I do 
 not doubt but perhaps a little the better now and then, for 
 being pricked up to its work. Turning off into Old Palace- 
 yard, the Courts of law kept me company for a quarter of an 
 hour ; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people they 
 were keeping awake, and bow intensely wretched and horrible 
 they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors. 
 Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another 
 quarter of an hour ; suggesting a wonderful procession of its 
 dead among the dark arches and pillars, each century more 
 amazed by the century following it than by all the centuries 
 going before. And indeed in those houseless night walks — 
 which even included cemeteries where watchman went round 
 among the graves at stated times, and moved the tell-tale 
 handle of an index which recorded that they had touched it 
 at such an hour — it was a solemn consideration what enormous 
 hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they 
 were raised while the living slept, there would not be the 
 space of a pin’s point in all the streets and ways for the 
 living to come out into. Not only that, but the vast armies 
 of dead would overflow the hills and valleys beyond the city, 
 and would stretch away all round it, God knows how far. 
 
 When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead 
 of the night, it may be at first mistaken for company and 
 hailed as such. But, as the spreading circles of vibration, 
 which you may perceive at such a time with great clearness, 
 go opening out, for ever and ever afterwards widening perhaps 
 (as the philosopher has suggested) in eternal space, the mis- 
 take is rectified and the sense of loneliness is profounder. 
 Once — it was after leaving the Abbey and turning my face 
 north — I came to the great steps of St. Martin’s church as 
 the clock was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing that in a 
 moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing, 
 rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness, 
 struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. 
 We then stood face to face looking at one another, frightened 
 by one another. The creature was like a beetle-browed hair- 
 lipped youoh of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, 
 which it held together with one of its hands. It shivered 
 
142 
 
 THE UNC02I3IEECIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 from head to foot, and its teeth chattered, and as it stared at 
 me — persecutor, devil, ghost, whatever it thought me — it 
 made with its whining mouth as if it were snapping at me, 
 like a worried dog. Intending to give this ugly object, money, 
 I put out my hand to stay it — for it recoiled as it whined and 
 snapped — and laid my hand upon its shoulder. Instantly, 
 it twisted out of its garment, like the young man in the New 
 Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags in my 
 hand. 
 
 Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was 
 wonderful company. The great wagons of cabbages, with 
 growers’ men and boys lying asleep under them, and with 
 sharp dogs from market-garden neighborhoods looking after 
 the whole, were as good as a party. But one of the worst 
 night sights I know in London, is to be found in the children 
 who prowl about this place ; who sleep in the baskets, light 
 for the offal, dart at any object they think they can lay their 
 thieving hands on, dive under the carts and barrows, dodge 
 the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt pattering 
 on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their naked 
 feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison 
 one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as 
 displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the 
 earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all 
 uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages. 
 
 There was early coffee to be got about Co vent-garden 
 Market, and that was more company — warm company, too, 
 which was better. Toast of a very substantial quality, was 
 likewise procurable : though the tousled-headed man who 
 made it, in an inner chamber within the coffee-room, hadn’t 
 got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with sleep that in every 
 interval of toast and coffee he went off anew behind the par- 
 tition into complicated cross-roads of choke and snore, and 
 lost his way directly. Into one of these establishments 
 (among the earliest) near Bow Street, -there came one morning 
 as I sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, 
 a man in a high and long snuff-colored coat, and shoes, and, 
 to the best of my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out 
 of his hat a large cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 143 
 
 large that it was a very tight fit, and brought the lining of 
 the hat out with it. This mysterious man was known by his 
 pudding, for on his entering, the man of sleep brought him a 
 pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a large knife and fork and 
 plate. Left to himself in his box, he stood the pudding on 
 the bare table, and, instead of cutting it, stabbed it, over- 
 hand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then took the 
 knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding asunder 
 with his fingers, and ate it all up. The remembrance of this 
 man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance 
 of the most spectral person my houselessness encountered. 
 Twice only was I in that establishment, and twice I saw him 
 stalk in (as I should say, just out of bed, and presently going 
 back to bed), take out his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the 
 dagger, and eat his pudding all up. He was a man whose 
 figure promised cadaverousness, but who had an excessively 
 red face, though shaped like a horse’s. On the second occa- 
 sion of my seeing him, he said, huskily to the man of sleep. 
 Am I red to-night ? ” — You are,” he uncompromisingly 
 answered. My mother,” said the spectre, was a red-faced 
 woman that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she 
 laid in her coffin, and I took the complexion.” Somehow, the 
 pudding seemed an unwholesome pudding after that, and I 
 put myself in its way no more. 
 
 When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a 
 railway terminus with the morning mails coming in, was 
 remunerative compan}^ But like most of the company to be 
 had in this world, it lasted only a very short time. The 
 station lamps would burst out ablaze, the porters would 
 emerge from places of concealment, the cabs and trucks would 
 rattle to their places (the post-office carts were already in 
 theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up, and the train 
 would come banging in. But there were few passengers and 
 little luggage, and everything scuttled away with the greatest 
 expedition. The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets 
 — as if they had been dragging the country for bodies — 
 would fly open as to their doors, and would disgorge a smell 
 of lamp, an exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their 
 bags of letters ; the engine would blow and heave and per- 
 
144 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 spire, like an engine wiping its forehead and saying what a run 
 it had had ; and within ten minutes the lamps were out, and I 
 was houseless and alone again. 
 
 But now, there weTe driven cattle on the high road near, 
 wanting (as cattle always do) to turn into the midst of stone 
 walls, and squeeze themselves through six inches’ width of 
 iron railing, and getting their heads down (also as cattle 
 always do) for tossing-purchase at quite imaginary dogs, and 
 giving themselves and every devoted creature associated with 
 them a most extraordinary amount of unnecessary trouble. 
 Now, too, the conscious gas began to grow pale with the 
 knowledge that daylight was coming, and straggling work- 
 people were already in the streets, and, as waking life had 
 become extinguished with the last pieman’s sparks, so it 
 began to be rekindled with the fires of the first street corner 
 breakfast-sellers. And so by faster and faster degrees, until 
 the last degrees were very fast, the day came, and I was tired 
 and could sleep. And it is not, as I used to think, going 
 home at such times, the least wonderful thing in London, 
 that in the real desert region of the night, the houseless 
 wanderer is alone there. I knew well enough where to find 
 Vice and Misfortune of all kinds, if I had chosen ; but they 
 were put out of sight, and my houselessness had many miles 
 upon miles of streets in which it could, and did, have its own 
 solitary way. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 145 
 
 XIV. 
 
 CHAMBERS. 
 
 Having occasion to transact some business with a solicitor 
 who occupies a highly suicidal set of chambers in Gray’s Inn, 
 I afterwards took a turn in the large square of that stronghold 
 of Melancholy, reviewing, with congenial surroundings, my 
 experiences of Chambers. 
 
 I began, as was natural, with the Chambers I had just left. 
 They were an upper set on a rotten staircase, with a mysteri- 
 ous bunk or bulkhead on the landing outside them, of a rather 
 nautical and Screw Collier-like appearance than otherwise, and 
 painted an intense black. Many dusty years have jjassed since 
 the appropriation of this Davy Jones’s locker to any purpose, 
 and during the whole period within the memory of living man, 
 it has been hasped and padlocked. I cannot quite satisfy my 
 mind whether it was originally meant for the reception of 
 coals, or bodies, or as a place of temporary security for the 
 plunder looted ” by laundresses ; but I incline to the last 
 opinion. It is about breast high, and usually serves as a bulk 
 for defendants in reduced circumstances to lean against and 
 ponder at, when they come on the hopeful errand of trying to 
 make an arrangement without money — under which auspicious 
 circumstances it mostly happens that the legal gentleman they 
 want to see, is much engaged, and they pervade the staircase 
 for a considerable period. Against this opposing bulk, in the 
 absurdest manner, the tomb-like outer door of the solicitor’s 
 chambers (which is also of an intense black) stands in dark 
 ambush, half open, and half shut, all day. The solicitor’s 
 apartments are three in number ; consisting of a slice, a cell, 
 and a wedge. The slice is assigned to the two clerks, the cell 
 is occupied by the principal, and the wedge is devoted to stray 
 papers, old game-baskets from the country, a washing-stand, 
 and a model of a patent Ship’s Caboose which was exhibited 
 
146 
 
 THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TEAVELLER, 
 
 in Chancery at the commencement of the present century on 
 an application for an injunction to restrain infringement. At 
 about half-past nine on every week-day morning, the younger 
 of the two clerks (who, I have reason to believe, leads the 
 fashion at Pentonville in the articles of pipes and shirts) may 
 be found knocking the dust out of his official door-key on the 
 bunk or locker before mentioned ; and so exceedingly subject 
 to dust is his key, and so very retentive of that superfluity, 
 that in exceptional summer weather when a ray of sunlight 
 has fallen on the locker in my presence, I have noticed its 
 inexpressive countenance to be deeply marked by a kind of 
 Bramah erysipelas or smallpox. 
 
 This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when 
 I have had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave mes- 
 sages, after office hours) is under the charge of a lady named 
 Sweeney, in figure extremely like an old family umbrella ; 
 whose dwelling confronts a dead wall in a court off Gray’s 
 Inn Lane, and who is usually fetched into the passage of that 
 bower, when wanted, from some neighboring home of industry, 
 which has the curious property of imparting an inflammatory 
 appearance to her visage. Mrs. Sweeney is one of the race of 
 professed laundresses, and is the compiler of a remarkable 
 manuscript volume entitled Mrs. Sweeney’s Book,” from 
 which much curious statistical information may be gathered 
 respecting the high prices and small uses of soda, soap, sand, 
 firewood, and other such articles. I have created a legend in 
 my mind — and consequently I believe it with the utmost per- 
 tinacity — that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under 
 the Honorable Society of Gray’s Inn, and that, in consideration 
 of his long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed 
 to her present post. Bor though devoid of personal charms, I 
 have observed this lady to exercise a fascination over the 
 elderly ticket-porter mind (particularly under the gateway, and 
 in corners and entries), which I can only refer to her being 
 one of the fraternity, yet not competing with it. All that 
 need be said concerning this set of chambers, is said, when I 
 have added that it is in a large double house in Gray’s Inn 
 Square, very much out of repair, and that the outer portal is 
 ornamented in a hideous manner with certain stone remains, 
 
LAUNDRESSES. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 147 
 
 which have the appearance of the dismembered bust, torso, 
 and limbs of a petrified bencher. 
 
 Indeed, I look upon Gray’s Inn generally as one of the 
 most depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to 
 the children of men. Can anything be more dreary than its 
 arid Square, Sahara Desert of the law, Avith the ugly old tile- 
 topped tenements, the dirty windows, the bills To Let To Let, 
 the doorposts inscribed like gravestones, the crazy gateway 
 giving upon the filthy Lane, the scowling iron-barred prison- 
 like passage into Verulam buildings, the mouldy red-nosed 
 ticket-porters with little coffin-plates and why with aprons, 
 the dry hard atomy-like appearance of the whole dust-heap ? 
 When my uncommercial travels tend to this dismal spot, my 
 comfort is its rickety state. Imagination gloats over the ful- 
 ness of time when the staircases shall have quite tumbled 
 down — they are daily wearing into an ill-savored powder, but 
 have not quite tumbled down yet — when the last old prolix 
 bencher all of the olden time, shall have been got out of an 
 upper window by means of a Fire Ladder, and carried off to 
 the Holborn Union; when the last clerk shall have engrossed 
 the last parchment behind the last splash on the last of the 
 mud-stained windows, which, all through the miry year, are 
 pilloried out of recognition in Gray’s Inn Lane. Then, shall 
 a squalid little trench, with rank grass and a pump in it, lying 
 between the coffee-house and South Square, be wholly given 
 up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have its empire divided 
 between those animals and a few briefless bipeds — surely 
 called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits, seeing that 
 they are wanted there by no mortal — who glance down, Avith 
 eyes better glazed than their casements, from their dreary and 
 lack-lustre rooms. Then shall the way FTor’ Westward, now 
 lying under a short grim colonnade where in summer-time 
 pounce flies from law stationering windows into the eyes of 
 laymen, be choked with rubbish and happily become impassa- 
 ble. Then shall the gardens Avhere turf, trees, and gravel wear 
 a legal livery of black, run rank, and pilgrims go to Gorham- 
 bury to see Bacon’s effigy as he sat, and not come here (which 
 in truth they seldom do) to see where he walked. Then, in a 
 word, shall the old-established vender of periodicals sit alone 
 
148 
 
 THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 in his little crib of a shop behind the Holborn Gate, like that 
 lumbering Marius among the ruins of Carthage, who has sat 
 heavy on a thousand million of similes. 
 
 At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented 
 another set of chambers in Gray’s Inn Square. They were 
 what is familiarly called ^^a top set,” and all the eatables and 
 drinkables introduced into them acquired a flavor of Cockloft. 
 I have known an unopened Strasbourg pate fresh from Fortnum 
 and Mason’s, to draw in this cockloft tone through its crockery 
 dish, and become penetrated with cockloft to the core of its 
 inmost truffle in three-quarters of an hour. This, however, 
 was not the most curious feature of those chambers ; that, con- 
 sisted in the profound conviction entertained by my esteemed 
 friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean. Whether 
 it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted to 
 him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. 
 But, I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the ques- 
 tion. Now, they were so dirty that I could take off the dis- 
 tinctest impression of my figure on any article of furniture by 
 merely lounging upon it for a few moments ; and it used to be 
 a private amusement of mine to print myself off — if I may 
 use the expression — all over the rooms. It was the first large 
 circulation I had. At other times I have accidentally shaken 
 a window curtain while in animated conversation with Parkle, 
 and struggling insects which were certainly red, and were cer- 
 tainly not ladybirds, have dropped on the back of my hand. 
 Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound body and soul 
 to the superstition that they were clean. He used to say, when 
 congratulated upon them, Well, they are not like chambers 
 in one respect, you know ; they are clean.” Concurrently, he 
 had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot 
 was in some way connected with the Church. When he was in 
 particularly good spirits, he used to believe thak a deceased 
 uncle of hers had been a Dean ; when he was poorly and low, 
 he believed that her brother had been a Curate. I and Mrs. 
 Miggot (she was a genteel woman) were on confidential terms, 
 but I never knew her to commit herself to any distinct asser- 
 tion on the subject; she merely claimed a proprietorship in 
 the Church, by looking when it was mentioned, as if the refer- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 149 
 
 ence awakened the slumbering Past, and were personal. It 
 may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs. MiggoPs better 
 days that inspired my friend with his delusion respecting the 
 chambers, but he never wavered in his fidelity to it for a mo- 
 ment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years. 
 
 Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into 
 the garden ; and we have sat up there together many a sum- 
 mer evening, saying how pleasant it was, and talking of many 
 things. To my intimacy with that top set, I am indebted for 
 three of my liveliest personal impressions of the loneliness of 
 life in chambers. They shall follow here, in order ; first, 
 second, and third. 
 
 First. My Gray’s Inn friend, on a time, hurt one of his 
 legs, and it became seriously inflamed. Not knowing of his 
 indisposition, I was on my way to visit him as usual, one 
 summer evening, when I was much surprised by meeting a 
 lively leech in Field Court, Gray’s Inn, seemingly on his way 
 to the West End of London. As the leech was alone, and 
 was of course unable to explain his position, even if he had 
 been inclined to do so (which he had not the appearance of 
 being), I passed him and went on. Turning the corner of 
 Gray’s Inn Square, I was beyond expression amazed by meet- 
 ing another leech — also entirely alone, and also proceeding 
 in a westerly direction, though with less decision of purpose. 
 Eliminating on this extraordinary circumstance, and en- 
 deavoring to remember whether I had ever read, in the 
 Philosophical Transactions or any work on Natural History, 
 of a migration of Leeches, I ascended to the top set, past the 
 dreary series of closed outer doors of offices and an empty set 
 or two, which intervened between that lofty region and the 
 surface. Entering my friend’s rooms, I found him stretched 
 upon his back, like Prometheus Bound, with a perfectly de- 
 mented ticket-porter in attendance on him instead of the 
 Vulture : which helpless individual, who was feeble and 
 frightened, and had (my friend explained to me, in great 
 choler) been endeavoring for some hours to apply leeches to 
 his leg, and as yet had only got on two out of twenty. To 
 this Unfortunate’s distraction between a damp cloth on which 
 he had placed the leeches to freshen them, and the wrathful 
 
150 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 adjurations of my friend to Stick ’em on, sir ! ” T referred 
 the phenomena I had encountered : the rather as two fine 
 specimens were at that moment going out at the door, while 
 a general insurrection of the rest was in progress on the 
 table. After a while our united efforts prevailed, and, when 
 the leeches came off and had recovered their spirits, we care- 
 fully tied them up in a decanter. But I never heard more of 
 them than that they were all gone next morning, and that 
 the Out-of-door young man of Bickle Bush and Bodger, on 
 the ground floor, had been bitten and blooded by some 
 creature not identified. They never took ” on Mrs. Miggot, 
 the laundress ; but, I have always preserved fresh, the belief 
 that she unconsciously carried several about her, until they 
 gradually found openings in life. 
 
 Second. On the same staircase with my friend Parkle, and 
 on the same floor, there lived a man of law who pursued his 
 business elsewhere, and used those chambers as his place of 
 residence. For three or four years, Parkle rather knew of 
 him than knew him, but after that — for Englishmen — short 
 pause of consideration, they began to speak. Parkle ex- 
 changed words with him in his private character only, and 
 knew nothing of his business ways, or means. He was a 
 man a good deal about town, but always alone. We used to 
 remark to one another, that although we often encountered 
 him in theatres, concert rooms, and similar public places, he 
 was always alone. Yet he was not a gloomy man, and was 
 of a decidedly conversational turn ; insomuch that he would 
 sometimes of an evening lounge with a cigar in his mouth, 
 half in and half out of Parkle’s rooms, and discuss the topics 
 of the day by the hour. He used to hint on these occasions 
 that he had four faults to find with life ; firstly, that it 
 obliged a man to be always winding up his watch ; secondly, 
 that London was too small ; thirdly, that it therefore wanted 
 variety ; fourthly, that there was too much dust in it. There 
 was so much dust in his own faded chambers, certainly, that 
 they reminded me of a sepulchre, furnished in prophetic 
 anticipation of the present time, which had newly been 
 brought to light, after having remained buried a few thou- 
 sand years. One dry hot autumn evening at twilight, this 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 151 
 
 man, being then five years turned of fifty, looked in upon 
 Parkle in his usual lounging way, with his cigar in his mouth 
 as usual, and said, I am going out of town.’’ As he never 
 went out of town, Parkle said, Oh indeed ! At last ? ” — Yes,” 
 says he, at last. For what is a man to do ? London is so 
 small ! If you go West, you come to Hounslow. If you go 
 East, you come to Bow. If you go South, there’s Brixton or 
 Norwood. If you go North, you can’t get rid of Barnet. 
 Then, the monotony of all the streets, streets, streets — and of 
 all the roads, roads, roads — and the dust, dust, dust ! ” When 
 he had said this, he wished Parkle a good-evening, but came 
 back again and said, with his watch in his hand, ^^Oh, I 
 really cannot go on winding up this watch over and over 
 again ; I wish you would take care of it.” So, Parkle laughed 
 and consented, and the man went out of town. The man re- 
 mained out of town so long, that his letter-box became choked, 
 and no more letters could be got into it, and they began to 
 be left at the lodge and to accumulate there. At last the 
 head-porter decided, on conference with the steward, to use 
 his master key and look into the chambers, and give them 
 the benefit of a whiff of air. Then, it was found that he had 
 hanged himself to his bedstead, and had left this written mem- 
 orandum : I should prefer to be cut down by my neighbor 
 and friend (if he will allow me to call him so), H. Parkle, 
 Esq.” This was an end of Parkle’s occupancy of chambers. 
 He went into lodgings immediately. 
 
 Third. While Parkle lived in Gray’s Inn, and I myself 
 was uncommercially preparing for the Bar — which is done, as 
 everybody knows, by having a frayed old gown put on in a 
 pantry by an old woman in a chronic state of Saint Anthony’s 
 fire and dropsy, and, so decorated, bolting a bad dinner in a 
 party of four, whereof each individual mistrusts the other 
 three — I say, while these things were, there was a certain 
 elderly gentleman who lived in a court of the Temple, and 
 was a great judge and lover of port wine. Every day he 
 dined at his club and drank his bottle or two of port wine, 
 and every night came home to the Temple and went to bed in 
 his lonely chambers. This had gone on many years without 
 variation, when one night he had a fit on coming home, and 
 
152 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 fell and cut his head deep, but partly recovered and groped 
 about in the dark to find the door. When he was afterwards 
 discovered, dead, it was clearly established by the marks of 
 his hands about the room that he must have done so. Now, 
 this chanced on the night of Christmas Eve, and over him 
 lived a young fellow who had sisters and young country 
 friends, and who gave them a little party that night, in the 
 course of which they played at Blindman’s Buff. They played 
 that game, for their greater sport, by the light of the fire 
 only; and once, when they were all quietly rustling and 
 stealing about, and the blindman was trying to pick out the 
 prettiest sister (for which I am far from blaming him), some- 
 body cried. Hark ! The man below must be playing Blind- 
 man’s Buff by himself to-night ! They listened, and they 
 heard sounds of some one falling about and stumbling against 
 furniture, and they all laughed at the conceit, and went on 
 with their play, more light-hearted and merry than ever. 
 Thus, those two so different games of life and death were 
 played out together, blindfolded, in the two sets of chambers. 
 
 Such are the occurrences, which, coming to my knowledge, 
 imbued me long ago with a strong sense of the loneliness of 
 chambers. There was a fantastic illustration to much the 
 same purpose implicitly believed by a strange sort of man now 
 dead, whom I knew when I had not quite arrived at legal 
 years of discretion, though I was already in the uncommercial 
 line. 
 
 This was a man who, though not more than thirty, had 
 seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities — had been 
 an officer in a South American regiment among other odd 
 things — but had not achieved much in any way of life, and 
 was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the 
 dreariest nature in Lyons Inn ; his name, however, was not 
 up on the door, or doorpost, but in lieu of it stood the name 
 of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him 
 the furniture. The story arose out of the furniture, and was 
 to this effect : — Let the former holder of the chambers, whose 
 name was still upon the door and doorpost, be Mr. Testator. 
 
 Mr. Testator took a set of chambers in Lyons Inn when he 
 had but very scanty furniture for his bedroom, and none for 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 153 
 
 his sitting-room. He had lived some wintry months in this 
 condition, and had found it very bare and cold. One night, 
 past midnight, when he sat writing and still had writing to 
 do that must be done before he went to bed, he found himself 
 out of coals. He had coals down-stairs, but had never been 
 to his cellar ; however the cellar-key was on his mantel-shelf, 
 and if he went down and opened the cellar it fitted, he might 
 fairly assume the coals in that cellar to be his. As to his 
 laundress, she lived among the coal-wagons and Thames 
 watermen — for there were Thames watermen at that time — 
 in some unknown rat-hole by the river, down lanes and alleys 
 on the other side of the Strand. As to any other person to 
 meet him or obstruct him, Lyons Inn was dreaming, drunk, 
 maudlin, moody, betting, brooding over bill-discounting, or 
 renewing — asleep or awake, minding its own affairs. Mr. 
 Testator took his coal-scuttle, in one hand, his candle and key 
 in the other, and descended to the dismallest underground 
 dens of Lyons Inn, where the late vehicles in the streets be- 
 came thunderous, and all the water-pipes in the neighbor- 
 hood seemed to have Macbeth’s Amen sticking in their throats 
 and to be trying to get it out. After groping here and there 
 among low doors to no purpose, Mr. Testator at length came 
 to a door with a rusty padlock which his key fitted. Getting 
 the door, open with much trouble, and looking in, he found, 
 no coals, but a confused pile of furniture. Alarmed by this 
 intrusion on another man’s property, he locked the door 
 again, found his own cellar, filled his scuttle, and returned 
 up-stairs. 
 
 But the furniture he had seen, ran on casters across and 
 across Mr. Testator’s mind incessantly, when, in the chill hour 
 of five in the morning he got to bed. He particularly wanted 
 a table to write at, and a table expressly made to be written at, 
 had been the piece of furniture in the foreground of the heap. 
 When his laundress emerged from her burrow in the morning 
 tp make his kettle boil, he artfully led up to the subject of 
 cellars and furniture ; but the two ideas had evidently no con- 
 nection in her mind. When she left him, and he sat at his 
 breakfast, thinking about the furniture, he recalled the rusty 
 state of the padlock, and inferred that the furniture must 
 
154 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLEB. 
 
 have been stored in the cellars for a long time — was perhaps 
 forgotten — owner dead, perhaps ? After thinking it over, 
 a few days, in the course of which he could pump nothing out 
 of Lyons Inn about the furniture, he became desperate, and 
 resolved to borrow that table. He did so, that night. He 
 had not had the table long, when he determined to borrow an 
 easy-chair ; he had not had that long, when he made up his 
 mind to borrow a bookcase ; then, a couch ; then, a carpet and 
 rug. By that time, he felt he was in furniture stepped in 
 so far,^^ as that it could be no worse to borrow it all. Conse- 
 quently, he borrowed it all, and locked up the cellar for good. 
 He had always locked it, after every visit. He had carried 
 up every separate article in the dead of the night, and, at the 
 best, had felt as wicked as a Eesurrection Man. Every article 
 was blue and furry when brought into his rooms, and he had 
 had, in a murderous and guilty sort of way, to polish it up 
 while London slept. 
 
 Mr. Testator lived in his furnished chambers two or three 
 years, or more, and gradually lulled himself into the opinion 
 that the furniture was his own. This was his convenient state 
 of mind when, late one night, a step came up the stairs, and 
 a hand passed over his door, feeling for his knocker, and then 
 one deep and solemn rap was rapped that might have been a 
 spring in Mr. Testator’s easy-chair to shoot him out of it; so 
 promptly was it attended with that effect. 
 
 With a candle in his hand, Mr. Testator went to the door, 
 and found there, a very pale and very tall man ; a man who 
 stooped; a man with very high shoulders, a very narrow 
 chest, and a very red nose ; a shabby-genteel man. He was 
 wrapped in a long threadbare black coat, fastened up the front 
 with more pins than buttons, and under his arm he squeezed 
 an umbrella without a handle, as if he were playing bagpipes. 
 He said, I ask your pardon, but can you tell me” — and 
 stopped; his eyes resting on some object within the chambers. 
 
 Can I tell you what ? ” asked Mr. Testator, noting his 
 stoppage with quick alarm. 
 
 ask your pardon,” said the stranger, ‘^but — this is not 
 the inquiry I was going to make — dol see in there, any small 
 article of property belonging to me ? ” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 155 
 
 Mr. Testator was beginning to stammer that he was not 
 aware — when the visitor slipped past him, into the chambers. 
 There, in a goblin way which froze Mr. Testator to the 
 marrow, he examined, first, the writing-table, and said. 
 Mine ; ’’ then, the easy-chair, and said, Mine ; ” then, the 
 bookcase, and said, Mine ; ’’ then, turned up a corner of the 
 carpet, and said, Mine ! in a word, inspected every item of 
 furniture from the cellar, in succession, and said, Mine ! ’’ 
 Towards the end of this investigation, Mr. Testator perceived 
 that he was sodden with liquor, and that the liquor was gin. 
 He was not unsteady with gin, either in his speech or carriage ; 
 but he was stiff with gin in both particulars. 
 
 Mr. Testator was in a dreadful state, for (according to his 
 making out of the story) the possible consequences of what he 
 had done in recklessness and hardihood, flashed upon him in 
 their fulness for the first time. When they had stood gazing 
 at one another for a little while, he tremulously began, — 
 
 Sir, I am conscious that the fullest explanation, compen- 
 sation, and restitution, are your due. They shall be yours. 
 Allow me to entreat that, without temper, without even 
 natural irritation on your part, we may have a little ’’ — 
 
 Drop of something to drink,’’ interposed the stranger, 
 am agreeable.” 
 
 Mr. Testator had intended to say, ^^a little quiet conversa- 
 tion,” but with great relief of mind adopted the amendment. 
 He produced a decanter of gin, and was bustling about for 
 hot water and sugar, when he found that his visitor had 
 already drunk half the decanter’s contents. With hot water 
 and. sugar the visitor drank the remainder before he had been 
 an hour in the chambers by the chimes of the church of St. 
 Mary in the Strand ; and during the process he frequently 
 whispered to himself, Mine ! ” 
 
 The gin gone, and Mr. Testator wondering what was to 
 follow it, the visitor rose and said, with increased stiffness. 
 At what hour of the morning, sir, will it be convenient ? ” 
 Mr. Testator hazarded, ^^At ten?” — ^^Sir,” said the visitor, 
 at ten, to the moment, I shall be here.” He then contem- 
 plated Mr. Testator somewhat at leisure, and said, God bless 
 you ! How is your wife ? ” Mr. Testator (who never had a 
 
156 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 wife) replied with much feeling, Deeply anxious, poor soul, 
 but otherwise well.’’ The visitor thereupon turned and went 
 away, and fell twice in going down-stairs. From that hour 
 he was never heard of. Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral 
 illusion of conscience, or a drunken man who had no business 
 there, or the drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a 
 transitory gleam of memory ; whether he got safe home, or 
 had no home to get to ; whether he died of liquor on the way, 
 or lived in liquor ever afterwards ; he never was heard of 
 more. This was the story, received with the furniture and 
 held to be as substantial, by its second possessor in an upper 
 set of chambers in grim Lyons Inn. 
 
 It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they 
 must have been built for chambers, to have the right kind of 
 loneliness. You may make a great dwelling-house very 
 lonely, by isolating suites of rooms and calling them chambers, 
 but you cannot make the true kind of loneliness. In dwelling- 
 houses, there have been family festivals ; children have grown 
 in them, girls have bloomed into women in them, courtships 
 and marriages have taken place in them. True chambers 
 never were young, childish, maidenly ; never had dolls in 
 them, or rocking-horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or 
 little coffins. Let Gray’s Inn identify the child who first 
 touched hands and hearts with Eobinson Crusoe, in any one 
 of its many ^^sets,” and that child’s little statue, in white 
 marble with a golden inscription, shall be at its service, at 
 my cost and charge, as a drinking-fountain for the spirit, to 
 freshen its thirsty square. Let Lincoln’s produce from all 
 its houses, a twentieth of the procession derivable from any 
 dwelling-house one-twentieth of its age, of fair young brides 
 who married for love and hope, not settlements, and all 
 the Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward be kept in nose- 
 gays for nothing, on application to the writer hereof. It is 
 not denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of 
 the streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about 
 Bedford Eow, or James Street of that ilk (a gruesome place), 
 or anywhere among the neighborhoods that have done flower- 
 ing and have run to seed, you may find Chambers replete with 
 the accommodations of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 157 
 
 where you may be as low-spirited as in the genuine article, 
 and might be as easily murdered, with the placid reputation 
 of having merely gone down to the seaside. But, the many 
 waters of life did run musical in those dry channels once ; — 
 among the Inns, never. The only popular legend known in 
 relation to any one of the dull family of Inns, is a dark Old 
 Bailey whisper concerning Clement’s, and importing how the 
 black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who 
 slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents 
 of his strong-box — for which architectural offence alone he 
 ought to have been condemned to live in it. But, what popu- 
 lace would waste fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, 
 Staple Inn, Barnard’s Inn, or any of the shabby crew ? 
 
 The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had 
 in its entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers. 
 Again, it is not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere. 
 Elsev/here you may have — for money — dishonesty, drunken- 
 ness, dirt, laziness, and profound incapacity. But the veri- 
 table shining-red-faced shameless laundress; the true Mrs. 
 Sweeney — in figure, color, texture, and smell, like the old 
 damp family-umbrella; the tip-top complicated abomination 
 of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and larceny ; 
 is only to be drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs. Sweeney is 
 beyond the reach of individual art. It requires the united 
 efforts of several men to insure that great result, and it is 
 only developed in perfection under an Honorable Society and 
 in an Inn of Court. 
 
158 
 
 JHJE7 UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XV. 
 
 nurse’s stories. 
 
 There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to 
 revisit when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which 
 I have never been. For, my acquaintance wfith those spots is 
 of such long standing, and has ripened into an intimacy of so 
 affectionate a nature, that I take a particular interest in assur- 
 ing myself that they are unchanged. 
 
 I never was in Eobinson Crusoe’s Island, yet I frequently 
 return there. The colony he established on it soon faded 
 away, and it is uninhabited by any descendants of the grave 
 and courteous Spaniards, or of Will Atkins and the other 
 mutineers, and has relapsed into its original condition. Not 
 a twig of its wicker houses remains, its goats have long run 
 wild again, its screaming parrots would darken the sun with 
 a cloud of many flaming colors if a gun were fired there, no 
 face is ever reflected in the waters of the little creek which 
 Friday swam across when pursued by his two brother canni- 
 bals with sharpened stomachs. After comparing notes with 
 other travellers who have similarly revisited the Island and 
 conscientiously inspected it, I have satisfied myself that it^ 
 contains no vestige of Mr. Atkins’s domesticity or theology, 
 though his track on the memorable evening of his landing to 
 set his captain ashore, when he was decoyed about and round 
 about until it was dark, and his boat was stove, and his 
 strength and spirits failed him, is yet plainly to be traced. 
 So is the hill-top on which Eobinson was struck dumb with 
 joy when the reinstated captain pointed to the ship, riding 
 within half a mile of the shore, that was to bear him away, 
 in the nine and twentieth year of his seclusion in that lonely 
 place. So is the sandy beach on which the memorable foot- 
 step was impressed, and where the savages hauled up their 
 canoes when they came ashore for those dreadful public 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 159 
 
 dinners, which led to a dancing worse than speech-making. 
 So is the cave where the flaring eyes of the old goat made 
 such a goblin appearance in the dark. So is the site of the 
 hut where Eobinson lived with the dog and the parrot and 
 the cat, and where he endured those first agonies of solitude, 
 which — strange to say — never involved any ghostly fancies ; 
 a circumstance so very remarkable, that perhaps he left out 
 something in writing his record ? Eound hundreds of such 
 objects, hidden in the dense tropical foliage, the tropical sea 
 breaks evermore ; and over them the tropical sky, saving in 
 the short rainy season, shines bright and cloudless. 
 
 Neither, was I ever belated among wolves, on the borders 
 of France and Spain ; nor, did I ever, when night was closing 
 in and the ground was covered with snow, draw up my little 
 company among some felled trees which served as a breast- 
 work, and there fire a train of gunpowder so dexterously that 
 suddenly we had three or four score blazing wolves illuminat- 
 ing the darkness around us. Nevertheless, I occasionally go 
 back to that dismal region and perform the feat again ; when 
 indeed to smell the singeing and the frying of the wolves 
 afire, and to see them setting one another alight as they rush 
 and tumble, and to behold them rolling in the snow vainly 
 attempting to put themselves out, and to hear their bowlings 
 taken up by all the echoes as w^ell as by all the unseen wolves 
 within the woods, makes me tremble. 
 
 I was never in the robbers’ cave, where Gil Bias lived, but 
 I often go back there and find the trap-door just as heavy to 
 raise as it used to be, while that wicked old disabled Black 
 lies everlastingly cursing in bed. I was never in Don 
 Quixote’s study, where he read his books of chivalry until 
 he rose and hacked at imaginary giants, and then refreshed 
 himself with great draughts of water, yet you couldn’t move 
 a book in it without my knowledge, or with my consent. I 
 was never (thank Heaven) in company with the little old 
 woman who hobbled out of the chest and told the merchant 
 Abudah to go in search of the Talisman of Oromanes, yet I 
 make it my business to know that she is well preserved and 
 as intolerable as ever. I was never at the school where the 
 boy Horatio Nelson got out of bed to steal the pears : not 
 
160 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 because be wanted any, but because every other boy was 
 afraid : yet I have several times been back to this Academy, 
 to see him let down out of window with a sheet. So with 
 Damascus, and Bagdad, and Brobdingnag (which has the 
 curious fate of being usually misspelt when written), and 
 Lilliput, and Laputa, and the Nile, and Abyssinia, and the 
 Ganges, and the North Pole, and many hundreds of places — 
 I was never at them, yet it is an affair of my life to keep them 
 intact, and I am always going back to them. 
 
 But, when I was in Dullborough one day, revisiting the 
 associations of my childhood as recorded in previous pages of 
 these notes, my experience in this wise was made quite in- 
 considerable and' of no account, by the quantity of places and 
 people — utterly impossible places and people, but none the 
 less alarmingly real — that I found I had been introduced to 
 by my nurse before I was six years old, and used to be forced 
 to go back to at night without at all wanting to go. If we 
 all knew our own minds (in a more enlarged sense than the 
 popular acceptation of that phrase), I suspect we should find 
 our nurses responsible for most of the dark corners we are 
 forced to go back to, against our wills. 
 
 The first diabolical character who intruded himself on my 
 peaceful youth (as I called to mind that.d’ay at Dullborough), 
 was a certain Captain Murderer. This wretch must have 
 been an offshoot of the Blue Beard family, but I had no 
 suspicion of the consanguinity in those times. His warning 
 name would seem to have awakened no general prejudice 
 against him, for he was admitted into the best society and 
 possessed immense wealth. Captain Murderer’s mission was 
 matrimony, and the gratification of a cannibal appetite with 
 tender brides. On his marriage morning, he always caused 
 both sides of the way to church to be planted with curious 
 flowers ; and when his bride said, Dear Captain Murderer, I 
 never saw flowers like these before : what are they called ? ” 
 he answered, They are called Garnish for house-lamb,” and 
 laughed at his ferocious practical joke in a horrid manner, 
 disquieting the minds of the noble bridal company, with a 
 very sharp show of teeth, then displayed for the first time. 
 He made love in a coach and six, and married in a coach and 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 161 
 
 twelve, and all his horses were milk-white horses with one 
 red spot on the back which he caused to be hidden by the 
 harness For, the spot looiild come there, though every horse 
 was milk-white when Captain Murderer bought him. And 
 the spot was young bride’s blood. (To this terrific point I 
 am indebted for my first personal experience of a shudder 
 and cold beads on the forehead.) When Captain Murderer 
 had ]nade an end of feasting and revelry, and had dismissed 
 the noble guests, and was alone with his wife on the day 
 month after their marriage it was his whimsical custom to 
 produce a golden rolling-pin and a silver pie-board. Now, 
 there was this special feature in the Captain’s courtships, 
 that he always asked if the young lady could make pie-crust ; 
 and if she couldn’t by nature or education, she was taught. 
 Well. When the bride saw Captain Murderer produce the 
 golden rolling-pin and silver pie-board, she remembered this, 
 and turned up her laced-silk sleeves to make a pie. The 
 Captain brought out a silver pie-dish of immense capacity, 
 and the Captain brought out fiour and butter and eggs and 
 all things needful, except the inside of the pie ; of materials 
 for the staple of the pie itself, the Captain brought out none. 
 Then said the lovely bride, ^^Dear Captain Murderer, what 
 pie is this to be ? ” He replied, A meat pie.” Then said 
 the lovely bride, ^^Dear Captain Murderer, I see no meat.” 
 The Captain humorously retorted, Look in the glass.” She 
 looked in the glass, but still she saw no meat, and then the 
 Captain roared with laughter, and suddenly frowning and 
 drawing his sword, bade her roll out the crust. So she rolled 
 out the crust, dropping large tears upon it all the time 
 because he was so cross, and when she had lined the dish 
 with crust and had cut the crust all ready to fit the top, the 
 Captain called out, I see the meat in the glass ! ” And the 
 bride looked up at the glass, just in time to see the Captain 
 cutting her head off ; and he chopped her in pieces, and pep- 
 pered her, and salted her, and put her in the pie, and sent it 
 to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the bones. 
 
 Captain Murderer went on in this way, prospering exceed- 
 ingly until he came to choose a bride from two twin sisters, 
 and at first didn’t know which to choose. For, though one 
 
162 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 was fair and the other dark, they were both equally beautiful. 
 But the fair twin loved him, and the dark twin hated him, so 
 he chose the fair one. The dark twin would have prevented 
 the marriage if she could, but she couldn’t ; however, on the 
 night before it, much suspecting Captain Murderer, she stole 
 out and climbed his garden wall, and looked in at his window 
 through a chink in the shutter, and saw him having his teeth 
 filed sharp. Next day she listened all day, and heard him 
 make his joke about the house-lamb. And that day month, 
 he had the paste rolled out, and cut the fair twin’s head off, 
 and chopped her in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, 
 and put her in the pie, and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it 
 all, and picked the bones. 
 
 Now, the dark twin had had her suspicions much increased 
 by the filing of the Captain’s teeth, and again by the house- 
 lamb joke. Putting all things together when he gave out that 
 her sister was dead, she divined the truth, and determined to 
 be revenged. So, she went up to Captain Murderer’s house, 
 and knocked at the knocker and pulled at the bell, and when 
 the Captain came to the door, said : Dear Captain Murderer, 
 marry me next, for 1 always loved you and was jealous of my 
 sister.” The Captain took it as a compliment, and made a 
 polite answer, and the marriage was quickly arranged. On 
 the night before it, the bride again climbed to his window, 
 and again saw him having his teeth filed sharp. At this sight 
 she laughed such a terrible laugh at the chink in the shutter, 
 that the Captain’s blood curdled, and he said : I hope noth- 
 ing has disagreed with me ! ” At that, she laughed again, a 
 still more terrible laugh, and the shutter was opened and 
 search made, but she was nimbly gone, and there was no one. 
 Next day they went to church in a coach and twelve, and 
 were married. And that day month, she rolled the pie-crust 
 out, and Captain Murderer cut her head off, and chopped her 
 in pieces, and peppered her, and salted her, and put her in the 
 pie, and sent it to the baker’s, and ate it all, and picked the 
 bones. 
 
 But before she began to roll out the paste she had taken a 
 deadly poison of a most awful character, distilled from toads’ 
 eyes and spiders’ knees ; and Captain Murderer had hardly 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 163 
 
 picked her last bone, when he began to swell, and to turn blue, 
 and to be all over spots, and to scream. And he went on 
 swelling and turning bluer, and being more all over spots and 
 screaming, until he reached from floor to ceiling, and from 
 wall to wall ; and then, at one o’clock in the morning, he blew 
 up with a loud explosion. At the sound of it, all the milk- 
 white horses in the stables broke their halters and went mad, 
 and then they galloped over everybody in Captain Murderer’s 
 house (beginning with the family blacksmith who had flled 
 his teeth) until the whole were dead, and then they galloped 
 away. 
 
 Hundreds of times did I hear this legend of Captain Mur- 
 derer, in my early youth, and added hundreds of times was 
 there a mental compulsion upon me in bed, to peep in at his 
 window as the dark twin peeped, and to revisit his horrible 
 house, and look at him in his blue and spotty and screaming 
 stage, as he reached from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. 
 The young woman who brought me acquainted with Captain 
 Murderer had a fiendish enjoyment of my terrors, and used to 
 begin, I remember — as a sort of introductory overture — by 
 clawing the air with both hands, and uttering a long low hol- 
 low groan. So acutely did I suffer from this ceremony in 
 combination with this infernal Captain, that I sometimes used 
 to plead I thought I was hardly strong enough and old enough 
 to hear the story again just yet. But, she never spared me 
 one word of it, and indeed commended the awful chalice to 
 my lips as the only preservative known to science against 
 The Black Cat ” — a weird and glaring-eyed supernatural 
 Tom^ who was reputed to prowl about the world by night, 
 sucking the breath of infancy, and who was endowed with a 
 special thirst (as I was given to understand) for mine. 
 
 This, female bard — may she have been repaid my debt of 
 obligation to her in the matter of nightmares and perspira- 
 tions ! — reappears in my memory as the daughter of a ship- 
 wright. Her name was Mercy, though she had none on me. 
 There was something of a shipbuilding flavor in the following 
 story. As it always recurs to me in a vague association with 
 calomel pills, I believe it to have been reserved for dull nights 
 when I was low with medicine. 
 
164 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 There was once a shipwright, and he wrought in a Govern- 
 ment Yard, and his name was Chips. And his father’s name 
 before him was Chips, and his father’s name before him was 
 Chips, and they were all Chipses. And Chips the father had 
 sold himself to the Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of ten- 
 penny nails and half a ton of copper and a rat that could 
 speak ; and Chips the grandfather had sold himself to the 
 Devil for an iron pot and a bushel of tenpenny nails and half 
 a ton of copper and a rat that could speak ; and Chips the 
 great-grandfather had disposed of himself in the same direc- 
 tion on the same terms ; and the bargain had run in the family 
 for a long long time. So, one day, when young Chips was at 
 work in the Dock Slip all alone, down in the dark hold of an 
 old Seventy-four that was hauled up for repairs, the Devil 
 presented himself, and remarked, — 
 
 ‘A Lemon has pips, 
 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 
 And I’ll have Chips. 
 
 (I don’t know why, but this fact of the Devil’s expressing 
 himself in rhyme was peculiarly trying to me.) Chips looked 
 up when he heard the words, and there he saw the Devil with 
 saucer eyes that squinted on a terrible great scale, and that 
 struck out sparks of blue fire continually. And whenever he 
 winked his eyes, showers of blue sparks came out, and his eye- 
 lashes made a clattering like flints and steels striking lights. 
 And hanging over one of his arms by the handle was an iron 
 pot, and under that arm was a bushel of tenpenny nails, and 
 under his other arm was half a ton of copper, and sitting on 
 one of his shoulders was a rat that could speak. So, the 
 Devil said again, — 
 
 “A Lemon has pips. 
 
 And a Yard has ships. 
 
 And I’ll have Chips.” 
 
 (The invariable effect of this alarming tautology on the part 
 of the Evil Spirit was to deprive me of my senses for some 
 moments.) So, Chips answered never a word, but went on 
 with his work. What are you doing. Chips ?” said the rat 
 that could speak. am putting in new planks where you 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 165 
 
 and your gang have eaten old away/’ said Chips. ^^But we’ll 
 eat them too/’ said the rat that could speak ; and we’ll let in 
 the water and drown the crew, and we’ll eat them too.” Chips, 
 being only a shipwright, and not a Man-of-war’s man, said. 
 You are welcome to it.” But he couldn’t keep his eyes off 
 the half a ton of copper or the bushel of tenpenny nails ; for 
 nails and copper are a shipwright’s sweethearts, and ship- 
 wrights will run away with them whenever they can. So, the 
 Devil said, I see what you are looking at. Chips. You had 
 better strike the bargain. You know the terms. Your father 
 before you was well acquainted with them, and so were your 
 grandfather and great-grandfather before him.” Says Chips, 
 I like the copper, and I like the nails, and I don’t mind the 
 pot, but I don’t like the rat.” Says the Devil, fiercely, You 
 can’t have the metal without him — and he^s a curiosity. I’m 
 going.” Chips, afraid of losing the half a ton of copper and 
 the bushel of nails, then said, Give us hold ! ” So, he got 
 the copper and the nails and the pot and the rat that could 
 speak, and the Devil vanished. Chips sold the copper, and he 
 sold the nails, and he would have sold the pot ; but whenever 
 he offered it for sale, the rat was in it, and the dealers dropped 
 it, and would have nothing to say to the bargain. So, Chips 
 resolved to kill the rat, and, being at work in the Yard one 
 day with a great kettle of hot pitch on one side of him and 
 the iron pot with the rat in it on the other, he turned the 
 scalding pitch into the pot, and filled it full. Then he kept 
 his eye upon it till it cooled and hardened, and then he let it 
 stand for twenty days, and then he heated the pitch again and 
 turned it back into the kettle, and then he sank the pot in 
 water for twenty days more, and then he got the smelters to 
 put it in the furnace for twenty days more, and then they gave 
 it him out, red hot, and looking like red-hot glass instead of 
 iron — yet there was the rat in it, just the same as ever ! And 
 the moment it caught his eye, it said with a jeer, — 
 
 ‘A Lemon has pips, 
 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 
 And J’ll have Chips.^’ 
 
 (For this Kefrain I had waited since its last appearance, with 
 inexpressible horror, which now culminated.) Chips now felt 
 
166 
 
 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 certain in his own mind that the rat would stick to him ; the 
 rat, answering his thoughts, said, I will — like pitch ! 
 
 Now, as the rat leaped out of the pot when it had spoken, 
 and made off, Chips began to hope that it wouldn’t keep its 
 word. But, a terrible thing happened next day. For, when 
 dinner-time came, and the Dock bell rang to strike work, he 
 put his rule into the long pocket at the side of his trousers, 
 and there he found a rat — not that rat, but another rat. And 
 in his hat, he found another ; and in his pocket-handkerchief, 
 another ; and in the sleeves of his coat, when he pulled it on 
 to go to dinner, two more. And from that time he found him- 
 self so frightfully intimate with all the rats in the Yard, that 
 they climbed up his legs when he was at work, and sat on his 
 tools while he used them. And they could all speak to one 
 another, and he understood what they said. And they got 
 into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and into 
 his beer, and into his boots. And he was going to be married 
 to a corn-chandler’s daughter ; and when he gave her a work- 
 box he had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it ; and 
 when he put his arm round her waist, a rat clung about her ; 
 so the marriage was broken off, though the banns were already 
 twice put up — which the parish clerk well remembers, for as he 
 handed the book to the clergyman for the second time of ask- 
 ing, a large fat rat ran over the leaf. (By this time a special 
 cascade of rats was rolling down my back, and the whole of 
 my small listening person was overrun with them. At inter- 
 vals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid of my own pocket, 
 lest my exploring hand should find a specimen or two of those 
 vermin in it.) 
 
 You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips ; 
 but even all this was not the worst. He knew besides, what 
 the rats were doing, wherever they were. So, sometimes he 
 would cry aloud, when he was at his club at night, Oh ! 
 Keep the rats out of the convicts’ burying-ground ! Don’t 
 let them do that ! ” Or, There’s one of them at the cheese 
 down-stairs ! ” Or, There’s two of them smelling at the 
 baby in the garret ! ” Or, other things of that sort. At last, 
 he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard, and could 
 get no other work. But, King George wanted men, so before 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 167 
 
 very long he got pressed for a sailor. And so he was taken 
 off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready 
 to sail. And so the first thing he made out in her as he got 
 near her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where 
 he had seen the Devil. She was called the Argonaut, and 
 they rowed right under the bowsprit where the figure-head 
 of the Argonaut, with a sheepskin in his hand and a blue 
 gown on, was looking out to sea ; and sitting staring on his 
 forehead was the rat who could speak, and his exact words 
 were these : Chips ahoy ! Old boy ! WeVe pretty well 
 eat them too, and wefil drown the crew, and will eat them 
 too ! (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would 
 have asked for water, but that I was speechless.) 
 
 The ship was bound for the Indies ; and if you don’t know 
 where that is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you. 
 (Here I felt myself an outcast from a future state.) The ship 
 set sail that very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and 
 sailed. Chips’s feelings were dreadful. Nothing ever equalled 
 his terrors. No wonder. At last, one day he asked leave to 
 speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv’ leave. Chips went 
 down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. Your Honor, 
 unless your Honor, without a moment’s loss of time makes 
 sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed ship, and her 
 name is the Coffin ! ” — Young man, your words are a mad- 
 man’s words.” — ^^Your Honor, no; they are nibbling us 
 away.” — They ? ” — Your Honor, them dreadful rats. 
 Dust and hollowness where solid oak ought to be ! Eats 
 nibbling a grave for every man on board ! Oh ! Does your 
 Honor love your Lady and your pretty children ? ” — Yes, 
 my man, to be sure.” — Then, for God’s sake, make for the 
 nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all 
 stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards 
 you with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that 
 you shall never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your 
 children more.” — My poor fellow, you are a case for the 
 doctor. Sentry, take care of this man ! ” 
 
 So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and 
 that, for six whole days and nights. So, then he again asked 
 leave to speak to the Admiral. The Admiral giv’ leave. He 
 
168 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TEAVELLER. 
 
 went down on his knees in the Great State Cabin. ^^Now, 
 Admiral, you must die ! You took no warning ; you must 
 die ! The rats are never wrong in their calculations, and 
 they make out that they’ll be through, at twelve to-night. 
 So, you must die ! — With me and all the rest ! ” And so at 
 twelve o’clock there was a great leak reported in the ship, 
 and a torrent of water rushed in and nothing could stop it, 
 and they all went down, every living soul. And what the 
 rats — being water-rats — left of Chips, at last floated to 
 shore, and sitting on him was an immense overgrown rat, 
 laughing, that dived when the corpse touched the beach and 
 never came up. And there was a deal of seaweed on the 
 remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed, and dry 
 them and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in these 
 thirteen words as plain as plain can be, — 
 
 ‘‘ A Lemon has pips, 
 
 And a Yard has ships, 
 
 And I’ve got Chips!” 
 
 The same female bard — descended, possibly, from those 
 terrible old Scalds who seem to have existed for the express 
 purpose of addling the brains of mankind when they begin 
 to investigate languages — made a standing pretence which 
 greatly assisted in forcing me back to a number of hideous 
 places that I would by all means have avoided. This pretence 
 was, that all her ghost stories had occurred to her own rela- 
 tions. Politeness towards a meritorious family, therefore, 
 forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an air of 
 authentication that impaired my digestive powers for life. 
 There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal fore- 
 boding death, which appeared in the open street to a parlor- 
 maid who went to fetch the beer ” for supper : first (as I 
 now recall it) assuming the likeness of a black dog, and 
 gradually rising on its hind legs and swelling into the sem- 
 blance of some quadruped greatly surpassing a hippopotamus : 
 which apparition — not because I deemed it in the least im- 
 probable, but because I felt it to be really too large to bear — 
 I feebly endeavored to explain away. But, on Mercy’s 
 retorting with wounded dignity that the parlor-maid was 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 169 
 
 her own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and 
 resigned myself to this zoological phenomenon as one of my 
 many pursuers. There was another narrative describing the 
 apparition of a young woman who came out of a glass case 
 and haunted another young woman until the other young 
 woman questioned it and elicited that its bones (Lord ! To 
 think of its being so particular about its bones !) were 
 buried under the glass case, whereas she required them to be 
 interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four 
 pound ten, in another particular place. This narrative I 
 considered I had a personal interest in disproving, because 
 we had glass cases at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be 
 guaranteed from the intrusion of young women requiring me 
 to bury them up to twenty -four pound ten, when I had only 
 twopence a week ? But my remorseless nurse cut the ground 
 from under my tender feet, by informing me that She was the 
 other young woman; and I couldn’t say don’t believe 
 you ; ” it was not possible. 
 
 Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was 
 forced to make, against my will, when I was very young and 
 unreasoning. And really, as to the latter part of them, it is 
 not so very long ago — now I come to think of it — that I 
 was asked to undertake them once again, with a steady 
 countenance. 
 
170 
 
 THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 XVI. 
 
 ARCADIAN LONDON. 
 
 Being in a humor for complete solitude and uninterrupted 
 meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks 
 in the most unfrequented part of England — in a word, in 
 London. 
 
 The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself is Bond 
 Street. From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the 
 surrounding wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts of the 
 Great Desert. The first solemn feeling of isolation overcome, 
 the first oppressive consciousness of profound retirement con- 
 quered, I enjoy that sense of freedom, and feel reviving 
 within me that latent wildness of the original savage, which 
 has been (upon the whole somewhat frequently) noticed by 
 Travellers. 
 
 My lodgings are at a hatter’s — my own hatter’s. After 
 exhibiting no articles in his window for some weeks, but sea- 
 side wide-awakes, shooting-caps, and a choice of rough water- 
 proof head-gear for the moors and mountains, he has put 
 upon the heads of his family as much of this stock as they 
 could carry, and has taken them off to the Isle of Thanet. 
 His young man alone remains — and remains alone — in the 
 shop. The young man has let out the fire at which the irons 
 are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no 
 reason why he should take the shutters down. 
 
 Happily for himself and for his country, the young man is 
 a Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think he would 
 become the prey of a settled melancholy. For, to live sur- 
 rounded by human hats, and alienated from human heads to 
 fit them on, is surely a great endurance. But, the young 
 man sustained by practising his exercise, and by constantly 
 furbishing up his regulation plume (it is unnecessary to 
 observe that, as a hatter, he is in a cock’s-feather corps), is 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 171 
 
 resigned, and uncomplaining. On a Saturday, when he closes 
 early and gets his Knickerbockers on, he is even cheerful. 
 I am gratefully particular in this reference to him, because 
 he is my companion through many peaceful hours. My hatter 
 has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed like 
 the clerk’s desk at Church. I shut myself into this place 
 of seclusion, after breakfast, and meditate. At such times, I 
 observe the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the 
 greatest precision, and maintaining a most galling and destruc- 
 tive fire upon the national enemy. I thank him publicly for 
 his companionship and his patriotism. 
 
 The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the 
 scenes by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early. 
 I go forth in my slippers, and promenade the pavement. It 
 is pastoral to feel the freshness of the air in the uninhabited 
 town, and to appreciate the shepherdess character of the few 
 milkwomen who purvey so little milk that it would be worth 
 nobody’s while to adulterate it, if anybody were left to under- 
 take the task. On the crowded seashore, the great demand 
 for milk, combined with the strong local temptation of chalk, 
 would betray itself in the lowered quality of the article. In 
 Arcadian London I derive it from the cow. 
 
 The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and 
 the primitive ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal 
 Golden Age, make it entirely new to me. Within a few hun- 
 dred yards of my retreat, is the house of a friend who main- 
 tains a most sumptuous butler. I never, until yesterday, saw 
 that butler out of superfine black broadcloth. Until yesterday, 
 I never saw him off duty, never saw him (he is the best of 
 butlers) with the appearance of having any mind for anything 
 but the glory of his master and his master’s friends. Yester- 
 day morning, walking in my slippers near the house of which 
 he is the prop and ornament — a house now a waste of shutters 
 — I encountered that butler, also in his slippers, and in a 
 shooting suit of one color, and in a low-crowned straw hat, 
 smoking an early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met 
 in another state of existence, and that we were translated into 
 a new sphere. Wisely and well, he passed me without recog- 
 nition. Under his arm he carried the morning paper, and 
 
172 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 shortly afterwards I saw him sitting on a rail in the pleasant 
 open landscape of Kegent Street, perusing it at his ease 
 under the ripening sun. 
 
 My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be 
 salted down, I am waited on by an elderly woman laboring 
 under a chronic sniff, who at the shadowy hour of half-past 
 nine o’clock of every evening, gives admittance at the street 
 door to a meagre and mouldy old man whom I have never 
 yet seen detached from a flat pint of beer in a pewter pot. 
 The meagre and mouldy old man is her husband, and the pair 
 have a dejected consciousness that they are not justified in 
 appearing on the surface of the earth. They come out of 
 some hole when London empties itself, and go in again when 
 it fills. I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself 
 took possession, and they arrived with the flat pint of beer, 
 and their bed in a bundle. The old man is a weak old man, 
 and appeared to me to get the bed down the kitchen stairs by 
 tumbling down with and upon it. They make their bed in 
 the lowest and remotest corner of the basement, and they 
 smell of bed, and have no possession but bed : unless it be 
 (which I rather infer from an undercurrent of flavor in them) 
 cheese. I know their name, through the chance of having 
 called the wife’s attention, at half-past nine on the second 
 evening of our acquaintance, to the circumstance of there 
 being some one at the house door ; when she apologetically 
 explained, ^^It’s only Mr. Klem.” What becomes of Mr. 
 Klein all day, or when he goes out, or why, is a mystery I 
 cannot penetrate ; but at half-past nine he never fails to turn 
 up on the doorstep with the flat pint of beer. And the pint 
 of beer, flat as it is, is so much more important than himself, 
 that it always seems to my fancy as if it had found him driv- 
 elling in the street and had humanely brought him home. 
 In making his way below, Mr. Klein never goes down the 
 middle of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles 
 against the wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is 
 occupying as little space as possible in the house ; and when- 
 ever I come upon him face to face, he backs from me in 
 fascinated confusion. The most extraordinary circumstance 
 I have traced in connection with this aged couple is, that 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TBAVELLER. 
 
 173 
 
 there is a Miss Klem, their daughter, apparently ten years 
 older than either of them, who has also a bed, and smells of 
 it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides it in 
 deserted houses. I came into this piece of knowledge through 
 Mrs. Klem’s beseeching me to sanction the sheltering of Miss 
 Klein under that roof for a single night, between her takin’ 
 care of the upper part in Pall Mall which the family of his 
 back, and a ^ouse in Serjameses Street, which the family of 
 leaves towng ter-morrer.’^ I gave my gracious consent (hav- 
 ing nothing that I know of to do with it), and in the shadowy 
 hours Miss Klem became perceptible on the doorstep, wrest- 
 ling with a bed in a bundle. Where she made it up for the 
 night I cannot positively state, but, I think, in a sink. I 
 know that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she 
 stowed it and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Klem 
 family, I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and 
 that is a power they possess of converting everything into 
 flue. Such broken victuals as they take by stealth, appear 
 (whatever the nature of the viands) invariably to generate 
 flue ; and even the nightly pint of beer, instead of assimilat- 
 ing naturally, strikes me as breaking out in that form, equally 
 on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem, and the threadbare coat of 
 her husband. 
 
 Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name — as to Mr. Klem he 
 has no idea of anything — and only knows me as her good 
 gentleman. Thus, if doubtful whether I am in my room or 
 no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door and says, Is my good gentle- 
 man here ? ’’ Or, if a messenger desiring to see me were 
 consistent with my solitude, she would show him in with 
 Here is my good gentleman.’^ I find this to be a generic 
 custom. For, I meant to have observed before now, that in 
 its Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly per- 
 vaded by the Klem species. They creep about with beds, 
 and go to bed in miles of deserted houses. They hold no 
 companionship except that sometimes, after dark, two of 
 them will emerge from opposite houses, and meet in the 
 middle of the road as on neutral ground, or will peep from 
 adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area railings, 
 and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting their 
 
174 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 good ladies or good gentlemen. This I have discovered in 
 the course of various solitary rambles I have taken Northward 
 from my retirement, along the awful perspectives of Wimpole 
 Street, Harley Street, and similar frowning regions. Their 
 effect would be scarcely distinguishable from that of the 
 primeval forests, but for the Klein stragglers ; these may be 
 dimly observed, when the heavy shadows fall, flitting to and 
 fro, putting up the door chain, taking in the pint of beer, 
 lowering like phantoms at the dark parlor windows or secretly 
 consorting underground with the dust bin and the water- 
 cistern. 
 
 In the Burlington Arcade, I observe, with peculiar pleasure, 
 a primitive state of manners to have superseded the baneful 
 influences of ultra civilization. Nothing can surpass the in- 
 nocence of the ladies’ shoe-shops, the artificial flower reposi- 
 tories, and the head-dress depots. They are in strange hands 
 at this time of the year — hands of unaccustomed persons, who 
 are imperfectly acquainted with the prices of the goods, and 
 contemplate them with unsophisticated delight and wonder. 
 The children of these virtuous people exchange familiarities 
 in the Arcade, and temper the asperity of the two tall beadles. 
 Their youthful prattle blends in an unwonted manner with 
 the harmonious shade of the scene, and the general effect is, 
 as of the voices of birds in a grove. In this happy restora- 
 tion of the golden time, it has been my privilege even to see 
 the bigger beadle’s wife. She brought him his dinner in a 
 basin, and he ate it in his arm-chair, and afterwards fell 
 asleep like a satiated child. At Mr. Truefitt’s, the excellent 
 hairdresser’s, they are learning Trench to beguile the time ; 
 and even the few solitaries left on guard at Mr. Atkinson’s, 
 the perfumer’s round the corner (generally the most inexor- 
 able gentleman in London, and the most scornful of three 
 and sixpence), condescend a little, as they drowsily bide or 
 recall their turn for chasing the ebbing Neptune on the ribbed 
 sea-sand. From Messrs. Hunt and Koskell’s, the jewellers, 
 all things are absent but the precious stones, and the gold 
 and silver, and the soldierly pensioner at the door with his 
 decorated breast. I might stand night and day for a month 
 to come, in Saville Bow, with my tongue out, yet not find a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 175 
 
 doctor to look at it for love or money. The dentist’s instru- 
 ments are rusting in their drawers, and their horrible cool 
 parlors, where people pretend to read the Every-Day Book 
 and not to be afraid, are doing penance for their grimness in 
 white sheets. The light weight of shrewd appearance, with 
 one eye always shut up, as if he were eating a sharp goose- 
 berry in all seasons, who usually stands at the gateway of the 
 livery stables on very little legs under a very large waistcoat, 
 has gone to Doncaster. Of such undesigning aspect is his 
 guileless yard now, with its gravel and scarlet beans, and the 
 yellow Brake housed under a glass roof in a corner, that I 
 almost believe I could not be taken in there, if I tried. In 
 the places of business of the great tailors, the cheval glasses 
 are dim and dusty for lack of being looked into. Kanges of 
 brown paper coat and waistcoat bodies look as funereal as if 
 they were the hatchments of the customers with whose names 
 they are inscribed; the measuring tapes hang idle on the 
 wall ; the order-taker, left on the hopeless chance of some 
 one looking in, yawns in the last extremity over the book of 
 patterns, as if he were trying to read that entertaining library. 
 The hotels in Brook Street have no one in them, and the staves 
 of servants stare disconsolately for next season out of .all the 
 windows. The very man who goes about like an erect Turtle, 
 between two boards recommendatory of the Sixteen Shilling 
 Trousers, is aware of himself as a hollow mockery, and eats 
 filberts while he leans his hinder shell against a wall. 
 
 Among these tranquillizing objects, it is my delight to walk 
 and meditate. Soothed by the repose around me, I wander 
 insensibly to considerable distances, and guide myself back 
 by the stars. Thus, I enjoy the contrast of a few still par- 
 tially inhabited and busy spots where all the lights are not 
 fled, where all the garlands are not dead, whence all but I 
 have not departed. Then, does it appear to me that in this 
 age three things are clamorously required of Man in the mis- 
 cellaneous thoroughfares of the metropolis. Firstly, that he 
 have his boots cleaned. Secondly, that he eat a penny ice. 
 Thirdly, that he get himself photographed. Then do I spec- 
 ulate, What have those seam-worn artists been who stand at 
 the photograph doors in Greek caps, sample in hand^ and 
 
176 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 mysteriously salute the public — the female public with a 
 pressing tenderness — to come in and be took ? What did 
 they do with their greasy blandishments, before the era of 
 cheap photography ? Of what class were their previous vic- 
 tims, and how victimized ? And how did they get, and how 
 did they pay for, that large collection of likenesses, all pur- 
 porting to have been taken inside, with the taking of none of 
 which had that establishment any more to do than with the 
 taking of Delhi ? 
 
 But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in 
 metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much of its 
 serene and peaceful character is attributable to the absence of 
 customary Talk. How do I know but there may be subtle 
 influences in Talk, to vex the souls of men who donT hear it ? 
 How do I know but that Talk, five, ten, twenty miles off, may 
 get into the air and disagree with me ? If I rise from my 
 bed, vaguely troubled and wearied and sick of my life, in the 
 session of Parliament, who shall say that my noble friend, my 
 right reverend friend, my right honorable friend, my honora- 
 ble friend, my honorable and learned friend, or my honorable 
 and gallant friend, may not be responsible for that effect 
 upon my nervous system ? Too much Ozone in the air, I am 
 informed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it is), 
 would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way ; why 
 may not too much Talk ? I don’t see or hear the Ozone ; I 
 don’t see or hear the Talk. And there is so much Talk ; so- 
 mu'ch too much ; such loud cry, and such scant supply of 
 wool ; such a deal of fleecing, and so little fleece ! Hence, in 
 the Arcadian season, I find it a delicious triumph to walk 
 down to deserted Westminster, and see the Courts shut up ; 
 to walk a little further and see the Two Houses shut up ; to 
 stand in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the 
 grand English History (concerning which unfortunate man, a 
 whole rookery of mares’ nests is generally being discovered), 
 and gloat upon the ruins of Talk. Eeturning to my primi- 
 tive solitude and lying down to sleep, my grateful heart 
 expands with the consciousness that there is no adjourned 
 Debate, no ministerial explanation, nobody to give notice of 
 intention to ask the noble Lord at the head of her Majesty’s 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 177 
 
 Government five and twenty bootless questions in one, no 
 term time with legal argument, no Nisi Prius with eloquent 
 appeal to British Jury ; that the air will to-morrow, and 
 to-morrow, and to-morrow, remain untroubled by this super- 
 abundant generating of Talk. In a minor degree it is a 
 delicious triumph to me to go into the club, and see the 
 carpets up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to the 
 four winds. Again New-Zealander-like, I stand on the cold 
 hearth, and say in the solitude, Here I watched Bore A 1, 
 with voice always mysteriously low and head always myste- 
 riously drooped, whispering political secrets into the ears of 
 Adam’s confiding children. Accursed be his memory forever 
 and a day ! ” 
 
 But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the 
 happy nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in 
 its being the abode of Love. It is, as it were, an inexpensive 
 Agapemone ; nobody’s speculation : everybody’s profit. The 
 one great result of the resumption of primitive habits, and 
 (convertible terms) the not having much to do, is, the abound- 
 ing of Love. 
 
 The Klein species are incapable of the softer emotions ; 
 probably, in that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have 
 all degenerated into flue. But, with this exception, all the 
 sharers^of my retreat make love. 
 
 I have mentioned Saville Eow. We all know the Doctor’s 
 servant. We all know what a respectable man he is, what a 
 hard dry man, what a firm man, what a confidential man ; 
 how he lets us into the waiting-room, like a man who knows 
 minutely what is the matter with us, but from whom the rack 
 should not wring the secret. In the prosaic season,” he 
 has distinctly the appearance of a man conscious of money 
 in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his respectability 
 with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to associate 
 him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to meet 
 his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest 
 Arcadian time, how changed ! I have seen him in a pepper- 
 and-salt jacket — jacket — and drab trousers, with his arm 
 round the waist of a bootmaker’s housemaid, smiling in open 
 day, I have seen him at the pump by the Albany, unsolicit- 
 
178 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 edly pumping for two fair young creatures, whose figures as 
 they bent over their cans, were — if I may be allowed an 
 original expression — a model for the sculptor. I have seen 
 him trying the piano in the Doctor’s drawing-room with his 
 forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of 
 lovely woman. I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and 
 going (obviously in search of excitement) to a fire. I saw 
 him, one moonlight evening, when the peace and purity of 
 our Arcadian west were at their height, polk with the lovely 
 daughter of a cleaner of gloves, from the doorsteps of his 
 own residence, across Saville Eow, round by Clifford Street 
 and Old Burlington Street, back to Burlington-gardens. Is 
 this the Golden Age revived, or Iron London ? 
 
 The Dentist’s servant. Is that man no mystery to us, no 
 type of invisible power ? The tremendous individual knows 
 (who else does ?) what is done with the extracted teeth ; he 
 knows what goes on in the little room where something is 
 always being washed or filed ; he knows what warm spicy 
 infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler from which we 
 rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels a foot 
 wide ; he knows whether the thing we spit into is a fixture 
 communicating with the Thames, or could be cleared away 
 for a dance ; he sees the horrible parlor when there are no 
 patients in it, and he could reveal, if he would, what becomes 
 of the Every-Day Book then. The conviction of my coward 
 conscience when I see that man in a professional light, is, 
 that he knows all the statistics of my teeth and gums, my 
 double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped teeth, and my 
 sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him as of a 
 harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who adores a 
 young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighboring bil- 
 liard-room, and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every 
 one of her teeth were false. They may be. He takes them 
 all on trust. 
 
 In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are 
 little shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two 
 together, where servants’ perquisites are bought. The cook 
 may dispose of grease at these modest and convenient marts ; 
 the butler, of bottles ; the valet and lady’s maid; of clothes ; 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 179 
 
 most servants^ indeed, of most things they may happen to lay 
 hold of. I have been told that in sterner times loving corre- 
 spondence, otherwise interdicted, may be maintained by letter 
 through the agency of some of these useful establishments. 
 In the Arcadian autumn, no such device is necessary. Every- 
 body loves, and openly and blamelessly loves. My landlord’s 
 young man loves the whole of one side of the way of Old 
 Bond Street, and is beloved several doors up New Bond Street 
 besides. I never look out of window but I see kissing of 
 hands going on all around me. It is the morning custom to 
 glide from shop to shop and exchange tender sentiments ; it 
 is the evening custom for couples to stand hand in hand at 
 house doors, or roam, linked in that flowery manner, through 
 the unpeopled streets. There is nothing else to do but love ; 
 and what there is to do, is done. 
 
 In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in 
 the domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered people 
 dine early, live moderately, sup socially, and sleep soundly. 
 It is rumored that the Beadles of the Arcade, from being the 
 mortal enemies of boys, have signed with tears an address to 
 Lord Shaftesbury, and subscribed to a ragged school. ISTo 
 wonder ! For, they might turn their heavy maces into crooks 
 and tend sheep in the Arcade, to the purling of the water- 
 carts as they give the thirsty streets much more to drink than 
 they can carry. 
 
 A happy Golden Age, and a serene tranquillity. Charming 
 picture, but it will fade. The iron age will return, London 
 will come back to town, if I show my tongue then in Saville 
 Kow for half a minute I shall be prescribed for, the Doctor’s 
 man and the Dentist’s man will then pretend that these days 
 of unprofessional innocence never existed. Where Mr. and 
 Mrs. Klein and their bed will be at that time, passes human 
 knowledge ; but my hatter hermitage will then know them 
 no more, nor will it then know me. The desk at which I have 
 written these meditations will retributively assist at the 
 making-out of my account, and the wheels of gorgeous car- 
 riages and the hoofs of high-stepping horses will crush the 
 silence out of Bond Street — will grind Arcadia away, and 
 give it to the elements in granite powder. 
 
180 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 THE CALAIS NIGHT-MAIL. 
 
 It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave 
 Calais something handsome in my will, or whether I shall 
 leave it my malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am 
 always so very glad to see it, that I am in a state of constant 
 indecision on this subject. 
 
 When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a 
 maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and drip- 
 ping saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but 
 the one great extremity, sea-sickness — who was a mere bilious 
 torso, with a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach — 
 who had been put into a horrible swing in Dover Harbor, and 
 had tumbled giddily out of it on the French coast, or the Isle 
 Man, or anywhere. Times have changed, and now I enter 
 Calais self-reliant and rational. I know where it is before- 
 hand, I keep a look out for it, I recognize its landmarks when 
 I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways, and I know 
 — and I can bear — its worst behavior. 
 
 Malignant Calais ! Low-lying alligator, evading the eye- 
 sight and discouraging hope ! Dodging flat streak, now on 
 this bow, now on that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now 
 nowhere ! In vain Cape Grinez, coming frankly forth into 
 the sea, exhorts the failing to be stout of heart and stomach : 
 sneaking Calais, prone behind its bar, invites emetically to 
 despair. Even when it can no longer quite conceal itself in 
 its muddy dock, it has an evil way of falling off, has Calais, 
 which is more hopeless than its invisibility. The pier is all 
 but on the bowsprit, and you think you are there — roll, roar, 
 wash ! — Calais has retired miles inland, and Dover has burst 
 out to look for it. It has a last dip and slide in its character, 
 has Calais, to be especially commended to the infernal gods. 
 Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it dives under 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 181 
 
 the boat’s keel, and comes up a league or two to the right, 
 with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about 
 for it ! . 
 
 Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I 
 particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which 
 it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to 
 Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than 
 any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess 
 of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends, 
 but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establish- 
 ment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good 
 house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact insisted upon in 
 all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I know the 
 Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or pitches, and 
 I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon that circum- 
 stance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I am 
 reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden like- 
 wise, for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so 
 angry as it rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite 
 soon enough, without the officious Warden’s interference ? 
 
 As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South- 
 Eastern Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to 
 me to be illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity 
 ill my personal dishonor. All its noises smack of taunting 
 praises of the land, and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of 
 me for going on it. The drums upon the heights have gone 
 to bed, or I know they would rattle taunts against me for 
 having my unsteady footing on this slippery deck. The many 
 gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in an offensive manner, 
 as if with derision. The distant dogs of Dover bark at me in 
 my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Bichard the Third. 
 
 A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the 
 Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more 
 smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises 
 against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, 
 and were prevented by circumstances over which they had no 
 control from drinking peaceably. We, the boat, become vio- 
 lently agitated — rumble, hum, scream, roar, and establish an 
 immense family washing-day at each paddle-box. Bright patches 
 
182 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 break out in tbe train as the doors of the post-office vans are 
 opened, and instantly stooping figures with sacks upon their 
 backs begin to be beheld among the piles, descending as it 
 would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones’s Locker. 
 The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen, 
 with hat-boxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantfc case-bottles ; 
 a few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few 
 shadowy Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending 
 not to expect it. I cannot disguise from my uncommercial 
 mind the miserable fact that we are a body of outcasts ; that 
 the attendants on us are as scant in number as may serve to 
 get rid of us with the least possible delay ; that there are no 
 night loungers interested in us ; that the unwilling lamps shiver 
 and shudder at us ; that the sole object is to commit us to the 
 deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes glaring in increas- 
 ing distance, and then the very train itself has gone to bed 
 before we are off ! 
 
 What is the moral support derived by some sea-going 
 amateurs from an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across 
 the Channel always put up that article, and hold it up with a 
 grim and fierce tenacity ? A fellow-creature near me — whom 
 I only know to he a fellow-creature, because of his umbrella : 
 without which he might be a dark bit of cliff, pier, or bulkhead 
 — clutches that instrument with a desperate grasp, that will 
 not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there any analogy, in 
 certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up, and 
 keeping the spirits up ? A hawser thrown on board with a 
 flop replies Stand by ! ” Stand by, below ! ” Half a turn 
 a head ! ” Half a turn a head ! ” Half speed ! ” Half 
 speed ! ” Port ! ” ‘‘ Port ! ” Steady ! ” Steady ! ” Go 
 on ! ” Go on ! ” 
 
 A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and 
 out at my left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my 
 throat, and a compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt 
 pair of pincers, — these are the personal sensations by which 
 I know we are off, and by which I shall continue to know it 
 until I am on the soil of France. My symptoms have scarcely 
 established themselves comfortably, when two or three skat- 
 ing shadows that have been trying to walk or stand, get flung 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 183 
 
 together, and other two or three shadows in tarpauling slide 
 with them into corners and cover them up. Then the South 
 Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way that bodes no 
 good. 
 
 It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais 
 knows no bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will 
 forgive that hated town. I have done so before, many times, 
 but that is past. Let me register a vow. Imj^lacable ani- 
 mosity to Calais everm — that was an awkward sea, and the 
 funnel seems of my opinion, for it gives a complaining roar. 
 
 The wind blows stiffly from the NoF-East, the sea runs 
 high, we ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and 
 the shapeless passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as 
 if they were sorted out for the laundress ; but for my own 
 uncommercial part I cannot pretend that I am much incon- 
 venienced by any of these things. A general howling whis- 
 tling flopping gurgling and scooping, I am aware of, and a 
 general knocking about of ISTature ; but the impressions I 
 receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper, something 
 like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel 
 languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because 
 I am under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the 
 Irish melodies. Rich and rare were the gems she wore,’’ 
 is the particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I 
 sing it to myself in the most charming manner and with the 
 greatest expression. 'Now and then, I raise my head (I am 
 sitting on the hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable 
 of wet attitudes, but I don’t mind it), and notice that I am a 
 whirling shuttlecock between a fiery battledoor of a lighthouse 
 on the French coast and a fiery battledoor of a lighthouse on 
 the English coast ; but I don’t notice it particularly, except 
 to feel envenomed in my hatred of Calais. Then I go on 
 again, ^^Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-e-e-e wore. And 
 a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore. But 0 her 
 beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond” — I am particularly proud of 
 my execution here, when I become aware of another awkward 
 shock from the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and 
 a fellow-creature at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed 
 than I think he need be — Her sparkling gems, or snow- 
 
184 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 white wand, But 0 her beauty was faa-a-a-a-r beyond’^ — 
 another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature with the 
 umbrella down and picked up, Her spa-a-rkling ge-e-ms, or 
 her Port! port! steady! steady! -snow-white fellow-creature 
 at the paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump roar wash 
 white wand.’^ 
 
 As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my 
 imperfect perceptions of what is going on around me, so what 
 is going on around me becomes something else than what it 
 is. The stokers open the furnace doors below, to feed the 
 fires, and I am again on the box of the old Exeter Telegraph 
 fast coach, and that is the light of the forever extinguished 
 coach-lamps, and the gleam on the hatches and paddle-boxes 
 is theh* gleam on cottages and haystacks, and the monotonous 
 noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the splendid team. 
 Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at every violent 
 roll, becomes the regular blast of a high-pressure engine, and 
 I recognize the exceedingly explosive steamer in which I 
 ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, 
 and when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which 
 the light of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking 
 block or so, become suggestive of Franconi’s Circus at Paris, 
 where I shall be this very night mayhap (for it must be 
 morning now), and they dance to the selfsame time and tune 
 as the trained steed. Black Eaven. What may be the spe- 
 ciality of these waves as they come rushing on, I cannot desert 
 the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she wore, 
 to inquire, but they are charged with something about Eobin- 
 son Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Eoads that he 
 first went a-seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific 
 sound that word had for me when I was a boy !) in his first 
 gale of wind. Still, through all this, I must ask her (who 
 teas she I wonder !) for the fiftieth time, and without ever 
 stopping. Does she not fear to stray. So lone and lovely 
 through this bleak way. And are Erin’s sons so good or so 
 cold. As not to be tempted by more fellow-creatures at the 
 paddle-box or gold ? Sir Knight I feel not the least alarm. 
 No son of Erin will offer me harm. For though they love 
 fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 185 
 
 Sir Knight they what a tremendous one love honor and virtue 
 more : For though they love Stewards with a bull’s eye 
 bright, they’ll trouble you for your ticket, sir — rough passage 
 to-night ! 
 
 I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weak- 
 ness and inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of 
 those last words from the steward than I begin to soften 
 towards Calais. Whereas I have been vindictively wishing 
 that those Calais burghers who came out of their town by a 
 short cut into the History of England, with those fatal ropes 
 round their necks by which they have since been towed into 
 so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now 
 begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous 
 tradesmen. Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez 
 well astern of the boat on the davits to leeward, and the light 
 of Calais Harbor undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead 
 and shining. Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say 
 attachment to Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have 
 weak notions that I will stay there a day or two on my way 
 back. A faded and recumbent stranger pausing in a profound 
 reverie over the rim of a basin, asked me what kind of place 
 Calais is ? I tell him (Heaven forgive me !) a very agreeable 
 place indeed — rather hilly than otherwise. 
 
 So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly — 
 though still I seem to have been on board a week — that I am 
 bumped rolled gurgled washed and pitched into Calais Har- 
 bor before her maiden smile has finally lighted her through 
 the Green Isle, When blest forever is she who relied. On 
 entering Calais at the top of the tide. For we have not to 
 land to-night down among those slimy timbers — covered with 
 green hair as if it were the mermaids’ favorite combing-place 
 — where one crawls to the surface of the jetty, like a stranded 
 shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbor to the Kailway 
 Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out 
 among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a 
 furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake 
 in the wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send 
 their vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have 
 come struggling against troubled water. And now, in the 
 
186 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 sudden relief and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems 
 to have had a prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this 
 very instant free of the Dentist’s hands. And now we all 
 know for the first time how wet and cold we are, and how salt 
 we are ; and now I love Calais with my heart of hearts ! 
 
 Hotel Dessin!” (but in this one case it is not a vocal 
 cry ; it is but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery repre- 
 sentative of that best of inns). Hotel Meurice ! ” Hotel 
 de France!” ^CHotel de Calais!” ^^The Hoyal Hotel, Sir, 
 Angaishe ouse!” ^^You are going to Parry, Sir?” ^^Your 
 baggage, registair froo. Sir ! ” Bless ye, my Touters, bless 
 ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed mysteries 
 in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or 
 night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I 
 never see you get ! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in 
 green and gray ; permit me to grasp the welcome hands that 
 descend into my travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet 
 at the bottom to give my change of linen a peculiar shake-up, 
 as if it were a measure of chaff or grain ! I have nothing to 
 declare. Monsieur le Douanier, except that when I cease to 
 breathe, Calais will be found written on my heart. No arti- 
 cle liable to local duty have I with me. Monsieur I’Officier de 
 rOctroi, unless the overflowing of a breast devoted to your 
 charming town should be in that wise chargeable. Ah ! see 
 at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother 
 and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the 
 names ! May he be forever changeless in his buttoned black 
 surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black 
 hat, surmounting his round smiling patient face ! Let us 
 embrace, my dearest brother. I am yours a tout jamais — 
 the whole of ever. 
 
 Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down 
 and dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of ^^an 
 ancient and fish-like smell” about it, and Calais blown and 
 sea-washed pure ; Calais represented at the Buffet by savory 
 roast fowls, hot coffee, cognac, and Bordeaux ; and Calais 
 represented everywhere by flitting persons with a monomania 
 for changing money — though I never shall be able to under- 
 stand in my present state of existence how they live by it, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 187 
 
 but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency question 
 — Calais en gros and Calais en detail^ forgive one who has 
 deeply wronged you. — I was not fully aware of it on the 
 other side, but I meant Dover. 
 
 Ding, ding ! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. 
 Ascend then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, 
 Lille, Douai, Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris ! I, humble 
 representative of the uncommercial interest, ascend with the 
 rest. The train is light to-night, and I share my compart- 
 ment with but two fellow-travellers ; one, a compatriot in an 
 obsolete cravat, who thinks it a quite unaccountable thing 
 that they don’t keep London time ” on a French railway, 
 and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the pos- 
 sibility of Paris time being more in their way ; the other, a 
 young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, 
 who feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up 
 in the network above his head, where he advances twittering, 
 to his front wires, and seems to address me in an electioneer- 
 ing manner. The compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and 
 whom I judge to be some person of distinction, as he w^as 
 shut up, like a stately species of rabbit, in a private hutch on 
 deck) and the young priest (who joined us at Calais) are soon 
 asleep, and then the bird and I have it all to ourselves. 
 
 A stormy night still ; a night that sweeps the wires of the 
 electric telegraph with a wild and fitful hand ; a night so 
 very stormy, with the added storm of the train-progress 
 through it, that when the Guard comes clambering round to 
 mark the tickets while we are at full speed (a really horrible 
 performance in an express train, though he holds on to the 
 open window by his elbows in the most deliberate manner), 
 he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him fast by the 
 collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go. Still, 
 when he is gone, the small small bird remains at his front 
 wires feebly twittering to me — twittering and twittering, 
 until, leaning back in my place and looking at him in drowsy 
 fascination, I find that he seems to jog my memory as we 
 rush along. 
 
 Uncommercial travels (thus the small small bird) have lain 
 in their idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp 
 
188 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 and dike, as through many other odd places ; and about here, 
 as you very well know, are the queer old stone farmhouses, 
 approached by drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at 
 by boats. Here, are the lands where the women hoe and dig, 
 paddling canoe-wise from field to field, and here are the caba- 
 rets and other peasant-houses where the stone dove-cotes in 
 the littered yards are as strong as warders’ towers in old 
 castles. Here, are the long monotonous miles of canal, with 
 the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted, and the tow- 
 ing-girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead, sometimes by 
 the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to see. 
 Scattered through this country are mighty works of Vauban, 
 whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as 
 you heard of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle. 
 Through these fiat districts, in the shining summer days, walk 
 those long grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel- 
 hats, whom you remember blackening the ground checkered 
 by the avenues of leafy trees. And now that Hazebroucke 
 slumbers ‘certain kilometres ahead, recall the summer evening 
 when your dusty feet strolling up from the station tended 
 hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest inhabitants were 
 circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby-horses, with 
 the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in the Fair 
 was a Religious Richardson’s — literally, on its own announce- 
 ment in great letters. Theatre Religieux. In which im- 
 proving Temple, the dramatic representation was of all the 
 interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to 
 the Tomb;” the principal female character, without any 
 reservation or exception, being at the moment of your arrival, 
 engaged in trimming the external Moderators (as it was grow- 
 ing dusk), while the next principal female character took the 
 money, and the Young Saint John disported himself upside 
 down on the platform. 
 
 Looking up at this point to confirm the small small bird in 
 every particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to 
 twitter, and has put his head under his wing. Therefore, in 
 my different way I follow the good example. 
 
THE UNC0M3IEBCIAL TEAVELLEE. 
 
 189 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY. 
 
 I HAD parted from the small bird at somewhere about four 
 o’clock in the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and 
 had been received by two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, 
 who presented an appropriately ornithological and crow-like 
 appearance. My compatriot and I had gone on to Paris ; my 
 compatriot enlightening me occasionally with a long list of 
 the enormous grievances of French railway travelling : every 
 one of which, as I am a sinner, was perfectly new to me, 
 though I have as much experience of French railways as most 
 uncommercials. I had left him at the terminus (through his 
 conviction, against all explanation and remonstrance, that his 
 baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket), insisting in a very 
 high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his own per- 
 sonal identity he was four packages weighing so many kilo- 
 grams — as if he had been Cassim Baba ! I had bathed and 
 breakfasted, and was strolling on the bright quays. The 
 subject of my meditations was the question whether it is 
 positively in the essence and nature of things, as a certain 
 school of Britons would seem to think it, that a Capital must 
 be insnared and enslaved before it can be made beautiful : 
 when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet, straying like 
 my mind, had brought me to Xotre Dame. 
 
 That is to say, Xotre Dame was before me, but there was a 
 large open space between us. A very little while gone, I had 
 left that space covered with buildings densely crowded; and 
 now it was cleared for some new wonder in the way of public 
 Street, Place, Garden, Fountain, or all four. Only the obscene 
 little Morgue, slinking on the brink of the river and soon to 
 come down, was left there, looking mortally ashamed of itself, 
 and supremely wicked. I had but glanced at this old acquaint- 
 ance, when I beheld an airy procession coming round in front 
 
190 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 of Notre Dame, past the great hospital. It had something of 
 a Masaniello look, with fluttering striped curtains in the midst 
 of it, and it came dancing round the cathedral in the liveliest 
 manner. 
 
 I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christ- 
 tening, or some other domestic festivity which I would see 
 out, when I found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses 
 past me, that it was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having 
 never before chanced upon this initiation, I constituted 
 myself a Blouse likewise, and ran into the Morgue with the 
 rest. It was a very muddy day, and we took in a quantity of 
 mire with us, and the procession coming in upon our heels, 
 brought a quantity more. The procession was in the highest 
 spirits, and consisted of idlers who had come with the cur- 
 tained litter from its starting-place, and of all the re-enforce- 
 ments it had picked up by the way. It set the litter down in 
 the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed 
 aloud that we were all invited’^ to go out. This invitation 
 was rendered the more pressing, if not the more flattering, by 
 our being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us. 
 
 Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, 
 by presenting to themselves an indifferently paved coach- 
 house accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates ; on 
 the left of the coach-house, occupying its width, any lalge 
 London tailor’s or linendraper’s plate-glass window reaching 
 to the ground ; within the window, on two rows of inclined 
 planes, what the coach-house has to show ; hanging above, like 
 irregular stalactites from the roof of a cave, a quantity of 
 clothes — the clothes of the dead and buried shows of the 
 coach-house. 
 
 We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the 
 Custodians pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, 
 as the procession came along. It looked so interestingly like 
 business. Shut out in the muddy street, we now became quite 
 ravenous to know all about it. Was it river, pistol, knife, 
 love, gambling, robbery, hatred, how many stabs, how many 
 bullets, fresh or decomposed, suicide or murder ? All wedged 
 together, and 'all staring at one another with our heads thrust 
 forward, we propounded these inquiries and a hundred more 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 191 
 
 such. Imperceptibly, it came to be known that Monsieur the 
 tall and sallow mason yonder, was acquainted with the facts. 
 Would Monsieur the tall and sallow mason, surged at by a 
 new wave of us, have the goodness to impart ? It was but a 
 poor old man, passing along the street under one of the new 
 buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled 
 dead. His age ? Another wave surged up against the tall 
 and sallow mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and he 
 was any age from sixty-five to ninety. 
 
 An old man was not much : moreover, we could have wished 
 he had been killed by human agency — his own, or somebody 
 else’s : the latter, preferable — but our comfort was, that he 
 had nothing about him to lead to his identification, and that 
 his people must seek him here. Perhaps they were waiting 
 dinner for him even now ? We liked that. Such of us as 
 had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow intense protracted wipe 
 at our noses, and then crammed our handkerchiefs into the 
 breast of our blouses. Others of us who had no handkerchiefs 
 administered a similar relief to our overwrought minds, by 
 means of prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on our 
 sleeves. One man with a gloomy malformation of brow — a 
 homicidal worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of 
 color, and a certain flavor of paralysis pervading him — got 
 his coat-collar between his teeth, and bit at it with an appe- 
 tite. Several decent women arrived upon the outskirts of 
 the crowd, and prepared to launch themselves into the dismal 
 coach-house when opportunity should come ; among them, a 
 pretty young mother, pretending to bite the forefinger of her 
 baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips that it might be handy 
 for guiding to point at the show. Meantime, all faces were 
 turned towards the building, and we men waited with a fixed 
 and stern resolution : — for the most part with folded arms. 
 Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommer- 
 cial eyes had seen, at which the expectant people did not form 
 en queue. But there was no such order of arrangement here ; 
 nothing but a general determination to make a rush for it, and 
 a disposition to object to some boys who had mounted on the 
 two stone posts by the hinges of the gates, with the design 
 of swooping in when the hinges should turn. 
 
192 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 Now, they turned, and we rushed ! Great pressure, and a 
 scream or two from the front. Then a laugh or two, some 
 expressions of disappointment, and a slackening of the press- 
 ure and subsidence of the struggle. — Old man not there. 
 
 But what would you have ? ’’ the Custodian reasonably 
 argues, as he looks out at his little door. Patience, patience ! 
 We make his toilette, gentlemen. He will be exposed pres- 
 ently. It is necessary to proceed according to rule. His 
 toilette is not made all at a blow. He will be exposed in 
 good time, gentlemen, in good time.’’ And so retires, smok- 
 ing, with a wave of his sleeveless arm towards the window, 
 importing, Entertain yourselves in the mean while with the 
 other curiosities. Fortunately the Museum is not empty to- 
 day.” 
 
 W^ho would have thought of public fickleness even at the 
 Morgue ? But there it was, on that occasion. Three lately 
 popular articles that had been attracting greatly when the 
 litter was first descried coming dancing round the corner by 
 the great cathedral, were so completely deposed now, that 
 nobody save two little girls (one showing them to a doll) 
 would look at them. Yet the chief of the three, the article in 
 the front row, had received jagged injury of the left temple ; 
 and the other two in the back row, the drowned two lying 
 side by side with their heads very slightly turned towards each 
 other, seemed to be comparing notes about it. Indeed, those 
 two of the back row were so furtive of appearance, and so (in 
 their puffed way) assassinatingly knowing as to the one of 
 the front, that it was hard to think the three had never come 
 together in their lives, and were only chance companions after 
 death. Whether or no this was the general, as it was the 
 uncommercial, fancy, it is not to be disputed that the group 
 had drawn exceedingly within ten minutes. Yet now, the in- 
 constant public turned its back upon them, and even leaned 
 its elbows carelessly against the bar outside the window and 
 shook off the mud from its shoes, and also lent and borrowed 
 fire for pipes. 
 
 Custodian re-enters from his door, Again once, gentlemen, 
 you are invited ” — No further invitation necessary. Ready 
 dash into the street. Toilet finished. Old man coming out. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 193 
 
 This timGj the interest was grown too hot to admit of tolera- 
 tion of the boys on the stone posts. The homicidal white- 
 lead worker made a pounce upon one boy who was hoisting 
 himself up, and brought him to earth amidst general com- 
 mendation. Closely stowed as we were, we yet formed into 
 groups — groups of conversation, without separation from the 
 mass — to discuss the old man. Rivals of the tall and sallow 
 mason sprang into being, and here again was popular incon- 
 stancy. These rivals attracted audiences, and were greedily 
 listened to ; and whereas they had derived their information 
 solely from the tall and sallow one, officious members of the 
 crowd now sought to enlighten him on their authority. 
 Changed by this social experience into an iron-visaged and 
 inveterate misanthrope, the mason glared at mankind, and 
 evidently cherished in his breast the wish that the whole of 
 the present company could change places with the deceased 
 old man. And now listeners became inattentive, and people 
 made a start forward at a slight sound, and an unholy fire 
 kindled in the public eye, and those next the gates beat at 
 them impatiently, as if they were of the cannibal species and 
 hungry. 
 
 Again the hinges creaked, and we rushed. Disorderly 
 pressure for some time ensued before the uncommercial unit 
 got figured into the front row of the sum. It was strange to 
 see so much heat and uproar seething about one poor spare 
 white-haired old man, quiet forevermore. He was calm of 
 feature and undisfigured, as he lay on his back — having been 
 struck upon the hinder part of the head, and thrown forward 
 — and something like a tear or two had started from the 
 closed eyes, and lay wet upon the face. The uncommercial 
 interest, sated at a glance, directed itself upon the striving- 
 crowd on either side and behind : wondering whether one 
 might have guessed, from the expression of those faces merely, 
 what kind of sight they were looking at. The differences of 
 expression were not many. There was a little pity, but not 
 much, and that mostly with a selfish touch in it as who 
 would say, Shall I, poor I, look like that, when the time 
 comes ? There was more of a secretly brooding contempla- 
 tion and curiosity, as That man I don’t like, and have the 
 
194 
 
 THE TJNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLEE. 
 
 grudge against; would sucli be his appearance, if some one — 
 not to mention names — by any chance gave him an ugly 
 knock ? There was a wolfish stare at the object, in which 
 the homicidal white-lead worker shone conspicuous. And 
 there was a much more general, purposeless, vacant staring 
 at it — like looking at wax-work without a catalogue, and not 
 knowing what to make of it. But all these expressions con- 
 curred in possessing the one underlying expression of looking 
 at something that could not return a look. The uncommercial 
 notice had established this as very remarkable, when a new 
 pressure all at once coming up from the street pinioned him 
 ignominiously, and hurried him into the arms (now sleeved 
 again) of the Custodian smoking at his door, and answering 
 questions, between puffs, with a certain placid meritorious air 
 of not being proud, though high in office. And mentioning 
 pride, it may be observed, by the way, that one could not well 
 help investing the original sole occupant of the front row with 
 an air depreciatory of the legitimate attraction of the poor 
 old man : while the two in the second row seemed to exult at 
 his superseded popularity. 
 
 Pacing presently round the garden of the Tower of St. 
 Jacques de la Boucherie, and presently again in front of the 
 Hotel de Ville, I called to mind a certain desolate open-air 
 Morgue that I happened to light upon in London, one day in 
 the hard winter of 1861, and which seemed as strange to me, 
 at the time of seeing it, as if I had found it in China. To- 
 wards that hour of a winter’s afternoon when the lamplighters 
 are beginning to light the lamps in the streets a little before 
 they are wanted, because the darkness thickens fast and soon, 
 I was walking in from the country on the northern side of the 
 Eegent’s Park — hard frozen and deserted — when I saw an 
 empty Hansom cab drive up to the lodge at Gloucester-gate, 
 and the driver with great agitation call to the man there : 
 who quickly reached a long pole from a tree, and, deftly col- 
 lared by the driver, jumped to the step of his little seat, and 
 so the Hansom rattled out at the gate, galloping over the 
 iron-bound road. I followed running, though not so fast but 
 that when I came to the right-hand Canal Bridge, near the 
 cross-path to Chalk Parm, the Hansom was stationary, the 
 
LEAVING THE MORGUE. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 195 
 
 horse was smoking hot, the long pole was idle on the ground, 
 and the driver and the park-keeper were looking over the 
 bridge parapet. Looking over too, I saw, lying on the 
 towing-path with her face turned up towards us, a woman, 
 dead a day or two, and under thirty, as I guessed, poorly 
 dressed in black. The feet were lightly crossed at the ankles, 
 and the dark hair, all pushed back from the face, as though 
 that had been the last action of her desperate hands, streamed 
 over the ground. Dabbled all about her, were the water and 
 the broken ice that had dropped from her dress, and had 
 splashed as she was got out. The policeman who had just 
 got her out, and the passing costermonger who had helped 
 him, were standing near the body; the latter with that stare 
 at it which I have likened to being at a wax-work exhibition 
 without a catalogue ; the former, looking over his stock, with 
 professional stiffness and coolness, in the direction in which 
 the bearers he had sent for were expected. So dreadfully 
 forlorn, so dreadfully sad, so dreadfully mysterious, this spec- 
 tacle of our dear sister here departed! A barge came up, 
 breaking the floating ice and the silence, and a woman steered 
 it. The man with the horse that towed it, cared so little for 
 the body, that the stumbling hoofs had been among the hair, 
 and the tow-rope had caught and turned the head, before our 
 cry of horror took him to the bridle. At which sound the 
 steering woman looked up at us on the bridge, with contempt 
 unutterable, and then looking down at the body with a similar 
 expression — as if it were made in another likeness from her- 
 self, had been informed with other passions, had been lost by 
 other chances, had had another nature dragged down to per- 
 dition — steered a spurning streak of mud at it, and passed on. 
 
 A better experience, but also of the Morgue kind, in which 
 chance happily made me useful in a slight degree, arose to 
 my remembrance as I took my way by the Boulevard de Se- 
 bastopol to the brighter scenes of Paris. 
 
 The thing happened, say five and twenty years ago. I was 
 a modest young uncommercial then, and timid and inexperi- 
 enced. Many suns and winds have browned me in the line, 
 but those were my pale days. Having newly taken the lease 
 of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan parish — a 
 
196 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class 
 Family Mansion, involving awful responsibilities — I became 
 the prey of a Beadle. I think the Beadle must have seen 
 me going in or coming out, and must have observed that I 
 tottered under the weight of my grandeur. Or he may have 
 been hiding under straw when I bought my first horse (in the 
 desirable stable-yard attached to the first-class Family Man- 
 sion), and when the vender remarked to me, in an original 
 manner, on bringing him for approval, taking his cloth off and 
 smacking him, There, Sir! There^s a Orse ! ’’ And when I 
 said gallantly, How much do you want for him ? ’’ and when 
 the vender said, ^^FTo more than sixty guineas, from you,’’ and 
 when I said smartly, Why not more than sixty from me ? ” 
 And when he said crushingly, Because upon my soul and 
 body he’d be considered cheap at seventy, by one who under- 
 stood the subject — but you don’t.” — I say, the Beadle may 
 have been in hiding under straw, when this disgrace befell me, 
 or he may have noted that I was too raw and young an Atlas 
 to carry the first-class Family Mansion in a knowing manner. 
 Be this as it may, the Beadle did what Melancholy did to the 
 youth in Gray’s Elegy — he marked me for his own. And 
 the way in which the Beadle did it, was this : he summoned 
 me as a Juryman on his Coroner’s Inquests. 
 
 In my first feverish alarm I repaired for safety and for suc- 
 cor” — like those sagacious Northern shepherds who, having 
 had no previous reason whatever to believe in young Norval, 
 very prudently did not originate the hazardous idea of believ- 
 ing in him — to a deep householder. This profound man in- 
 formed me that the Beadle counted on my buying him off; on 
 my bribing him not to summon me ; and that if I would 
 attend an Inquest with a cheerful countenance, and profess 
 alacrity in that branch of my country’s service, the Beadle 
 would be disheartened, and would give up the game. 
 
 I roused my energies, and the next time the wily Beadle 
 summoned me, I went. The Beadle was the blankest Beadle 
 I have ever looked on when I answered to my name, and his 
 discomfiture gave me courage to go through with it. 
 
 We were impanelled to inquire concerning the death of a 
 very little mite of a child. It was the old miserable story. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 197 
 
 Whether the mother had committed the minor offence of con- 
 cealing the birth, or whether she had committed the major 
 offence of killing the child, was the question on which we were 
 wanted. We must commit her on one of the two issues. 
 
 The Inquest came off in the parish workhouse, and I have 
 yet a lively impression that I was unanimously received by 
 my brother Jurymen as a brother of the utmost conceivable 
 insignificance. Also, that before we began, a broker who had 
 lately cheated me fearfully in the matter of a pair of card- 
 tables, was for the utmost rigor of the law. I remember that 
 we sat in a sort of board- room, on such very large square 
 horse-hair chairs that I wondered what race of Patagonians 
 they were made for ; and further, that an undertaker gave me 
 his card when we were in the full moral freshness of having 
 just been sworn, as ^^an inhabitant that was newly come into 
 the parish, and was likely to have a young family.’’ The case 
 was then stated to us by the Coroner, and then we went down- 
 stairs — led by the plotting Beadle — to view the body. From 
 that day to this, the poor little figure, on which that sounding 
 legal appellation was bestowed, has lain in the same place 
 and with the same surroundings, to my thinking. In a kind of 
 crypt devoted to the warehousing of the parochial coffins, and 
 in the midst of a perfect Panorama of coffins of all sizes, it 
 was stretched on a box ; the mother had put it in her box — 
 this box — almost as soon as it was born, and it had been 
 presently found there. It had been opened, and neatly sewn 
 up, and regarded from that point of view, it looked like a 
 stuffed creature. It rested on a clean white cloth, with a sur- 
 gical instrument or so at hand, and regarded from that point of 
 view, it looked as if the cloth were ^^laid,” and the Giant 
 were coming to dinner. J^here was nothing repellent about 
 the poor piece of innocence, and it demanded a mere form of 
 looking at. So, we looked at an old pauper who was going 
 about among the coffins with a foot rule, as if he were a case 
 of Self-Measurement ; and we looked at one another ; and we 
 said the place was well whitewashed anyhow ; and then our 
 conversational powers as a British Jury flagged, and the fore- 
 man said, All right, gentlemen ? Back again, Mr. Beadle ! ” 
 
 The miserable young creature who had given birth to this 
 
198 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 child Avithin a very few days, and who had cleaned the cold 
 wet door-steps immediately afterwards, Avas brought before us 
 Avhen Ave resumed our horse-hair chairs, and was present dur- 
 ing the proceedings. She had a horse-hair chair herself, 
 being very weak and ill; and I remember hoAV she turned to 
 the unsympathetic nurse who attended her, and who might 
 have been the figure-head of a pauper-ship, and how she hid 
 her face and sobs and tears upon that wooden shoulder. I 
 remember, too, how hard her mistress was upon her (she was 
 a servaiit-of-all-work), and Avith what a cruel pertinacity that 
 piece of Virtue spun her thread of evidence double, by inter- 
 twisting it with the sternest thread of construction. Smitten 
 hard by the terrible low wail from the utterly friendless 
 orphan girl, which never ceased during the whole inquiry, I 
 took heart to ask this witness a question or two, which hope- 
 fully admitted of an answer that might give a favorable turn 
 to the case. She made the turn as little favorable as it could 
 be, but it did some good, and the Coroner, who was nobly 
 patient and humane (he was the late Mr. Wakley), cast a look 
 of strong encouragement in my direction. Then, we had the 
 doctor who had made the examination, and the usual tests as 
 to whether the child was born alive ; but he was a timid 
 muddle-headed doctor, and got confused and contradictory, 
 and Avouldn’t say this, and couldnT ansAver for that, and the 
 immaculate broker was too much for him, and our side slid 
 back again. However, I tried again, and the Coroner backed 
 me again, for which I ever afterAvards felt grateful to him as 
 I do now to his memory ; and Ave got another favorable turn, 
 out of some other witness, some member of the family with a 
 strong prepossession against the sinner; and I think Ave had 
 the doctor back again ; and I knoAV that the Coroner summed 
 up for our side, and that I and my British brothers turned 
 round to discuss our verdict, and get ourseh^es into great diffi- 
 culties with our large chairs and the broker. At that stage of 
 the case I tried hard again, being convinced that I had cause 
 for it ; and at last Ave found for the minor offence of only con- 
 cealing the birth ; and the poor desolate creature, Avho had 
 been taken out during our deliberation, being brought in again 
 to be told of the verdict, then dropped upon her knees before 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 199 
 
 US, with protestations that we were right — protestations among 
 the most affecting that I have ever heard in my life — and 
 was carried away insensible. 
 
 (In private conversation after this was all over, the Coroner 
 showed me his reasons as a trained surgeon, for perceiving it 
 to be impossible that the child could, under the most favor- 
 able circumstances, have drawn many breaths, in the very 
 doubtful case of its having ever breathed at all ; this, owing 
 to the discovery of some foreign matter in the windpipe, quite 
 irreconcilable with many moments of life.) 
 
 When the agonized girl had made those final protestations, 
 I had seen her face, and it was in unison with her distracted 
 heart-broken voice, and it was very moving. It certainly did 
 not impress me by any beauty that it had, and if I ever see it 
 again in another world I shall only know it by the help of 
 some new sense or intelligence. But it came to me in my 
 sleep that night, and I selfishly dismissed it in the most effi- 
 cient way I could think of. I caused some extra care to be taken 
 of her in the prison, and counsel to be retained for her defence 
 when she was tried at the Old Bailey ; and her sentence was 
 lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was right. 
 In doing the little I did for her, I remember to have had the 
 kind help of some gentle-hearted functionary to whom I 
 addressed myself — but what functionary I have long forgot- 
 ten — who I suppose was officially present at the Inquest. 
 
 I regard this as a very notable uncommercial experience, 
 because this good came of a Beadle. And to the best of my 
 knowledge, information, and belief, it is the only good that 
 ever did come of a Beadle since the first Beadle put on his 
 cocked-hat. 
 
200 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XIX. 
 
 BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS. 
 
 It came into my mind that I would recall in these notes a 
 few of the many hostelries I have rested at in the course of 
 my journeys ; and, indeed, I had taken up my pen for the pur- 
 pose, when I was baffled by an accidental circumstance. It 
 was the having to leave off, to wish the owner of a certain 
 bright face that looked in at my door, ^^many happy returns 
 of the day.’’ Thereupon a new thought came into my mind, 
 driving its predecessor out, and I began to recall — instead of 
 Inns — the birthdays that I have put up at, on my way to 
 this present sheet of paper. 
 
 I can very well remember being taken out to visit some 
 peach-faced creature in a blue sash, and shoes to correspond, 
 whose life I supposed to consist entirely of birthdays. Upon 
 seed-cake, sweet wine, and shining presents, that glorified 
 young person seemed to me to be exclusively reared. At so 
 early a stage of my travels did I assist at the anniversary of 
 her nativity (and become enamoured of her), that I had not 
 yet acquired the recondite knowledge that a birthday is the 
 common property of all who are born, but supposed it to be a 
 special gift bestowed by the favoring Heavens on that one 
 distinguished infant. There was no other compan^q and we 
 sat in a shady bower — under a table, as my better (or worse) 
 knowledge leads me to believe — and were regaled with sac- 
 charine-substances and liquids, until it was time to part. A 
 bitter powder was administered to me next morning, and I 
 was wretched. On the whole, a pretty accurate foreshadow- 
 ing of my more mature experiences in such wise ! 
 
 Then came the time when, inseparable from one’s own 
 birthday, was a certain sense of merit, a consciousness of well- 
 earned distinction. When I regarded my birthday as a grace- 
 ful achievement of my own, a monument of my perseverance, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 201 
 
 independence, and good sense, redounding greatly to my honor. 
 This was at about the period when Olympia Squires became 
 involved in the anniversary. Olympia was most beautiful 
 (of course), and I loved her to that degree, that I used to be 
 obliged to get out of my little bed in the night, expressly to 
 exclaim to Solitude, 0, Olympia Squires ! Visions of Olympia, 
 clothed entirely in sage-green, from which I infer a defectively 
 educated taste on the part of her respected parents, who were 
 necessarily unacquainted with the South Kensington Museum, 
 still arise before me. Truth is sacred, and the visions are 
 crowned by a shining white beaver bonnet, impossibly sugges- 
 tive of a little feminine post-boy. My memory presents a 
 birthday when Olympia and I were taken by an unfeeling 
 relative — some cruel uncle, or the like — to a slow torture 
 called an Orrery. The terrible instrument was set up at the 
 local Theatre, and I had expressed a profane wish in the 
 morning that it was a Play : for which a serious aunt had 
 probed my conscience deep, and my pocket deeper, by reclaim- 
 ing a bestowed half-crown. It was a venerable and a shabby 
 Orrery, at least one thousand stars and twenty-five comets 
 behind the age. Nevertheless, it was awful. When the low- 
 spirited gentleman with a wand said, Ladies and gentlemen’’ 
 (meaning particularly Olympia and me), ‘^the lights are about 
 to be put out, but there is not the slightest cause for alarm,” 
 it was very alarming. Then the planets and stars began. 
 Sometimes they wouldn’t come on, sometimes they wouldn’t 
 go off, sometimes they had holes in them, and mostly they 
 didn’t seem to be good likenesses. All this time the gentle- 
 man with the wand was going on in the dark (tapping away 
 at the heavenly bodies between whiles, like a wearisome wood- 
 pecker), about a sphere revolving on its own axis eight hun- 
 dred and ninety-seven thousand millions of times — or miles 
 — in two hundred and sixty-three thousand five hundred and 
 twenty-four millions of something elses, until I thought if 
 this was a birthday it were better never to have been born. 
 Olympia, also, became much depressed, and we both slumbered 
 and woke cross, and still the gentleman was going on in the 
 dark — whether up in the stars, or down on the stage, it would 
 have been hard to make put, if it had been worth trying — 
 
202 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 ciphering away about planes of orbits, to such an infamous 
 extent that Olympia, stung to madness, actually kicked me. 
 A pretty birthday spectacle, when the lights were turned up 
 again, and all the schools in the town (including the National, 
 who had come in for nothing, and serve them right, for they 
 were always throwing stones) were discovered with exhausted 
 countenances, screwing their knuckles into their eyes, or 
 clutching their heads of hair. A pretty birthday speech when 
 Dr. Sleek of the City-Free bobbed up his powdered head in 
 the stage-box, and said that before this assembly dispersed he 
 really must beg to express his entire approval of a lecture as 
 improving, as informing, as devoid of anything that could call 
 a blush into the cheek of youth, as any it had ever been his 
 lot to hear delivered. A pretty birthday altogether, when 
 Astronomy couldn’t leave poor Small Olympia Squires and 
 me alone, but must put an end to our loves ! For, we never 
 got over it ; the threadbare Orrery outwore our mutual tender- 
 ness ; the man with the wand was too much for the boy with 
 the bow. 
 
 When shall I disconnect the combined smells of oranges, 
 brown paper, and straw, from those other birthdays at school, 
 when the coming hamper casts its shadow before, and when a 
 week of social harmony — shall I add of admiring and affec- 
 tionate popularity — led up to that Institution ? What noble 
 sentiments were expressed to me in the days before the hamper, 
 what vows of friendship were sworn to me, what exceedingly 
 old knives were given me, what generous avowals of having 
 been in the wrong emanated from else obstinate spirits once 
 enrolled among my enemies ! The birthday of the potted 
 game and guava jelly, is still made special to me by the noble 
 conduct of Bully Globson. Letters from home had mysteri- 
 ously inquired whether I should be much surprised and dis- 
 appointed if among the treasures in the coming hamper I 
 discovered potted game, and guava jelly from the Western 
 Indies. I had mentioned those hints in confidence to a few 
 friends, and had promised to give away, as I now see reason 
 to believe, a handsome covey of partridges potted, and about 
 a hundred weight of guava jelly. It was now that Globson, 
 Bully no more, sought me out in the playground. He was a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 203 
 
 big fat boy, with a big fat head and a big fat fist, and at the 
 beginning of that Half had raised such a bump on my fore- 
 head that I couldn’t get my hat of state on, to go to church. 
 He said that after an interval of cool reflection (four months) 
 he now felt this blow to have been an error of judgment, and 
 that he wished to apologize for the same. Not only that, but 
 holding down his big head between his two big hands in order 
 that I might reach it conveniently, he requested me, as an act 
 of justice which would appease his awakened conscience, to 
 raise a retributive bump upon it, in the presence of witnesses. 
 This handsome proposal I modestly declined, and he then 
 embraced me, and we walked away conversing. We conversed 
 respecting the West India Islands, and, in the pursuit of 
 knowledge he asked me with much interest whether in the 
 course of my reading I had met with any reliable description 
 of the mode of manufacturing guava jelly ; or whether I had 
 ever happened to taste that conserve, which he had been given 
 to understand was of rare excellence. 
 
 Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty ; and then with the 
 waning months came an ever augmenting sense of the dignity 
 of twenty-one. Heaven knows I had nothing to come into,” 
 save the bare birthday, and yet I esteemed it as a great 
 possession. I now and then paved the way to my state of • 
 dignity, by beginning a proposition with the casual words, 
 say that a man of twenty-one,” or by the incidental assump- 
 tion of a fact that could not sanely be disputed, as, for when 
 a fellow comes to be a man of twenty-one.” I gave a party 
 on the occasion. She was there. It is unnecessary to name 
 Her, more particularly ; she was older than I, and had per- 
 vaded every chink and crevice of my mind for three or four 
 years. I had held volumes of Imaginary Conversations with 
 her mother on the subject of our union, and I had written 
 letters more in number than Horace Walpole’s, to that discreet 
 woman, soliciting her daughter’s hand in marriage. I had 
 never had the remotest intention of sending any of those 
 letters ; but to write them, and after a few days tear them 
 up, had been a sublime occupation. Sometimes I had begun 
 “Honored Madam. I think that a lady gifted with those 
 powers of observation which I know you to possess, and 
 
204 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 endowed with those womanly sympathies with the young and 
 ardent which it were more than heresy to doubt, can scarcely 
 have failed to discover that I love your adorable daughter, 
 deeply, devotedly/^ In less buoyant states of mind I had 
 begun, ^^Bear with me. Dear Madam, bear with a daring 
 wretch who is about to make a surprising confession to you, 
 wholly unanticipated by yourself, and which he beseeches 
 you to commit to the flames as soon as you have become 
 aware to what a towering height his mad ambition soars.’’ 
 At other times — periods of profound mental depression, when 
 She had gone out to balls where I was not — the draft took the 
 affecting form of a paper to be left on my table after my 
 departure to the confines of the globe. As thus : For Mrs. 
 Onowenever, these lines when the hand that traces them shall 
 be far away. I could not bear the daily torture of hopelessly 
 loving the dear one whom I will not name. Broiling on the 
 coast of Africa, or congealing on the shores of Greenland, I 
 am far far better there than here.” (In this sentiment my 
 cooler judgment perceives that the family of the beloved 
 object would have most completely concurred.) ‘^If I ever 
 emerge from obscurity, and my name is ever heralded by 
 Fame, it will be for her dear sake. If I ever amass Gold, it 
 •will be to pour it at her feet. Should I on the other hand 
 become the prey of Kavens” — I doubt if I ever quite 
 made up my mind what was to be done in that affecting case ; 
 I tried then it is better so ; ” but not feeling convinced that 
 it would be better so, I vacillated between leaving all else 
 blank, which looked expressive and bleak, or winding up with 
 
 Farewell ! ” 
 
 This fictitious correspondence of mine is to blame for the 
 foregoing digression. I was about to pursue the statement 
 that on my twenty-first birthday I gave a party, and She was 
 there. It was a beautiful party. There was not a single 
 animate or inanimate object connected with it (except the 
 company and myself) that I had ever seen before. Every- 
 thing was hired, and the mercenaries in attendance were pro- 
 found strangers to me. Behind a door, in the crumby part 
 of the night when wineglasses were to be found in unex- 
 pected spots, I spoke to Her — spoke out to Her, What 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 205 
 
 passed, I cannot as a man of honor reveal. She was all 
 angelical gentleness, but a word was mentioned — a short and 
 dreadful word of three letters, beginning with a B — which, 
 as I remarked at the moment, scorched my brain.’’ She 
 went away soon afterwards, and when the hollow throng 
 (though to be sure it was no fault of theirs) dispersed, I issued 
 forth, with a dissipated scorner, and, as I mentioned expressly 
 to him, sought oblivion.” It was found, with a dreadful 
 headache in it, but it didn’t last ; for, in the shaming light of 
 next day’s noon, I raised my heavy head in bed, looking back 
 to the birthdays behind me, and tracking the circle by which 
 I had got round, after all, to the bitter powder and the 
 wretchedness again. 
 
 This reactionary powder (taken so largely by the human 
 race that I am inclined to regard it as the Universal Medicine 
 once sought for in Laboratories) is capable of being made 
 up in another form for birthday use. Anybody’s long-lost 
 brother will do ill to turn up on a birthday. If I had a long- 
 lost brother I should know beforehand that he would prove a 
 tremendous fraternal failure if he appointed to rush into my 
 arms on my birthday. The first Magic Lantern I ever saw, 
 was secretly and elaborately planned to be the great effect of 
 a very juvenile birthday; but it wouldn’t act, and its images 
 were dim. My experience of adult birthday Magic Lanterns 
 may possibly have been unfortui;|Late, but has certainly been 
 similar. I have an illustrative birthday in my eye : a birth- 
 day of my friend Flipfield, who^e -birthdays had long been 
 remarkable as social successes. There had been nothing set 
 or formal about them ; Flipfield having been accustomed 
 merely to say, two or three days before, Don’t forget to 
 come and dine, old boy, according to custom ; ” — I don’t know 
 what he said to the ladies he invited, but I may safely assume 
 it not to have been ^^old girl.” Those were delightful gather- 
 ings, and were enjoyed by all participators. In an evil hour, 
 a long-lost brother of Flipfield’s came to light in foreign 
 parts. Where he had been hidden, or what he had been 
 doing, I don’t know, for Flipfield vaguely informed me that 
 he had turned up on the banks of the Ganges ” — speaking 
 of him as if he had been washed ashore. The Long-lost was 
 
206 
 
 THE VNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 coming home, and Flipfield made an unfortunate calculation, 
 based on the well-known regularity of the P. and 0. Steamers, 
 that matters might be so contrived as that the Long-lost 
 should appear in the nick of time on his (Flipfield’s) birth- 
 day. Delicacy commanded that I should repress the gloomy 
 anticipations with which my soul became fraught when I 
 heard of this plan. The fatal day arrived, and we assembled 
 in force. Mrs. Flipfield senior formed an interesting feature 
 in the group, with a blue-veined miniature of the late Mr. 
 Flipfield round her neck, in an oval, resembling a tart from 
 the pastrycook’s : his hair powdered, and the bright buttons 
 on his coat, evidently very like. She was accompanied by 
 Miss Flipfield, the eldest of her numerous family, who held 
 her pocket-handkerchief to her bosom in a majestic manner, 
 and spoke to all of us (none of us had ever seen her before), 
 in pious and condoning tones, of all the quarrels that had 
 taken place in the family, from her infancy, which must have 
 been a long time ago — down to that hour. The Long-lost 
 did not appear. Dinner, half an hour later than usual, was 
 announced, and still no Long-lost. We sat down to table. 
 The knife and fork of the Long-lost made a vacuum in Nature, 
 and when the champagne came round for the first time, 
 Flipfield gave him up for the day, and had them removed. 
 It was then that the Long-lost gained the height of his popu- 
 larity with the company ; for my own part, I felt convinced 
 that I loved him dearly. Flipfield’s dinners are perfect, and 
 he is the easiest and best of entertainers. Dinner went on 
 brilliantly, and the more the Long-lost didn’t come, the more 
 comfortable we grew, and the more highly we thought of 
 him. Flipfield’s own man (who has a regard for me) was in 
 the act of struggling with an ignorant stipendiary, to wrest 
 from him the wooden leg of a Guinea-fowl which he was 
 pressing on my acceptance, and to substitute a slice of the 
 breast, when a ringing at the door-bell suspended the strife. 
 I looked round me, and perceived the sudden pallor which I 
 knew my own visage revealed, refiected in the faces of the 
 company. Flipfield hurriedly excused himself, went out, was 
 absent for about a minute or two, and then re-entered with the 
 Long-lost. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 207 
 
 I beg to say distinctly that if the stranger had brought 
 Mont Blanc with him, or had come attended by a retinue of 
 eternal snows, he could not have chilled the circle to the 
 marrow in a more efficient manner. Embodied failure sat 
 enthroned upon the Long-lost’s brow, and pervaded him to his 
 Long-lost boots. In vain Mrs. Elipfield senior, opening her 
 arms, exclaimed, My Tom ! ” and pressed his nose against 
 the counterfeit presentment of his other parent. In vain Miss 
 Elipfield, in the first transports of this re-union, showed him 
 a dint upon her maidenly cheek, and asked him if he remem- 
 bered when he did that with the bellows ? We, the by- 
 standers, were overcome, but overcome by the palpable, 
 undisguisable, utter, and total break-down of the Long-lost. 
 Nothing he could have done would have set him right with 
 us but his instant return to the Ganges. In the very same 
 moments it became established that the feeling was reciprocal, 
 and that the Long-lost detested us. When a friend of the 
 family (not myself, upon my honor), wishing to set things 
 going again, asked him, while he partook of soup — asked 
 him with an amiability of intention beyond all praise, but 
 with a weakness of execution open to defeat — what kind of 
 river he considered the Ganges, the Long-lost, scowling at 
 the friend of the family over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent 
 race, replied, Why a river of water, I suppose,” and spooned 
 his soup into himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that 
 blighted the amiable questioner. Not an opinion could be 
 elicited from the Long-lost, in unison with the sentiments 
 of any individual present. He contradicted Elipfield dead, 
 before he had eaten his salmon. He had no idea — or affected 
 to have no idea — that it was his brother’s birthday, and on 
 the communication of that interesting fact to him, merely 
 wanted to made him out four years older than he was. He 
 was an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift 
 of treading on everybody’s tenderest place. They talk in 
 America of a man’s Platform.” I should describe the Plat- 
 form of the Long-lost as a Platform composed of other 
 people’s corns, on which he had stumped his way, with all 
 his might and main, to his present position. It is needless 
 to add that Elipfield’s great birthday went by the board, and 
 
208 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 that he was a wreck when I pretended at parting to wish him 
 many happy returns of it. 
 
 There is another class of birthdays at which I have so 
 frequently assisted, that I may assume such birthdays to be 
 pretty well known to the human race. My friend Mayday’s 
 birthday is an example. The guests have no knowledge of 
 one another except on that one day in the year, and are 
 annually terrified for a week by the prospect of meeting one 
 another again. There is a fiction among us that we have 
 uncommon reasons for being particularly lively and spirited 
 on the occasion, whereas deep despondency is no phrase for 
 the expression of our feelings. But the wonderful feature of 
 the case is, that we are in tacit accordance to avoid the sub- 
 ject — to keep it as far off as possible, as long as possible — 
 and to talk about anything else, rather than the joyful event. 
 I may even go so far as to assert that there is a dumb compact 
 among us that we will pretend that it is not Mayday’s birth- 
 day. A mysterious and gloomy Being, who is said to have 
 gone to school with Mayday, and who is so lank and lean 
 that he seriously impugns the Dietary of the establishment at 
 which they were jointly educated, always leads us, as I may 
 say, to the block, by laying his grisly hand on a decanter 
 and begging us to fill our glasses. The devices and pretences 
 that I have seen put in practice to defer the fatal moment, 
 and to interpose between this man and his purpose, are 
 innumerable. I have known desperate guests, when they 
 saw the grisly hand approaching the decanter, wildly to begin, 
 without any antecedent whatsoever, That reminds me ” — 
 and to plunge into long stories. When at last the hand and 
 the decanter come together, a shudder, a palpable, perceptible 
 shudder, goes round the table. We receive the reminder that 
 it is Mayday’s birthday, as if it were the anniversary of some 
 profound disgrace he had undergone, and we sought to com- 
 fort him. And when we have drunk Mayday’s health, and 
 wished him many happy returns, we are seized for some 
 moments with a ghastly blitheness, an unnatural levity, as if 
 we were in the first fiushed reaction of having undergone a 
 surgical operation. 
 
 Birthdays of this species have a public as well as a private 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 209 
 
 phase. My boyhood’s home/’ Dullborough, presents a case 
 in point. An Immortal Somebody was wanted in Dull- 
 borough, to dimple for a day the stagnant face of the waters ; 
 he was rather wanted by Dullborough generally, and much 
 wanted by the principal hotel-keeper. The County history 
 was looked up for a locally Immortal Somebody, but the 
 registered Dullborough worthies were all ISTobodies. In this 
 state of things, it is hardly necessary to record that Dull- 
 borough did what every man does when he wants to write 
 a book or deliver a lecture, and is provided with all the 
 materials except a subject. It fell back upon Shakespeare. 
 
 No sooner was it resolved to celebrate Shakespeare’s birth- 
 day in Dullborough, than the popularity of the immortal bard 
 became surprising. You might have supposed the first edi- 
 tion of his works to have been published last week, and 
 enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half through them. (I 
 doubt, by the way, whether it had ever done half that, but 
 this is a private opinion.) A young gentleman with a sonnet, 
 the retention of which for two years had enfeebled his mind 
 and undermined his knees, got the sonnet into the Dullborough 
 Warden, and gained flesh. Portraits of Shakespeare broke 
 out in the bookshop windows, and our principal artist painted 
 a large original portrait in oils for the decoration of the 
 dining-room. It was not in the least like any of the other 
 portraits, and was exceedingly admired, the head being much 
 swollen. At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed 
 the new question, was there sufficient ground for supposing 
 that the Immortal Shakespeare ever stole deer ? This was 
 indignantly decided by an overwhelming majority in the 
 negative ; indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching 
 side, and that was the vote of the orator who had undertaken 
 to advocate it, and who became quite an obnoxious character 
 — particularly to the Dullborough roughs,” who were about 
 as well informed on the matter as most other people. Dis- 
 tinguished speakers were invited down, and very nearly came 
 (but not quite). Subscriptions were opened, and committees 
 sat, and it would have been far from a popular measure in 
 the height of the excitement, to have told Dullborough that 
 it wasn’t Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet, after all these prepara- 
 
210 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLER. 
 
 tions, when the great festivity took place, and the portrait 
 elevated aloft, surveyed the company as if it were in danger 
 of springing a mine of intellect and blowing itself up, it did 
 undoubtedly happen, according to the inscrutable mysteries of 
 things, that nobody could be induced, not to say to touch upon 
 Shakespeare, but to come within a mile of him, until the 
 crack speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the immortal 
 memory. Which he did with the perplexing and astonishing 
 result that before he had repeated the great name half a dozen 
 times, or had been upon his legs as many minutes, he was 
 assailed with a general shout of Question.^’ 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 211 
 
 XX. 
 
 BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 
 
 Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot 
 morning early in June. My road lies through that part of 
 London generally known to the initiated as “ Down by the 
 Docks.’’ Down by the Docks, is home to a good many people 
 — to too many, if I may judge from the overflow of local 
 population in the streets — but my nose insinuates that the 
 number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily counted. 
 Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose as my point 
 of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant. It would 
 present my intention to me in such a sensible light ; it would 
 show me so many things to be run away from. 
 
 Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter 
 the roughest oyster shells, known to the descendants of Saint 
 George and the Dragon. Down by the Docks, they consume 
 the slimiest of shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped off 
 the copper bottoms of ships. Down by the Docks, the vege- 
 tables at greengrocers’ doors acquire a saline and a scaly 
 look, as if they had been crossed with fish and seaweed. 
 Down by the Docks, they board seamen ” at the eating- 
 houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops, the coffee-shops, 
 the tally-shops, all kinds of shops mentionable and unmen- 
 tionable — board them, as it were, in the piratical sense, 
 making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down 
 by the Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day, 
 their pockets inside out, and their heads no better. Down by 
 the Docks, the daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove, 
 clad in silken attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the 
 breeze, bandanna kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and 
 crinoline not wanting. Down by the Docks, you may hear 
 the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing the Standard of England, 
 with a hornpipe, any night ; or any day may see at the wax- 
 
212 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 work, for a penny and no waiting, him as killed the police- 
 man at Acton and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you 
 may buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, 
 if you are not particular what they are made of besides 
 seasoning. Down by the Docks, the children of Israel creep 
 into any gloomy cribs and entries they can hire, and hang 
 slops there — pewter watches, sou’-wester hats, waterproof 
 overalls — firtht rate articleth, Thjack.’’ Down by the Docks, 
 such dealers exhibiting on a frame a complete nautical suit 
 without the refinement of a waxen visage in the hat, present 
 the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm, with his 
 seafaring and earthfaring troubles over. Down by the Docks, 
 the placards in the shops apostrophize the customer, knowing 
 him familiarly beforehand, as Look here. Jack ! ’’ Here’s 
 your sort, my lad ! ” Try our sea-going mixed, at two and 
 nine ! ” The right kit for the British tar ! ” Ship ahoy ! ” 
 Splice the main-brace, brother!” Come, cheer up, my 
 lads. We’ve the best liquors here. And you’ll find something 
 new In our wonderful Beer ! ” Down by the Docks, the 
 pawnbroker lends money on Union-Jack pocket-handkerchiefs, 
 on watches with little ships pitching fore and aft on the dial, 
 on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases, and such-like. 
 Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business on 
 the wretchedest scale — chiefly on lint and plaster for the 
 strapping of wounds — and with no bright bottles, and with 
 no little drawers. Down by the Docks, the shabby under- 
 taker’s shop will bury you for next to nothing, after the 
 Malay or Chinaman has stabbed you for nothing at all; so 
 you can hardly hope to make a cheaper end. Down by the 
 Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with anybody drunk or 
 sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it, and on the 
 shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red shirts, 
 shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed arms, Bri- 
 tannia’s daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and madness. 
 Down by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses 
 all day long, and, shrill above their din and all the din, rises 
 the screeching of innumerable parrots brought from foreign 
 parts, who appear to be very much astonished by what they 
 find on these native shores of ours. Possibly the parrots 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 213 
 
 don’t know, possibly they do, that Down by the Docks is the 
 road to the Pacific Ocean, with its lovely islands, where the 
 savage girls plait flowers, and the savage boys carve cocoa- 
 nut shells, and the grim blind idols muse in their shady 
 groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests and chiefs. 
 And possibly the parrots don’t know, possibly they do, that 
 the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and 
 has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and 
 no reason, to answer for. 
 
 Shadwell church ! Pleasant whispers of there being a 
 fresher air down the river than down by the Docks, go pur- 
 suing one another, playfully, in and out of the openings in its 
 spire. Gigantic in the basin just beyond the church, looms 
 my Emigrant Ship : her name, the Amazon. Her figure- 
 head is not c^isfigured as those beauteous founders of the race 
 of strong-minded women are fabled to have been, for the 
 convenience of drawing the bow ; but I sympathize with the 
 carver : — 
 
 A flattering carver who made it liis care 
 
 To carve busts as they ought to be — not as they were. 
 
 My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf. Two great 
 gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the 
 wharf ; and up and down these gangways, perpetually crowd- 
 ing to and fro and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants 
 who are going to sail in my Emigrant Ship. Some with 
 cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with cheese and 
 butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes, beds and 
 bundles, some with babies — nearly all with children — nearly 
 all with brand-new tin cans for their daily allowance of water, 
 uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavor in the drink. To 
 and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here and 
 there and everywhere, my Emigrants. And still as the Dock- 
 Gate swings upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, 
 and vans appear, bringing more of my Emigrants, with more 
 cabbages, more loaves, more cheese and butter, more milk 
 and beer, more boxes, beds and bundles, more tin cans, and 
 on those shipping investments accumulated compound interest 
 of children. 
 
214 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to the great 
 cabin, and find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that 
 pass. Perspiring landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens 
 and inkstands, pervade it ; and the general appearance of 
 things is as if the late Mr. Amazonas funeral had just come 
 home from the cemetery, and the disconsolate Mrs. Amazon’s 
 trustees found the affairs in great disorder, and were looking 
 high and low for the will. I go out on the poop-deck, for air, 
 and surveying the emigrants on the deck below (indeed they 
 are crowded all about me, up there too), find more pens and 
 inkstands in action, and more papers, and interminable com- 
 plication respecting accounts with individuals for tin cans and 
 what not. But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is the 
 worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word, 
 nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down, upon 
 the deck in every corner where it is possible to find a few 
 square feet to kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every 
 unsuitable attitude for writing, are writing letters. 
 
 Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. 
 And these people are so strikingly different from all other 
 people in like circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I 
 wonder aloud, What would a stranger suppose these 
 emigrants to be ! ” 
 
 The vigilant bright face of the weather-browned captain of 
 the Amazon is at my shoulder, and he says, What, indeed ! 
 The most of these came aboard yesterday evening. They 
 came from various parts of England in small parties that had 
 never seen one another before. Yet they had not been a 
 couple of hours on board, when they established their own 
 police, made their own regulations, and set their own watches 
 at all the hatchways. Before nine o’clock, the ship was 
 as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.” 
 
 I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going 
 on with the most curious composure. Perfectly abstracted in 
 the midst of the crowd ; while great casks were swinging 
 aloft, and being lowered into the hold ; while hot agents were 
 hurrying up and down, adjusting the interminable accounts ; 
 while two hundred strangers were searching everywhere for 
 two hundred other strangers, and were asking questions 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 215 
 
 about them of two hundred more ; while the children played 
 up and down all the steps, and in and out among all the 
 people’s legs, and were beheld, to the general dismay, top- 
 pling over all the dangerous places ; the letter-writers wrote 
 on calmly. On the starboard side of the ship, a grizzled man 
 dictated a long letter to another grizzled man in an immense 
 fur cap : which letter was of so profound a quality, that it 
 became necessary for the amanuensis at intervals to take oft* 
 his fur cap in both his hands, for the ventilation of his brain, 
 and stare at him who dictated, as a man of many mysteries 
 who was worth looking at. On the larboard side, a woman 
 had covered a belaying-pin with a white cloth to make a neat 
 desk of it, and was sitting on a little box, writing with the 
 deliberation of a bookkeeper. Down upon her breast on tlie 
 planks of the deck at this woman’s feet, with her head diving 
 in under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an eligible 
 place of refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl 
 wrote for a good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the 
 surface occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the boat, 
 close to me on the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh well-grown 
 country girl, was writing another letter on the bare deck. 
 Later in the day, when this self-same boat was filled with a 
 choir who sang glees and catches for a long time, one of the 
 singers, a girl, sang her part mechanically all the while, and 
 wrote a letter in the bottom of the boat while doing so. 
 
 A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for 
 these people, Mr. Uncommercial,” says the captain. 
 
 Indeed he would.” 
 
 If you hadn’t known, could you ever have supposed ? ” — 
 
 How could I ? I should have said they were in their 
 degree, the pick and flower of England.” 
 
 So should I,” says the captain. 
 
 How many are they ? ” 
 
 Eight hundred in round numbers.” 
 
 I went between-decks, where the families with children 
 swarmed in the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been 
 caused by the last arrivals, and where the confusion was 
 increased by the little preparations for dinner that were going 
 on in each group. A few women here and there, had got lost, 
 
216 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 and were laughing at it, and asking their way to their own 
 people, or out on deck again. A few of the poor children 
 were crying ; but otherwise the universal cheerfulness was 
 amazing. We shall shake down by to-morrow.’^ We 
 shall come all right in a day or so.’^ We shall have more 
 light at sea.’’ Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped 
 my way among chests and barrels and beams and unstowed 
 cargo and ring-bolts and Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, 
 and thence up to the light of day again, and to my former 
 station. 
 
 Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of self- 
 abstraction ! All the former letter-writers were still writing 
 calmly, and many more letter-writers had broken out in my 
 absence. A boy with a bag of books in his hand and a slate 
 under his arm, emerged from below, concentrated himself in 
 my neighborhood (espying a convenient skylight for his 
 purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were stone deaf. 
 A father and mother and several young children, on the main- 
 deck below me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of 
 the crowded restless gangway, where the children made a 
 nest for themselves in a coil of rope, and the father and 
 mother, she suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as 
 peaceably as if they were in perfect retirement. I think the 
 most noticeable characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, 
 was their exemption from hurry. 
 
 Eight hundred what ? Geese, villain ? ” Eight hun- 
 dred Mormons. I Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of 
 Human Interest Brothers, had come aboard this Emigrant 
 Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-Day Saints were like, 
 and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of all my 
 expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous 
 exactness. 
 
 The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them 
 together, and in making the contract with my friends, the 
 owners of the ship to take them as far as New York oiv their 
 way to the Great Salt Lake, was pointed out to me. A com- 
 pactly-made handsome man in black, rather short, with rich 
 brown hair and beard, and clear bright eyes. From his 
 speech, I should set him down as American. Brobably, a man 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 217 
 
 who had knocked about the world pretty much. A man 
 with a frank open manner, and unshrinking look ; withal a 
 man of great quickness. I believe he was wholly ignorant of 
 my Uncommercial individuality, and consequently of my 
 immense Uncommercial importance. 
 
 Uncommercial. These are a very fine set of people you 
 have brought together here. 
 
 Mormon Agent. Yes, sir, they are a very fine set of 
 people. 
 
 Uncommercial (looking about). Indeed, I think it would 
 be difficult to find Eight hundred people together anywhere 
 else, and find so much beauty and so much strength and 
 capacity for work among them. 
 
 Mormon Agent (not looking about, but looking steadily at 
 Uncommercial). I think so. — We sent out about a thousand 
 more, yes’day, from Liverpool. 
 
 Uncommercial. You are not going with these emigrants ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. No, sir. I remain. 
 
 Uncommercial. But you have been in the Mormon Terri- 
 tory ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Yes ; I left Utah about three years ago. 
 
 Uncommercial. It is surprising to me that these people 
 are all so cheery, and make so little of the immense distance 
 before them. 
 
 Mormon Agent. Well, you see; many of ’em have friends 
 out at Utah, and many of ’em look forward to meeting friends 
 on the way. 
 
 Uncommercial. On the way ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. This way ’tis. This ship lands ’em in 
 New York City. Then they go on by rail right away beyond 
 St. Louis, to that part of the Banks of the Missouri where 
 they strike the Plains. There, wagons from the settlement 
 meet ’em to bear ’em company on their journey ’cross — twelve 
 hundred miles about. Industrious people who come out to 
 the settlement soon get wagons of their own, and so the 
 friends of some of these will come down in their own wagons 
 to meet ’em. They look forward to that, greatly. 
 
 Uncommercial. On their long journey across the Desert, 
 do you arm them ? 
 
218 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Mormon Agent. Mostly you would find they have arms of 
 some kind or another already with them. Such as had not 
 arms we should arm across the Plains, for the general pro- 
 tection and defence. 
 
 Uncommercial. Will these wagons bring down any prod- 
 uce to the Missouri ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Well, since the war broke out, weVe 
 taken to growing cotton, and theyfil likely bring down cotton 
 to be exchanged for machinery. We want machinery. Also 
 we have taken to growing indigo, which is a fine commodity 
 for profit. It has been found that the climate on the further 
 side of the Great Salt Lake suits well for raising indigo. 
 
 Uncommercial. I am told that these people now on board 
 are principally from the South of England ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. And from Wales. ThaPs true. 
 
 Uncommercial. Do you get many Scotch ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Not many. 
 
 Uncommercial. Highlanders, for instance. 
 
 Mormon Agent. No, not Highlanders. They ain’t in- 
 terested enough in universal brotherhood and peace and good 
 will. 
 
 Uncommercial. The old fighting blood is strong in them ? 
 
 Mormon Agent. Well, yes. And besides ; they’ve no 
 faith. 
 
 Uncommercial (who has been burning to get at the 
 Prophet Joe Smith, and seems to discover an opening). 
 Faith in ! 
 
 Mormon Agent (far too many for Uncommercial). Well. 
 — In anything ! 
 
 Similarly on this same head, the Uncommercial underwent 
 discomfiture from a Wiltshire laborer : a simple fresh-colored 
 farm-laborer, of eight and thirty, who at one time stood beside 
 him looking on at new arrivals, and with whom he held this 
 dialogue : — 
 
 Uncommercial. Would you mind my asking you what part 
 of the country you come from ? 
 
 Wiltshire. Not a bit. Theer ! (exultingly) I’ve worked 
 all my life o’ Salisbury Plain, right under the shadder o’ 
 Stonehenge. You mightn’t think it, but I haive. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 219 
 
 Uncommercial. And a pleasant country too. 
 
 Wiltshire. Ah ! ^Tis a pleasant country. 
 
 Uncommercial. Have you any family on board ? 
 
 Wiltshire. Two children^ boy and gal. I am a widderer, 
 I am, and I’m going out alonger my boy and gal. That’s my 
 gal, and she’s a fine gal o’ sixteen (pointing out the girl who 
 is writing by the boat). I’ll go and fetch my boy. I’d like 
 to show you my boy. (Here Wiltshire disappears, and pres- 
 ently comes back with a big shy boy of twelve, in a super- 
 abundance of boots, who is not at all glad to be presented.) 
 He is a fine boy too, and a boy fur to work ! (Boy having 
 undutifully bolted, Wiltshire drops him.) 
 
 Uncommercial. It must cost you a great deal of money to 
 go so far, three strong. 
 
 Wiltshire. A power of money. Theer ! Eight shillen 
 a week, eight shillen a week, eight shillen a week, put by out 
 of the week’s wages for ever so long. 
 
 Uncommercial. I wonder how you did it. 
 
 Wiltshire (recognizing in this a kindred spirit). See 
 theer now ! I wonder how I done it ! But what with a bit o’ 
 subscription heer, and what with a bit o’ help theer, it were 
 done at last, though I don’t hardly know how. Then it were 
 unfort’net for us, you see, as we got kep’ in Bristol so long — 
 nigh a fortnight, it were — on accounts of a mistake wi’ 
 Brother Halliday. S waller’ d up money, it did, when we 
 might have come straight on. 
 
 Uncommercial (delicately approaching Joe Smith). You 
 are of the Mormon religion, of course ? 
 
 Wiltshire (confidently). 0 yes, 7’m a Mormon. (Then 
 reflectively.) I’m a Mormon. (Then, looking round the ship, 
 feigns to descry a particular friend in an empty spot, and 
 evades the Uncommercial forevermore.) 
 
 After a noontide pause for dinner, during which my Emi- 
 grants were nearly all between-decks, and the Amazon looked 
 deserted, a general muster took place. The muster was 
 for the ceremony of passing the Government Inspector and 
 the Doctor. Those authorities held their temporary state 
 amidships, by a cask or two ; and, knowing that the whole 
 Eight hundred emigrants must come face to face with them, 
 
220 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 I took my station behind the two. They knew nothing 
 whatever of me, I believe, and my testimony to the unpre- 
 tending gentleness and good nature with which they discharged 
 their duty, may be of the greater worth. There was not 
 the slightest flavor of the Circumlocution Office about their 
 proceedings. 
 
 The emigrants were now all on deck. They were densely 
 crowded aft, and swarmed upon the poop-deck like bees. 
 Two or three Mormon agents stood ready to hand them on to 
 the Inspector, and to hand them forward when they had 
 passed. By what successful means, a special aptitude for 
 organization had been infused into these people, I am, of 
 course, unable to report. But I know that, even now, there 
 was no disorder, hurry, or difficulty. 
 
 All being ready, the first group are handed on. That mem- 
 ber of the party who is intrusted with the passenger-ticket 
 for the whole, has been warned by one of the agents to have 
 it ready, and here it is in his hand. In every instance 
 through the whole eight hundred, without an exception, this 
 paper is always ready. 
 
 Inspector (reading the ticket). Jessie Jobson, Sophronia 
 Jobson, Jessie Jobson again, Matilda Jobson, William Job- 
 son, Jane Jobson, Matilda Jobson again, Brigham Jobson, 
 Leonardo Jobson, and Orson Jobson. Are you all here ? 
 (glancing at the party, over his spectacles). 
 
 Jessie Jobson Number Two. All here, sir. 
 
 This group is composed of an old grandfather and grand- 
 mother, their married son and his wife, and their family of 
 children. Orson Jobson is a little child asleep in his 
 mother’s arms. The Doctor with a kind word or so, lifts 
 up the corner of the mother’s shawl, looks at the child’s 
 face, and touches the little clinched hand. If we were 
 all as well as Orson Jobson, doctoring would be a poor pro- 
 fession. ^ 
 
 Inspector. Quite right, Jessie Jobson. Take your ticket, 
 Jessie, and pass on. 
 
 And away they go. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, 
 hands them on. Mormon agent, skilful and quiet, hands 
 next party up. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 221 
 
 Inspector (reading ticket again). Susannah Cleverly and 
 William Cleverly. Brother and sister, eh ? 
 
 Sister (young woman of business, hustling slow brother). 
 Yes, sir. 
 
 Inspector. Very good, Susannah Cleverly. Take your 
 ticket, Susannah, and take care of it. 
 
 And away they go. 
 
 Inspector (taking ticket again). Sampson Dibble and 
 Dorothy Dibble (surveying a very old couple over his spec- 
 tacles, with some surprise). Your husband quite blind, Mrs. 
 Dibble ? 
 
 Mrs. Dibble. Yes, sir, he be stone blind. 
 
 Mr. Dibble (addressing the mast). Yes, sir, I be stone 
 blind. 
 
 Inspector. That’s a bad job. Take your ticket, Mrs. 
 Dibble, and don’t lose it, and pass on. 
 
 Doctor taps Mr. Dibble on the eyebrow with his forefinger, 
 and away they go. 
 
 Inspector (taking ticket again). Anastatia Weedle. 
 
 Anastatia (a pretty girl in a bright Garibaldi, this morn- 
 ing elected by universal suffrage the Beauty of the Ship). 
 That is me, sir. 
 
 Inspector. Going alone, Anastatia ? 
 
 Anastatia (shaking her curls). I am with Mrs. Jobson, sir, 
 but I’ve got separated for the moment. 
 
 Inspector. Oh ! you are with the Jobsons ? Quite right. 
 That’ll do. Miss Weedle. Don’t lose your ticket. 
 
 Away she goes, and joins the Jobsons who are waiting for 
 her, and stoops and kisses Brigham Jobson — who appears to 
 be considered too young for the purpose, by several Mormons 
 rising twenty, who are looking on. Before her extensive 
 skirts have departed from the casks a decent widow stands 
 there with four children, and so the roll goes. 
 
 The faces of some of the W^elsh people, among whom there 
 were many old persons, were certainly the least intelligent. 
 Some of these emigrants would have bungled sorely, but for 
 the directing hand that was always ready. The intelligence 
 here was unquestionably of a low order, and the heads were 
 of a poor type. Generally the case was the reverse. There 
 
222 
 
 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLEB. 
 
 were many worn faces bearing traces of patient poverty 
 and hard work, and there was great steadiness of purpose 
 and much undemonstrative self-respect among this class. ’ A 
 few young men were going singly. Several girls were going, 
 two or three together. These latter I found it very difficult 
 to refer back, in my mind, to their relinquished homes and 
 pursuits. Perhaps they were more like country milliners, 
 and pupil teachers rather tawdrily dressed, than any other 
 classes of young women. I noticed, among many little 
 ornaments worn, more than one photograph-brooch of the 
 Princess of Wales, and also of the late Prince Consort. Some 
 single women of from thirty to forty, whom one might sup- 
 pose to be embroiderers, or straw-bonnet makers, were obvi- 
 ously going out in quest of husbands, as finer ladies go to India. 
 That they had any distinct notions of a plurality of husbands 
 or wives, I do not believe. To suppose the family groups of 
 whom the majority of emigrants were composed, poly gam i- 
 cally possessed, would be to suppose an absurdity, manifest to 
 any one who saw the fathers and mothers. 
 
 I should say (I had no means of ascertaining the fact) that 
 most familiar kinds of handicraft trades were represented 
 here. Farm-laborers, shepherds, and the like, had their full 
 share of representation, but I doubt if they preponderated. 
 It was interesting to see how the leading spirit in the family 
 circle never failed to show itself, even in the simple process of 
 answering to the names as they were called, and checking off 
 the owners of the names. Sometimes it was the father, much 
 oftener the mother, sometimes a quick little girl second or 
 third in order of seniority. It seemed to occur for the first 
 time to some heavy fathers, what large families they had; 
 and their eyes rolled about, during the calling of the list, as 
 if they half misdoubted some other family to have been 
 smuggled into their own. Among all the fine handsome 
 children, I observed but two with marks upon their necks 
 that were probably scrofulous. Out of the whole number of 
 emigrants, but one old woman was temporarily set aside by 
 the doctor, on suspicion of fever ; but even she afterwards 
 obtained a clean bill of health. 
 
 When all had passed/^ and the afternoon began to wear 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 223 
 
 on, a black box became visible on deck, which box was in 
 charge of certain personages also in black, of whom only one 
 had the conventional air of an itinerant preacher. This box 
 contained a supply of hymn-books, neatly printed and got up, 
 published at Liverpool, and also in London at the Latter- 
 Day Saints’ Book Depot, 30, Florence Street.” Some copies 
 were handsomely bound ; the plainer were the more in request, 
 and many were bought. The title ran : Sacred Hymns and 
 Spiritual Songs for the Church of J esus Christ of Latter-Day 
 Saints.” The Preface, dated Manchester, 1840, ran thus : — 
 
 The Saints in this country have been very desirous for a 
 Hymn Book adapted to their faith and worship, that they 
 might sing the truth with an understanding heart, and express 
 their praise joy and gratitude in songs adapted to the Hew 
 and Everlasting Covenant. In accordance with their wishes, 
 we have selected the following volume, which we hope will 
 prove acceptable until a greater variety can be added. With 
 sentiments of high consideration and esteem, we subscribe 
 ourselves your brethren in the Hew and Everlasting Cove- 
 nant, Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor.” 
 From this book — by no means explanatory to myself of the 
 Hew and Everlasting Covenant, and not at all making my 
 heart an understanding one on the subject of that mystery — 
 a hymn was sung, which did not attract any great amount of 
 attention, and was supported by a rather select circle. But 
 the choir in the boat was very popular and pleasant ; and 
 there was to have been a Band, only the Cornet was late in 
 coming on board. In the course of the afternoon, a mother 
 appeared from shore, in search of her daughter, who had 
 run away with the Mormons.” She received every assistance 
 from the Inspector, but her daughter was not found to be on 
 board. The saints did not seem to me, particularly interested 
 in finding her. 
 
 Towards five o’clock, the galley became full of tea-kettles, 
 and an agreeable fragrance of tea pervaded the ship. There 
 was no scrambling or jostling for the hot water, no ill humor, 
 no quarrelling. As the Amazon was to sail with the next 
 tide, and as it would not be high water before two o’clock in 
 the morning, I left her with her tea in full action, and her 
 
224 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 idle Steam Tug lying by, deputing steam and smoke for the 
 time-being to the Tea-kettles. 
 
 I afterwards learned that a Despatch was sent home by the 
 captain before he struck out into the wide Atlantic, highly 
 extolling the behavior of these Emigrants, and the perfect 
 order and propriety of all their social arrangements. What 
 is in store for the poor people on the shores of the Great Salt 
 Lake, what happy delusions they are laboring under now, on 
 what miserable blindness their eyes may be opened then, I 
 do not pretend to say. But I went on board their ship to 
 bear testimony against them if they deserved it, as I fully 
 believed they would ; to my great astonishment they did not 
 deserve it ; and my predispositions and tendencies must not 
 affect me as an honest witness. I went over the Amazonas 
 side, feeling it impossible to deny that, so far, some remark- 
 able influence had produced a remarkable result, which better 
 known influences have often missed.^ 
 
 1 After this Uncommercial Journey was printed, I happened to mention the 
 experience it describes to Lord Houghton. That gentleman then showed me an 
 article of his writing, in The Edinburgh Review for January, 1862, which is highly 
 remarkable for its philosophical and literary research concerning these Latter-Day 
 Saints. I find in it the following sentences ; — “ The Select Committee of the House 
 of Commons on emigrant ships for 1854 summoned the Mormon agent and passen- 
 ger-broker before it, and came to the conclusion that no ships under the provisions 
 of the ‘ Passengers Act ’ could be depended upon for comfort and security in the 
 same degree as those under his administration. The Mormon ship is a Family under 
 strong and accepted discipline, with every provision for comfort, decorum, and 
 internal peace.” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 225 
 
 XXI. 
 
 THE CITY OF THE ABSENT. 
 
 When I think I deserve particularly well of myself, and 
 have earned the right to enjoy a little treat, I stroll from 
 Covent Garden into the City of London, after business-hours 
 there, on a Saturday, or — better yet — on a Sunday, and roam 
 about its deserted nooks and corners. It is necessary to the 
 full enjoyment of these journeys that they should be made in 
 summer-time, for then the retired spots that I love to haunt, 
 are at their idlest and dullest. A gentle fall of rain is not 
 objectionable, and a warm mist sets off my favorite retreats 
 to decided advantage. 
 
 Among these. City Churchyards hold a high place. Such 
 strange churchyards hide in the City of London ; churchyards 
 sometimes so entirely detached from churches, always so 
 pressed upon by houses ; so small, so rank, so silent, so for- 
 gotten, except by the few people who ever look down into 
 them from their smoky windows. As I stand peeping in 
 through the iron gates and rails, I can peel the rusty metal 
 off, like bark from an old tree. The illegible tombstones are 
 all lop-sided, the grave-mounds lost their shape in the rains of 
 a hundred years ago, the Lombardy Poplar or Plane-tree that 
 was once a drysaltePs daughter and several common-coun- 
 ci Imen, has withered like those worthies, and its departed 
 leaves are dust beneath it. Contagion of slow ruin overhangs 
 the place. The discolored tiled roofs of the environing build- 
 ings stand so awry, that they can hardly be proof against any 
 stress of weather. Old crazy stacks of chimneys seem to 
 look down as they overhang, dubiously calculating how far 
 they will have to fall. In an angle of the walls, what was 
 once the tool-house of the grave-digger rots away, incrusted 
 with toad-stools. Pipes and spouts for carrying off the rain 
 from the encompassing gables, broken or feloniously cut for 
 
226 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 old lead long ago/ now let the rain drip and splash as it list, 
 upon the weedy earth. Sometimes there is a rusty pump 
 somewhere near, and, as I look in at the rails and meditate, I 
 hear it working under an unknown hand with a creaking 
 protest : as though the departed in the churchyard urged, 
 
 Let us lie here in peace ; don’t suck us up and drink us ! ” 
 
 One of my best beloved churchyards, I call the churchyard 
 of Saint Ghastly Grim ; touching what men in general call it, 
 I have no information. It lies at the heart of the City, and 
 the Blackwall Railway shrieks at it daily. It is a small small 
 churchyard, with a ferocious strong spiked iron gate, like a 
 jail. This gate is ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, 
 larger than the life, wrought in stone ; but it likewise came 
 into the mind of Saint Ghastly Grim, that to stick iron spikes 
 a-top of the stone skulls, as though they were impaled, would 
 be a pleasant device. Therefore the skulls grin aloft horribly, 
 thrust through and through with iron spears. Hence, there 
 is attraction of repulsion for me in Saint Ghastly Grim, and, 
 having often contemplated it in the daylight and the dark, I 
 once felt drawn towards it in a thunderstorm at midnight. 
 
 Why not ? ” I said, in self-excuse. I have been to see 
 the Colosseum by the light of the moon ; is it worse to go to 
 see Saint Ghastly Grim by the light of the lightning ? ” I 
 repaired to the Saint in a hackney cab, and found the skulls 
 most effective, having the air of a public execution, and seem- 
 ing, as the lightning flashed, to wink and grin with the pain 
 of the spikes. Having no other person to whom to impart my 
 satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. So far from 
 being responsive, he surveyed me — he was naturally a bottle- 
 nosed red-faced man — with a blanched countenance. And as 
 he drove me back, he ever and again glanced in over his 
 shoulder through the little front window of his carriage, as 
 mistrusting that I was a fare originally from a grave in the 
 churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim, who might have flitted 
 home again without paying. 
 
 Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives 
 upon a churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, 
 you may hear them (if you are looking in through the iron 
 rails, which you never are when I am) toasting their own 
 
TIME AND HIS WIFE. 
 

THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 227 
 
 Worshipful prosperity. Sometimes, a wholesale house of 
 business, requiring much room for stowage, will occupy one 
 or two or even all three sides of the enclosing space, and the 
 backs of bales of goods will lumber up the windows, as if 
 they were holding some crowded trade-meeting of themselves 
 within. Sometimes, the commanding windows are all blank, 
 and show no more sign of life than the graves below — not so 
 much, for they tell of what once upon a time was life undoubt- 
 edly. Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard that 
 I saw last summer, on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards 
 eight of the clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old old 
 man and an old old woman in it, making hay. Yes, of all 
 occupations in this world, making hay ! It was a very con- 
 fined patch of churchyard lying between Grace Church Street 
 and the Tower, capable of yielding, say an apronful of hay. 
 By what means the old old man and woman had got into it, 
 with an almost toothless hay-making rake, I could not fathom. 
 Iso open window was within view ; no window at all was within 
 view, sufficiently near the ground to have enabled their old 
 legs to descend from it ; the rusty churchyard gate was locked, 
 the mouldy church was locked. Gravely among the graves, 
 they made hay, all alone by themselves. They looked like 
 Time and his wife. There was but the one rake between 
 them, and they both had hold of it in a pastorally-loving man- 
 ner, and there was hay on the old woman’s black bonnet, as if 
 the old man had recently been playful. The old man was 
 quite an obsolete old man, in knee-breeches and coarse gray 
 stockings, and the old woman wore mittens like unto his 
 stockings in texture and in color. They took no heed of me 
 as I looked on, unable to account for them. The old woman 
 was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much too 
 meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone in the foreground 
 between me and them, were two cherubim ; but for those celes- 
 tial embellishments being represented as having no possible 
 use for knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have 
 compared them with the haymakers, and sought a likeness. 
 I coughed and awoke the echoes, but the haymakers never 
 looked at me. They used the rake with a measured action, 
 drawing the scanty crop towards them ; and so I was fain to 
 
228 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 leave them under three yards and a half of darkening sky, 
 gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by them- 
 selves. Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium. 
 
 In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, 
 I saw, that self-same summer, two comfortable charity chil- 
 dren. They were making love — tremendous proof of the 
 vigor of that immortal article, for they were in the graceful 
 uniform under which English Charity delights to hide herself 
 — and they were overgrown, and their legs (his legs at least, 
 for I am modestly incompetent to speak of hers) were as much 
 in the wrong as mere passive weakness of character can render 
 legs. 0 it was a leaden churchyard, but no doubt a golden 
 ground to those young persons ! I first saw them on a Satur- 
 day evening, and, perceiving from their occupation that Satur- 
 day evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening 
 se’nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them. They came 
 there to shake the bits of matting which were spread in the 
 church aisles, and they afterwards rolled them up, he rolling 
 his end, she rolling hers, until they met, and over the two 
 once divided now united rolls — sweet emblem ! — gave and 
 received a chaste salute. It was so refreshing to find one of 
 my faded churchyards blooming into flower thus, that I 
 returned a second time, and a third, and ultimately this 
 befell : — They had left the church door open, in their dust- 
 ing and arranging. Walking in to look at the church, I became 
 aware, by the dim light, of him in the pulpit, of her in the 
 reading-desk, of him looking down, of her looking up, exchan- 
 ging tender discourse. Immediately both dived, and became 
 as it were non-existent on this sphere. With an assumption 
 of innocence I turned to leave the sacred edifice, when an 
 obese form stood in the portal, puffily demanding Joseph, or 
 in default of Joseph, Celia. Taking this monster by the 
 sleeve, and luring him forth on pretence of showing him 
 whom he sought, I gave time for the emergence of Joseph 
 and Celia, who presently came towards us in the churchyard, 
 bending under dusty matting, a picture of thriving and uncon- 
 scious industry. It would be superfluous to hint that I have 
 ever since deemed this the proudest passage in my life. 
 
 But such instances, or any tokens of vitality, are rare indeed 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 229 
 
 in my City churchyards. A few sparrows occasionally try to 
 raise a lively chirrup in their solitary tree — perhaps, as taking 
 a different view of worms from that entertained by humanity 
 — but they are flat and hoarse of voice, like the clerk, the 
 organ, the bell, the clergyman, and all the rest of the Church 
 works when they are wound up for Sunday. Caged larks, 
 thrushes, or blackbirds, hanging in neighboring courts, pour 
 forth their strains passionately, as scenting the tree, trying to 
 break out, and see leaves again before they die, but their song 
 is Willow, Willow — of a churchyard cast. So little light 
 lives inside the churches of my churchyards, when the two are 
 co-existent, that it is often only- by an accident and after long 
 acquaintance that I discover their having stained glass in 
 some odd window. The westering sun slants into the church- 
 yard by some unwonted entry, a few prismatic tears drop on 
 an old tombstone, and a window that I thought was only dirty, 
 is for the moment all bejewelled. Then the light passes and 
 the colors die. Though even then, if there be room enough 
 for me to fall back so far as that I can gaze up to the top of the 
 Church Tower, I see the rusty vane new burnished, and seem- 
 ing to look out with a joyful flash over the sea of smoke at 
 the distant shore of country. 
 
 Blinking old men who are let out of workhouses by the 
 hour, have a teiTdency to sit on bits of coping-stone in these 
 churchyards, leaning with both hands on their sticks and 
 asthmatically gasping. The more depressed class of beggars 
 too, bring hither broken meats, and munch. I am on nod- 
 ding terms with a meditative turncock who lingers in one of 
 them, and whom I suspect of a turn for poetry ; the rather, 
 as he looks out of temper when he gives the fire-plug a dis- 
 paraging wrench with that large tuning-fork of his which 
 would wear out the shoulder of his coat, but for a precau- 
 tionary piece of inlaid leather. Fire-ladders, which I am 
 satisfied nobody knows anything about, and the keys of which 
 were lost in ancient times, moulder away in the larger church- 
 yards, under eaves like wooden eyebrows ; and so removed 
 are those corners from the haunts of men and boys, that once 
 on a fifth of November I found a ^^Guy ’’ trusted fo take care 
 of himself there, while his proprietors had gone to dinner. 
 
230 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Of the expression of his face I cannot report, because it was 
 turned to the wall ; but his shrugged shoulders and his ten 
 extended lingers, appeared to denote that he had moralized in 
 his little straw chair on the mystery of mortality until he 
 gave it up as a bad job. 
 
 You do not come upon these churchyards violently ; there 
 are shades of transition in the neighborhood. An antiquated 
 news-shop, or barber’s shop, apparently bereft of customers 
 in the earlier days of George the Third, would warn me to 
 look out for one, if any discoveries in this respect were left 
 for me to make. A very quiet court, in combination with an 
 unaccountable dyer’s and scourer’s, would prepare me for a 
 churchyard. An exceedingly retiring public-house, with a 
 bagatelle-board shadily visible in a sawdusty parlor shaped 
 like an omnibus, and with a shelf of punch-bowls in the bar, 
 would apprise me that I stood near consecrated ground. A 
 Dairy,” exhibiting in its modest window one very little 
 milk-can and three eggs, would suggest to me the certainty of 
 finding the poultry hard by, pecking at my forefathers. I 
 first inferred the vicinity of Saint Ghastly Grim, from a cer- 
 tain air of extra repose and gloom pervading a vast stack of 
 warehouses. 
 
 From the hush of these places, it is congenial to pass into 
 the hushed resorts of business. Down the lanes I like to see 
 the carts and wagons huddled together in repose, the cranes 
 idle, and the warehouses shut. Pausing in the alleys behind 
 the closed Banks of mighty Lombard Street, it gives one as 
 good as a rich feeling to think of the broad counters with a 
 rim along the edge, made for telling money out on, the scales 
 for weighing precious metals, the ponderous ledgers, and, 
 above all, the bright copper shovels for shovelling gold. When 
 I draw money, it never seems so much money as when it is 
 shovelled at me out of a bright copper shovel. I like to say. 
 In gold,” and to see seven pounds musically pouring out of 
 the shovel, like seventy ; the Bank appearing to remark to me 
 — I italicize ajpjpearing — if you want more of this yellow 
 earth, we keep it in barrows at your service.” To think of 
 the banker’s clerk with his deft finger turning the crisp edges 
 of the Hundred Pound Notes he has taken in a fat roll out of 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 231 
 
 a drawer, is again to hear the rustling of that delicious south- 
 cash wind. How will you have it ? I once heard this 
 usual question asked at a Bank Counter of an elderly female, 
 habited in mourning and steeped in simplicity, who answered, 
 open-eyed, crook-fingered, laughing with expectation, Any- 
 how ! Calling these things to mind as I stroll among the 
 Banks, I wonder whether the other solitary Sunday man I 
 pass, has designs upon the Banks. For the interest and 
 mystery of the matter, I almost hope he may have, and that 
 his confederate may be at this moment taking impressions 
 of the keys of the iron closets in wax, and that a delightful 
 robbery may be in course of transaction. About College Hill, 
 Mark Lane, and so on towards the Tower, and Dock ward, the 
 deserted wine-merchants’ cellars are fine subjects for consid- 
 eration ; but the deserted money-cellars of the Bankers, and 
 their plate-cellars, and their jewel-cellars, what subterranean 
 regions of the Wonderful Lamp are these! And again: 
 possibly some shoeless boy in rags, passed through this street 
 yesterday, for whom it is reserved to be a Banker in the ful- 
 ness of time, and to be surpassing rich. Such reverses have 
 been, since the days of Whittington ; and were, long before. 
 I want to know whether the boy has any foreglittering of 
 that glittering fortune now, when he treads these stones, 
 hungry. Much as I also want to know whether the next man 
 to be hanged at Hewgate yonder, had any suspicion upon him 
 that he was moving steadily towards that fate, when he talked 
 so much about the last man who paid the same great debt at 
 the same small Debtors’ Door. 
 
 Where are all the people who on busy working-days pervade 
 these scenes ? The locomotive banker’s clerk, who carries a 
 black portfolio chained to him by a chain of steel, where is 
 he ? Does he go to bed with his chain on — to church with 
 his chain on — or does he lay it by ? And if he lays it by, 
 what becomes of his portfolio when he is unchained for a 
 holiday ? The waste-paper baskets of these closed counting- 
 houses would let me into many hints of business matters if I 
 had the exploration of them ; and what secrets of the heart 
 should I discover on the pads ” of the young clerks — the 
 sheets of cartridge-paper and blotting-paper interposed between 
 
232 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 their writing and their desks ! Pads are taken into confidence 
 on the tenderest occasions, and oftentimes when I have made 
 a business visit, and have sent in my name from the outer 
 office, have I had it forced on my discursive notice that the 
 officiating young gentleman has over and over again inscribed 
 Amelia, in ink of various dates, on corners of his pad. Indeed, 
 the pad may be regarded as the legitimate modern successor 
 of the old forest-tree : whereon these young knights (having 
 no attainable forest nearer than Epping) engraved the names 
 of their mistresses. After all, it is a more satisfactory process 
 than carving, and can be oftener repeated. So these courts in 
 their Sunday rest are courts of Love Omnipotent (I rejoice to 
 bethink myself), dry as they look. And here is Garraway’s, 
 bolted and shuttered hard and fast ! It is possible to imagine 
 the man who cuts the sandwiches, on his back in a hayfield; 
 it is possible to imagine his desk, like the desk of a clerk at 
 church, without him ; but imagination is unable to pursue the 
 men who wait at Garraway’s all the week for the men who 
 never come. - When they are forcibly put out of Garra way’s 
 on Saturday night — which they must be, for they never would 
 go out of their own accord — where do they vanish until Mon- 
 day morning ? On the first Sunday that I ever strayed here, I 
 expected to find them hovering about these lanes, like restless 
 ghosts, and trying to peep into Garraway’s through chinks in 
 the shutters, if not endeavoring to turn the lock of the door 
 with false keys, picks, and screw-drivers. But the wonder is, 
 that they go clean away ! And now I think of it, the wonder 
 is, that every working-day pervader of these scenes goes clean 
 away. The man who sells the dogs’ collars and the little toy 
 coal-scuttles, feels under as great an obligation to go afar off, 
 as Glyn and Co., or Smith, Payne, and Smith. There is an old 
 monastery-crypt under Garraway’s (I have been in it among 
 the port wine), and perhaps Garraway’s, taking pity on the 
 mouldy men who wait in its public-room all their lives, gives 
 them cool house-room down there over Sundays ; but the cata- 
 combs of Paris would not be large enough to hold the rest of 
 the missing. This characteristic of London City greatly helps 
 its being the quaint place it is in the weekly pause of business, 
 and greatly helps my Sundaj^ sensation in it of being the Last 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 233 
 
 Man. In my solitude, the ticket-porters being all gone with 
 the rest, I venture to breathe to the quiet bricks and stones 
 my confidential wonderment why a ticket-porter, who never 
 does any work with his hands, is bound to wear a white apron, 
 and why a great Ecclesiastical Dignitary, who never does any 
 work with his hands either, is equally bound to wear a black 
 one. 
 
234 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 XXII. 
 
 AN OLD STAGE-COACHING HOUSE. 
 
 Before the waitress had shut the door, I had forgotten how 
 many stage-coaches she said used to change horses in the town 
 every day. But it was of little moment ; any high number 
 would do as well as another. It had been a great stage-coach- 
 ing town in the great stage-coaching times, and the ruthless 
 railways had killed and buried it. 
 
 The sign of the house was the Dolphin’s head. Why only 
 head, I don’t know ; for the Dolphin’s effigy at full length, 
 and upside down — as a Dolphin is always bound to be when 
 artistically treated, though I suppose he is sometimes right 
 side upward in his natural condition — graced the sign-board. 
 The sign-board chafed its rusty hooks outside the bow-window 
 of my room, and was a shabby work. Xo visitor could have 
 denied that the Dolphin was dying by inches, but he showed 
 no bright colors. He had once served another master ; there 
 was a newer streak of paint below him, displaying with incon- 
 sistent freshness the legend, By J. Mellows. 
 
 My door opened again, and J. Mellows’s representative came 
 back. I had asked her what I could have for dinner, and she 
 now returned with the counter-question, what would I like ? 
 As the Dolphin stood possessed of nothing that I do like, I 
 was fain to yield to the suggestion of a duck, which I don’t like. 
 J. Mellows’s representative was a mournful young woman, with 
 one eye susceptible of guidance, and one uncontrollable eye ; 
 which latter, seeming to wander in quest of stage-coaches, deep- 
 ened the melancholy in which the Dolphin was steeped. 
 
 This young woman had but shut the door on retiring again 
 when I bethought me of adding to my order, the words, with 
 nice vegetables.” Looking out at the door to give them emphatic 
 utterance, I found her already in a state of pensive catalepsy 
 in the deserted gallery, picking her teeth with a pin. 
 
TUE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 235 
 
 At the Eailway Station seven miles off, I had been the 
 subject of wonder when I ordered a fly in which to come 
 here. And when I gave the direction ^^To the Dolphin’s 
 Head,” I had observed an ominous stare on the countenance 
 of the strong young man in velveteen, who was the platform 
 servant of the Company. He had also called to my driver at 
 parting, All ri-ight ! Don’t hang yourself when you get 
 there, Geo-o-rge ! ” in a sarcastic tone, for which I had enter- 
 tained some transitory thoughts of reporting him to the 
 General Manager. 
 
 I had no business in the town — I never have any business 
 in any town — but I had been caught by the fancy that I 
 would come and look at it in its degeneracy. My purpose 
 was fitly inaugurated by the Dolphin’s Head, which every- 
 where expressed past coachfulness and present coachlessness. 
 Colored prints of coaches, starting, arriving, changing horses, 
 coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the snow, coaches in the 
 wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches on the King’s 
 birthday, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their 
 triumph and victory, but never in the act of breaking down 
 or overturning, pervaded the house. Of these works of art, 
 some, framed and not glazed, had holes in them ; the varnish 
 of others had become so brown and cracked, that they looked 
 like overdone pie-crust ; the designs of others were almost 
 obliterated by the flies of many summers. Broken glasses, 
 damaged frames, lop-sided hanging, and consignment of in- 
 curable cripples to places of refuge in dark corners, attested 
 the desolation of the rest. The old room on the ground floor 
 where the passengers of the Highflyer used to dine, had noth- 
 ing in it but a wretched show of twigs and flower-pots in the 
 broad window to hide the nakedness of the land, and in a 
 corner little Mellows’s perambulator, with even its parasol- 
 head turned despondently to the wall. The other room, where 
 post-horse company used to wait while relays were getting 
 ready down the yard, still held its ground, but was as airless 
 as I conceive a hearse to be : insomuch that Mr. Pitt, hanging 
 high against the partition (with spots on him like port wine, 
 though it is mysterious how port wine ever got squirted up 
 there), had good reason for perking his nose and snifiing. The 
 
236 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 stopperless cruets on the spindle-shanked sideboard were in a 
 miserably dejected state : the anchovy sauce having turned 
 blue some years ago, and the cayenne pepper (with a scoop in 
 it like a small model of a wooden leg) having turned solid. 
 The old fraudulent candles which were always being paid for 
 and never used, were burnt out at last ; but their tall stilts of 
 candlesticks still lingered, and still outraged the human intel- 
 lect by pretending to be silver. The mouldy old unreformed 
 Borough Member, with his right hand buttoned up in the 
 breast of his coat, and his back characteristically turned on 
 bales of petitions from his constituents, was there too ; and 
 the poker which never had been among the fire-irons, lest 
 post-horse company should overstir the fire, was not there, as 
 of old. 
 
 Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin’s Head, I found it 
 sorely shrunken. When J. Mellows came into possession, he 
 had walled off half the bar, w'hich was now a tobacco-shop 
 with its own entrance in the yard — the once glorious yard 
 where the post-boys, whip in hand and always buttoning 
 their waistcoats at the last moment, used to come running 
 forth to mount and away. A Scientific Shoeing-Smith and 
 Veterinary Surgeon,” had further encroached upon the yard; 
 and a grimly satirical Jobber, who announced himself as 
 having to Let A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,” 
 had established his business, himself, and his family, in a 
 part of the extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean 
 off from the Dolphin’s Head, and now comprised a chapel, a 
 wheelwright’s, and a Young Men’s Mutual Improvement and 
 Discussion Society (in a loft) : the whole forming a back 
 lane. Ho audacious hand had plucked down the vane from 
 the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown rusty and 
 stuck at H — Hil : while the score or two of pigeons that 
 remained true to their ancestral traditions and the place, had 
 collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse 
 retained by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried 
 to push the outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblem- 
 atical of the struggle for post and place in railway times. 
 
 Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and 
 pillared entrance to the Dolphin’s Yard, once redolent of 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 237 
 
 soup and stable litter, now redolent of musty disuse, I paced 
 the street. It was a hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the 
 shops were all drawn down, and the more enterprising trades- 
 men had caused their Trentices to trickle water on the pave- 
 ment appertaining to their frontage. It looked as if they had 
 been shedding tears for the stage-coaches, and drying their 
 ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs. Such weakness would have 
 been excusable; for business was — as one dejected porkman 
 who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the compliment 
 by keeping him, informed me — bitter bad.^’ Most of the 
 harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the 
 coaches, but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal pro- 
 cession of Children down that old original steep Incline, the 
 Valley of the Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly suc- 
 ceeded by venders of sweetmeats and cheap toys. The oppo- 
 sition house to the Dolphin, once famous as the New White 
 Hart, had long collapsed. In a lit of abject depression, it had 
 cast whitewash on its windows, and boarded up its front door, 
 and reduced itself to a side entrance; but even that had 
 proved a world too wide for the Literary Institution which 
 had been its last phase ; for the Institution had collapsed too, 
 and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on the White 
 Hart’s front, all had fallen off but these : 
 
 L Y INS T 
 
 — suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neighboring 
 market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, 
 to the dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half 
 across it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms 
 on the shafts of his cart, superciliously gazing around ; his 
 velveteen waistcoat, evidently harboring grave doubts whether 
 it was worth his while to stay a night in such a place. 
 
 The church-bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they 
 by no means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant 
 way, and speaking with some difficulty in their irritation, 
 WHAT’s-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES ! ” Nor would they (I found 
 on listening) ever vary their emphasis, save in respect of 
 growing more sharp and vexed, but invariably went on, 
 WHAx’s-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES ! — always beginning the 
 
238 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. Perhaps from their 
 elevation they saw the railway, and it aggravated them. 
 
 Coming upon a coachmakePs workshop, I began to look 
 about me with a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I 
 might behold there some remains of the old times of the 
 town’s greatness. There was only one man at work — a dry 
 man, grizzled, and far advanced in years, but tall and upright, 
 who, becoming aware of me looking on, straightened his back, 
 pushed up his spectacles against his brown paper cap, and 
 appeared inclined to defy me. To whom I pacifically said, — 
 
 Good-day, sir ! ” 
 
 What ? ” said he. 
 
 Good-day, sir.” 
 
 He seemed to consider about that, and not to agree with 
 me. — ^^Was you a-looking for anything?” he then asked, in 
 a pointed manner. 
 
 I was wondering whether there happened to be any frag- 
 ment of an old stage-coach here.” 
 
 Is that all ? ” 
 
 That’s all.” 
 
 ^^Ho, there ain’t.” 
 
 It was now my turn to say Oh ! ” and I said it. Not 
 another word did the dry and grizzled man say, but bent to 
 his work again. In the coach-making days, the coach-painters 
 had tried their brushes on a post beside him ; and quite a 
 Calendar of departed glories was to be read upon it, in blue 
 and yellow and red and green, some inches thick. Presently 
 he looked up again. 
 
 You seem to have a deal of time on your hands,” was his 
 querulous remark. 
 
 I admitted the fact. 
 
 I think it’s a pity you was not brought up to something,” 
 said he. 
 
 I said I thought so too. 
 
 Appearing to be informed with an idea, he laid down his 
 plane (for it was a plane he was at work with), pushed up 
 his spectacles again, and came to the door. 
 
 Would a po-shay do for you ? ” he asked. 
 
 I am not sure that I understand what you mean.” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 239 
 
 Would a po-shay/’ said the coachmaker, standing close 
 before me, and folding his arms in the manner of a cross- 
 examining counsel — would a po-shay meet the views you 
 have expressed ? Yes, or no ? 
 
 Yes/’ 
 
 Then you keep straight along down there till you see one. 
 YouHl see one if you go fur enough.” 
 
 With that he turned me by the shoulder in the direction I 
 was to take, and went in and resumed his work against a 
 background of leaves and grapes. For, although he was a 
 soured man and a discontented, his workshop was that agree- 
 able mixture of town and country, street and garden, which 
 is often to be seen in a small English town. 
 
 I went the way he had turned me, and I came to the Beer- 
 shop with the sign of The First and Last, and was out of the 
 town on the old London road. I came to the turnpike, and I 
 found it, in its silent way, eloquent respecting the change that 
 had fallen on the road. The Turnpike-house was all over- 
 grown with ivy ; and the Turnpike-keeper, unable to get a 
 living out of the tolls, plied the trade of a cobbler. Not only 
 that, but his wife sold ginger-beer, and, in the very window 
 of espial through which the Toll-takers of old times used 
 with awe to behold the grand London coaches coming on at a 
 gallop, exhibited for sale little barbers’-poles of sweetstuff 
 in a sticky lantern. 
 
 The political economy of the master of the turnpike thus 
 expressed itself. 
 
 How goes turnpike business, master ? ” said I to him, as 
 he sat in his little porch, repairing a shoe. 
 
 It don’t go at all, master,” said he to me. It’s stopped.” 
 
 That’s bad,” said I. 
 
 Bad ? ” he repeated. And he pointed to one of his sun- 
 burnt dusty children who was climbing the turnpike-gate, 
 and said, extending his open right hand in remonstrance 
 with Universal Nature. Five on ’em ! ” 
 
 “ But how to improve Turnpike business ? ” said I. 
 
 There’s a way, master,” said he, with the air of one who 
 had thought deeply on the subject. 
 
 I should like to know it.” 
 
240 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Lay a toll on everything as comes through ; lay a toll 
 on walkers. Lay another toll on everything as don’t come 
 through; lay a toll on them as stops at home.” 
 
 Would the last remedy be fair ? ” 
 
 Fair ? Them as stops at home, could come through if 
 they liked ; couldn’t they ? ’’ 
 
 Say they could.” 
 
 Toll ’em. If they don’t come through, it’s their lookout. 
 Anyways, — Toll em ! ” 
 
 Finding it was as impossible to argue with this financial 
 genius as if he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
 consequently the right man in the right place, I passed on 
 meekly. 
 
 My mind now began to misgive me that the disappointed 
 coachmaker had sent me on a wild-goose errand, and that 
 there was no post-chaise in those parts. But coming within 
 view of certain allotment-gardens by the roadside, I retracted 
 the suspicion, and confessed that I had done him an injustice. 
 For, there I saw, surely, the poorest superannuated post- 
 chaise left on earth. 
 
 It was a post-chaise taken off its axletree and wheels, and 
 plumped down on the clayey soil among a ragged growth of 
 vegetables. It was a post-chaise not even set straight upon 
 the ground, but tilted over, as if it had fallen out of a balloon. 
 It was a post-chaise that had been a long time in those 
 decayed circumstances, and against which scarlet beans were 
 trained. It was a post-chaise patched and mended with old 
 teatrays, or with scraps of iron that looked like them, and 
 boarded up as to the windows, but having a knocker on the 
 off-side door. Whether it was a post-chaise used as tool- 
 house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover, 
 for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when I 
 knocked ; but it was certainly used for something, and locked 
 up. In the wonder of this discovery, I walked round and 
 round the post-chaise many times, and sat down by the post- 
 chaise, waiting for further elucidation. ISTone came. At last, 
 I made my way back to the old London road by the further 
 end of the allotment-gardens, and consequently at a point 
 beyond that from which I had diverged. I had to scramble 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 24l 
 
 through a hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly came 
 down a-top of a little spare man who sat breaking stones by 
 the roadside. 
 
 He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously 
 through his dark goggles of wire, — 
 
 Are you aware, sir, that youVe been trespassing ? ’’ 
 
 I turned out of the w^ay,^^ said I, in explanation, to look 
 at that odd post-chaise. Do you happen to know anything 
 about it ? 
 
 I know it was many a year upon the road,’’ said he. 
 
 So I supposed. Do you know to whom it belongs ? ” 
 
 The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his 
 heap of stones, as if he were considering whether he should 
 answer the question or not. Then, raising his barred eyes to 
 my features as before, he said, — 
 
 To me.” 
 
 Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a 
 sufficiently awkward Indeed ! Dear me ! ” Presently I 
 added, Do you ” — I was going to say live there,” but it 
 seemed so absurd a question, that I substituted ^Hive near 
 here ? ” 
 
 The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since 
 we began to converse, then did as follows. He raised himself 
 by poising his figure on his hammer, and took his coat, on 
 which he had been seated, over his arm. He then backed to 
 an easier part of the bank than that by which I had come 
 down, keeping his dark goggles silently upon me all the 
 time, and then shouldered his hammer, suddenly turned, 
 ascended, and was gone. His face was so small, and his 
 goggles were so large, that he left me wholly uninformed as 
 to his countenance ; but he left me a profound impression 
 that the curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished, 
 were the legs of an old post-boy. It was not until then that 
 I noticed he had been working by a grass-grown milestone, 
 wffiich looked like a tombstone erected over the grave of the 
 London road. 
 
 My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to 
 pursue the goggles or the subject then, but made my way 
 back to the Dolphin’s Head. In the gateway I found J. 
 
242 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 Mellows, looking at nothing, and apparently experiencing 
 that it failed to raise his spirits. 
 
 I don’t care for the town,” said J. Mellows, when I com- 
 plimented him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not 
 possess ; I wish I had never seen the town ! ” 
 
 You don’t belong to it, Mr. Mellows ? ” 
 
 Belong to it ! ” repeated Mellows. If I didn’t belong 
 to a better style of town than this, I’d take and drown myself 
 in a pail.” It then occurred to me that Mellows, having so 
 little to do, was habitually thrown back on his internal 
 resources — by which I mean the Dolphin’s cellar. 
 
 What we want,” said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and 
 making as if he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that 
 had exuded from his brain, before he put it on again for 
 another load ; what we want, is a Branch. The Petition 
 for the Branch Bill is in the coffee-room. 'W^ould you put 
 your name to it ? Every little helps.” 
 
 I found the document in question stretched out fiat on the 
 coffee-room table by the aid of certain weights from the 
 kitchen, and I gave it the additional weight of my uncom- 
 mercial signature. To the best of my belief, I bound myself 
 to the modest statement that universal traffic, happiness, 
 prosperity, and civilization, together with unbounded national 
 triumph in competition with the foreigner, would infallibly 
 flow from the Branch. 
 
 Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. 
 Mellows if he could grace my dinner with a pint of good 
 wine ? Mr. Mellows thus replied : — 
 
 If I couldn’t give you a pint of good wine, I’d — there ! — 
 I’d take and drown myself in a pail. But I was deceived 
 when I bought this business, and the stock was higgledy- 
 piggledy, and I haven’t yet tasted my way quite through it 
 with a view to sorting it. Therefore, if you order one kind 
 and get another, change till it comes right. For what,” said 
 Mellows, unloading his hat as before, ^^what would you or 
 any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of wine and was 
 required to drink another ? Why, you’d (and naturally and 
 properly, having the feelings of a gentleman), you’d take and 
 drown yourself in a pail ! ” 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 243 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with 
 Paris, Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva — almost any im- 
 portant town on the continent of Europe — I find very striking 
 after an absence of any duration in foreign parts. London is 
 shabby in contrast with Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with 
 Exeter, with Liverpool, with a bright little town like Bury 
 St. Edmunds. London is shabby in contrast with Xew York, 
 with Boston, with Philadelphia. In detail, one would say it 
 can rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of shabbiness, to a 
 stranger from any of those places. There is nothing shabbier 
 than Drury Lane, in Borne itself. The meanness of Begent 
 Street, set against the great line of Boulevarts in Paris, is as 
 striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar Square, set 
 against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. 
 London is shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. No 
 Englishman knows what gaslight is, until he sees the Bue de 
 Bivoli and the Palais Boyal after dark. 
 
 The mass of London people are shabby. The absence of 
 distinctive dress has, no doubt, something to do with it. The 
 porters of the Vintners’ Company, the draymen, and the 
 butchers, are about the only people who wear distinctive 
 dresses ; and even these do not wear them on holidays. We 
 have nothing which for cheapness, cleanliness, convenience, 
 or picturesqueness, can compare with the belted blouse. As 
 to our women; — next Easter or Whitsuntide, look at the 
 bonnets at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and 
 think of the pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, 
 or the Genoese mezzero. 
 
 Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in 
 London than in Paris, and yet the mass of the London 
 
244 
 
 THE UJSrCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 population have a second-hand look which is not to be de- 
 tected on the mass of the Parisian population. I think this 
 is mainly because a Parisian workman does not in the least 
 trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian idler, but 
 dresses in the way of his own class, and for his own comfort. 
 In London, on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you 
 never fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, 
 until you see it in its last descent. It was but the other day, 
 on a race-course, that I observed four people in a barouche 
 deriving great entertainment from the' contemplation of four 
 people on foot. The four people on foot were two young men 
 and two young women ; the four people in the barouche were 
 two young men and two young women. The four young 
 women were dressed in exactly the same style ; the four 
 young men were dressed in exactly the same style. Yet the 
 two couples on wheels were as much amused by the two 
 couples on foot, as if they were quite unconscious of having 
 themselves set those fashions, or of being at that very moment 
 engaged in the display of them. 
 
 Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends 
 here in London — and consequently in England — and thence 
 shabbiness arises ? Let us think a little, and be just. The 
 Black Country round about Birmingham, is a very black 
 country ; but is it quite as black as it has been lately painted ? 
 An appalling accident happened at the People’s Park near 
 Birmingham, this last July, when it was crowded with people 
 from the Black Country — an appalling accident consequent 
 on a shamefully dangerous exhibition. Did the shamefully 
 dangerous exhibition originate in the moral blackness of the 
 Black Country, and in the Black People’s peculiar love of 
 the excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they 
 looked on at, but in which they did not participate ? Light 
 is much wanted in the Black Country. 0 we are all agreed 
 on that. But, we must not quite forget the crowds of gentle- 
 folks who set the shamefully dangerous fashion, either. We 
 must not quite forget the enterprising Directors of an Institu- 
 tion vaunting mighty educational pretences, who made the 
 low sensation as strong as they possibly could make it, by 
 hanging the Blondin rope as high as they possibly could hang 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 245 
 
 it. All this must not be eclipsed in the Blackness of the 
 Black Country. The reserved seats high up by the rope, the 
 cleared space below it, so that no one should be smashed but 
 the performer, the pretence of slipping and falling off, the 
 baskets for the feet and the sack for the head, the photographs 
 everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere — all this 
 must not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the 
 jet-black country. 
 
 Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend. 
 This is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fash- 
 ions. When you find a fashion low down, look back for the 
 time (it will never be far off) when it was the fashion high 
 up. This is the text for a perpetual sermon on social justice. 
 From imitations of Ethiopian Serenaders, to imitations of 
 Prince’s coats and Avaistcoats, you will find the original model 
 in St. James’s Parish. When the Serenaders become tire- 
 some, trace them beyond the Black Country ; when the coats 
 and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to their 
 source in the Upper Toady Regions. 
 
 Gentlemen’s clubs Avere once maintained for purposes of 
 savage party warfare ; workingmen’s clubs of the same day 
 assumed the same character. Gentlemen’s clubs became 
 places of quiet inoffensive recreation ; Avorkingmen’s clubs 
 began to follow suit. If workingmen have seemed rather 
 slow to appreciate advantages of combination Avhich have 
 saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their comforts, 
 it is because workingmen could scarcely, for Avant of capital, 
 originate such combinations without help ; and because help 
 has not been separable from that great impertinence. Patron- 
 age. The instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, 
 is a quality much to be resjjected in the English working- 
 man. It is the base of the base of his best qualities. Nor is 
 it surprising that he should be unduly suspicious of patron- 
 age, and sometimes resentful of it even where it is not, seeing 
 what a flood of washy talk has been let loose on his devoted 
 head, or Avith Avhat complacent condescension the same de- 
 voted head has been smoothed and patted. It is a proof to 
 me of his self-control that he never strikes out pugilistically, 
 right and left, when addressed as one of My friends,” or 
 
246 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 assembled friends;’^ that he does not become inappeas- 
 able, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped 
 in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him ; that any 
 pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him 
 out of his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron 
 like a mad bull. 
 
 For, how often have I heard the unfortunate workingman 
 lectured, as if he were a little charity child, humid as to his 
 nasal development, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and 
 called by Providence to walk all his days in a station in life 
 represented on festive occasions by a mug of warm milk and 
 water and a bun ! What popguns of jokes have these ears 
 tingled to hear let off at him, what asinine sentiments, what 
 impotent conclusions, what spelling-book moralities, what 
 adaptations of the orator’s insufferable tediousness to the 
 assumed level of his understanding ! If his sledge-hammers, 
 his spades and pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his paint-pots 
 and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines, the horses that 
 he drove at his work, and the machines that drove him at his 
 work, were all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby 
 who played with them, he could not have been discoursed to, 
 more impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him dis- 
 coursed to times innumerable. Consequently, not being a 
 fool or a fawner, he has come to acknowledge his patronage 
 by virtually saying, Let me alone. If you understand me 
 no better than that, sir and madam, let me alone. You mean 
 very well, I dare say, but I don’t like it, and I won’t come 
 here again to have any more of it.” 
 
 Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the 
 workingman must be so far done by himself as that it is 
 maintained by himself. And there must be in it no touch 
 of condescension, no shadow of patronage. In the great work- 
 ing districts, this truth is studied and understood. When the 
 American civil war rendered it necessary, first in Glasgow, 
 and afterwards in Manchester, that the working-people should 
 be shown how to avail themselves of the advantages derivable 
 from system, a,nd from the combination of numbers, in the 
 purchase and the cooking of their food, this truth was above 
 all things borne in mind. The quick consequence was, that 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 247 
 
 suspicion and reluctance were vanquished, and that, the effort 
 resulted in an astonishing and a complete success. 
 
 Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning 
 of this summer, as I walked towards Commercial Street (not 
 Uncommercial Street), Whitechapel. The Glasgow and Man- 
 chester system had been lately set a-going there, by certain 
 gentlemen who felt an interest in its diffusion, and I had 
 been attracted by the following hand-bill printed on rose- 
 colored paper : — 
 
 SELF-SUPPORTING 
 
 COOKING DEPOT 
 
 FOR THE WORKING CLASSES, 
 
 Commercial-street, Whitechapel, 
 
 Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably 
 
 300 persons at a time. 
 
 
 Open from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. 
 
 
 PEICES. 
 
 
 All Articles of the Best Quality. 
 
 
 Cup of Tea or Coffee 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Bread and Butter 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Bread and Cheese 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Slice of Bread . . One halfpenny or 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Boiled Egj? 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Ginger Beer 
 
 One Penny 
 
 The above Articles always ready. 
 
 
 Besides the above may be had, from 12 
 
 to 3 o’clock. 
 
 Bowl of Scotch Broth 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Bowl of Soup 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Plate of Potatoes 
 
 One Penny 
 
 Plate of Minced Beef 
 
 Twopence 
 
 Plate of Cold Beef 
 
 Twopence 
 
 Plate of Cold Ham 
 
 Twopence 
 
 Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice .... 
 
 One Penny 
 
 As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the 
 simplicity of the arrangements with which a great number of 
 
248 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 persons can be served at one time, the Upper Eoom of this 
 Establishment will be especially set apart for a 
 
 Public DIISTNEE every Day 
 From 12 till 3 o’clock, 
 
 Consisting of the following Dishes: 
 
 Bowl of Broth, or Soup, 
 
 Plate of Cold Beef or Ham, 
 
 Plate of Potatoes, 
 
 Plum Pudding, or Bice. 
 
 FIXED CHARGE 
 
 THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED. 
 
 N.B. — This Establishment is conducted on the strictest 
 business principles, with the full intention of making it self- 
 supporting, so that every one may frequent it with a feeling 
 of perfect independence. 
 
 The assistance of all frequenting the Depot is confidently 
 expected in checking anything interfering with the comfort, 
 quiet, and regularity of the establishment. 
 
 Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some 
 other person whom it may interest. 
 
 This Self-Supporting Cooking Depot (not a very good name, 
 and one would rather give it an English one) had hired a 
 newly-built warehouse that it found to let ; therefore it was 
 not established in premises especially designed for the pur- 
 pose. But, at a small cost they were exceedingly well adapted 
 to the purpose : being light, well ventilated, clean, and cheer- 
 ful. They consisted of three large rooms. That on the base- 
 ment story was the kitchen ; that on the ground floor was the 
 general dining-room ; that on the floor above was the Upper 
 Room referred to in the hand-bill, where the Public Dinner 
 at fourpence-halfpenny a head was provided every day. The 
 cooking was done, with much economy of space and fuel, by 
 American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously 
 brought up as cooks ; the walls and pillars of the two dining- 
 rooms were agreeably brightened with ornamental colors ; 
 the tables were capable of accommodating six or eight persons 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 249 
 
 each ; the attendants were all young women, becomingly and 
 neatly dressed, and dressed alike. I think the whole staff 
 was female, with the exception of the steward or manager. 
 
 My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff; 
 because, if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, 
 live upon the spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a 
 feeble existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources (as 
 too many so-called Mechanics’ Institutions do), I make bold 
 to express my Uncommercial opinion that it has no business 
 to live, and had better die. It was made clear to me by the 
 account-books, that every person employed was properly 
 paid. My next inquiries were directed to the quality of the 
 provisions purchased, and to the terms on which they were 
 bought. It was made equally clear to me that the quality 
 Avas the very best, and that all bills were paid weekly. My 
 next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for the last 
 two weeks — only the third and fourth of the establishment’s 
 career. It was made equally clear to me, that after everything 
 bought was paid for, and after each week was charged with 
 its full share of wages, rent and taxes, depreciation of plant 
 in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four per cent per 
 annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round num- 
 bers) one pound ten ; and the previous week a profit of six 
 pounds ten. By this time I felt that I had a healthy appetite 
 for the dinners. 
 
 It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces 
 had already begun to appear at a little window in the wall of 
 the partitioned space where I sat looking over the books. 
 Within this little window, like a pay-box at a theatre, a neat 
 and brisk young woman presided to take money and issue 
 tickets. Every one coming in must take a ticket. Either 
 the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for the upper room (the most 
 popular ticket, I think), or a penny ticket for a bowl of soup, 
 or as many penny tickets as he or she chose to buy. For 
 three penny tickets one had quite a wide range of choice. A 
 plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes ; or a plate of cold ham 
 and potatoes ; or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes ; or a 
 bowl of soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of plum pudding. 
 Touching what they should have, some customers on taking 
 
250 
 
 THE UNCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLEE. 
 
 their seats fell into a reverie — became mildly distracted — 
 postponed decision, and said in bewilderment, they would 
 think of it. One old man I noticed when I sat among the 
 tables in the lower room, who was startled by the bill of fare, 
 and sat contemplating it as if it were something of a ghostly 
 nature. The decision of the boys was as rapid as their execu- 
 tion, and always included pudding. 
 
 There were several women among the diners, and several 
 clerks and shopmen. There were carpenters and painters 
 from the neighboring buildings under repair, and there were 
 nautical men, and there were, as one diner observed to me, 
 some of most sorts.’’ Some were solitary, some came two 
 together, some dined in parties of three or four, or six. The 
 latter talked together, but assuredly no one was louder than 
 at my club in Pall-Mall. One young fellow whistled in 
 rather a shrill manner while he waited for his dinner, but I 
 was gratified to observe that he did so in evident defiance of 
 my Uncommercial individuality. Quite agreeing with him, 
 on consideration, that I had no business to be there, unless I 
 dined like the rest, I went in,” as the phrase is, for four- 
 pence-halfpenny. 
 
 The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the 
 lower room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a great 
 number of cold portions ready for distribution. Behind this 
 counter, the fragrant soup was steaming in deep cans, and the 
 best-cooked of potatoes were fished out of similar receptacles. 
 Nothing to eat was touched with the hand. Every waitress 
 had her own tables to attend to. As soon as she saw a new 
 customer seat himself at one of her tables, she took from the 
 counter all his dinner — his soup, potatoes, meat, and pudding 
 — piled it up dexterously in her two hands, set it before him, 
 and took his ticket. This serving of the whole dinner at 
 once, had been found greatly to simplify the business of 
 attendance, and was also popular with the customers : who 
 were thus enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of 
 dishes : beginning with soup to-day, putting soup in the middle 
 to-morrow, putting soup at the end the day after to-morrow, 
 and ringing similar changes on meat and pudding. The 
 rapidity with which every new-comer got served, was remark- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCTAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 251 
 
 able ; and the dexterity with which the waitresses (quite new 
 to the art a month before) discharged their duty, was as 
 agreeable to see, as the neat smartness with which they wore 
 their dress and had dressed their hair. 
 
 If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate 
 better meat, potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an 
 honest and stout soup, with rice and barley in it, and little 
 matters for the teeth to touch,’’ as had been observed to me 
 by my friend below stairs already quoted. The dinner-service, 
 too, was neither conspicuously hideous for High Art nor for 
 Low Art, but was of a pleasant and pure appearance. Con- 
 cerning the viands and their cookery, one last remark. I 
 dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days afterwards, 
 for exactly twelve times the money, and not half as well. 
 
 The company thickened after one o’clock struck, and changed 
 pretty quickly. Although experience of the place had been 
 so recently attainable, and although there was still consider- 
 able curiosity out in the street and about the entrance, the 
 general tone was as good as could be, and the customers fell 
 easily into the ways of the place. It was clear to me, how- 
 ever, that they were there to have what they paid for, and to 
 be on an independent footing. To the best of my judgment, 
 they might be patronized out of the building in a month. 
 With judicious visiting, and by dint of being questioned, 
 read to, and talked at, they might even be got rid of (for the 
 next quarter of a century) in half the time. 
 
 This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so 
 many wholesome changes in the lives of the working-people, 
 and with so much good in the way of overcoming that sus- 
 picion which our own unconscious impertinence has engen- 
 dered, that it is scarcely gracious to criticise details as yet ; 
 the rather, because it is indisputable that the managers of the 
 Whitechapel establishment most thoroughly feel that they 
 are upon their honor with the customers, as to the minutest 
 points of administration. But, although the American stoves 
 cannot roast, they can surely boil one kind of meat as well as 
 another, and need not always circumscribe their boiling talents 
 within the limits of ham and beef. The most enthusiastic 
 admirer of those substantials, would probably not object to 
 
252 
 
 THE UNC03IMEBCIAL TBAVELLER. 
 
 occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton: or, 
 especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with 
 Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Another drawback 
 on the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer. 
 Regarded merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, 
 as having a tendency to send the workingmen to the public- 
 house, where gin is reported to be sold. But, there is a much 
 higher ground on which this absence of beer is objectionable. 
 It expresses distrust of the workingman. It is a fragment of 
 that old mantle of patronage in which so many estimable 
 Thugs, so darkly wandering up and down the moral world, 
 are sworn to muffle him. Good beer is a good thing for him, 
 he says, and he likes it ; the Depot could give it him good, 
 and he now gets it bad. Why does the Depot not give it him 
 good ? Because he would get drunk. Why does the Depot 
 not let him have a pint with his dinner, which would not make 
 him drunk ? Because he might have had another pint, or 
 another two pints, before he came. Now, this distrust is an 
 affront, is exceedingly inconsistent with the confidence the 
 managers express in their hand-bills, and is a timid stopping- 
 short upon the straight highway. It is unjust and unreason- 
 able, also. It is unjust, because it punishes the sober man for 
 the vice of the drunken man. It is unreasonable, because 
 any one at all experienced in such things knows that the 
 drunken workman does not get drunk where he goes to eat 
 and drink, but where he goes to drink — expressly to drink. 
 To suppose that the workingman cannot state this question 
 to himself quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose 
 that he is a baby, and is again to tell him in the old wearisome 
 condescending patronizing way that he must be goody -poody, 
 and do as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny-panny or a 
 voter-poter, but fold his handy-pandys, and be a childy-pildy. 
 
 I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Sup- 
 porting Cooking Depot, that every article sold in it, even at 
 the prices I have quoted, yields a certain small profit ! Indi- 
 vidual speculators are of course already in the field, and are 
 of course already appropriating the name. The classes for 
 whose benefit the real depots are designed, will distinguish 
 between the two kinds of enterprise. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 253 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 CHATHAM DOCKYARD. 
 
 There are some small out-of-the-way landing-places on the 
 Thames and the Medway, where I do much of my summer 
 idling. Kunning water is favorable to day-dreams, and a 
 strong tidal river is the best of running water for mine. I like 
 to watch the great ships standing out to sea or coming home 
 richly laden, the active little steam-tugs confidently puffing 
 with them to and from the sea-horizon, the fleet of barges 
 that seem to have plucked their brown and russet sails from 
 the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy old colliers, light in 
 ballast, floundering down before the tide, the light screw barks 
 and schooners imperiously holding a straight course while the 
 others patiently tack and go about, the yachts with their tiny 
 hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little sailing-boats 
 bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or business, 
 and — as it is the nature of little people to do — making a 
 prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these 
 objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or 
 even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my 
 humor. As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of 
 the tide, the ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, 
 or the humming steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, 
 with the creaking little jetty on which I sit, aud the gaunt 
 high-water marks and low-water marks in the mud, and the 
 broken causeway, and the broken bank, and the broken stakes 
 and piles leaning forward as if they were vain of their 
 personal appearance and looking for their reflection in the 
 water, will melt into any train of fancy. Equally adaptable 
 to any purpose or to none, are the pasturing sheep and kine 
 upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip around me, 
 the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich 
 harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks 
 
254 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 as melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn^t agreed with 
 him. Everything within the range of the senses will, by the 
 aid of the running water, lend itself to everything beyond 
 that range, and work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind 
 of tune, but for which there is no exact definition. 
 
 One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see 
 the ISTore Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which 
 fort mysteriously emerges a boy, to whom I am much indebted 
 for additions to my scanty stock of knowledge. He is a young 
 boy, with an intelligent face burnt to a dust color by the 
 summer sun, and with crisp hair of the same hue. He is a 
 boy in whom I have perceived nothing incompatible with 
 habits of studious inquiry and meditation, unless an evan- 
 escent black eye (I was delicate of inquiring how occasioned) 
 should be so considered. To him am I indebted for ability 
 to identify a Custom-house boat at any distance, and for 
 acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies observed by 
 a homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the 
 Custom-house officers go aboard her. But for him, I might 
 never have heard of the dumb-ague,’’ respecting which 
 malady I am now learned. Had I never sat at his feet, I 
 might have finished ray mortal career and never known that 
 when I see a white horse on a barge’s sail, that barge is a 
 lime-barge. For precious secrets in reference to beer, am I 
 likewise beholden to him, involving warning against the beer 
 of a certain establishment, by reason of its having turned 
 sour through failure in point of demand : though my young 
 sage is not of opinion that similar deterioration has befallen 
 the ale. He has also enlightened me touching the mushrooms 
 of the marches, and has gently reproved my ignorance in 
 having supposed them to be impregnated with salt. Plis 
 manner of imparting information, is thoughtful, and appro- 
 priate to the scene. As he reclines beside me, he pitches 
 into the river a little stone or piece of grit, and then delivers 
 himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the centre of 
 the spreading circle that it makes in the water. He never 
 improves my mind without observing this formula. 
 
 With the wise boy — whom I know by no other name than 
 the Spirit of the Fort — I recently consorted on a breezy day 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 255 
 
 when the river leaped about us and was full of life. I had 
 seen the sheaved corn carrying in the golden fields as I came 
 down to the river ; and the rosy farmer, watching his laboring- 
 men in the saddle on his cob, had told me how he had reaped 
 his two hundred and sixty acres of long-strawed corn last 
 week, and how a better week’s work he had never done in all 
 his days. Peace and abundance were on the country-side in 
 beautiful forms and beautiful colors, and the harvest seemed 
 even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea in the 
 yellow laden barges that mellowed the distance. 
 
 It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing 
 his remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in 
 that reach of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions 
 on naval architecture, and informed me that he would like 
 to be an engineer. I found him up to everything that is done 
 in the contracting line by Messrs. Peto and Brassey — cunning 
 in the article of concrete — mellow in the matter of iron — 
 great on the subject of gunnery. When he spoke of pile- 
 driving and sluice-making, he left me not a leg to stand on, 
 and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his forbearance with 
 me in my disabled state. While he thus discoursed, he several 
 times directed his eyes to one distant quarter of. the landscape, 
 and spoke with vague mysterious awe of ^Hhe Yard.” Pon- 
 dering his lessons after we had parted, I bethought me that 
 the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it 
 lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the wind- 
 mills, as if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful 
 times, and sought to trouble no man. Taken with this mod- 
 esty on the part of the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard’s 
 acquaintance. 
 
 My good opinion of the Yard’s retiring character was not 
 dashed by nearer approach. It resounded with the noise of 
 hammers beating upon iron ; and the great sheds or slips under 
 which the mighty men-of-war are built, loomed business-like 
 when contemplated from the opposite side of the river. For 
 all that, however, the Yard made no display, but kept itself 
 snug under hillsides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and orchards ; 
 its great chimneys smoking with a quiet — almost a lazy — 
 air, like giants smoking tobacco ; and the great Shears moored 
 
256 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TEAVELLER. 
 
 off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, 
 like the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The store of 
 cannon on the neighboring gun-wharf, had an innocent toy- 
 like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over 
 them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement. 
 As the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed 
 for the identical little man who had the little gun, and whose 
 bullets they were made of lead, lead, lead. 
 
 Crossing the river and landing at the Stairs, where a drift 
 of chips and weed had been trying to land before me and had 
 not succeeded, but had got into a corner instead, I found the 
 very street-posts to be cannon, and the architectural orna- 
 ments to be shells. And so I came to the Yard, which was 
 shut up tight and strong with great folded gates, like an enor- 
 mous patent safe. These gates devouring me, I became 
 digested into the Yard ; and it had, at first, a clean-swept 
 holiday air, as if it had given over work until next war-time. 
 Though indeed a quantity of hemp for rope was tumbling out 
 of storehouses, even there, which would hardly be lying like 
 so much hay on the white stones if the Yard were as placid 
 as it pretended. 
 
 Ding, Clash, Dong, Bang, Boom, Battle, Clash, Bang, Clink, 
 Bang, Dong, Bang, Clatter, bang bang BANG ! What on 
 earth is this ! This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron 
 armor-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her 
 now ; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides, 
 over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her 
 decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling 
 and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is 
 possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, meas- 
 urers, calkers, armorers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights ; twelve 
 hundred dingers, dashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers 
 bangers bangers ! Yet all this stupendous uproar around the 
 rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which 
 the perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day 
 when the full work is in hand for which this is but note of 
 preparation — the day when the scuppers that are now fitting 
 like great dry thirsty conduit-pipes, shall run red. All these 
 busy figures between decks, dimly seen bending at their work 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 257 
 
 in smoke and fire, are as nothing to the figures that shall do 
 work here of another kind in smoke and fire, that day. These 
 steam-worked engines alongside, helping the ship by travel- 
 ling to and fro, and wafting tons of iron plates about, as 
 though they were so many leaves of trees, would be rent limb 
 from limb if they stood by here for a minute then. To think 
 that this Achilles, monstrous compound of iron tank and 
 oaken chest, can ever swim or roll ! To think that any force 
 of wind and wave could ever break her ! To think that wher- 
 ever 1 see a glowing red-hot iron point thrust out of her side 
 from within — as I do now, there, and there, and there ! — 
 and two watching men on a stage without, with bared arms 
 and sledge-hammers, strike at it fiercely, and repeat their 
 blows until it is black and flat, I see a rivet being driven 
 home, of which there are many in every iron plate, and thou- 
 sands upon thousands in the ship ! To think that the diffi- 
 culty I experience in appreciating the ship’s size when I am 
 on board, arises from her being a series of iron tanks and 
 oaken chests, so that internally she is ever finishing and ever 
 beginning, and half of her might be smashed, and yet the 
 remaining half suffice and be sound. Then, to go over the 
 side again and down among the ooze and wet to the bottom of 
 the dock, in the depths of the subterranean forest of dog- 
 shores and stays that hold her up, and to see the immense 
 mass bulging out against the upper light, and tapering down 
 towards me, is, with great pains and much clambering, to 
 arrive at an impossibility of realizing that this is a ship at all, 
 and to become possessed by the fancy that it is an enormous 
 immovable edifice set up in an ancient amphitheatre (say, 
 that at Verona), and almost filling it ! Yet what would even 
 these things be, without the tributary workshops and the 
 mechanical powers for piercing the iron plates — four inches 
 and a half thick — for rivets, shaping them under hydraulic 
 pressure to the finest tapering turns of the ship’s lines, and 
 paring them away, with knives shaped like the beaks of 
 strong and cruel birds, to the nicest requirements of the 
 design ! These machines of tremendous force, so easily 
 directed by one attentive face and presiding hand, seem to me 
 to have in them something of the retiring character of the 
 
258 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Yard. Obedient monster, please to bite this mass of iron 
 through and through, at equal distances, where these regular 
 chalk-marks are, all round.’’ Monster looks at its work, and 
 lifting its ponderous head, replies, I don’t particularly want 
 to do it ; but if it must be done ! ” — The solid metal wriggles 
 out, hot from the monster’s crunching tooth, and it is done. 
 
 Dutiful monster, observe this other mass of iron. It is 
 required to be pared away, according to this delicately lessen- 
 ing and arbitrary line, which please to look at.” Monster 
 (who has been in a reverie) brings down its blunt head, and, 
 much in the manner of Doctor Johnson, closely looks along 
 the line — very closely, being somewhat near-sighted. 
 don’t particularly want to do it ; but if it must be done ! ” — 
 Monster takes another near-sighted look, takes aim, and the 
 tortured piece writhes off, and falls, a hot tight-twisted snake, 
 among the ashes. The making of the rivets is merely a pretty 
 round game, played by a man and a boy, who put red-hot 
 barley sugar in a Pope Joan board, and immediately rivets 
 fall out of window ; but the tone of the great machines is the 
 tone of the great Yard and the great country: ^^We don’t par- 
 ticularly want to do it ; but if it must be done ! ” — 
 
 How such a prodigious mass as the Achilles can ever be 
 held by such comparatively little anchors as those intended 
 for her and lying near her here, is a mystery of seamanshij) 
 which I will refer to the wise boy. For my own part, I 
 should as soon have thought of tethering an elephant to a 
 tent-peg, or the larger hippopotamus in the Zoological Gar- 
 dens to my shirt-pin. Yonder in the river, alongside a hulk, 
 lie two of this ship’s hollow iron masts. They are large 
 enough for the eye, I find, and so are all her other appliances. 
 I wonder why only her anchors look small. 
 
 I have no present time to think about it, for I am going to 
 see the workshops where they make all the oars used in the 
 British Navy. A pretty large pile of building, I opine, and a 
 pretty long job ! As to the building, I am soon disappointed, 
 because the work is all done in one loft. And as to a long 
 job — what is this ? Two rather large mangles with a swarm 
 of butterflies hovering over them ? What can there be in the 
 mangles that attracts butterflies ? 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 259 
 
 Drawing nearer, I discern that these are not mangles, but 
 intricate machines, set with knives and saws and planes, which 
 cut smooth and straight here, and slantwise there,' and now 
 cut such a depth, and now miss cutting altogether, according 
 to the predestined requirements of the pieces of wood that are 
 pushed on below them : each of which pieces is to be an oar, 
 and is roughly adapted to that purpose before it takes its final 
 leave of far-off forests, and sails for England. Likewise I 
 discern that the butterflies are not true butterflies, but wooden 
 shavings, which, being spirted up from the wood by the vio- 
 lence of the machinery, and kept in rapid and not equal move- 
 ment by the impulse of its rotation on the air, flutter and 
 play, and rise and fall, and conduct themselves as like butter- 
 flies as heart could wish. Suddenly the noise and motion 
 cease, and the butterflies drop dead. An oar has been made 
 since I came in, wanting the shaped handle. As quickly as I 
 can follow it with my eye and thought, the same oar is carried 
 to a turning-lathe. A whirl and a Nick ! Handle made. Oar 
 finished. 
 
 The exquisite beauty and efficiency of this machinery need 
 no illustration, but happen to have a pointed illustration 
 to-day. A pair of oars of unusual size chance to be wanted 
 for a special purpose, and they have to be made by hand. 
 Side by side with the subtle and facile machine, and side by 
 side with the fast-growing pile of oars on the floor, a man 
 shapes out these special oars with an axe. Attended by no 
 butterflies, and chipping and dinting, by comparison as leisurely 
 as if he were a laboring Pagan getting them ready against his 
 decease at threescore and ten, to take with him as a present 
 to Charon for his boat, the man (aged about thirty) plies his 
 task. The machine would make a regulation oar while the 
 man wipes his forehead. The man might be buried in a 
 mound made of the strips of thin broad wooden ribbon torn 
 from the wood whirled into oars as the minutes fall from the 
 clock, before he had done a forenoon’s work with his axe. 
 
 Passing from this wonderful sight to the Ships again — for 
 my heart, as to the Yard, is where the ships are — I notice 
 certain unfinished wooden walls left seasoning on the stocks, 
 pending the solution of the merits of the wood and iron ques- 
 
260 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 tion, and having an air of biding their time with surly confi- 
 dence. The names of these worthies are set up beside them, 
 together with their capacity in guns ^ — a custom highly con- 
 ducive to ease and satisfaction in social intercourse, if it 
 could be adapted to mankind. By a plank more gracefully 
 pendulous than substantial, I make bold to go aboard a trans- 
 port ship (iron screw) just sent in from the contractor’s yard 
 to be inspected and passed. She is a very gratifying experi- 
 ence, in the simplicity and humanity of her arrangements 
 for troops, in her provision for light and air and cleanliness, 
 and in her care for women and children. It occurs to me, as 
 I explore her, that I would require a handsome sum of money 
 to go aboard her, at midnight by the Dockyard bell, and stay 
 aboard alone till morning ; for surely she must be haunted by 
 a crowd of ghosts of obstinate old martinets, mournfully 
 flapping their cherubic epaulets over the changed times. 
 Though still we may learn from the astounding ways and 
 means in our Yards now, more highly than ever to respect 
 the forefathers who got to sea, and fought the sea, and held 
 the sea, -without them. This remembrance putting me in the 
 best of tempers with an old hulk, very green as to her copper, 
 and generally dim and patched, I pull off my hat to her. 
 Which salutation a callow and downy-faced young officer of 
 Engineers, going by at the moment, perceiving, appropriates 
 — and to which he is most heartily welcome, I am sure. 
 
 Having been torn to pieces (in imagination) by the steam 
 circular saws, perpendicular saws, horizontal saws, and saws of 
 eccentric action, I come to the sauntering part of my expedi- 
 tion, and consequently to the core of my Uncommercial pur- 
 suits. 
 
 Everywhere, as I saunter up and down the Yard, I meet 
 with tokens of its quiet and retiring character. There is a 
 gravity upon its red brick offices and houses, a staid pretence 
 of having nothing worth mentioning to do, an avoidance of 
 display, which I never saw out of England. The white stones 
 of the pavement present no other trace of Achilles and his 
 twelve hundred banging men (not one of whom strikes an 
 attitude) than a few occasional echoes. But for a whisper in 
 the air suggestive of sawdust and shavings, the oar-making 
 
THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 261 
 
 and the saws of many movements might be miles away. 
 Down below here, is the great reservoir of water where timber 
 is steeped in various temperatures, as a part of its seasoning 
 process. Above it, on a tramroad supported by pillars, is a 
 Chinese Enchanter’s Car, which fishes the logs up, when suffi- 
 ciently steeped, and rolls smoothly away with them to stack 
 them. When I was a child (the Yard being then familiar to 
 me) I used to think that I should like to play at Chinese En- 
 chanter, and to have that apparatus placed at my disposal for 
 the purpose by a beneficent country. I still think that I should 
 rather like to try the effect of writing a book in it. Its retire- 
 ment is complete, and to go gliding to and fro among the stacks 
 of timber would be a convenient kind of travelling in foreign 
 countries — among the forests of North America, the sodden 
 Honduras swamps, the dark pine woods, the Norwegian frosts, 
 and the tropical heats, rainy seasons, and thunder-storms. 
 The costly store of timber is stacked and stowed away in 
 sequestered places, with the pervading avoidance of flourish 
 or effect. It makes as little of itself as possible, and calls to 
 no one Come and look at me ! ” And yet it is picked out 
 from the trees of the world ; picked out for length, picked 
 out for breadth, picked out for straightness, picked out for 
 crookedness, chosen with an eye to every need of ship and 
 boat. Strangely twisted pieces lie about, precious in the sight 
 of shipwrights. Sauntering through these groves, I come 
 upon an open glade where workmen are examining some 
 timber recently delivered. Quite a pastoral scene, with a 
 background of river and windmill ! and no more like War 
 than the American States are at present like an Union. 
 
 Sauntering among the ropemaking, I am spun into a state 
 of blissful indolence, wherein my rope of life seems to be so 
 untwisted by the process as that I can see back to very early 
 days indeed, when my bad dreams — they were frightful, 
 though my more mature understanding has never made out 
 why — were of an interminable sort of ropemaking, with long 
 minute filaments for strands, which when they were spun 
 home together close to my eyes, occasioned screaming. Next, 
 I walk among the quiet lofts of stores — of sails, spars, rigging, 
 ships’ boats — determined to believe that somebody in authority 
 
262 
 
 THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 wears a girdle and bends beneath the weight of a massive 
 bunch of keys, and that, when such a thing is wanted, he 
 comes telling his keys like Blue Beard, and opens such a door. 
 Impassive as the long lofts look, let the electric battery send 
 down the word, and the shutters and doors shall fly open, and 
 such a fleet of armed ships, under steam and under sail, shall 
 burst forth as will charge the old Medway — where the merry 
 Stuart let the Dutch come, while his not so merry sailors 
 starved in the streets — with something worth looking at to 
 carry to the sea. Thus I idle round to the Medway again, 
 where it is now flood tide ; and I find the river evincing a 
 strong solicitude to force a way into the dry dock where 
 Achilles is waited on by the twelve hundred bangers, with 
 intent to bear the whole away before they are ready. 
 
 To the last, the Yard puts a quiet face upon it ; for I make 
 my way to the gates through a little quiet grove of trees, 
 shading the quaintest of Dutch landing-places, where the leaf- 
 speckled shadow of a shipwright just passing away at the 
 further end might be the shadow of Bussian Peter himself. 
 So, the doors of the great patent safe at last close upon me, 
 and I take boat again : somehow, thinking as the oars dip, of 
 braggart Pistol and his brood, and of the quiet monsters of 
 the Yard, with their ^^We don’t particularly want to do it; 
 but if it must be done ! ” — Scrunch. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 263 
 
 XXV. 
 
 IN THE FRENCH-FLEMISH COUNTRY. 
 
 It is neither a bold nor a diversified country/’ said I to 
 myself, this country which is three-quarters Flemish, and a 
 quarter French ; yet it has its attractions too. Though great 
 lines of railway traverse it, the trains leave it behind, and go 
 puffing off to Paris and the South, to Belgium and Germany, 
 to the Northern Sea-Coast of France, and to England, and 
 merely smoke it a little in passing. Then I don’t know it, 
 and that is a good reason for being here ; and I can’t pro- 
 nounce half the long queer names I see inscribed over the 
 shops, and that is another good reason for being here, since 
 I surely ought to learn how.” In short, I was here,” and I 
 wanted an excuse for not going away from here, and I made 
 it to my satisfaction, and stayed here. 
 
 What part of my decision was borne by Monsieur P. Salcy, 
 is of no moment, though I own to encountering that gentle- 
 man’s name on a red bill on the wall, before I made up my 
 mind. Monsieur P. Salcy, par permission de M. le Maire,” 
 had established his theatre in the whitewashed Hotel de Ville, 
 on the steps of which illustrious edifice I stood. And Monsieur 
 P. Salcy, privileged director of such theatre, situate in the 
 first theatrical arrondissement of the department of the 
 North,” invited French-Flemish mankind to come and par- 
 take of the intellectual banquet provided by his family of 
 dramatic artists, fifteen subjects in number. ^^La Famille 
 P. Salcy, composee d’artistes dramatiques, au nombre de 15 
 sujets.” 
 
 Neither a bold nor a diversified country, I say again, and 
 withal an untidy country, but pleasant enough to ride in, 
 when the paved roads over the flats and through the hollows, 
 are not too deep in black mud. A country so sparely 
 inhabited, that I wonder where the peasants who till and sow 
 
264 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 and reap the ground, can possibly dwell, and also by what 
 invisible balloons they are conveyed from their distant homes 
 into the fields at sunrise and back again at sunset. The 
 occasional few poor cottages and farms in this region, surely 
 cannot afford shelter to the numbers necessary to the culti- 
 vation, albeit the work is done so very deliberately, that on 
 one long harvest day I have seen, in twelve miles, about twice 
 as many men and women (all told) reaping and binding. Yet 
 have I seen more cattle, more sheep, more pigs, and all in 
 better case, than where there is purer French spoken, and 
 also better ricks — round swelling peg-top ricks, well thatched : 
 not a shapeless brown heap, like the toast of a Giant’s toast 
 and water, pinned to the earth with one of the skewers out of 
 his kitchen. A good custom they have about here, likewise, 
 of prolonging the sloping tiled roof of farm or cottage, so 
 that it overhangs three or four feet, carrying off the wet, and 
 making a good drying-place wherein to hang up herbs, or 
 implements, or what not. A better custom than the popular 
 one of keeping the refuse-heap and puddle close before the 
 house door: which, although I paint my dwelling never so 
 brightly blue (and it cannot be too blue for me, hereabouts), 
 will bring fever inside my door. Wonderful poultry of the 
 French-Flemish country, why take the trouble to he poultry ? 
 Why not stop short at eggs in the rising generation, and die 
 out and have done with it ? Parents of chickens have I seen 
 this day, followed by their wretched young families, scratching 
 nothing out of the mud with an air — tottering about on legs 
 so scraggy and weak, that the valiant word drumsticks be- 
 comes a mockery when applied to them, and the crow of the 
 lord and master has been a mere dejected case of croup. 
 Carts have I seen, and other agricultural instruments, un- 
 wieldy, dislocated, monstrous. Poplar-trees by the thousand 
 fringe the fields and fringe the end of the flat landscape, so 
 that I feel, looking straight on before me, as if, when I pass 
 the extremest fringe on the low horizon, I shall tumble over 
 into space. Little whitewashed black holes of chapels, with 
 barred doors and Flemish inscriptions, abound at roadside 
 corners, and often they are garnished with a sheaf of wooden 
 crosses, like children’s swords ; or, in their default, some 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 265 
 
 hollow old tree with a saint roosting in it, is similarly deco- 
 rated, or a pole with a very diminutive saint enshrined aloft 
 in a sort of sacred pigeon-house. Not that we are deficient 
 in such decoration in the town here, for, over at the church 
 yonder, outside the building, is a scenic representation of the 
 Crucifixion, built up with old bricks and stones, and made out 
 with painted canvas and wooden figures : the whole sur- 
 mounting the dusty skull of some holy personage (perhaps), 
 shut up behind a little ashy iron grate, as if it were originally 
 put there to be cooked, and the fire had long gone out. A 
 windmilly country this, though the windmills are so damp 
 and rickety, that they nearly k'nock themselves off their legs 
 at every turn of their sails, and creak in loud complaint. A 
 weaving country, too, for in the wayside cottages the loom 
 goes wearily — rattle and click, rattle and click — and, looking 
 in, I see the poor weaving peasant, man or woman, bending 
 at the work, while the child, working too, turns a little hand- 
 wheel put upon the ground to suit its height. An uncon- 
 scionable monster, the loom in a small dwelling, asserting 
 himself ungenerously as the bread-winner, straddling over 
 the children’s straw beds, cramping the family in space and 
 air, and making himself generally objectionable and tyrannical. 
 He is tributary, too, to ugly mills and factories and bleaching- 
 grounds, rising out of the sluiced fields in an abrupt bare 
 way, disdaining, like himself, to be ornamental or accommo- 
 dating. Surrounded by these things, here I stood on the 
 steps of the Hotel de Ville, persuaded to remain by the P. 
 Salcy Family, fifteen dramatic subjects strong. 
 
 There was a Fair besides. The double persuasion being 
 irresistible, and my sponge being left behind at the last Hotel, 
 I made the tour of the little town to buy another. In the 
 small sunny shops — mercers, opticians, and druggist-grocers, 
 with here and there an emporium of religious images — the 
 gravest of old spectacled Flemish husbands and wives sat 
 contemplating one another across bare counters, while the 
 wasps, who seemed to have taken military possession of the 
 town, and to have placed it under wasp-martial law, executed 
 warlike manoeuvres in the windows. Other shops the wasps 
 had entirely to themselves, and, nobody cared and nobody 
 
266 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 came when I beat with a five-franc piece upon the board of 
 custom. What I sought was no more to be found than if I 
 had sought a nugget of Californian gold : so I went, sponge- 
 less, to pass the evening with the Family P. Salcy. 
 
 The members of the Family P. Salcy were so fat and so 
 like one another — fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, 
 and aunts — that I think the local audience were much con- 
 fused about the plot of the piece under representation, and to 
 the last expected that everybody must turn out to be the 
 long-lost relative of everybody else. The Theatre was estab- 
 lished on the top story of the Hotel de Ville, and was 
 approached by a long bare staircase, whereon, in an airy 
 situation, one of the P. Salcy Family — a stout gentleman 
 imperfectly repressed by a belt — took the money. This occa- 
 sioned the greatest excitement of the evening ; for, no sooner 
 did the curtain rise on the introductory Vaudeville, and reveal 
 in the person of the young lover (singing a very short song 
 with his eyebrows) apparently the very same identical stout 
 gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, than everybody 
 rushed out of the playing-house, to ascertain whether he could 
 possibly have put on that dress-coat, that clear complexion, 
 and those arched black vocal eyebrows, in so short a space of 
 time. It then became manifest that this was another stout 
 gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt : to whom, before 
 the spectators had recovered their presence of mind, entered 
 a third stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, 
 exactly like him. These two subjects,’’ making with the 
 money-taker three of the announced fifteen, fell into conver- 
 sation touching a charming young widow : who, presently 
 appearing, proved to be a stout lady altogether irrepressible 
 by any means — quite a parallel case to the American Negro 
 — fourth of the fifteen subjects, and sister of the fifth who 
 presided over the check-department. In good time the whole 
 of the fifteen subjects were dramatically presented, and we 
 had the inevitable Ma Mere, Ma Mere ! and also the inevitable 
 malediction d’un pere, and likewise the inevitable Marquis, 
 and also the inevitable provincial young man, weak-minded 
 but faithful, who followed Julie to Paris, and cried and 
 laughed and choked all at once. The story was wrought out 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 267 
 
 with the help of a virtuous spinning-wheel in the beginning, 
 a vicious set of diamonds in the middle, and a rheumatic 
 blessing (which arrived by post) from Ma Mere towards the 
 end ; the whole resulting in a small sword in the body of one 
 of the stout gentlemen imperfectly repressed by a belt, fifty 
 thousand francs per annum and a decoration to the other 
 stout gentleman imperfectly repressed by a belt, and an 
 assurance from everybody to the provincial young man that 
 if he were not supremely happy — which he seemed to have 
 no reason whatever for being — he ought to be. This afforded 
 him a final opportunity of crying and laughing and choking 
 all at once, and sent the audience home sentimentally 
 delighted. Audience more attentive or better behaved there 
 could not possibly be, though the places of second rank in 
 the Theatre of the Family P. Salcy were sixpence each in 
 English money, and the places of first rank a shilling. How 
 the fifteen subjects ever got so fat upon it, the kind Heavens 
 know. 
 
 What gorgeous china figures of knights and ladies, gilded 
 till they gleamed again, I might have bought at the Fair for 
 the garniture of my home, if I had been a French-Flemish 
 peasant, and had had the money ! What shining coffee-cups 
 and saucers I might have won at the turntables, if I had had 
 the luck ! .Eavishing perfumery also, and sweetmeats, I might 
 have speculated in, or I might have fired for prizes at a multi- 
 tude of little dolls in niches, and might have hit the doll of 
 dolls, and won francs and fame. Or, being a French-Flemish 
 youth, I might have been drawn in a hand-cart by my com- 
 peers, to tilt for municipal rewards at the water-quintain ; 
 which, unless I sent my lance clean through the ring, emptied 
 a full bucket over me ; to fend off which, the competitors 
 wore grotesque old scarecrow hats. Or, being French-Flemish 
 man or woman, boy or girl, I might have circled all night on 
 my hobby-horse in a stately cavalcade of hobby-horses four 
 abreast, interspersed with triumphal cars, going round and 
 round and round and round, we the goodly company singing 
 a ceaseless chorus to the music of the barrel-organ, drum, and 
 cymbals. On the whole, not more monotonous than the Eing 
 in Hyde Park, London, and much merrier ; for when do the 
 
268 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 circling company sing chorus, there, to the barrel-organ, when 
 do the ladies embrace their horses round the neck with both 
 arms, when do the gentlemen fan the ladies with the tails of 
 their gallant steeds ? On all these revolving delights, and on 
 their own especial lamps and Chinese lanterns revolving with 
 them, the thoughtful weaver-face brightens, and the Hotel de 
 Ville sheds an illuminated line of gaslight : while above it, the 
 Eagle of France, gas-outlined and apparently afflicted with 
 the prevailing infirmities that have lighted on the poultry, is 
 in a very undecided state of policy, and as a bird moulting. 
 Flags fiutter all around. Such is the prevailing gayety that 
 the keeper of the prison sits on the stone steps outside the 
 prison door, to have a look at the world that is not locked up ; 
 while that agreeable retreat, the wine-shop opposite to the 
 prison in the prison-alley (its sign La Tranquillite, because of 
 its charming situation), resounds with the voices of the shep- 
 herds and shepherdesses who resort there this festive night. 
 And it reminds me that only this afternoon, I saw a shepherd 
 in trouble, tending this way, over the jagged stones of a neigh- 
 boring street. A magnificent sight it was, to behold him in 
 his blouse, a feeble little jog-trot rustic, swept along by the 
 wind of two immense gendarmes, in cocked-hats for which 
 the street was hardly wide enough, each carrying a bundle of 
 stolen property that would not have held his shoulder-knot, 
 and clanking a sabre that dwarfed the prisoner. 
 
 Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to you at this Fair, as a 
 mark of my confidence in the people of this so-renowned town, 
 and as an act of homage to their good sense and fine taste, the 
 Ventriloquist, the Ventriloquist ! Further, Messieurs et Mes- 
 dames, I present to you the Face-Maker, the Physiognomist, 
 the great Changer of Countenances, who transforms the features 
 that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession 
 of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending. Mes- 
 sieurs et Mesdames, all the contortions, energetic and expres- 
 sive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions 
 of the human heart, as Love, Jealousy, Revenge, Hatred, 
 Avarice, Despair ! Hi hi. Ho ho, Lu lu. Come in ! ’’ To this 
 effect, with an occasional smite upon a sonorous kind of tam- 
 bourine — bestowed with a will, as if it represented the people 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 269 
 
 who won’t come in — holds forth a man of lofty and severe 
 demeanor ; a man in stately uniform, gloomy with the knowl- 
 edge he possesses of the inner secrets of the booth. Come 
 in, come in ! Your opportunity presents itself to-night ; to- 
 morrow it will be gone forever. To-morrow morning by the 
 Express Train the railroad will reclaim the Ventriloquist and 
 the Face-Maker ! Algeria will reclaim the Ventriloquist and 
 the Face-Maker ! Yes ! For the honor of their country they 
 have accepted propositions of a magnitude incredible, to appear 
 in Algeria. See them for the last time before their departure ! 
 We go to commence on the instant. Hi hi ! Ho ho ! Lu lu ! 
 Come in ! Take the money that now ascends, Madame ; but 
 after that, no more, for we commence ! Come in ! ” 
 
 Nevertheless, the eyes both of the gloomy Speaker and of 
 Madame receiving sous in a muslin bower, survey the crowd 
 pretty sharply after the ascending money has ascended, to 
 detect any lingering sous at the turning-point. ^^Come in, 
 come in ! Is there any more money, Madame, on the point of 
 ascending ? If so, we wait for it. If not, we commence ! ’’ 
 The orator looks back over his shoulder to say it, lashing the 
 spectators with the conviction that he beholds through the 
 folds of the drapery into which he is about to plunge, the Ven- 
 triloquist and the Face-Maker. Several sous burst out of 
 pockets, and ascend. Come up then. Messieurs ! ” exclaims 
 Madame in a shrill voice, and beckoning with a bejewelled 
 finger. Come up ! This presses. Monsieur has commanded 
 that they commence ! ” Monsieur dives into his Interior, and 
 the last half-dozen of us follow. His Interior is comparatively 
 severe ; his Exterior also. A true Temple of Art needs noth- 
 ing but seats, drapery, a small table with two moderator lamps 
 hanging over it, and an ornamental looking-glass let into the 
 wall. Monsieur in uniform gets behind the table and surveys 
 us with disdain, his forehead becoming diabolically intellectual 
 under the moderators. Messieurs et Mesdames, I present to 
 you the Ventriloquist. He will commence with the celebrated 
 Experience of the bee in the window. The bee, apparently 
 the veritable bee of Nature, will hover in the window and 
 about the room. He will be with difficulty caught in the hand 
 of Monsieur the Ventriloquist — he will escape — he will again 
 
270 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 hover — at length he will be recaptured by Monsieur the Ven- 
 triloquist, and will be with difficulty put into a bottle. Achieve 
 then, Monsieur ! ” Here the proprietor is replaced behind the 
 table by the Ventriloquist, who is thin and sallow, and of a 
 weakly aspect. While the bee is in progress. Monsieur the 
 Proprietor sits apart on a stool, immersed in dark and remote 
 thought. The moment the bee is bottled, he stalks forward, 
 eyes us gloomily as we applaud, and then announces, sternly 
 waving his hand : The magnificent Experience of the child 
 with the whooping-cough The child disposed of, he starts 
 up as before. The superb and extraordinary Experience of 
 the dialogue between Monsieur Tatambour in his dining-room, 
 and his domestic, Jerome, in the cellar; concluding with the 
 songsters of the grove, and the Concert of domestic Farmyard 
 animals.’^ All this done, and well done. Monsieur the Ven- 
 triloquist withdraws, and Monsieur the Face-Maker bursts in, 
 as if his retiring-room were a mile long instead of a yard. A 
 corpulent little man in a large white waistcoat, with a comic 
 countenance, and with a wig in his hand. Irreverent disposi- 
 tion to laugh, instantly checked by the tremendous gravity of 
 the Face-Maker, who intimates in his bow that if we expect 
 that sort of thing we are mistaken. A very little shaving- 
 glass with a leg behind it is handed in, and placed on the 
 table before the Face-Maker. Messieurs et Mesdames, with 
 no other assistance than this mirror and this wig, I shall have 
 the honor of showing you a thousand characters.’^ As a prep- 
 aration, the Face-Maker with both hands gouges himself, and 
 turns his mouth inside out. He then becomes frightfully 
 grave again, and says to the Proprietor, I am ready ! ” Pro- 
 prietor stalks forth from baleful reverie, and announces The 
 Young Conscript!” Face-Maker claps his wig on, hind side 
 before, looks in the glass, and appears above it as a conscript 
 so very imbecile, and squinting so extremely hard, that I 
 should think the State would never get any good of him. 
 Thunders of applause. Face-Maker dips behind the looking- 
 glass, brings his own hair forward, is himself again, is awfully 
 grave. ^^A distinguished inhabitant of the Faubourg St. 
 Germain.” Face-Maker dips, rises, is supposed to be aged, 
 blear-eyed, toothless, slightly palsied, supernaturally polite, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 271 
 
 evidently of noble birth. The oldest member of the Corps 
 of Invalides on the fete-day of his master.’^ Face-Maker dips, 
 rises, wears the wig on one side, has become the feeblest mili- 
 tary bore in existence, and (it is clear) would lie frightfully 
 about his past achievements, if he were not confined to panto- 
 mime. ^^The Miser Face-Maker dips, rises, clutches a 
 bag, and every hair of the wig is on end to express that he 
 lives in continual dread of thieves. ^^The Genius of France 
 Face-Maker dips, rises, wig pushed back and smoothed flat, 
 little cocked-hat (artfully concealed till now) put a-top of it, 
 Face-MakeFs white waistcoat much advanced, Face-Maker’s 
 left hand in bosom of white waistcoat, Face-Maker’s right 
 hand behind his back. Thunders. This is the first of three 
 positions of the Genius of France. In the second position, 
 the Face-Maker takes snuff ; in the third, rolls up his right 
 hand, and surveys illimitable armies through that pocket-glass. 
 The Face-Maker then, by putting out his tongue, and wearing 
 the wig nohow in particular, becomes the Village Idiot. The 
 most remarkable feature in the whole of his ingenious per- 
 formance, is, that whatever he does to disguise himself, has the 
 effect of rendering him rather more like himself than he was 
 at first. 
 
 There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure 
 of recognizing several fields of glory with which I became 
 well acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now 
 doing duty as Mexican victories. The change was neatly 
 effected by some extra smoking of the Eussians, and by 
 permitting the camp followers free range in the foreground 
 to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As no British troops 
 had ever happened to be within sight when the artist took his 
 original sketches, it followed fortunately that none were in the 
 way now. 
 
 The Fair wound up with a ball. Eespecting the particular 
 night of the week on which the ball took place, I decline to 
 commit myself ; merely mentioning that it was held in a 
 stable-yard so very close to the railway, that it is a mercy the 
 locomotive did not set fire to it. (In Scotland, I suppose it 
 would have done so.) There, in a tent prettily decorated 
 with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy flags, the people 
 
272 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 danced all night. It was not an expensive recreation, the 
 price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady being one and 
 threepence in English money, and even of that small sum five- 
 pence was reclaimable for consommation : which word I 
 venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, 
 at the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and 
 lemon in it. It was a ball of great good humor and of great 
 enjoyment, though very many of the dancers must have been 
 as poor as the fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family. 
 
 In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot 
 with me to this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the 
 measure of simple enjoyment that it poured into the dull 
 French-Flemish country life. How dull that is, I had an 
 opportunity of considering when the Fair was over — when 
 the tricolored flags were withdrawn from the windows of the 
 houses on the Place where the Fair was held — when the 
 windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time — 
 when the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its 
 eagle — when the two paviors, whom I take to form the entire 
 paving population of the town, were ramming down the stones 
 which had been pulled up for the erection of decorative poles 
 — when the jailer had slammed his gate, and sulkily locked 
 himself in with his charges. But then, as I paced the ring which 
 marked the track of the departed hobby-horses on the market- 
 place, pondering in my mind how long some hobby-horses do 
 leave their tracks in public ways, and how difficult they are to 
 erase, my eyes were greeted with a goodly sight. I beheld 
 four male personages thoughtfully pacing the Place together, 
 in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the town, and hav- 
 ing upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not belonging 
 to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas, another 
 in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock, the 
 fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made 
 out of old umbrellas. All wore dust-colored shoes. My heart 
 beat high ; for, in those four male personages, although com- 
 plexionless and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the 
 Family P. Salcy. Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft 
 of the youthful smoothness of cheek which is imparted by 
 what is termed in Albion a Whitechapel shave (and which 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 273 
 
 is, in fact, whitening, judiciously applied to the jaws with 
 the palm of the hand), I recognized them. As I stood admir- 
 ing, there emerged from the yard of a lowly Cabaret, the 
 excellent Ma Mm*e, Ma Mere, with the words, The soup is 
 served ; words which so elated the subject in the canvas suit, 
 that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing 
 with his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas 
 trousers, after the Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, 
 the last I saw of him was, that he looked in through a window 
 (at the soup, no doubt) on one leg. 
 
 Full of this pleasure, I shortly afterwards departed from 
 the town, little dreaming of an addition to my good fortune. 
 But more was in reserve. I went by a train which was heavy 
 with third-class carriages, full of young fellows (well guarded) 
 who had drawn unlucky numbers in the last conscription, and 
 were on their way to a famous French garrison town where 
 much of the raw military material is worked up into soldiery. 
 At the station they had been sitting about, in their thread- 
 bare homespun blue garments, with their poor little bundles 
 under their arms, covered with dust and clay, and the various 
 soils of France ; sad enough at heart, most of them, but put- 
 ting a good face upon it, and slapping their breasts and sing- 
 ing choruses on the smallest provocation; the gayer spirits 
 shouldering half-loaves of black bread speared upon their 
 walking-sticks. As we went along, they were audible at every 
 station, chorusing wildly out of tune, and feigning the highest 
 hilarity. After a while, however, they began to leave off 
 singing, and to laugh naturally, while at intervals there 
 mingled with their laughter the barking of a dog. Now, I 
 had to alight short of their destination, and, as that stoppage 
 of the train was attended with a quantity of horn-blowing, 
 bell-ringing, and proclamation of what Messieurs les Voya- 
 geurs were to do, and were not to do, in order to reach their 
 respective destinations, I had ample leisure to go forward on 
 the platform to take a parting look at my recruits, whose 
 heads were all out at window, and who were laughing like 
 delighted children. Then I perceived that a large poodle 
 with a pink nose, who had been their travelling companion 
 and the cause of their mirth, stood on his hind-legs presenting 
 
274 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 arms on the extreme verge of the platform, ready to salute 
 them as the train went off. This poodle wore a military 
 shako (it is unnecessary to add, very much on one side over 
 one eye), a little military coat, and the regulation white 
 gaiters. He was armed with a little musket and a little 
 sword-bayonet, and he stood presenting arms in perfect atti- 
 tude, with his unobscured eye on his master or superior officer, 
 who stood by him. So admirable was his discipline, that, when 
 the train moved, and he was greeted with the parting cheers 
 of the recruits, and also with a shower of centimes, several of 
 which struck his shako, and had a tendency to discompose 
 him, he remained stanch on his post, until the train was 
 gone. He then resigned his arms to his officer, took off his 
 shako by rubbing his paw over it, dropped on four legs, bring- 
 ing his uniform coat into the absurdest relations with the 
 overraching skies, and ran about the platform in his white 
 gaiters, wagging his tail to an exceeding great extent. It 
 struck me that there was more waggery than this in the 
 poodle, and that he knew that the recruits would neither get 
 through their exercises, nor get rid of their uniforms, as 
 easily as he ; revolving which in my thoughts, and seeking in 
 my pockets some small money to bestow upon him, I casually 
 directed my eyes to the face of his superior officer, and in 
 him beheld the Face-Maker! Though it was not the way to 
 Algeria, but quite the reverse, the military poodle^s Colonel 
 was the Face-Maker in a dark blouse, Avith a small bundle 
 dangling over his shoulder at the end of an umbrella, and 
 taking a pipe from his breast to smoke as he and the poodle 
 went their mysterious way. 
 
TH£: UJSfCOMMIJECIAL TUAVELLER, 
 
 275 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 MEDICINE-MEN OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 My voyages (in paper boats) among savages often yield 
 me matter for reflection at home. It is curious to trace the 
 savage in the civilized man, and to detect the hold of some 
 savage customs on conditions of society rather boastful of 
 being high above them. 
 
 I wonder, is the Medicine Man of the Xorth American 
 Indians never to be got rid of, out of the Xorth American 
 country ? He comes into my Wigwam on all manner of 
 occasions, and with the absurdest Medicine.’’ I always find 
 it extremely difiicult, and I often find it simply impossible, 
 to keep him out of my Wigwam. For his legal Medicine” 
 he sticks upon his head the hair of quadrupeds, and plasters 
 the same with fat, and dirty white powder, and talks a gibber- 
 ish quite unknown to the men and squaws of his tribe. For 
 his religious Medicine ” he puts on puffy white sleeves, little 
 black aprons, large black waistcoats of a peculiar cut, collar- 
 less coats with Medicine buttonholes, Medicine stockings and 
 gaiters and shoes, and tops the whole with a highly grotesque 
 Medicinal hat. In one respect, to be sure, I am quite free 
 from him. On occasions when the Medicine Men in general, 
 together with a large number of the miscellaneous inhabitants 
 of his village both male and female, are presented to the 
 principal Chief, his native Medicine ” is a comical mixture 
 of old odds and ends (hired of traders) and new things in 
 antiquated shapes, and pieces of red cloth (of which he is 
 particularly fond), and white and red and blue paint for the 
 face. The irrationality of this particular Medicine culminates 
 in a mock battle-rush, from which many of the squaws are 
 borne out, much dilapidated. I need not observe how unlike 
 this is to a Drawing-Room at St. James’s Palace. 
 
276 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 The African magician I find it very difi&cult to exclude from 
 my Wigwam too. This creature takes cases of death and 
 mourning under his supervision, and will frequently impover- 
 ish a whole family by his preposterous enchantments. He 
 is a great eater and drinker, and always conceals a rejoicing 
 stomach under a grieving exterior. His charms consist of an 
 infinite quantity of worthless scraps, for which he charges 
 very high. He impresses on the poor bereaved natives, that 
 the more of his followers they pay to exhibit such scraps on 
 their persons for an hour or two (though they never saw the 
 deceased in their lives, and are put in high spirits by his 
 decease), the more honorably and piously they grieve for the 
 dead. The poor people, submitting themselves to this conjurer, 
 an expensive procession is formed, in which bits of sticks, 
 feathers of birds, and a quantity of other unmeaning objects 
 besmeared with black paint, are carried in a certain ghastly 
 order of which no one understands the meaning, if it ever had 
 any, to the brink of the grave, and are then brought back 
 again. 
 
 In the Tonga Islands everything is supposed to have a 
 soul, so that when a hatchet is irreparably broken, they say, 
 ^^His immortal part has departed; he is gone to the happy 
 hunting-plains.” This belief leads to the logical sequence 
 that when a man is buried, some of his eating and drinking 
 vessels, and some of his warlike implements, must be broken 
 and buried with him. Superstitious and wrong, but surely a 
 more respectable superstition than the hire of antic scraps for 
 a show that has no meaning based on any sincere belief. 
 
 Let me halt on my Uncommercial road, to throw a passing 
 glance on some funeral solemnities that I have seen where 
 North American Indians, African Magicians, and Tonga 
 Islanders, are supposed not to be. 
 
 Once, I dwelt in an Italian city, where there dwelt with me 
 for awhile, an Englishman of an amiable nature, great enthu- 
 siasm, and no discretion. This friend discovered a desolate 
 stranger, mourning over the unexpected death of one very 
 dear to him, in a solitary cottage among the vineyards of an 
 outlying village. The circumstances of the bereavement were 
 unusually distressing ; and the survivor, new to the peasants 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 277 
 
 and the country, sorely needed help,, being alone with the 
 remains. With some difficulty, but with the strong influence 
 of a purpose at once gentle, disinterested, and determined, my 
 friend — Mr. Kindheart — obtained access to the mourner, 
 and undertook to arrange the burial. 
 
 There was a small Protestant cemetery near the city walls, 
 and as Mr. Kindheart came back to me, he turned into it and 
 chose the spot. He was always highly flushed when render- 
 ing a service unaided, and I knew that to make him happy I 
 must keep aloof from his ministration. But when at dinner 
 he warmed with the good action of the day, and conceived the 
 brilliant idea of comforting the mourner with ^^an English 
 funeral,’^ I ventured to intimate that I thought that institu- 
 tion, which was not absolutely sublime at home, might prove 
 a failure in Italian hands. However, Mr. Kindheart was so 
 enraptured with his conception, that he presently wrote down 
 into the town requesting the attendance with to-morrow’s 
 earliest light of a certain little upholsterer. This upholsterer 
 was famous for speaking the unintelligible local dialect (his 
 own) in a far more unintelligible manner than any other man 
 alive. 
 
 When from my bath next morning I overheard Mr. Kind- 
 heart and the upholsterer in conference on the top of an echo- 
 ing staircase ; and when I overheard Mr. Kindheart rendering 
 English Undertaking phrases into very choice Italian, and 
 the upholsterer replying in the unknown Tongues ; and 
 when I furthermore remembered that the local funerals had 
 no resemblance to English funerals ; I became in my secret 
 bosom apprehensive. But Mr. Kindheart informed me at 
 breakfast that measures had been taken to insure a signal 
 success. 
 
 As the funeral was to take place at sunset, and as I knew 
 to which of the city gates it must tend, I went out at that 
 gate as the sun descended, and walked along the dusty, dusty, 
 road. I had not walked far, when I encountered this proces- 
 sion : — 
 
 1. Mr. Kindheart, much abashed, on an immense gray 
 horse. 
 
 2. A bright yellow coach and pair, driven by a coachman 
 
278 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 in bright red velvet knee-breeches and waistcoat. (This was 
 the established local idea of State.) Both coach doors kept 
 open by the coffin, which was on its side within, and sticking 
 out at each. 
 
 3. Behind the coach, the mourner, for whom the coach was 
 intended, walking in the dust. 
 
 4. Concealed behind a roadside well for the irrigation of a 
 garden, the unintelligible Upholsterer, admiring. 
 
 It matters little now. Coaches of all colors are alike to 
 poor Kindheart, and he rests far North of the little cemetery 
 with the cypress-trees, by the city walls where the Mediter- 
 ranean is so beautiful. 
 
 My first funeral, a fair representative funeral after its kind, 
 was that of the husband of a married servant, once my nurse. 
 She married for money. Sally Flanders, after a year or two 
 of matrimony, became the relict of Flanders, a small master 
 builder ; and either she or Flanders had done me the honor 
 to express a desire that I should follow.’^ I may have been 
 seven or eight years old ; — young enough, certainly, to feel 
 rather alarmed by the expression, as not knowing where the 
 invitation was held to terminate, and how far I was expected 
 to follow the deceased Flanders. Consent being given by the 
 heads of houses, I was jobbed up into what was pronounced 
 at home decent mourning (comprehending somebody else’s 
 shirt, unless my memory deceives me), and was admonished 
 that if, when the funeral was in action, I put my hands in 
 my pockets, or took my eyes out of my pocket-handkerchief, 
 I was personally lost, and my family disgraced. On the 
 eventful day, having tried to get myself into a disastrous 
 frame of mind, and having formed a very poor opinion of 
 myself because I couldn’t cry, I repaired to Sally’s. Sally 
 was an excellent creature, and had been a good wife to old 
 Flanders, but the moment I saw her I knew that she was not 
 in her own real natural state. She formed a sort of Coat of 
 Arms, grouped with a smelling-bottle, a handkerchief, an 
 orange, a bottle of vinegar, Flanders’s sister, her own sister, 
 Flanders’s brother’s wife, and two neighboring gossips — all 
 in mourning, and all ready to hold her whenever she fainted. 
 At sight of poor little me she became much agitated (agitating 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 279 
 
 me much more), and having exclaimed, O here’s dear Master 
 Uncommercial!” became hysterical, and swooned as if I had 
 been the death of her. An affecting scene followed, during 
 which I was handed about and poked at her by various peo- 
 ple, as if I were the bottle of salts. Eeviving a little, she 
 embraced me, said, You knew him well, dear Master 
 Uncommercial, and he knew you!” and fainted again : which, 
 as the rest of the Coat of Arms soothingly said, done her 
 credit.” Now, I knew that she needn’t have fainted unless 
 she liked, and that she wouldn’t have fainted unless it had 
 been expected of her, quite as well as I know it at this day. 
 It made me feel uncomfortable and hypocritical besides. I 
 was not sure but that it might be manners in me to faint 
 next, and I resolved to keep my eye on Flanders’s uncle, and 
 if I saw any signs of his going in that direction, to go too, 
 politely. But Flanders’s uncle (who was a weak little old 
 retail grocer) had only one idea, which was that we all 
 wanted tea ; and he handed us cups of tea all round, inces- 
 santly, whether we refused or not. There was a young 
 nephew of Flanders’s present, to whom Flanders, it was 
 rumored, had left nineteen guineas. He drank all the tea 
 that was offered him, this nephew — amounting, I should say, 
 to several quarts — and ate as much plum-cake as he could 
 possibly come by ; but he felt it to be decent mourning that 
 he should now and then stop in the midst of a lump of cake, 
 and appear to forget that his mouth was full, in the contem- 
 plation of his uncle’s memory. I felt all this to be the fault 
 of the undertaker, who was handing us gloves on a tea-tray 
 as if they were muffins, and tying us into cloaks (mine had to 
 be pinned up all round, it was so long for me), because I 
 knew that he was making game. So, when we got out into 
 the streets, and I constantly disarranged the procession by 
 tumbling on the people before me because my handkerchief 
 blinded my eyes, and tripping up the people behind me 
 because my cloak was so long, I felt that we were all making 
 game. I was truly sorry for Flanders, but I knew that it 
 was no reason why we should be trying (the women with 
 their heads in hoods like coal-scuttles with the black side out- 
 ward) to keep step with a man in a scarf, carrying a thing 
 
280 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 like a mourning spy-glass, whicli he was going to open pres- 
 ently and sweep the horizon with. I knew that we should 
 not all have been speaking in one particular key-note struck 
 by the undertaker, if we had not been making game. Even 
 in our faces we were every one of us as like the undertaker 
 as if we had been his own family, and I perceived that this 
 could not have happened unless we had been making game. 
 When we returned to Sally’s, it was all of a piece. The con- 
 tinued impossibility of getting on without plum-cake ; the 
 ceremonious apparition of a pair of decanters containing port 
 and sherry and cork ; Sally’s sister at the tea-table, clinking 
 the best crockery and shaking her head mournfully every 
 time she looked down into the teapot, as if it were the tomb ; 
 the Coat of Arms again, and Sally as before ; lastly, the 
 words of consolation administered to Sally when it was con- 
 sidered right that she should come round nicely : ” which 
 were, that the deceased had had as com-for-ta-ble a f u-ne-ral 
 as comfortable could be ! ” 
 
 Other funerals have I seen with grown-up eyes, since that 
 day, of which the burden has been the same childish burden. 
 Making game. Eeal affliction, real grief and solemnity, have 
 been outraged, and the funeral has been performed.” The 
 waste for which the funeral customs of many tribes of 
 savages are conspicuous, has attended these civilized ob- 
 sequies ; and once, and twice, have I wished in my soul that 
 if the waste must be, they would let the undertaker bury the 
 money, and let me bury the friend. 
 
 In Erance, upon the whole, these ceremonies are more 
 sensibly regulated, because they are upon the whole less 
 expensively regulated. I cannot say that I have ever been 
 much edified by the custom of tying a bib and apron on the 
 front of the house of mourning, or that I would myself 
 particularly care to be driven to my grave in a nodding and 
 bobbing car, like an infirm four-post bedstead, by an inky 
 fellow-creature in a cocked-hat. But it may be that I am 
 constitutionally insensible to the virtues of a cocked-hat. In 
 provincial France, the solemnities are sufficiently hideous, but 
 are few and cheap. The friends and townsmen of the de- 
 parted, in their own dresses and not masquerading under the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 281 
 
 auspices of the African Conjurer, surround the hand-bier, and 
 often carry it. It is not considered indispensable to stifle the 
 bearers, or even to elevate the burden on their shoulders ; 
 consequently it is easily taken up, and easily set down, and is 
 carried through the streets without the distressing floundering 
 and shuffling that we see at home. A dirty priest or two, and 
 a dirtier acolyte or two, do not lend any especial grace to 
 the proceedings ; and I regard with personal animosity the 
 bassoon, which is blown at intervals by the big-legged priest 
 (it is always a big-legged priest who blows the bassoon), when 
 his fellows combine in a lugubrious stalwart drawl. But 
 there is far less of the Conjurer and the Medicine Man in the 
 business than under like circumstances here. The grim coaches 
 that we reserve expressly for such shows, are non-existent ; 
 if the cemetery be far out of the town, the coaches that are 
 hired for other purposes of life are hired for this purpose ; 
 and although the honest vehicles make no pretence of being 
 overcome, I have never noticed that the people in them were 
 the worse for it. In Italy, the hooded members of Confra- 
 ternities who attend on funerals, are dismal and ugly to look 
 upon ; but the services they render are at least voluntarily 
 rendered, and impoverish no one, and cost nothing. Why 
 should high civilization and low savagery ever come together 
 on the point of making them a wantonly wasteful and con- 
 temptible set of forms ? 
 
 Once I lost a friend by death, who had been troubled in his 
 time by the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and upon whose 
 limited resources there were abundant claims. The Conjurer 
 assured me that I must positively follow,’’ and both he and 
 the Medicine Man entertained no doubt that I must go in a 
 black carriage, and must wear fittings.” I objected to 
 fittings as having nothing to do with my friendship, and I 
 objected to the black carriage as being in more senses than 
 one a job. So, it came into my mind to try what would 
 happen if I quietly walked, in my own way, from my own 
 house to my friend’s burial-place, and stood beside his open 
 grave in my own dress and person, reverently listening to the 
 best of Services. It satisfied my mind, I found, quite as well 
 as if I had been disguised in a hired hatband and scarf both 
 
282 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 trailing to my very heels, and as if I had cost the orphan 
 children, in their greatest need, ten guineas. 
 
 Can any one who ever beheld the stupendous absurdities 
 attendant on A message from the Lords ’’ in the House of 
 Commons, turn upon the Medicine Man of the poor Indians ? 
 Has he any Medicine in that dried skin pouch of his, so 
 supremely ludicrous as the two Masters in Chancery holding 
 up their black petticoats and butting their ridiculous wigs at 
 Mr. Speaker ? Yet there are authorities innumerable to tell 
 me — as there are authorities innumerable among the Indians 
 to tell them — that the nonsense is indispensable, and that its 
 abrogation would involve most awful consequences. What 
 would any rational creature who had never heard of judicial 
 and forensic fittings,’^ think of the Court of Common Pleas 
 on the first day of Term ? Or with what an awakened sense 
 of humor would Livijstgstone^s account of a similar scene be 
 perused, if the fur and red cloth and goats’ hair and horse hair 
 and powdered chalk and black patches on the top of the head, 
 were all at Tala Mungongo instead of Westminster ? That 
 model missionary and good brave man found at least one tribe 
 of blacks with a very strong sense of the ridiculous, insomuch 
 that although an amiable and docile people, they never could 
 see the Missionaries dispose of their legs in the attitude of 
 kneeling, or hear them begin a hymn in chorus, without 
 bursting into roars of irrepressible laughter. Ib is much to 
 be hoped that no member of this facetious tribe may ever 
 find his way to England and get committed for contempt of 
 Court. 
 
 In the Tonga Islands already mentioned, there are a set of 
 personages called Mataboos — or some such name — who are 
 the masters of all the public ceremonies, and who know the 
 exact place in which every chief must sit down when a 
 solemn public meeting takes place : a meeting which bears a 
 family resemblance to our own Public Dinner, in respect of 
 its being a main part of the proceedings that every gentleman 
 present is required to drink something nasty. These Mataboos 
 are a privileged order, so important is their avocation, and 
 they make the most of their high functions. A long way out 
 of the Tonga Islands, indeed, rather near the British Islands, 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 283 
 
 was there no calling in of the Mataboos the other day to 
 settle an earth-convulsing question of precedence ; and was 
 there no weighty opinion delivered on the part of the Mataboos 
 which, being interpreted to that unlucky tribe of blacks with 
 the sense of the ridiculous, would infallibly set the whole 
 population screaming with laughter ? 
 
 My sense of justice demands the admission, however, that 
 this is not quite a one-sided question. If we submit ourselves 
 meekly to the Medicine Man and the Conjurer, and are not 
 exalted by it, the savages may retort upon us that we act 
 more unwisely than they in other matters wherein we fail to 
 imitate them. It is a widely diffused custom among savage 
 tribes, when they meet to discuss any affair of public impor- 
 tance, to sit up all night making a horrible noise, dancing, 
 blowing shells, and (in cases where they are familiar with 
 fire-arms) flying out into open places and letting off guns. It 
 is questionable whether our legislative assemblies might not 
 take a hint from this. A shell is not a melodious wind-instru- 
 ment, and it is monotonous ; but it is as musical as, and not 
 more monotonous than, my Honorable friend’s own trumpet, 
 or the trumpet that he blows so hard for the Minister. The 
 uselessness of arguing with any supporter of a Government 
 or of an Opposition, is well known. Try dancing. It is a 
 better exercise, and has the unspeakable recommendation that 
 it couldn’t be reported. The honorable and savage member 
 who has a loaded gun, and has grown impatient of debate, 
 plunges out of doors, fires in the air, and returns calm and 
 silent to the Palaver. Let the honorable and civilized mem- 
 ber similarly charged with a speech, dart into the cloisters of 
 Westminster Abbey in the silence of night, let his speech 
 off, and come back harmless. It is not at first sight a very 
 rational custom to paint a broad blue stripe across one’s nose 
 and both cheeks, and a broad red stripe from the forehead to 
 the chin, to attach a few pounds of wood to one’s under lip, 
 to stick fish-bones in one’s ears and a brass curtain-ring in 
 one’s nose, and to rub one’s body all over with rancid oil, as a 
 preliminary to entering on business. But this is a question 
 of taste and ceremony, and so is the Windsor Uniform. The 
 manner of entering on the business itself is another question. 
 
284 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 A council of six hundred savage gentlemen entirely inde- 
 pendent of tailors, sitting on their hams in a ring, smoking, 
 and occasionally grunting, seem to me, according to the 
 experience I have gathered in my voyages and travels, some- 
 how to do what they come together for ; whereas that is not 
 at all the general experience of a council of six hundred 
 civilized gentlemen very dependent on tailors and sitting on 
 mechanical contrivances. It is better that an Assembly should 
 do its utmost to envelop itself in smoke, than that it should 
 direct its endeavors to enveloping the public in smoke ; and I 
 would rather it buried half a hundred hatchets than buried 
 one subject demanding attention. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 285 
 
 XXVTI. 
 
 titbull’s alms-houses. 
 
 By the side of most railways out of London, one may see 
 Alms-Houses and Betreats (generally with a Wing or a 
 Centre wanting, and ambitious of being much bigger than 
 they are), some of which are newly -founded Institutions, and 
 some old establishments transplanted. There is a tendency 
 in these pieces of architecture to shoot upward unexpectedly, 
 like Jack^s bean-stalk, and to be ornate in spires of Chapels 
 and lanterns of Halls, which might lead to the embellishment 
 of the air with many castles of questionable beauty but for the 
 restraining consideration of expense. However, the managers, 
 being always of a sanguine temperament, comfort themselves 
 with plans and elevations of Loomings in the future, and are 
 influenced in the present by philanthropy towards the railway 
 passengers. For, the question how prosperous and promising 
 the buildings can be made to look in their eyes, usually 
 supersedes the lesser question how they can be turned to the 
 best account for the inmates. 
 
 Why none of the people who reside in these places ever 
 look out of window, or take an airing in the piece of ground 
 which is going to be a garden by and by, is one of the won- 
 ders I have added to my always lengthening list of the 
 wonders of the world. I have got it into my mind that they 
 live in a state of chronic injury and resentment, and on that 
 account refuse to decorate the building with a human interest. 
 As I have known legatees deeply injured by a bequest of five 
 hundred pounds because it was not five thousand, and as I 
 was once acquainted with a pensioner on the Public to the 
 extent of two hundred a year, who perpetually anathematized 
 his Country because he was not in the receipt of four, having 
 no claim whatever to sixpence : so perhaps it usually happens, 
 within certain limits, that to get a little help is to get a notion 
 
286 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 of being defrauded of more. How do they pass their lives 
 in this beautiful and peaceful place ? ’’ was the subject of my 
 speculation with a visitor who once accompanied me to a 
 charming rustic retreat for old men and women: a quaint 
 ancient foundation in a pleasant English county, behind a 
 picturesque church and among rich old convent gardens. 
 There were but some dozen or so of houses, and we agreed 
 that we would talk with the inhabitants, as they sat in their 
 groined rooms between the light of their fires and the light 
 shining in at their latticed windows, and would find out. 
 They passed their lives in considering themselves mulcted of 
 certain ounces of tea by a deaf old steward who lived among 
 them in the quadrangle. There was no reason to suppose 
 that any such ounces of tea had ever been in existence, or 
 that the old steward so much as knew what was the matter ; 
 — he passed his life in considering himself periodically de- 
 frauded of a birch-broom by the beadle. 
 
 But it is neither to old Alms-Houses in the country, nor to 
 new Alms-Houses by the railroad, that these present Uncom- 
 mercial notes relate. They refer back to journeys made 
 among those commonplace smoky-fronted London Alms- 
 Houses, with a little paved courtyard in front enclosed by 
 iron railings, which have got snowed up, as it were, by bricks 
 and mortar; which were once in a suburb, but are now in 
 the densely populated town; gaps in the busy life around 
 them, parentheses in the close and blotted texts of the 
 streets. 
 
 Sometimes, these Alms-Houses belong to a Company or 
 Society. Sometimes, they were established by individuals, 
 and are maintained out of private funds bequeathed in per- 
 petuity long ago. My favorite among them is TitbulPs, 
 which establishment is a picture of many. Of Titbull I know 
 no more than that he deceased in 1723, that his Christian 
 name was Sampson, and his social designation Esquire, and 
 that he founded these Alms-Houses as Dwellings for Nine 
 Poor Women and Six Poor Men by his Will and Testament. 
 I should not know even this much, but for its being inscribed 
 on a grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of the 
 centre house of Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and which stone is 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLEB. 
 
 287 
 
 ornamented a-top with a piece of sculptured drapery resem- 
 bling the effigy of Titbulhs bath-towel. 
 
 Titbulhs Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great 
 highway, in a poor busy and thronged neighborhood. Old 
 iron and fried fish, cough-drops and artificial flowers, boiled 
 pigs^-feet and household furniture that looks as if it were 
 polished up wdth lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal literature 
 and saucers full of shell-fish in a green juice which I hope is 
 natural to them when their health is good, garnish the paved 
 sideways as you go to TitbulPs. I take the ground to have 
 risen in those parts since TitbulPs time, and you drop into 
 his domain by three stone steps. So did I first drop into it, 
 very nearly striking my brows against Titbulks pump, which 
 stands with its back to the thoroughfare just inside the gate, 
 and has a conceited air of reviewing TitbulPs pensioners. 
 
 And a worse one,’^ said a virulent old man with a pitcher, 
 there isn’t nowhere. A harder one to work, nor a grudginer 
 one to yield, there isn’t nowhere ! ” This old man wore a long 
 coat, such as we see Hogarth’s chairmen represented with, and 
 it was of that peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which 
 seems to come of poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of 
 cupboard which seems to come of poverty. 
 
 The pump is rusty, perhaps,” said I. 
 
 Hot said the old man, regarding it with undiluted 
 virulence in his watery eye. It never were fit to be termed 
 a pump. That’s what’s the matter with ^Y.” 
 
 Whose fault is that ? ” said I. 
 
 The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be 
 trying to masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard 
 and there was too much of it, replied, Them gentlemen.” 
 
 What gentlemen ? ” 
 
 Maybe you’re one of ’em ? ” said the old man, suspi- 
 ciously. 
 
 The trustees ? ” 
 
 I wouldn’t trust ’em myself,” said the virulent old man. 
 
 ^^If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, 
 I am not one of them ; nor have I ever so much as heard of 
 them.” 
 
 I wish I never heard of them,” gasped the old man : at 
 
288 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 my time of life — with the rheumatics — drawing water — from 
 that thing ! Not to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the 
 old man gave it another virulent look, took up his pitcher, 
 and carried it into a corner dwelling-house, shutting the door 
 after him. 
 
 Looking around and seeing that each little house was a 
 house of two little rooms ; and seeing that the little oblong 
 courtyard in front was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, 
 saving that no word was engraven on its flat dry stones ; and 
 seeing that the currents of life and noise ran to and fro out- 
 side, having no more to do with the place than if it were a 
 sort of low-water mark on a lively beach ; I say, seeing this 
 and nothing else, I was going out at the gate when one of the 
 doors opened. 
 
 Was you looking for anything, sir ? asked a tidy well- 
 favored woman. 
 
 Eeally, no ; I couldn’t say I was.” 
 
 Not wanting any one, sir ? ” 
 
 No — at least I — pray what is the name of the elderly 
 gentleman who lives in the corner there ? ” 
 
 The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indi- 
 cated, and she and the pump and I stood all three in a row 
 with our backs to the thoroughfare. 
 
 Oh ! His name is Mr. Battens,” said the tidy woman, 
 dropping her voice. 
 
 have just been talking with him.” 
 
 ^Mndeed?” said the tidy woman. ^^Ho! I wonder Mr. 
 Battens talked ! ” 
 
 Is he usually so silent ? ” 
 
 Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here — that is to say, the 
 oldest of the old gentlemen — in point of residence.” 
 
 She had a way of passing her hands over and under one 
 another as she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory ; 
 so I asked her if I might look at her little sitting-room ? She 
 willingly replied Yes, and we went into it together; she 
 leaving the door open, with an eye as I understood to the 
 social proprieties. The door opening at once into the room 
 without any intervening entry, even scandal must have been 
 silenced by the precaution. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 289 
 
 It was a gloomy little chamber, but clean, and with a mug 
 of wallflower in the window. On the chimney-piece were 
 two peacock’s feathers, a carved ship, a few shells, and a 
 black profile with one eyelash; whether this portrait pur- 
 ported to be male or female passed my comprehension, until 
 my hostess informed me that it was her only son, and quite 
 a speaking one.” 
 
 He is alive, I hope ? ” 
 
 Ho, sir,” said the widow, he were cast away in China.” 
 This was said with a modest sense of its reflecting a certain 
 geographical distinction on his mother. 
 
 ^^If the old gentlemen here are not given to talking,” said 
 I, ‘^1 hope the old ladies are ? — not that you are one.” 
 
 She shook her head. You see they get so cross.” 
 
 How is that ? ” 
 
 Well, whether the gentlemen really do deprive us of any 
 little matters which ought to be ours by rights, I cannot say 
 for certain ; but the opinion of the old ones is they do. And 
 Mr. Battens he do even go so far as to doubt whether credit 
 is due to the Founder. For Mr. Battens he do say, anyhow 
 he got his name up by it and he done it cheap.” 
 
 I am afraid the pump has soured Mr. Battens.” 
 
 It may be so,” returned the tidy widow, but the handle 
 does go very hard. Still, what I say to myself is, the gentle- 
 men may not pocket the difference between a good pump 
 and a bad one, and I would wish to think well of them. And 
 the dwellings,” said my hostess, glancing round her room ; 
 
 perhaps they were convenient dwellings in the Founder’s 
 time, considered as his time, and therefore he should not be 
 blamed. But Mrs. Saggers is very hard upon them.” 
 
 Mrs. Saggers is the oldest here ? ” 
 
 ^^The oldest but one. Mrs. Quinch being the oldest, and 
 have totally lost her head.” 
 
 And you ? ” 
 
 ^^I am the youngest in residence, and consequently am not 
 looked up to. But when Mrs. Quinch makes a happy release, 
 there will be one below me. Hor is it to be expected that 
 Mrs. Saggers will prove herself immortal.” 
 
 True. Hor Mr. Battens.” 
 
290 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Regarding the old gentlemen/’ said my widow slightingly, 
 
 they count among themselves. They do not count among 
 us. Mr. Battens is that exceptional that he have written to 
 the gentlemen many times and have worked the case against 
 them. Therefore he have took a higher ground. But we 
 do not, as a rule, greatly reckon the old gentlemen.” 
 
 Pursuing the subject, I found it to be traditionally settled 
 among the poor ladies that the poor gentlemen, whatever 
 their ages, were all very old indeed, and in a state of dotage. 
 I also discovered that the juniors and new-comers preserved, 
 for a time, a waning disposition to believe in Titbull and his 
 trustees, but that as they gained social standing they lost 
 this faith, and disparaged Titbull and all his works. 
 
 Improving my acquaintance subsequently with this re- 
 spected lady, whose name was Mrs. Mitts, and occasionally 
 dropping in upon her with a little offering of sound Family 
 Hyson in my pocket, I gradually became familiar with the 
 inner politics and ways of Titbull’s Alms-Houses. But I 
 never could find out who the trustees were, or where they 
 were : it being one of the fixed ideas of the place that those 
 authorities must be vaguely and mysteriously mentioned as 
 ^Hhe gentlemen ” only. The secretary of ^Hhe gentlemen” 
 was once pointed out to me, evidently engaged in champion- 
 ing the obnoxious pump against the attacks of the discon- 
 tented Mr. Battens ; but I am not in a condition to report 
 further of him than that he had the sprightly bearing of a 
 lawyer’s clerk. I had it from Mrs. Mitts’s lips in a very con- 
 fidential moment, that Mr. Battens was once ^^had up before 
 the gentlemen” to stand or fall by his accusations, and that 
 an old shoe was thrown after him on his departure from the 
 building on this dread errand ; — not ineffectually, for, the 
 interview resulting in a plumber, was considered to have 
 encircled the temples of Mr. Battens with the wreath of 
 victory. 
 
 In Titbull’s Alms-Houses, the local society is not regarded 
 as good society. A gentleman or lady receiving visitors from 
 without, or going out to tea, counts, as it were, accordingly ; 
 but visitings or tea-drinkings interchanged among Titbullians 
 do not score. Such interchanges, however, are rare, in con- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 291 
 
 sequence of internal dissensions occasioned by Mrs. Saggers’s 
 pail : which household article has split Titbull’s into almost 
 as many parties as there are dwellings in that precinct. The 
 extremely complicated nature of the conflicting articles of 
 belief on the subject prevents my stating them here with my 
 usual perspicuity^ but I think they have all branched off 
 from the root-and-trunk question, Has Mrs. Saggers any 
 right to stand her pail outside her dwelling ? The question 
 has been much reflned upon, but roughly stated may be 
 stated in those terms. 
 
 There are two old men in Titbull’s Alms-Houses who, I 
 have been given to understand, knew each other in the world 
 beyond its pump and iron railings, when they were both in 
 trade.” They make the best of their reverses, and are looked 
 upon with great contempt. They are little stooping blear- 
 eyed old men of cheerful countenance, and they hobble up 
 and down the courtyard wagging their chins and talking 
 together quite gayly. This has given offence, and has, more- 
 over, raised the question whether they are justifled in passing 
 any other windows than their own. Mr. Battens, however, 
 permitting them to pass his windows, on the disdainful ground 
 that their imbecility almost amounts to irresponsibility, they 
 are allowed to take their walk in peace. They live next door 
 to one another, and take it by turns to read the newspaper 
 aloud (that is to say, the newest newspaper they can get), 
 and they play cribbage at night. On warm and sunny days 
 they have been known to go so far as to bring out two chairs 
 and sit by the iron railings, looking forth, but this low con- 
 duct, being much remarked upon throughout Titbull’s, they 
 were deterred by an outraged public opinion from repeating 
 it. There is a rumor — but it may be malicious — that they 
 hold the memory of Titbull in some weak sort of veneration, 
 and that they once set off together on a pilgrimage to the 
 parish churchyard to And his tomb. To this, perhaps, might 
 be traced a general suspicion that they are spies of ^Hhe gen- 
 tlemen : ” to which they were supposed to have given color 
 in my own presence on the occasion of the weak attempt at 
 justification of the pump by the gentlemen’s clerk ; when 
 they emerged bareheaded from the doors of their dwellings. 
 
292 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 as if their dwellings and themselves constituted an old- 
 fashioned weather-glass of double action with two figures of 
 old ladies inside, and deferentially bowed to him at intervals 
 until he took his departure. They are understood to be per- 
 fectly friendless and relationless. Unquestionably the two 
 poor fellows make the very best of their lives in Titbulks 
 Alms-Houses, and unquestionably they are (as before men- 
 tioned) the subjects of unmitigated contempt there. 
 
 On Saturday nights, when there is a greater stir than 
 usual outside, and when itinerant venders of miscella- 
 neous wares even take their stations and light up their 
 smoky lamps before the iron railings, Titbulks becomes flur- 
 ried. Mrs. Saggers has her celebrated palpitations of the 
 heart, for the most part on Saturday nights. But Titbulks 
 is unfit to strive with the uproar of the streets in any of its 
 phases. It is religiously believed at Titbulks that people 
 push more than they used, and likewise that the foremost 
 object of the population of England and Wales is to get you 
 down and trample on you. Even of railroads they know, at 
 Titbulks, little more than the shriek (which Mrs. Saggers 
 says goes through her, and ought to be taken up by Govern- 
 ment) ; and the penny postage may even yet be unknown 
 there, for I have never seen a letter delivered to any inhab- 
 itant. But there is a tall straight sallow lady resident in 
 Number Seven, TitbulPs, who never speaks to anybody, who 
 is surrounded by a superstitious halo of lost wealth, who does 
 her household work in housemaid’s gloves, and who is secretly 
 much deferred to, though openly cavilled at; and it has 
 obscurely leaked out that this old lady has a son, grandson, 
 nephew, or other relative, who is ^^a Contractor,” and who 
 would think it nothing of a job to knock down Titbull’s, pack 
 it off into Cornwall, and knock it together again. An im- 
 mense sensation was made by a gypsy-party calling in a 
 spring-van, to take this old lady up to go for a day’s pleasure 
 into Epping Forest, and notes were compared as to which of 
 the company was the son, grandson, nephew, or other rela- 
 tive, the Contractor. A thick-set personage with a white 
 hat and a cigar in his mouth, was the favorite : though as 
 Titbull’s had no other reason to believe that the Contractor 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 293 
 
 was there at all, than that this man was supposed to eye the 
 chimney stacks as if he would like to knock them down and 
 cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving 
 at a conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it concen- 
 trated itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every 
 stitch in whose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies 
 then and there, and whose goings on with another and a 
 thinner personage in a white hat might have suffused the 
 pump (where they were principally discussed) with blushes, 
 for months afterwards. Herein TitbulPs was to Titbulks 
 true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all strangers. As 
 concerning innovations and improvements, it is always of 
 opinion that what it doesn^t want itself, nobody ought to 
 want. But I think I have met with this opinion outside 
 TitbulPs. 
 
 Of the humble treasure of furniture brought into TitbulPs 
 by the inmates when they establish themselves in that place 
 of contemplation for the rest of their days, by far the greater 
 and more valuable part belongs to the ladies. I may claim 
 the honor of having either crossed the threshold, or looked 
 in at the door, of every one of the nine ladies, and I have 
 noticed that they are all particular in the article of bedsteads, 
 and maintain favorite and long-established bedsteads and 
 bedding as a regular part of their rest. Generally an anti- 
 quated chest of drawers is among their cherished possessions ; 
 a tea-tray always is. I know of at least two rooms in which 
 a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished copper, vies with the 
 cat in winking at the fire ; and one old lady has a tea-urn 
 set forth in state on the top of her chest of drawers, which 
 urn is used as her library, and contains four duodecimo 
 volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account 
 of the funeral of Her Eoyal Highness the Princess Charlotte. 
 Among the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties. 
 Their furniture has the air of being contributed, like some 
 obsolete Literary Miscellany, by several hands ; their few 
 chairs never match; old patchwork coverlets linger among 
 them ; and they have an untidy habit of keeping their ward- 
 robes in hat-boxes. When I recall one old gentleman who is 
 rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have 
 
294 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 summed up the domestic elegancies of that side of the 
 building. 
 
 On the occurrence of a death in 'Titbulhs, it is invariably 
 agreed among the survivors — and it is the only subject on 
 which they do agree — that the departed did something ^^to 
 bring it on.’’ Judging by Titbull’s, I should say the human 
 race need never die, if they took care. But they don’t take 
 care, and they do die, and when they die in Titbull’s they are 
 buried at the cost of the Foundation. Some provision has 
 been made for the purpose, in virtue of which (I record this 
 on the strength of having seen the funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a 
 lively neighboring undertaker dresses up four of the old 
 men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a pro- 
 cession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow 
 at the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily 
 from time to time to see that no member of the party has got 
 lost, or has tumbled down ; as if they were a company of dim 
 old dolls. 
 
 Kesignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in 
 Titbull’s. A story does obtain there, how an old lady’s 
 son once drew a prize of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the 
 Lottery, and presently drove to the gate in his own car- 
 riage, with French Horns playing up behind, and whisked 
 his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast. But I 
 have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and 
 regard it as an Alms-House Fairy Tale. It is curious that 
 the only proved case of resignation happened within my 
 knowledge. 
 
 It happened on this wise. There is a sharp competition 
 among the ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and 
 I have so often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday 
 occasion, that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to 
 make all possible display when they come. In these circum- 
 stances much excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs. 
 Mitts receiving a visit from a Greenwich Pensioner. He was 
 a Pensioner of a bluff and warlike appearance, with an empty 
 coat-sleeve, and he was got up with unusual care ; his coat- 
 buttons were extremely bright, he wore his empty coat-sleeve 
 in a graceful festoon, and he had a walking-stick in his hand 
 
A PHENOMENON AT TITBULL’S. 
 
/ 
 
 aij 1. \ 
 
 
 ;? J 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 295 
 
 that must have cost money. When, with the head of his 
 walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts’s door — there are no 
 knockers in Titbull’s — Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next- 
 door neighbor to utter a cry of surprise expressing much 
 agitation ; and the same neighbor did afterwards solemnly 
 affirm that when he was admitted into Mrs. Mitts’s room, she 
 heard a smack. Heard a smack which was not a blow. 
 
 There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he 
 took his departure, which imbued all Pitbull’s with the con- 
 viction that he was coming again. He was eagerly looked 
 for, and Mrs. Mitts was closely watched. In the mean time, 
 if anything could have placed the unfortunate six old gentle- 
 men at a greater disadvantage than that at which they 
 chronically stood, it would have been the apparition of this 
 Greenwich Pensioner. They were well shrunken already, 
 but they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the Pensioner. 
 Even the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious of 
 their inferiority, and to know submissively that they could 
 never hope to hold their own against the Pensioner with his 
 warlike and maritime experience in the past, and his tobacco 
 money in the present : his checkered career of blue water, 
 black gunpowder, and red bloodshed for England home and 
 beauty. 
 
 Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared. 
 Again he knocked at Mrs. Mitts’s door with the handle of 
 his stick, and again was he admitted. But not again did he 
 depart alone ; for Mrs. Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having 
 been re-embellished, went out walking with him, and stayed 
 out till the ten o’clock beer, Greenwich time. 
 
 There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of 
 Mrs. Saggers’s pail ; nothing was spoken of among the ladies 
 but the conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blighting infiuence on 
 the reputation of Pitbull’s. It was agreed that Mr. Battens 
 ought to take it up,” and Mr. Battens was communicated 
 with on the subject. That unsatisfactory individual replied 
 ^^that he didn’t see his way yet,” and it was unanimously 
 voted by the ladies that aggravation was in his nature. 
 
 How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsist- 
 ency, that Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the 
 
296 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Pensioner admired by all the ladies, matters not. Before 
 another week was out, TitbulPs was startled by another 
 phenomenon. At ten o’clock in the forenoon appeared a cab, 
 containing not only the Greenwich Pensioner with one arm, 
 but, to boot, a Chelsea Pensioner with one leg. Both dis- 
 mounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the Greenwich 
 Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea Pen- 
 sioner mounted the box by the driver : his wooden leg 
 sticking out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular 
 homage to his friend’s sea-going career. Thus the equipage 
 drove away. No Mrs. Mitts returned that night. 
 
 What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking 
 it up, goaded by the infuriated state of public feeling next 
 morning, was anticipated by another phenomenon. A Truck, 
 propelled by the Greenwich Pensioner and the Chelsea Pen- 
 sioner, each placidly smoking a pipe, and pushing his warrior 
 breast against the handle. 
 
 The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his 
 marriage-lines,” and his announcement that himself and 
 friend had looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, 
 late Mitts, by no means reconciled the ladies to the conduct 
 of their sister ; on the contrary, it is said that they appeared 
 more than ever exasperated. Nevertheless, my stray visits 
 to Titbull’s since the date of this occurrence, have confirmed 
 me in an impression that it was a wholesome fillip. The nine 
 ladies are smarter, both in mind and dress, than they used 
 to be, though it must be admitted that they despise the six 
 gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much greater 
 interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had when 
 I first knew Titbull’s. And whenever I chance to be leaning 
 my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be talk- 
 ing to one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has 
 passed over her face, I immediately know without looking 
 round that a Greenwich Pensioner has gone past. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 297 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 THE ITALIAN PRISONER. 
 
 The rising of the Italian people from under their unutter- 
 able wrongs, and the tardy burst of day upon them after the 
 long long night of oppression that has darkened their beauti- 
 ful country, have naturally caused my mind to dwell often 
 of late on my own small wanderings in Italy. Connected 
 with them, is a curious little drama, in which the character I 
 myself sustained was so very subordinate that I may relate 
 its story without any fear of being suspected of self-display. 
 It is strictly a true story. 
 
 I am newly arrived one summer evening, in a certain 
 small town on the Mediterranean. I have had my dinner at 
 the inn, and I and the mosquitoes are coming out into the 
 streets together. It is far from Xaples ; but a bright brown 
 plump little woman-servant at the inn, is a Keapolitan, and 
 is so vivaciously expert in pantomimic action, that in the 
 single moment of answering my request to have a pair of 
 shoes cleaned which I have left up-stairs, she plies imaginary 
 brushes, and goes completely through the motions of polishing 
 the shoes up, and laying them at my feet. I smile at the 
 brisk little woman in perfect satisfaction with her briskness ; 
 and the brisk little woman, amiably pleased with me because 
 I am pleased with her, claps her hands and laughs delight- 
 fully. We are in the inn-yard. As the little woman’s bright 
 eyes sparkle on the cigarette I am smoking I make bold to 
 offer her one ; she accepts it none the less merrily, because I 
 touch a most charming little dimple in her fat cheek, with its 
 light paper end. Glancing up at the many green lattices to 
 assure herself that the mistress is not looking on, the little 
 A7oman then puts her two little dimple arms a-kimbo, and 
 stands on tiptoe to light her cigarette at mine. And now, 
 dear little sir,” says she, puffing out smoke in a most inno- 
 
298 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 cent and cherubic manner, keep quite straight on, take the 
 first to the right, and probably you will see him standing at 
 his door.’^ 
 
 I have a commission to ^^him,’’ and I have been inquiring 
 about him. I have carried the commission about Italy 
 several months. Before I left England, there came to me 
 one night a certain generous and gentle English nobleman 
 (he is dead in these days when I relate the story, and exiles 
 have lost their best British friend), with this request : When- 
 ever you come to such a town, will you seek out one Giovanni 
 Carlavero, who keeps a little wine-shop there, mention my 
 name to him suddenly, and observe how it affects him ? ’’ I 
 accepted the trust, and am on my way to discharge it. 
 
 The sirocco has been blowing all day, and it is a hot 
 unwholesome evening with no cool sea-breeze. Mosquitoes 
 and fireflies are lively enough, but most other creatures are 
 faint. The coquettish airs of pretty young women in the 
 tiniest and wickedest of dolls’ straw hats, who lean out at 
 opened lattice blinds, are almost the only airs stirring. Very 
 ugly and haggard old women with distaffs, and with a gray 
 tow upon them that looks as if they were spinning out their 
 own hair (I suppose they were once pretty, too, but it is very 
 difficult to believe so), sit on the footway leaning against 
 house walls. Everybody who has come for water to the 
 fountain, stays there, and seems incapable of any such ener- 
 getic idea as going home. Vespers are over, though not so 
 long but that I can smell the heavy resinous incense as I 
 pass the church. No man seems to be at work, save the 
 coppersmith. In an Italian town he is always at work, and 
 always thumping in the deadliest manner. 
 
 I keep straight on, and come in due time to the first on 
 the right ; a narrow dull street, where I see a well-favored 
 man of good stature and military bearing, in a great cloak, 
 standing at a door. Drawing near to this threshold, I see 
 it is the threshold of a small wine-shop ; and I can just make 
 out, in the dim light, the inscription that it is kept by Giovanni 
 Carlavero. 
 
 I touch my hat to the figure in the cloak, and pass in, and 
 draw a stool to a little table. The lamp (just such another as 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 299 
 
 they dig out of Pompeii) is lighted, but the place is empty. 
 The figure in the cloak has followed me in, and stands before 
 me. 
 
 The master ? 
 
 At your service, sir.’^ 
 
 Please to give me a glass of the wine of the country.’^ 
 
 He turns to a little counter, to get it. As his striking 
 face is pale, and his action is evidently that of an enfeebled 
 man, I remark that I fear he has been ill. It is not much, 
 he courteously and gravely answers, though bad while it lasts : 
 the fever. 
 
 As he sets the wine on the little table, to his manifest 
 surprise I lay my hand on the back of his, look him in the 
 face, and say in a low voice, am an Englishman, and 
 you are acquainted with a friend of mine. Do you recol- 
 lect ? and I mentioned the name of my generous coun- 
 
 tryman. 
 
 Instantly, he utters a loud cry, bursts into tears, and falls 
 on his knees at my feet, clasping my legs in both his arms 
 and bowing his head to the ground. 
 
 Some years ago, this man at my feet, whose over-fraught 
 heart is heaving as if it would burst from his breast, and 
 whose tears are wet upon the dress I wear, was a galley-slave 
 in the North of Italy. He was a political offender, having 
 been concerned in the then last rising, and was sentenced 
 to imprisonment for life. That he would have died in his 
 chains, is certain, but for the circumstance that the English- 
 man happened to visit his prison. 
 
 It was one of the vile old prisons of Italy, and a part of it 
 was below the waters of the harbor. The place of his confine- 
 ment was an arched under-ground and under-water gallery, 
 with a grill-gate at the entrance, through which it received 
 such light and air as it got. Its condition was insufferably 
 foul, and a stranger could hardly breathe in it, or see in it with 
 the aid of a torch. At the upper end of this dungeon, and con- 
 sequently in the worst position, as being the furthest removed 
 from light and air, the Englishman first beheld him, sitting on 
 an iron bedstead to which he was chained by a heavy chain. 
 His countenance impressed the Englishman as having nothing 
 
300 
 
 THE UHCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 in common with the faces of the malefactors witk whom he 
 was associated, and he talked with him, and learnt how he 
 came to be there. 
 
 When the Englishman emerged from the dreadful den into 
 the light of day, he asked his conductor, the governor of the 
 jail, why Giovanni Carlavero was put into the worst place ? 
 
 Because he is particularly recommended,’^ was the strin- 
 gent answer. 
 
 Eecommended, that is to say, for death ? ” 
 
 Excuse me ; particularly recommended,” was again the 
 answer. 
 
 He has a bad tumor in his neck, no doubt occasioned by 
 the hardship of his miserable life. If he continues to be 
 neglected, and he remains where he is, it will kill him.” 
 
 Excuse me, I can do nothing. He is particularly recom- 
 mended.” 
 
 The Englishman was staying in that town, and he went to 
 his home there ; but the figure of this man chained to the bed- 
 stead made it no home, and destroyed his rest and peace. He 
 was an Englishman of an extraordinarily tender heart, and he 
 could not bear the picture. He went back to the prison 
 grate ; went back again and again, and talked to the man and 
 cheered him. He used his utmost influence to get the man 
 unchained from the bedstead, were it only for ever so short a 
 time in the day, and permitted to come to the grate. It took 
 a long time, but the Englishman’s station, personal character, 
 and steadiness of purpose, wore out opposition so far, and that 
 grace was at last accorded. Through the bars, when he could 
 thus get light upon the tumor, the Englishman lanced it, and 
 it did well, and healed. His strong interest in the prisoner 
 had greatly increased by this time, and he formed the desper- 
 ate resolution that he would exert his utmost self-devotion 
 and use his utmost efforts, to get Carlavero pardoned. 
 
 If the prisoner had been a brigand and a murderer, if he 
 had committed every non-political crime in the Newgate 
 Calendar and out of it, nothing would have been easier than 
 for a man of any court or priestly influence to obtain his 
 release. As it was, nothing could have been more difficult. 
 Italian authorities, and English authorities who had interest 
 
THE UNC0M3IERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 301 
 
 with them, alike assured the Englishman that his object was 
 hopeless. He met with nothing but evasion, refusal, and 
 ridicule. His political prisoner became a joke in the place. 
 It was especially observable that English Circumlocution, and 
 English Society on its travels, were as humorous on the sub- 
 ject as Circumlocution and Society may be on any subject 
 without loss of. caste. But, the Englishman possessed (and 
 proved it well in his life) a courage very uncommon among 
 us : he had not the least fear of being considered a bore, in a 
 good humane cause. So he went on persistently trying, and 
 trying, and trying, to get Giovanni Carlavero out. That 
 prisoner had been rigorously rechained, after the tumor 
 operation, and it was not likely that his miserable life could 
 last very long. 
 
 One day, when all the town knew about the Englishman 
 and his political prisoner, there came to the Englishman, a 
 certain sprightly Italian Advocate of whom he had some 
 knowledge; and he made this strange proposal. ^^Give me a 
 hundred pounds to obtain Carlavero’s release. I think I can 
 get him a pardon, with that money. But I cannot tell you 
 what I am going to do with the money, nor must you ever 
 ask me the question if I succeed, nor must you ever ask me 
 for an account of the money if I fail.’’ The Englishman 
 decided to hazard the hundred pounds. He did so, and heard 
 not another word of the matter. For half a year and more, 
 the Advocate made no sign, and never once took on ” in any 
 way, to have the subject on his mind. The Englishman was 
 then obliged to change his residence to another and more 
 famous town in the North of Italy. He parted from the poor 
 prisoner with a sorrowful heart, as from a doomed man from 
 whom there was no release but Death. 
 
 The Englishman lived in his new place of abode another 
 half-year and more, and had no tidings of the wretched pris- 
 oner. At length, one day, he received from the Advocate a 
 cool concise mysterious note, to this effect. ^^If you still 
 wish to bestow that benefit upon the man in whom you were 
 once interested, send me fifty pounds more, and I think it can 
 be insured.” Now, the Englishman had long settled in his 
 mind that the Advocate was a heartless sharper, who had 
 
302 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 preyed upon his credulity and his interest in an unfortunate 
 sufferer. So, he sat down and wrote a dry answer, giving the 
 Advocate to understand that he was wiser now than he had 
 been formerly, and that no more money was extractable from 
 his pocket. 
 
 He lived outside the city gates, some mile or two from the 
 post-office, and was accustomed to walk into the city with his 
 letters and post them himself. On a lovely spring day, when 
 the sky was exquisitely blue, and the sea divinely beautiful, 
 he took his usual walk, carrying this letter to the Advocate 
 in his pocket. As he went along, his gentle heart was much 
 moved by the loveliness of the prospect, and by the thought 
 of the slowly dying prisoner chained to the bedstead, for 
 whom the universe had no delights. As he drew nearer and 
 nearer to the city where he was to post the letter, he became 
 very uneasy in his mind. He debated with himself, was it 
 remotely possible, after all, that this sum of fifty pounds 
 could restore the fellow-creature whom he pitied so much, 
 and for whom he had striven so hard, to liberty ? He was 
 not a conventionally rich Englishman — very far from that — 
 but, he had a spare fifty pounds at the banker’s. He resolved 
 to risk it. Without doubt, God has recompensed him for the 
 resolution. 
 
 He went to the banker’s, and got a bill for the amount, and 
 enclosed it in a letter to the Advocate that I wish I could have 
 seen. He simply told the Advocate that he was quite a poor 
 man, and that he was sensible it might be a great weakness in 
 him to part with so much money on the faith of so vague a 
 communication ; but, that there it was, and that he prayed the 
 Advocate to make a good use of it. If he did otherwise no 
 good could ever come of it, and it would lie heavy on his soul 
 one day. 
 
 Within a week, the Englishman was sitting at his breakfast, 
 when he heard some suppressed sounds of agitation on the 
 staircase, and Giovanni Carlavero leaped into the room and 
 fell upon his breast, a free man ! 
 
 Conscious of having wronged the Advocate in his own 
 thoughts, the Englishman wrote him an earnest and grateful 
 letter, avowing the fact, and entreating him to confide by 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 303 
 
 what means and through what agency he had succeeded so 
 well. The Advocate returned for answer through the post, 
 
 There are many things, as you know, in this Italy of ours, 
 that are safest and best not even spoken of — far less written 
 of. We may meet some day, and then I may tell you what 
 you want to know ; not here, and now.’^ But, the two never 
 did meet again. The Advocate was dead when the English- 
 man gave me my trust ; and how the man had been set free, 
 remained as great a mystery to the Englishman, and to the 
 man himself, as it was to me. 
 
 But, I knew this : — here was the man, this sultry night, on 
 his knees at my feet, because I was the Englishman’s friend ; 
 here were his tears upon my dress ; here were his sobs chok- 
 ing his utterance ; here were his kisses on my hands, because 
 they had touched the hands that had worked out his release. 
 He had no need to tell me it would be happiness to him to die 
 for his benefactor ; I doubt if I ever saw real sterling, fervent 
 gratitude of soul, before or since. 
 
 He was much watched and suspected, he said, and had had 
 enough to do to keep himself out of trouble. This, and his 
 not having prospered in his worldly affairs, had led to his 
 having failed in his usual communications to the Englishman 
 for — as I now remember the period — some two or three years. 
 But, his prospects were brighter, and his wife who had been 
 very ill had recovered, and his fever had left him, and he had 
 bought a little vineyard, and would I carry to his benefactor the 
 first of its wine ? Ay, that I would (I told him with enthu- 
 siasm), and not a drop of it should be spilled or lost ! 
 
 He had cautiously closed the door before speaking of him- 
 self, and had talked with such excess of emotion, and in a 
 provincial Italian so difficult to understand, that I had more 
 than once been obliged to stop him, and beg him to have 
 compassion on me and be slower and calmer. By degrees he 
 became so, and tranquilly walked back with me to the hotel. 
 There, I sat down before I went to bed and wrote a faithful 
 account of him to the Englishman : which I concluded by 
 saying that I would bring the wine home, against any difficul- 
 ties, every drop. 
 
 Early next morning when I came out at the hotel door to 
 
304 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 pursue my journey, I found my friend waiting with, one of 
 those immense bottles in which the Italian peasants store 
 their wine — a bottle holding some half-dozen gallons — bound 
 round with basket-work for greater safety on the journey. I 
 see him now, in the bright sunlight, tears of gratitude in his 
 eyes, proudly inviting my attention to this corpulent bottle. 
 (At the street-corner hard by, two high-flavored able-bodied 
 monks — pretending to talk together, but keeping their four 
 evil eyes upon us.) 
 
 How the bottle had been got there, did not appear; but the 
 difficulty of getting it into the ramshackle vetturino carriage 
 in which I was departing, was so great, and it took up so 
 much room when it was got in, that I elected to sit outside. 
 The last I saw of Giovanni Carlavero was his running through 
 the town by the side of the jingling wheels, clasping my hand 
 as I stretched it down from the box, charging me with a thou- 
 sand last loving and dutiful messages to his dear patron, and 
 finally looking in at the bottle as it reposed inside, with an 
 admiration of its honorable way of travelling that was beyond 
 measure delightful. 
 
 And now, what disquiet of mind this dearly-beloved and 
 highly-treasured Bottle began to cost me, no man knows. It 
 was my precious charge through a long tour, and, for hun- 
 dreds of miles, I never had it off my mind by day or by night. 
 Over bad roads — and there were many — I clung to it with 
 affectionate desperation. Up mountains, I looked in at it and 
 saw it helplessly tilting over on its back, with terror. At 
 innumerable inn doors when the weather was bad, I was 
 obliged to be put into my vehicle before the Bottle could be 
 got in, and was obliged to have the Bottle lifted out before 
 human aid could come near me. The Imp of the same name, 
 except that his associations were all evil and these associa- 
 tions were all good, would have been a less troublesome trav- 
 elling companion. I might have served Mr. Cruikshank as a 
 subject for a new illustration of the miseries of the Bottle. 
 The National Temperance Society might have made a power- 
 ful Tract of me. 
 
 The suspicions that attached to this innocent Bottle greatly 
 aggravated my difficulties. It was like the apple-pie in the 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 305 
 
 child’s book. Parma pouted at it, Modena mocked it, Tus- 
 cany tackled it, Naples nibbled it, Rome refused it, Austria 
 accused it. Soldiers suspected it, Jesuits jobbed it. I com- 
 posed a neat Oration, developing my inoffensive intentions in 
 connection with this Bottle, and delivered it in an infinity of 
 guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every 
 drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of 
 fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an 
 infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy 
 degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as 
 much difficulty in workimg my way with the Bottle, as if it 
 had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In 
 the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, 
 a priest, or a lazzarone, the shameless beggars of all four 
 denominations incessantly pounced on the Bottle and made it 
 a pretext for extorting money from me. Quires — quires do 
 I say? Reams — of forms illegibly printed on whity-brown 
 paper were filled up about the Bottle, and it was the subject 
 of more stamping and sanding than I had ever seen before. 
 In consequence of which haze of sand, perhaps, it was always 
 irregular, and always latent with dismal penalties of going 
 back or not going forward, which were only to be abated by 
 the silver crossing of a base hand, poked shirtless out of a 
 ragged uniform sleeve. Under all discouragements, however, 
 I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my resolution that 
 every drop of its contents should reach the Bottle’s destina- 
 tion. 
 
 The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles 
 on its own separate account. What corkscrews did I see the 
 military power bring out against that Bottle ; what gimlets, 
 spikes, divining-rods, gauges, and unknown tests and instru- 
 ments ! At some places, they persisted in declaring that the 
 wine must not be passed, without being opened and tasted ; 
 I, pleading to the contrary, used then to argue the question 
 seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in spite of me. 
 In the southern parts of Italy more violent shrieking, face- 
 making, and gesticulating, greater vehemence of speech and 
 countenance and action, went on about that Bottle, than 
 would attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It raised 
 
306 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of night. 
 I have known half a dozen military lanterns to disperse 
 themselves at all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each 
 lantern summoning some official creature to get up, put on his 
 cocked-hat instantly, and come and stop the Bottle. It was 
 characteristic that while this innocent Bottle had such immense 
 difficulty in getting from little town to town. Signor Mazzini 
 and the fiery cross were traversing Italy from end to end. 
 
 Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentle- 
 man all of the olden time. The more the Bottle was inter- 
 fered with, the stancher I became (if possible) in my first 
 determination that my countryman should have it delivered 
 to him intact, as the man whom he had so nobly restored to 
 life and liberty had delivered it to me. If ever I had been 
 obstinate in my days — and I may have been, say, once or 
 twice — I was obstinate about the Bottle. But, I made it a 
 rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its service, 
 and never to be out of temper in its cause. Thus, I and the 
 Bottle made our way. Once we had a break-down ; rather a 
 bad break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below us, 
 on a tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. We were 
 driving four wild horses abreast. Southern fashion, and there 
 was some little difficulty in stopping them. I was outside, 
 and not thrown off ; but no words can describe my feelings 
 when I saw the Bottle — travelling inside, as usual — burst 
 the door open, and roll obesely out into the road. A blessed 
 Bottle, with a charmed existence, he took no hurt, and we 
 repaired damage, and went on triumphant. 
 
 A thousand representations were made to me that the 
 Bottle must be left at this place, or that, and called for again. 
 I never yielded to one of them, and never parted from the 
 Bottle, on any pretence, consideration, threat, or entreaty. 
 I had no faith in any official receipt for the Bottle, and noth- 
 ing would induce me to accept one. These unmanageable poli- 
 tics at last brought me and the Bottle, still triumphant, to 
 Genoa. There, I took a tender and reluctant leave of him 
 for a few weeks, and consigned him to a trusty English 
 captain, to be conveyed to the Port of London by sea. 
 
 While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 307 
 
 Shipping Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an under- 
 writer. There was some stormy weather after I myself had 
 got to England by way of Switzerland and France, and my 
 mind greatly misgave me that the Bottle might be wrecked. 
 At last to my great joy, I received notice of his safe arrival, 
 and immediately went down to Saint Katharine^s Docks, and 
 found him in a state of honorable captivity in the Custom 
 House. 
 
 The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the 
 generous Englishman — probably it had been something like 
 vinegar when I took it up from Giovanni Carlavero — but not 
 a drop of it was spilled or gone. And the Englishman told 
 me, with much emotion in his face and voice, that he had 
 never tasted wine that seemed to him so sweet and sound. 
 And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his table. And the 
 last time I saw him in this world that misses him, he took 
 me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: ^^We 
 were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you 
 had been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero'S 
 Bottle.^’ 
 
308 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 THE SHORT-TIMERS. 
 
 Within so many yards of this Co vent-garden lodging of 
 mine, as within so many yards of Westminster Abbey, Saint 
 Paul’s Cathedral, the Houses of Parliament, the Prisons, the 
 Courts of Justice, all the Institutions that govern the land, I 
 can find — must find, whether I will or no — in the open 
 streets, shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable 
 toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races 
 of wretched and destructive cripples both in body and mind, a 
 misery to themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace 
 to civilization, and an outrage on Christianity. I know it to 
 be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the 
 elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin 
 its work and duty at the beginning, and would with the strong 
 hand take those children out of the streets, while they are 
 yet children, and wisely train them, it would make them a 
 part of England’s glory, not its shame — of England’s strength, 
 not its weakness — would raise good soldiers and sailors, and 
 good citizens, and many great men, out of the seeds of its 
 criminal population. Yet I go on bearing with the enormity 
 as if it were nothing, and I go on reading the Parliamentary 
 Debates as if they were something, and I concern myself far 
 more about one railway bridge across a public thoroughfare, 
 than about a dozen generations of scrofula, ignorance, wicked- 
 ness, prostitution, poverty, and felony. I can slip out at my 
 door, in the small hours after any midnight, and, in one circuit 
 of the purlieus of Co vent-garden Market, can behold a state 
 of infancy and youth, as vile as if a Bourbon sat upon the 
 English throne ; a great police force looking on with authority 
 to do no more than worry and hunt the dreadful vermin into 
 corners, and there leave them. Within the length of a few 
 streets I can find a workhouse, mismanaged with that dull 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLEB, 
 
 309 
 
 short-sighted obstinacy that its greatest opportunities as to 
 the children it receives are lost, and yet not a farthing saved 
 to any one. But the wheel goes round, and round, and round ; 
 and because it goes round — so I am told by the politest 
 authorities — it goes well.’^ 
 
 Thus I reflected, one day in the Whitsun week last past, as 
 I floated down the Thames among the bridges, looking — not 
 inappropriately — at the drags that were hanging up at certain 
 dirty stairs to hook the drowned out, and at the numerous 
 conveniences provided to facilitate their tumbling in. My 
 object in that uncommercial journey called up another train 
 of thought, and it ran as follows : — 
 
 ^^When I was at school, one of seventy boys, I wonder 
 by what secret understanding our attention began to wander 
 when we had pored over our books for some hours. I won- 
 der by what ingenuity we brought on that confused state of 
 mind when sense became nonsense, when figures wouldn’t 
 work, when dead languages wouldn’t construe, when live 
 languages wouldn’t be spoken, when memory wouldn’t come, 
 when dulness and vacancy wouldn’t go. I cannot remember 
 that we ever conspired to be sleepy after dinner, or that we 
 ever particularly wanted to be stupid, and to have flushed 
 faces and hot beating heads, or to find blank hopelessness 
 and obscurity this afternoon in what would become perfectly 
 clear and bright in the freshness of to-morrow morning. We 
 suffered for these things, and they made us miserable enough. 
 Neither do I remember that we ever bound ourselves by any 
 secret oath or other solemn obligation, to find the seats 
 getting too hard to be sat upon after a certain time ; or to 
 have intolerable twitches in our legs, rendering us aggressive 
 and malicious with those members ; or to be troubled with a 
 similar uneasiness in our elbows, attended with fistic conse- 
 quences to our neighbors ; or to carry two pounds of lead 
 in the chest, four pounds in the head, and several active blue- 
 bottles in each ear. Yet, for certain, we suffered under those 
 distresses, and were always charged at for laboring under 
 them, as if we had brought them on, of our own deliberate 
 act and deed. As to the mental portion of them being my 
 own fault in my own case — I should like to ask any well- 
 
310 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 trained and experienced teacher, not to say psychologist. And 
 as to the physical portion — I should like to ask Professoh 
 OWEN.’^ 
 
 It happened that I had a small bundle of papers with me, 
 on what is called The Half-Time System ’’ in schools. Ee- 
 ferring to one of those papers I found that the indefatigable 
 Mr. Chadwick had been beforehand with me, and had already 
 asked Professor Owen : who had handsomely replied that I 
 was not to blame, but that, being troubled with a skeleton, 
 and having been constituted according to certain natural laws, 
 I and my skeleton were unfortunately bound by those laws — 
 even in school — and had comported ourselves accordingly. 
 Much comforted by the good Professor’s being on my side, 
 I read on to discover whether the indefatigable Mr. Chadwick 
 had taken up the mental part of my afflictions. I found that 
 he had, and that he had gained on my behalf. Sir Benjamin 
 Brodie, Sir David Wilkie, Sir Walter Scott, and the 
 common sense of mankind. For which I beg Mr. Chadwick, 
 if this should meet his eye, to accept my warm acknowledg- 
 ments. 
 
 Up to that time I had retained a misgiving that the seventy 
 unfartunates of whom I was one, must have been, without 
 knowing it, leagued together by the spirit of evil in a sort of 
 perpetual Guy Fawkes Plot, to grope about in vaults with 
 dark lanterns after a certain period of continuous study. But 
 now the misgiving vanished, and I floated on with a quieted 
 mind to see the Half-Time System in action. For that was 
 the purpose of my journey, both by steamboat on the Thames, 
 and by very dirty railway on the shore. To which last insti- 
 tution, I beg to recommend the legal use of coke as engine- 
 fuel, rather than the illegal use of coal ; the recommendation 
 is quite disinterested, for I was most liberally supplied with 
 small coal on the journey, for which no charge was made. I 
 had not only my eyes, nose, and ears filled, but my hat, and 
 all my pockets, and my pocket-book, and my watch. 
 
 The V.D.S.C.K.C. (or Very Dirty and Small Coal Eailway 
 Company) delivered me close to my destination, and I soon 
 found the Half-Time System established in spacious premises, 
 and freely placed at my convenience and disposal. 
 
THE UJSCOMMEliCIAL TBAVELLEE. 
 
 311 
 
 What would I see first of the Half-Time System ? I chose 
 Military Drill. Atteii — tion ! Instantly a hundred boys 
 stood forth in the paved yard as one boy ; bright, quick, 
 eager, steady, watchful for the look of command, instant and 
 ready for the word. Not only was there complete precision — 
 complete accord to the eye and to the ear — but an alertness 
 in the doing of the thing which deprived it, curiously, of its 
 monotonous or mechanical character. There was perfect uni- 
 formity, and yet an individual spirit and emulation. No 
 spectator could doubt that the boys liked it. With* non- 
 commissioned officers varying from a yard to a yard and a 
 half high, the result could not possibly have been attained 
 otherwise. They marched, and counter-marched, and formed 
 in line and square, and company, and single file and double 
 file, and performed a variety of evolutions ; all most admirably. 
 In respect of an air of enjoyable understanding of what they 
 were about, which seems to be forbidden to English soldiers, 
 the boys might have been small French troops. When they 
 were dismissed and the broadsword exercise, limited to a 
 much smaller number, succeeded, the boys who had no part in 
 that new drill, either looked on attentively, or disported them- 
 selves in a gymnasium hard by. The steadiness of the broad- 
 sword boys on their short legs, and the firmness with which 
 they sustained the different positions, was truly remarkable. 
 
 The broadsword exercise over, suddenly there was great 
 excitement and a rush. Naval Drill ! 
 
 In a corner of the ground stood a decked mimic ship, with 
 real masts, yards, and sails — mainmast seventy feet high. 
 At the word of command from the Skipper of this, ship — a 
 mahogany-faced Old Salt, with the indispensable quid in his 
 cheek, the true nautical roll, and all wonderfully complete — 
 the rigging was covered with a swarm of boys : one, the first 
 to spring into the shrouds, outstripping all the others, and 
 resting on the truck of the main-topmast in no time. 
 
 And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner ; 
 the Skipper himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and 
 all hands present, implicitly believing that there was not a 
 moment to lose, that the wind had that instant chopped round 
 and sprung up fair, and that we were away on a voyage round 
 
312 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 the world. Get all sail upon her ! With a will, my lads ! 
 Lay out upon the main-yard there ! Look alive at the weather 
 earring ! Cheery, my boys ! Let go the sheet now ! Stand 
 by at the braces, you ! With a will, aloft there ! Belay, star- 
 board watch ! Fifer ! Come aft, fifer, and give ’em a tune ! 
 Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand — smallest boy ever 
 seen — big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on a 
 paving-stone — gives ’em a tune with all his might and main. 
 Hooroar, fifer ! With a will, my lads ! Tip ’em a livelier one, 
 fifer !. Fifer tips ’em a livelier one, and excitement increases. 
 Shake ’em out, my lads ! Well done ! There you have her ! 
 Pretty, pretty ! Every rag upon her she can carry, wind right 
 astarn, and ship cutting through the water fifteen knots an 
 hour ! 
 
 At this favorable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm 
 A man overboard ! ” (on the gravel), but he was immediately 
 recovered, none the worse. Presently, I observed the Skipper 
 overboard, but forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise 
 disconcerted by the accident. Indeed, I soon came to regard 
 the Skipper as an amphibious creature, for he was so perpetu- 
 ally plunging overboard to look up at the hands aloft, that he 
 was oftener in the bosom of the ocean than on deck. His 
 pride in his crew on those occasions was delightful, and the 
 conventional unintelligibility of his orders in the ears of 
 uncommercial land-lubbers and loblolly boys, though they 
 were always intelligible to the crew, was hardly less pleasant. 
 But we couldn’t expect to go on in this way forever ; dirty 
 weather came on, and then worse weather, and when we least 
 expected it we got into tremendous difficulties. Screw loose 
 in the chart perhaps — something certainly wrong somewhere 
 — but here we were with breakers ahead, my lads, driving 
 head on, slap on a lee shore ! The Skipper broached this ter- 
 rific announcement in such great agitation, that the small fifer, 
 not fifing now, but standing looking on near the wheel with 
 his fife under his arm, seemed for the moment quite unboyed, 
 though he speedily recovered his presence of mind. In the 
 trying circumstances that ensued, the Skipper and the crew 
 proved worthy of one another. The Skipper got dreadfully 
 hoarse, but otherwise was master of the situation. The man 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 313 
 
 at the wheel did wonders ; all hands (except the fifer) were 
 turned up to wear ship ; and I observed the fifer, when we 
 were at our greatest extremity, to refer to some document in 
 his waistcoat pocket, which I conceived to be his will. I think 
 she struck. I was not myself conscious of any collision, but I 
 saw the Skipper so very often washed overboard and back 
 again, that I could only impute it to the beating of the ship. 
 I am not enough of a seaman to describe the manoeuvres by 
 which we were saved, but they made the Skipper very hot 
 (French polishing his mahogany face) and the crew very 
 nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within a few minutes 
 of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off, and were 
 all a-taunto — which I felt very grateful for : not that I knew 
 what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all 
 a-taunto lately. Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and 
 we shaped our course for it, having the wind abeam, and fre- 
 quently changing the man at the helm, in order that every 
 man might have his spell. We worked into harbor under 
 prosperous circumstances, and furled our sails, and squared our 
 yards, and made all shipshape and handsome, and so our voyage 
 ended. When I complimented the Skipper at parting on his 
 exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed me that 
 the latter were provided for the worst, all hands being taught 
 to swim and dive ; and he added that the able seaman at the 
 main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as he could 
 go high. 
 
 The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short- 
 Timers, was the sudden apparition of a military band. I had 
 been inspecting the hammocks of the crew of the good ship, 
 when I saw with astonishment that several musical instru- 
 ments, brazen and of great size, appeared to have suddenly 
 developed two legs each, and to be trotting about a yard. And 
 my astonishment was heightened when I observed a large 
 drum, that had previously been leaning helpless against a 
 wall, taking up a stout position on four legs. Approaching 
 this drum and looking over it, I found two boys behind it (it 
 was too much for one), and then I found that each of the 
 brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and was going to 
 discourse sweet sounds. The boys — not omitting the fifer, 
 
314 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 now playing a new instrument — were dressed in neat uniform, 
 and stood up in a circle at their music-stands, like any other 
 Military Band. They played a march or two, and then we 
 had Cheer boys. Cheer, and then we had Yankee Doodle, and 
 we finished, as in loyal duty bound, with God Save the Queen. 
 The band’s proficiency was perfectly wonderful, and it was not 
 at all wonderful that the whole body corporate of Short-Timers 
 listened with faces of the liveliest interest and pleasure. 
 
 What happened next among the Short-Timers ? As if the 
 band had blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen 
 tubes, in a great class-room I found myself now, with the 
 whole choral force of Short-Timers singing the praises of a 
 summer’s day to the harmonium, and my small but highly- 
 respected friend the fifer blazing away vocally, as if he had 
 been saving up his wind for the last twelvemonth ; also the 
 whole crew of the good ship Nameless swarming up and down 
 the scale as if they had never swarmed up and down the rig- 
 ging. This done, we threw our whole power into God bless 
 the Prince of Wales, and blessed his Eoyal Highness to such 
 an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part, I gasped again 
 when it was over. The moment this was done, we formed, 
 with surpassing freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to 
 work at oral lessons, as if we never did, and had never thought 
 of doing, anything else. 
 
 Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the 
 Uncommercial Traveller would have been betrayed but for a 
 discreet reticence, coupled with an air of absolute wisdom on 
 the part of that artful personage. Take the square of five, 
 multiply it by fifteen, divide it by three, deduct eight from it, 
 add four dozen to it, give me the result in pence, and tell me 
 how many eggs I could get for it at three farthings apiece. 
 The problem is hardly stated, when a dozen small boys pour 
 out answers. Some wide, some very nearly right, some worked 
 as far as they go with such accuracy, as at once to show what 
 link of the chain has been dropped in the hurry. For the 
 moment, none are quite right ; but behold a laboring spirit 
 beating the buttons on its corporeal waistcoat, in a process of 
 internal calculation, and knitting an accidental bump on its 
 corporeal forehead in a concentration of mental arithmetic ! 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 315 
 
 It is my honorable friend (if he will allow me to call him so) 
 the fifer. With right arm eagerly extended in token of being 
 inspired with an answer, and with right leg foremost, the fifer 
 solves the mystery : then recalls both arm and leg, and with 
 bump in ambush awaits the next poser. Take the square of 
 three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty to it, 
 take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give me 
 the result in pence, and say how many halfpence. Wise as the 
 serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach 
 to that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and 
 quenches this arithmetical fire. Tell me something about 
 Great Britain, tell me something about its principal produc- 
 tions, tell me something about its ports, tell me something 
 about its seas and rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, 
 cotton, timber, tin, and turpentine. The hollow square bristles 
 with extended right arms ; but ever faithful to fact is the lifer, 
 ever wise as the serpent is the performer on that instrument, 
 ever prominently buoyant and brilliant are all members of the 
 band. I observe the player of the cymbals to dash at a sound- 
 ing answer now and then rather than not cut in at all ; but I 
 take that to.be in the way of his instrument. All these ques- 
 tions, and many such, are put on the spur of the moment, and 
 by one who has never examined these boys. The Uncommer- 
 cial, invited to add another, falteringly demands how many 
 birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February will 
 have had on completing his fiftieth year ? A general percep- 
 tion of trap and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen 
 to retire behind the corduroys of his next neighbors, as per- 
 ceiving special necessity for collecting himself and commun- 
 ing with his mind. Meanwhile, the wdsdom of the serpent 
 suggests that the man will have had only one birthday in all 
 that time, for how can any man have more than one, seeing 
 that he is born once and dies once ? The blushing Uncommer- 
 cial stands corrected, and amends the formula. Pondering 
 ensues, two or three wrong answers are offered, and Cymbals 
 strikes up Six ! but doesn’t know why. Then modestly 
 emerging from his Academic Grove of corduroys appears the 
 fifer, right arm extended, right leg foremost^ bump irradiated. 
 Twelve, and two over ! ” 
 
316 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, 
 and very creditably too. Would have done better perhaps, 
 with a little more geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher ; 
 for a cold eye, my young friend, and a hard abrupt manner, 
 are not by any means the powerful engines that your inno- 
 cence supposes them to be. Both girls and boys wrote excel- 
 lently, from copy and dictation ; both could cook ; both could 
 mend their own clothes ; both could clean up everything about 
 them in an orderly and skilful way, the girls having womanly 
 household knowledge superadded. Order and method began 
 in the songs of the Infant School which I visited likewise, 
 and they were even in their dwarf degree to be found in the 
 Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was carried 
 off with acclamations, and where the Doctor ’’ — a medical 
 gentleman of two, who took his degree on the night when he 
 was found at an apothecary’s door — did the honors of the 
 establishment with great urbanity and gayety. 
 
 These have long been excellent schools ; long before the 
 days of the Short-Time. I first saw them, twelve or fifteen 
 years ago. But since the introduction of the Short-Time 
 system it has been proved here that eighteen hours a week of 
 book-learning are more profitable than thirty-six, and that the 
 pupils are far quicker and brighter than of yore. The good 
 influences of music on the whole body of children have like- 
 wise been surprisingly proved. Obviously another of the 
 immense advantages of the Short-Time system to the cause of 
 good education is the great diminution of its cost, and of the 
 period of time over which it extends. The last is a most 
 important consideration, as poor parents are always impatient 
 to profit by their children’s labor. 
 
 It will be objected : Firstly, that this is all very well, but 
 special local advantages and special selection of children must 
 be necessary to such success. Secondly, that this is all very 
 well, but must be very expensive. Thirdly, that this is all 
 very well, but we have no proof of the results, sir, no proof. 
 
 On the first head of local advantages and special selection. 
 Would Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Cliil- 
 dren’s Paradise ? Or would the legitimate and illegitimate 
 pauper children of the long-shore population of such a river- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 317 
 
 side district, be regarded as unusually favorable specimens to 
 work with ? Yet these schools are at Limehcuse, and are the 
 Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper Union. 
 
 On the second head of expense. Would sixpence a week 
 be considered a very large cost for the education of each pupil, 
 including all salaries of teachers and rations of teachers ? 
 But supposing the cost were not sixpence a week, not five- 
 pence ? It is FOURPENCE-HALFPENNY. 
 
 On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof. Is there any 
 proof in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and 
 more highly qualified, have been produced here under the 
 Short-Time system than under the Long-Time system ? That 
 the Short-Timers, in a writing competition, beat the Long- 
 Timers of a first-class National School ? That the sailor-boys 
 are in such demand for merchant ships, that whereas, before 
 they were trained, 10^. premium used to be given with each 
 boy — too often to some greedy brute of a drunken skipper, 
 who disappeared before the term of apprenticeship was out, if 
 the ill-used boy didn’t — captains of the best character now 
 take these boys more than willingly, with no premium at all ? 
 Tliat they are also much esteemed in the Koyal Navy, which 
 they prefer, because everything is so neat and clean and 
 orderly ? ” Or, is there any proof in Naval captains writing. 
 Your little fellows are all that I can desire ? ” Or, is there 
 any proof in such testimony as this : The owner of a vessel 
 called at the school, and said that as his ship was going down 
 Channel on her last voyage, with one of the boys from the 
 school on board, the pilot said, ^ It would be as well if the 
 royal were lowered ; I wish it were down.’ Without waiting 
 for any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the lad, whom 
 they had taken on board from the school, instantly mounted 
 the mast and lowered the royal, and at the next glance of the 
 pilot to the masthead, he perceived that the sail had been let 
 down. He exclaimed ^ Who’s done that job?’ The owner, 
 who was on board, said, ^ That was the little fellow whom I 
 put on board two days ago.’ The pilot immediately said, 
 ^ Why, where could he have been brought up ? ’ That boy 
 had never seen the sea or been on a real ship before ? ” Or, 
 is there any proof in these boys being in greater demand for 
 
318 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 Regimental Bands than the Union can meet ? Or, in ninety- 
 eight of them having gone into Regimental Bands in three 
 years ? Or, in twelve of them being in the band of one regi- 
 ment ? Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing, We 
 want six more boys ; they are excellent lads ? ’’ Or, in one 
 of the boys having risen to be band-corporal in the same regi- 
 ment ? Or, in employers of all kinds chorusing, Give us 
 drilled boys, for they are prompt, obedient, and punctual ? 
 Other proofs I have myself beheld with these Uncommercial 
 eyes, though I do not regard myself as having a right to re- 
 late in what social positions they have seen respected men and 
 women who were once pauper children of the Stepney Union. 
 
 Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the 
 capabilities for being turned, I need not point out. Many of 
 them are always ambitious of military service ; and once upon 
 a time when an old boy came back to see the old place, a cav- 
 alry soldier all complete, with his spurs on, such a yearning 
 broke out to get into cavalry regiments and wear those sub- 
 lime appendages, that it was one of the greatest excitements 
 ever known in the school. The girls make excellent domestic 
 servants, and at certain periods come back, a score or two at 
 a time, to see the old building, and to take tea with the old 
 teachers, and to hear the old band, and see the old ship with 
 her masts towering up above the neighboring roofs and 
 chimneys. As to the physical health of these schools, it is so 
 exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary regu- 
 lations are as good as the other educational arrangements), 
 that when Mr, Tufnell, the Inspector, first stated it in a 
 report, he was supposed, in spite of his high character, to 
 have been betrayed into some extraordinary mistake or exag- 
 geration. In the moral health of these schools — where cor- 
 poral punishment is unknown — Truthfulness stands high. 
 When the ship was first erected, the boys were forbidden to 
 go aloft, until the nets, which are now always there, were 
 stretched as a precaution against accidents. Certain boys, in 
 their eagerness, disobeyed the injunction, got out of window 
 in the early daylight, and climbed to the masthead. One boy 
 unfortunately fell, and was killed. There was no clew to the 
 others ; but all the boys were assembled, and the chairman of 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 319 
 
 the Board addressed them. I promise nothing ; you see what 
 a dreadful thing has happened ; you know what a grave offence 
 it is that has led to such a consequence ; I cannot say what 
 will be done with the offenders ; but, hoys, you have been 
 trained here, above all things, to respect the truth. I want 
 the truth. Who are the delinquents ? Instantly, the whole 
 number of boys concerned, separated from the rest, and stood 
 out. 
 
 Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless 
 to say, a good head and a good heart) have been deeply inter- 
 ested in these schools for many years, and are so still ; and 
 the establishment is very fortunate in a most admirable mas- 
 ter, and moreover the schools of the Stepney Union cannot 
 have got to be what they are, without the Stepney Board of 
 Guardians having been earnest and humane men, strongly 
 imbued with a sense of their responsibility. But what one 
 set of men can do in this wise, another set of men can do ; 
 and this is a noble example to all other Bodies and Unions, 
 and a noble example to the State. Followed, and enlarged 
 upon by its enforcement on bad parents, it would clear Lon- 
 don streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight 
 with — myriads of little children who awfully reverse Our 
 Saviour’s words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but 
 of the Kingdom of Hell. 
 
 Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public con- 
 science of such reproach ? Ah ! Almost prophetic, surely, 
 the child’s jingle : — 
 
 When will that be, 
 
 Say the bells of Step-ney! 
 
320 
 
 THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 A SMALL STAR IN THE EAST. 
 
 I HAD been looking, yesternight, through the famous 
 Dance of Death,’^ and to-day the grim old woodcuts arose 
 in my mind with the new significance of a ghastly monotony 
 not to be found in the original. The weird skeleton rattled 
 along the streets before me, and struck fiercely ; but it was 
 never at the pains of assuming a disguise. It played on no 
 dulcimer here, was crowned with no flowers, waved no 
 plume, minced in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine- 
 cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted no gold. It was 
 simply a bare, gaunt, famished skeleton, slaying his way 
 along. 
 
 The borders of Eatcliff and Stepney, eastward of London, 
 and giving on the impure river, were the scene of this uncom- 
 promising dance of death, upon a drizzling Xovember day. 
 A squalid maze of streets, courts, and alleys of miserable 
 houses let out in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags, 
 and hunger. A mud-desert, chiefly inhabited by a tribe from 
 whom employment has departed, or to whom it comes but 
 fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled mechanics in any 
 wise. They are but laborers, — dock-laborers, water-side 
 laborers, coal-porters, ballast-heavers, such like hewers of 
 wood and drawers of water. But they have come into exist- 
 ence, and they propagate their wretched race. 
 
 One grisly joke alone, methought, the skeleton seemed to 
 play off here. It had stuck election-bills on the walls, which 
 the wind and rain had deteriorated into suitable rags. It 
 had even summed up the state of the poll, in chalk, on the 
 shutters of one ruined house. It adjured the free and inde- 
 pendent starvers to vote for Thisman and vote for Thatman ; 
 not to plump, as they valued the state of parties and the 
 national prosperity (both of great importance to them, I 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 321 
 
 think) ; but^ by returning Thisman and Thatman, each naught 
 without the other, to compound a glorious and immortal 
 w^hole. Surely the skeleton is nowhere more cruelly ironical 
 in the original monkish idea ! 
 
 Pondering in my mind the far-seeing schemes of Thisman 
 and Thatman, and of the public blessing called Party, for 
 staying the degeneracy, physical and moral, of many thou- 
 sands (who shall say how many ?) of the English race ; for 
 devising employment useful to the community for those who 
 want but to work and live ; for equalizing rates, cultivating 
 waste lands, facilitating emigration, and, above all things, 
 saving and utilizing the oncoming generations, and thereby 
 changing ever-growing national weakness into strength ; pon- 
 dering in my mind, I say, these hopeful exertions, I turned 
 down a narrow street to look into a house or two. 
 
 It was a dark street with a dead wall on one side. Nearly 
 all the outer doors of the houses stood open. I took the first 
 entry, and knocked at a parlor-door. Might I come in ? I 
 might, if I plased, sur. 
 
 The woman of the room (Irish) had picked up some long 
 strips of wood, about some wharf or barge; and they had just 
 now been thrust into the otherwise empty grate to make two 
 iron pots boil. There was some fish in one, and there were 
 some potatoes in the other. The flare of the burning wood 
 enabled me to see a table, and a broken chair or so, and some 
 old cheap crockery ornaments about the chimney-piece. It 
 was not until I had spoken with the woman a few minutes, 
 that I saw a horrible brown heap on the floor in a corner, 
 which, but for previous experience in this dismal wise, I might 
 not have suspected to be ^^the bed.’’ There was something 
 thrown upon it ; and I asked what that was. 
 
 ^^’Tis the poor craythur that stays here, sur; and ’tis 
 very bad she is, and ’tis very bad she’s been this long 
 time, and ’tis better she’ll never be, and ’tis slape she does 
 all day, and ’tis wake she does all night, and ’tis the lead, 
 sur.” 
 
 The what ? ” 
 
 The lead, sur. Sure ’tis the lead-mills, where the women 
 gets took on at eighteen-pence a day, sur, when they makes 
 
322 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 ajDplication early enougli, and is lucky and wanted; and ’tis 
 lead-pisoned she is, sur, and some of them gets lead-pisoned 
 soon, and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but 
 not many, niver ; and ^tis all according to the constitooshun, 
 sur, and some constitooshuns is strong, and some is weak; 
 and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned, bad as can be, sur; 
 and her brain is coming out at her ear, and it hurts her 
 dreadful ; and that’s what it is, and niver no more, and niver 
 no less, sur.” 
 
 The sick young woman moaning here, the speaker bent 
 over her, took a bandage from her head, and threw open a 
 back door to let in the daylight upon it, from the smallest 
 and most miserable back-yard I ever saw. 
 
 That’s what cooms from her, sur, being lead-pisoned ; 
 and it cooms from her night and day, the poor, sick craythur ; 
 and the pain of it is dreadful ; and God he knows that my 
 husband has walked the sthreets these four days, being a 
 laborer, and is walking them now, and is ready to work, and 
 no work for him, and no fire and no food but the bit in the 
 pot, and no more than ten shillings in a fortnight ; God be 
 good to us ! and it is poor we are, and dark it is and could it 
 is indeed.” 
 
 Knowing that I could compensate myself thereafter for my 
 self-denial, if I saw fit, I had resolved that I would give 
 nothing in the course of these visits. I did this to try the 
 people. I may state at once that my closest observation could 
 not detect any indication whatever of an expectation that I 
 would give money : they were grateful to be talked to about 
 their miserable affairs, and sympathy was plainly a comfort 
 to them ; but they neither asked for money in any case, nor 
 showed the least trace of surprise or disappointment or resent- 
 ment at my giving none. 
 
 The woman’s married daughter had by this time come 
 down from her room on the floor above, to join in the con- 
 versation. She herself had been in the lead-mills very early 
 that morning to be ^^took on,” but had not succeeded. She 
 had four children ; and her husband, also a water-side laborer, 
 and then out seeking work, seemed in no better case as to 
 finding it than her father. She was English, and by nature 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 323 
 
 of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in her poor dress and 
 in her mother’s there was an effort to keep up some appear- 
 ance of neatness. She knew all about the sufferings of the 
 unfortunate invalid, and all about the lead-poisoning, and 
 how the symptoms came on, and how they grew, — having 
 often seen them. The very smell when you stood inside the 
 door of the works was enough to knock you down, she said : 
 yet she was going back again to get took on.” What could 
 she do ? Better be ulcerated and paralyzed for eighteen- 
 pence a day, while it lasted, than see the children starve. 
 
 A dark and squalid cupboard in this room, touching the 
 back door and all manner of offence, had been for some time 
 the sleeping-place of the sick young woman. But the nights 
 being now wintry, and the blankets and coverlets gone to 
 the leaving shop,” she lay all night where she lay all day, 
 and was lying then. The woman of the room, her husband, 
 this most miserable patient, and two others, lay on the one 
 brown heap together for warmth. 
 
 God bless you, sir, and thank you ! ” were the parting 
 words from these people, — gratefully spoken too, — with 
 which I left this place. 
 
 Some streets away, I tapped at another parlor-door on 
 another ground floor. Looking in, I found a man, his wife, 
 and four children, sitting at a washing-stool by way of table, 
 at their dinner of bread and infused tea-leaves. There was 
 a very scanty cinderous fire in the grate by which they sat ; 
 and there was a tent bedstead in the room with a bed upon it 
 and a coverlet. The man did not rise when I went in, nor 
 during my stay, but civilly inclined his head on my pulling 
 off my hat, and, in answer to my inquiry whether I might 
 ask him a question or two, said, Certainly.” There being 
 a window at each end of this room, back and front, it might 
 have been ventilated ; but it was shut up tight, to keep the 
 cold out, and was very sickening. 
 
 The wife, an intelligent, quick woman, rose and stood at 
 her husband’s elbow ; and he glanced up at her as if for help. 
 It soon appeared that he was rather deaf. He was a slow, 
 simple fellow of about thirty. 
 
 What was he by trade ? ” 
 
324 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 Gentleman asks what are you by trade, John ? ’’ 
 
 ‘‘1 am a boilermaker ; looking about him with an exceed- 
 ingly perplexed air, as if for a boiler that had unaccountably 
 vanished. 
 
 He ain’t a mechanic, you understand, sir,” the wife put 
 in : he’s only a laborer.” 
 
 Are you in work ? ” 
 
 He looked up at his wife again. Gentleman says are you 
 in work, John ? ” 
 
 “ In work ! ” cried this forlorn boilermaker, staring aghast 
 at his wife, and then working his vision’s way very slowly 
 round to me : Lord, no ! ” 
 
 ‘‘ Ah, he ain’t indeed ! ” said the poor woman, shaking her 
 head, as she looked at the four children in succession, and 
 then at him. 
 
 Work ! ” said the boilermaker, still seeking that evapo- 
 rated boiler, first in my countenance, then in the air, and then 
 in the features of his second son at his knee : I wish I was 
 in work ! I haven’t had more than a day’s work to do this 
 three weeks.” 
 
 How have you lived ? ” 
 
 A faint gleam of admiration lighted up the face of the 
 would-be boilermaker, as he stretched out the short sleeve of 
 his threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, pointing her out, 
 On the work of the wife.” 
 
 I forget where boilermaking had gone to, or where he 
 supposed it had gone to; but he added some resigned in- 
 formation on that head, coupled with an expression of his 
 belief that it was never coming back. 
 
 The cheery helpfulness of the wife was very remarkable. 
 She did slop-work ; made pea-jackets. She produced the 
 pea-jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon the bed, — 
 the only piece of furniture in the room on which to spread it. 
 She showed how much of it she made, and how much was 
 afterwards finished off by the machine. According to her 
 calculation at the moment, deducting what her trimming 
 cost her, she got for making a pea-jacket tenpence half-penny, 
 and she could make one in something less than two days. 
 
 But, you see, it come to her through two hands, and of 
 
THE UNCOMMEUCIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 325 
 
 course it didn’t come through the second hand for nothing. 
 Why did it come through the second hand at all ? Why, 
 this way. The second hand took the risk of the given-out 
 work, you see. If she had money enough to pay the secu- 
 rity deposit, — call it two pound, — she could get the work 
 from the first hand, and so the second would not have to be 
 deducted for. But, having no money at all, the second hand 
 come ill and took its profit, and so the whole worked down to 
 tenpence half-penny. Having explained all this with great 
 intelligence, even with some little pride, and without a whine 
 or murmur, she folded her work again, sat down by her 
 husband’s side at the washing-stool, and resumed her dinner of 
 dry bread. Mean as the meal was, on the bare board, with 
 its old gallipots for cups, and what not other sordid make- 
 shifts ; shabby as the woman was in dress, and toning down 
 towards the Bosjesman color, with want of nutriment and 
 washing, — there was positively a dignity in her, as the family 
 anchor just holding the poor shipwrecked boilermaker’s bark. 
 When I left the room, the boilermaker’s eyes were slowly 
 turned towards her, as if his last hope of ever again seeing 
 that vanished boiler lay in her direction. 
 
 These people had never applied for parish relief but once ; 
 and that was when the husband met with a disabling accident 
 at his work. 
 
 Hot many doors from here, I went into a room on the first 
 floor. The woman apologized for its being in ^^an untidy 
 mess.” The day was Saturday, and she was boiling the 
 children’s clothes in a saucepan on the hearth. There was 
 nothing else into which she could have put them. There was 
 no crockery, or tinware, or tub, or bucket. There was an 
 old gallipot or two, and there was a broken bottle or so, and 
 there were some broken boxes for seats. The last small 
 scraping of coals left was raked together in a corner of the 
 floor. There were some rags in an open cupboard, also on 
 the floor. In a corner of the room was a crazy old French 
 bedstead, with a man lying on his back upon it in a ragged 
 pilot jacket, and rough oilskin fantail hat. The room was 
 perfectly black. It was difficult to believe, at first, that it 
 was not purposely colored black, the walls were so begrimed. 
 
326 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 As I stood opposite the woman boiling the ^ children’s 
 clothes, — she had not even a piece of soap to wash them 
 with, — and apologizing for her occupation, I could take in 
 all these things without appearing to notice them, and could 
 even correct my inventory. I had missed, at the first glance, 
 some half a pound of bread in the otherwise empty safe, an old 
 red ragged crinoline hanging on the handle of the door by 
 which I had entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron 
 scattered on the floor, which looked like broken tools and a 
 piece of stove-pipe. A child stood looking on. On the box 
 nearest to the fire sat two younger children ; one a delicate 
 and pretty little creature, whom the other sometimes kissed. 
 
 This woman, like the last, was wofully shabby, and was 
 degenerating to the Bosjesman complexion. But her figure, 
 and the ghost of a certain vivacity about her, and the spectre 
 of a dimple in her cheek, carried my memory strangely back 
 to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre, London, when Mrs. 
 Fitzwilliam was the friend of Victorine. 
 
 May I ask you what your husband is ? ” 
 
 He’s a coal-porter, sir,” — with a glance and a sigh towards 
 the bed. 
 
 Is he out of work ? ” 
 
 Oh, yes, sir ! and work’s at all times very, very scanty 
 with him ; and now he’s laid up.” 
 
 It’s ni}^ legs,” said the man upon the bed. I’ll unroll 
 ’em.” And immediately began. 
 
 Have you any older children ? ” 
 
 I have a daughter that does the needle-work, and I have a 
 son that does what he can. She’s at her work now, and he’s 
 trying for work.” 
 
 Do they live here ? ” 
 
 ^^They sleep here. They can’t afford to pay more rent, 
 and so they come here at night. The rent is very hard upon 
 us. It’s rose upon us too, now, — sixpence a week, — on ac- 
 count of these new changes in the law, about the rates. We 
 are a week behind ; the landlord’s been shaking and rattling 
 at that door frightfully ; he says he’ll turn us out. I don’t 
 know what’s to come of it.” 
 
 The man upon the bed ruefully interposed, Here’s my 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 327 
 
 legs. The skin’s broke, besides the swelling. I have had a 
 many kicks, working, one way and another.” 
 
 He looked at his legs (which were much discolored and 
 misshapen) for a while, and then appearing to remember 
 that they were not popular with his family, rolled them up 
 again, as if they were something in the nature of maps or 
 plans that were not wanted to be referred to, lay hopelessly 
 down on his back once more with his fantail hat over his 
 face, and stirred not. 
 
 Do your eldest son and daughter sleep in that cupboard ? ” 
 
 ^^Yes,” replied the woman. 
 
 With the children ? ” 
 
 ^^Yes. We have to get together for warmth. We have 
 little to cover us.” 
 
 Have you nothing by you to eat but the piece of bread 
 I see there ? ” 
 
 Hothing. And we had the rest of the loaf for our break- 
 fast, with water. I don’t know what’s to come of it.” 
 
 Have you no prospect of improvement ? ” 
 
 If my eldest son earns anything to-day, he’ll bring it 
 home. Then we shall have something to eat to-night, and 
 may be able to do something towards the rent. If not, I 
 don’t know what’s to come of it.” 
 
 This is a sad state of things.” 
 
 Yes, sir; it’s a hard, hard life. Take care of the stairs 
 as you go, sir, — they’re broken, — and good-day, sir ! ” 
 
 These people had a mortal dread of entering the workhouse, 
 and received no out-of-door relief. 
 
 In another room, in still another tenement, I found a very 
 decent woman with live children, — the last a baby, and she 
 herself a patient of the parish doctor, — to whom, her hus- 
 band being in the hospital, the Union allowed for the sup- 
 port of herself and family, four shillings a week and five 
 loaves. I suppose when Thisman, M.P., and Thatman, M.P., 
 and the Public-blessing Party, lay their heads together in 
 course of time, and come to an equalization of rating, she 
 may go down to the dance of death to the tune of sixpence 
 more. 
 
 I could enter no other houses for that one while, for I 
 
328 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 could not bear the contemplation of the children. Such 
 heart as I had summoned to sustain me against the miseries 
 of the adults failed me when I looked at the children. I 
 saw how young they were, how hungry, how serious and 
 still. I thought of them, sick and dying in those lairs. I 
 think of them dead without anguish ; but to think of them so 
 suffering and so dying quite unmanned me. 
 
 Down by the river’s bank in Ratcliff, I was turning up- 
 ward by a side-street, therefore, to regain the railway, when 
 my eyes rested on the inscription across the road, ^^East 
 London Children’s Hospital.” I could scarcely have seen 
 an inscription better suited to my frame of mind ; and I went 
 across and went straight in. 
 
 I found the children’s hospital established in an old sail- 
 loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest 
 means. There were trap-doors in the floors, where goods 
 had been hoisted up and down ; heavy feet and heavy weights 
 had started every knot in the well-trodden planking : in- 
 convenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases per- 
 plexed my passage through the wards. But I found it airy, 
 sweet, and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I saw but 
 little beauty; for starvation in the second or third genera- 
 tion takes a pinched look : but I saw the sufferings both of 
 infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged; I heard the little 
 patients answering to pet playful names, the light touch of a 
 delicate lady laid bare the wasted sticks of arms for me to 
 pity ; and the claw-like little hands, as she did so, twined 
 themselves lovingly around her wedding-ring. 
 
 One baby mite there was as pretty as any of Raphael’s 
 angels. The tiny head was bandaged for water on the 
 brain ; and it was suffering with acute bronchitis too, and 
 made from time to time a plaintive, though not impatient or 
 complaining, little sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks * 
 and of the chin was faultless in its condensation of infantine 
 beauty, and the large bright eyes were most lovely. It hap- 
 pened as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that these eyes 
 rested upon mine with that wistful expression of wondering 
 thoughtfulness which we all know sometimes in very little 
 children. They remained fixed on mine, and never turned 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 329 
 
 from me while I stood there. When the utterance of that 
 plaintive sound shook the little form, the gaze still remained 
 unchanged. I felt as though the child implored me to tell 
 the story of the little hospital in which it was sheltered to 
 any gentle heart I could address. Laying my world-worn 
 hand upon the little unmarked clasped hand at the chin, I 
 gave it a silent promise that I would do so. 
 
 A gentleman and lady, a young husband and wife, have 
 bought and fitted up this building for its present noble use, 
 and have quietly settled themselves in it as its medical officers 
 and directors. Both have had considerable practical expe- 
 rience of medicine and surgery ; he as house-surgeon of a 
 great London hospital ; slie as a very earnest student, tested 
 by severe examination, and also as a nurse of the sick poor 
 during the prevalence of cholera. 
 
 With every qualification to lure them away, with youth 
 and accomplishments and tastes and habits that can have 
 no response in any breast near them, close begirt by every 
 repulsive circumstance inseparable from such a neighbor- 
 hood, there they dwell. They live in the hospital itself, and 
 their rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at their dinner- 
 table, they could hear the cry of one of the children in pain. 
 The lady’s piano, drawing-materials, books, and other such 
 evidences of refinement are as much a part of the rough place 
 as the iron bedsteads of the little patients. They are put to 
 shifts for room, like passengers on board ship. The dispenser 
 of medicines (attracted to them not by self-interest, but by 
 their own magnetism and that of their cause) sleeps in a 
 recess in the dining-room, and has his washing apparatus in 
 the sideboard. 
 
 Their contented manner of making the best of the things 
 around them, I found so pleasantly inseparable from their 
 usefulness ! Their pride in this partition that we put up 
 ourselves, or in that partition that we took down, or in that 
 other partition that we moved, or in the stove that was given 
 us for the waiting-room, or in our nightly conversion of the 
 little consulting-room into a smoking-room ! Their admira- 
 tion of the situation, if we could only get rid of its one 
 objectionable incident, the coal-yard at the back ! Our 
 
330 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 hospital carriage, presented by a friend, and very useful.’’ 
 That was my presentation to a perambulator, for which a coach- 
 house had been discovered in a corner down-stairs, just large 
 enough to hold it. Colored prints, in all stages of prepara- 
 tion for being added to those already decorating the wards, 
 were plentiful ; a charming wooden phenomenon of a bird, 
 with an impossible top-knot who ducked his head when you 
 set a counter-weight going, had been inaugurated as a public 
 statue that very morning ; and trotting about among the 
 beds, on familiar terms with all the patients, was a comical 
 mongrel dog, called Poodles. This comical dog (quite a 
 tonic in himself) was found characteristically starving at the 
 door of the institution, and was taken in and fed, and has 
 lived here ever since. An admirer of his mental endow- 
 ments has presented him with a collar bearing the legend. 
 Judge not Poodles by external appearances.” He was 
 merrily wagging his tail on a boy’s pillow when he made this 
 modest appeal to me. 
 
 When this hospital was first opened, in January of the 
 present year, the people could not possibly conceive but that 
 somebody paid for the services rendered there ; and were 
 disposed to claim them as a right, and to find fault if out of 
 temper. They soon came to understand the case better, and 
 have much increased in gratitude. The mothers of the 
 patients avail themselves very freely of the visiting rules; 
 the fathers often on Sundays. There is an unreasonable (but 
 still, I think, touching and intelligible) tendency in the parents 
 to take a child away to its wretched home, if on the point 
 of death. One boy who had been thus carried off on a rainy 
 night, when in a violent state of inflammation, and who had 
 been afterwards brought back, had been recovered with ex- 
 ceeding difficulty ; but he was a jolly boy, with a specially 
 strong interest in his dinner, when I saw him. 
 
 Insufficient food and unwholesome living are the main 
 causes of disease among these small patients. So nourish- 
 ment, cleanliness, and ventilation are the main remedies. 
 Discharged patients are looked after, and invited to come 
 and dine now and then ; so are certain famishing creatures 
 who were never patients. Both the lady and the gentleman 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 331 
 
 are well acquainted, not only with the histories of the 
 patients and their families, but with the characters and cir- 
 cumstances of great numbers of their neighbors : of these 
 they keep a register. It is their common experience, that 
 people, sinking down by inches into deeper and deeper 
 poverty, will conceal it, even from them, if possible, unto 
 the very last extremity. 
 
 The nurses of this hospital are all young, — ranging, say, 
 from nineteen to four and twenty. They have even within 
 these narrow limits, what many well-endowed hospitals 
 would not give them, a comfortable room of their own in 
 which to take their meals. It is a beautiful truth, that 
 interest in the children and sympathy with their sorrows 
 bind these young women to their places far more strongly 
 than any other consideration could. The best skilled of the 
 nurses came originally from a kindred neighborhood, almost 
 as poor ; and she knew Iioav much the work was needed. 
 She is a fair dressmaker. The hospital cannot pay her as 
 many pounds in the year as there are months in it ; and one 
 day the lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her about her 
 improving her prospects and following her trade. hlo,’^ 
 she said : she could never be so useful or so happy elsewhere 
 any more ; she must stay among the children. And she 
 stays. One of the nurses, as I passed her, was washing a 
 baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I stopped to speak to 
 her charge, < — a common, bullet-headed, frowning charge 
 enough, laying hold of his own nose with a slippery grasp, 
 and staring very solemnly out of a blanket. The melting of 
 the pleasant face into delighted smiles, as this young gentle- 
 man gave an unexpected kick, and laughed at me, was almost 
 worth my previous pain. 
 
 An affecting play was acted in Paris years ago, called The 
 Children’s Doctor.” As I parted from my children’s doctor, 
 now in question, I saw in his easy black necktie, in his loose 
 buttoned black frock-coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of 
 his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the very turn of his 
 mustache, the exact realization of the Paris artist’s ideal as it 
 was presented on the stage. But no romancer that I know 
 of has had the boldness to prefigure the life and home of 
 
332 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 this young husband and young wife in the Children’s Hos- 
 pital in the east of London. 
 
 I came away from Ratcliff by the Stepney railway station 
 to the terminus at Fenchurch Street. Any one who will re- 
 verse that route may retrace my steps. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 333 
 
 XXXL 
 
 ABOARD SHIP. 
 
 My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of 
 Human-Interest Brothers have not slackened since I last 
 reported of them, but have kept me continually on the move. 
 I remain in the same idle employment. I never solicit an 
 order, I never get any commission, I am the rolling stone that 
 gathers no moss, — unless any should by chance be found 
 among these samples. 
 
 Some half a year ago, T found myself in my idlest, dreamiest, 
 and least accountable condition altogether, on board ship, in 
 the harbor of the city of Hew York, in the United States of 
 America. Of all the good ships afloat, mine was the good 
 steamship ^^Eussia,’’ Capt. Cook, Cunard Line, bound for 
 Liverpool. What more could I wish for ? 
 
 I had nothing to wish for but a prosperous passage. My 
 salad-days, when I was green of visage and seasick, being 
 gone with better things (and no worse), no coming event cast 
 its shadow before. 
 
 I might but a few moments previously have imitated 
 Sterne, and said, ^^^And yet, methinks, Eugenius,’ — laying 
 my forefinger wistfully on his coat-sleeve, thus, — ^ and yet, 
 methinks, Eugenius, ’tis but sorry work to part with thee, 
 for what fresh fields, . . . my dear Eugenius, . . . can be 
 fresher than thou art, and in what pastures new shall I find 
 Eliza, or call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt, Annie ? ’ — I say I 
 might have done this ; but Eugenius was gone, and I hadn’t 
 done it. 
 
 I was resting on a skylight on the hurricane-deck, watching 
 the working of the ship very slowly about, that she might 
 head for England. It was high-noon on a most brilliant day 
 in April, and the beautiful bay was glorious and glowing. 
 Eull manj a time, on shore there, had I seen the snow come 
 
334 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 down, down, down (itself like down), until it lay deep in all 
 the ways of men, and particularly, as it seemed, in my way, 
 for I had not gone dry-shod many hours for months. Within 
 two or three days last past had 1 watched the feathery fall 
 setting in with the ardor of a new idea, instead of dragging 
 at the skirts of a worn-out wdnter, and permitting glimpses of 
 a fresh young spring. But a bright sun and a clear sky had 
 melted the snow in the great crucible of nature ; and it had 
 been poured out again that morning over sea and land, trans- 
 formed into myriads of gold and silver sparkles. 
 
 The ship was fragrant with flowers. Something of the old 
 Mexican passion for flowers may have gradually passed into 
 North America, where flowers are luxuriously grown, and 
 tastefully combined in the richest profusion ; but, be that as 
 it may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers had come on board, 
 that the small officer’s cabin on deck, which I tenanted, 
 bloomed over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks of other 
 flowers that it couldn’t hold made a garden of the unoccupied 
 tables in the passengers’ saloon. These delicious scents of 
 the shore, mingling with the fresh airs of the sea, made the 
 atmosphere a dreamy, an enchanting one. And so, with the 
 watch aloft setting all the sails, and with the screw below 
 revolving at a mighty rate, and occasionally giving the ship 
 an angry shake for resisting, I fell into my idlest ways, and 
 lost myself. 
 
 As, for instance, whether it was I lying there, or some 
 other entity even more mysterious, was a matter I was far 
 too lazy to look into. What did it signify to me if it were I ? 
 or to the more mysterious entity, if it were he ? Equally as 
 to the remembrances that drowsily floated by me, or by him, 
 why ask when or where the things happened ? Was it not 
 enough that they befell at some time, somewhere ? 
 
 There was that assisting at the church service on board 
 another steamship, one Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps 
 on the passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear the ship’s 
 bells go as like church-bells as they could ; pleasant to see the 
 watch off duty mustered and come in : best hats, best Guern- 
 seys, washed hands and faces, smoothed heads. But then 
 arose a set of circumstances so rampantly comical, that no 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLEB. 
 
 335 
 
 check which the gravest intentions could put upon them 
 would hold them in hand. Thus the scene. Some seventy 
 passengers assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-books on 
 tables. Ship rolling heavily. Pause. No minister. Pumor 
 has related that a modest young clergyman on board has 
 responded to the captain’s request that he will officiate. 
 Pause again, and very heavy rolling. 
 
 Closed double doors suddenly burst open, and two strong 
 stewards skate in, supporting minister between them. General 
 appearance as of somebody picked up drunk and incapable, 
 and under conveyance to station-house. Stoppage, pause, and 
 particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch their opportunity, 
 and balance themselves, but cannot balance minister; who, 
 struggling with a drooping head and a backward tendenc}^ 
 seems determined to return below, while they are as deter- 
 mined that he shall be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon. 
 Desk portable, sliding away down a long table, and aiming 
 itself at the breasts of various members of the congregation. 
 Here the double doors, which have been carefully closed by 
 stewards, fly open again, and worldly passenger tumbles in, 
 seemingly with pale-ale designs : who, seeking friend, says 
 Joe ! ” Perceiving incongruity, says Hullo ! Beg yer par- 
 don ! ” and tumbles out again. All this time the congregation 
 have been breaking up into sects, — as the manner of congre- 
 gations often is, — each sect sliding away by itself, and all 
 pounding the weakest sect which slid first into the corner. 
 Utmost point of dissent soon attained in every corner, and 
 violent rolling. Stewards at length make a dash; conduct 
 minister to the mast in the centre of the saloon, which he 
 embraces with both arms ; skate out ; and leave him in that 
 condition to arrange affairs with flock. 
 
 There was another Sunday, when an officer of the ship 
 read the service. It was quiet and impressive, until we fell 
 upon the dangerous and perfectly unnecessary experiment of 
 striking up a hymn. After it was given out, we all rose, but 
 everybody left it to somebody else to begin. Silence resulting, 
 the officer (no singer himself) rather reproachfully gave us 
 the first line again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old gentle- 
 man, remarkable throughout the passage for his cheerful 
 
336 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 politeness, gave a little stamp with his boot (as if he were 
 leading off a country dance), and blithely warbled us into a 
 show of joining. At the end of the first verse we became, 
 through these tactics, so much refreshed and encouraged, that 
 none of us, howsoever immelodious, would submit to be left 
 out of .the second verse ; while as to the third we lifted up 
 our voices in a sacred howl that left it doubtful whether we were 
 the more boastful of the sentiments we united in professing, 
 or of professing them with a most discordant defiance of time 
 and tune. 
 
 Lord Bless us ! thought I, when the fresh remembrance 
 of these things made me laugh heartily alone in the dead 
 water-gurgling waste of the night, what time I was wedged 
 into my berth by a wooden bar, or I must have rolled out of 
 it, ^^what errand was 1 then upon, and to what Abyssinian 
 point had public events then marched ? No matter as to me. 
 And as to them, if the wonderful popular rage for a play- 
 thing (utterly confounding in its inscrutable unreason) had 
 not then lighted on a poor young savage boy, and a poor old 
 screw of a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair of his 
 princely head to ^ inspect ’ British volunteers, and hauled the 
 second off by the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal Palace, 
 why so much the better for all of us outside Bedlam ! ’’ 
 
 So, sticking to the ship, I was at the trouble of asking 
 myself would I like to show the grog distribution in the 
 fiddle’’ at noon to the Grand United Amalgamated Total 
 Abstinence Society ? Yes, I think I should. I think it would 
 do them good to smell the rum, under the circumstances. 
 Over the grog, mixed in a bucket, presides the boatswain’s 
 mate, small tin can in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty con- 
 sumers, the grown-up brood of Giand Despair, in contradis- 
 tinction to the band of youthful angel Hope. Some in boots 
 some in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls, some in frocks, 
 some in pea-coats, a very few in jackets, most with sou’wester 
 hats, all with something rough and rugged round the throat 5 
 all, dripping salt water where they stand; all pelted by 
 weather, besmeared with grease, and blackened by the sooty 
 rigging. 
 
 Each man’s knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TUAVELLER. 
 
 337 
 
 dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, 
 watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very 
 small tin mug, to be prosaic), and tossing back his head, 
 tosses the contents into himself, and passes the empty chalice 
 and passes on, so the second man with an anticipatory wipe 
 of his mouth on sleeve or handkerchief, bides his turn, and 
 drinks and hands and passes on, in w^hom and in each as his 
 turn approaches, beams a knowingly kindled eye, a brighter 
 temper, and a suddenly awakened tendency to be jocose with 
 some shipmate. Nor do I even observe that the man in 
 charge of the ship^s lamps, who in right of his office has a 
 double allowance of poisoned chalices, seems thereby vastly 
 degraded, even though he empties the chalices into himself, 
 one after the other, much as if he were delivering their con- 
 tents at some absorbent establishment in which he had no 
 personal interest. But vastly comforted, I note them all to 
 be, on deck presently, even to the circulation of redder blood 
 in their cold blue knuckies ; and when I look up at them 
 lying out on the yards, and holding on for life among the 
 beating sails, I cannot for my life see the justice of visiting 
 on them — or on me — the drunken crimes of any number of 
 criminals arraigned at the heaviest of assizes. 
 
 Abetting myself in my idle humor, I closed my eyes, and 
 recalled life on board of one of those mail-packets, as I lay, 
 part of that day, in the Bay of New York, 0 ! The regular 
 life began — mine always did, for I never got to sleep after- 
 wards — with the rigging of the pump while it was yet dark, 
 and w^ashing-down of decks. Any enormous giant at a pro- 
 digious hydropathic establishment, conscientiously undergoing 
 the water-cure in all its departments, and extremely partic- 
 ular about cleaning his teeth, would make those noises. 
 Swash, splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble, swash, splash, 
 bubble, toothbrush, splash, splash, bubble, rub. Then the 
 day would break, and, descending from my berth by a grace- 
 ful ladder composed of half-opened drawers beneath it, I 
 would reopen my outer dead-light and my inner sliding 
 window (closed by a watchman during the water-cure), and 
 would look out at the long-rolling, lead-colored, white-topped 
 waves over which the dawn, on a cold winter morning cast a 
 
338 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 level, lonely glance, and throiigli which the ship fought her 
 melancholy way at a terrific rate. And now, lying down 
 again, awaiting the season for broiled ham and tea, I would 
 be compelled to listen to the voice of conscience, — the screw. 
 
 It might be, in some cases, no more than the voice of 
 stomach ; but I called it in my fancy by the higher name. 
 Because it seemed to me that we were all of us, all day long, 
 endeavoring to stifle the voice. Because it was under every- 
 body’s pillow, everybody’s plate, everybody’s camp-stool, every- 
 body’s book, everybody’s occupation. Because we pretended 
 not to hear it, especially at meal-times, evening whist, and 
 morning conversation on deck ; but it was always among us 
 in an under monotone, not to be drowned in pea-soup, not to 
 be shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by books, not to be 
 knitted into any pattern, not to be walked away from. It 
 was smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in the strongest 
 cocktail : it was conveyed on deck at noon with limp ladies, 
 who lay there in their wrappers until the stars shone ; it 
 waited at table with the stewards ; nobody could put it out 
 with the lights. It was considered (as on shore) ill-bred to 
 acknowledge the voice of conscience. It was not polite to 
 mention it. One squally day an amiable gentleman in love 
 gave much offence to a surrounding circle, including the 
 object of his attachment, by saying of it, after it had goaded 
 him over two easy-chairs and a skylight, Screw ! ” 
 
 Sometimes it would appear subdued. In fleeting moments, 
 when bubbles of champagne pervaded the nose, or when there 
 was hot pot ” in the bill of fare, or when an old dish we had 
 had regularly every day was described in that ofiflcial docu- 
 ment by a new name, — under such excitements, one would 
 almost believe it hushed. The ceremony of washing plates 
 on deck, performed after every meal by a circle as of ringers 
 of crockery triple-bob majors for a prize, would keep it down. 
 Hauling the reel, taking the sun at noon, posting the twenty- 
 four hours’ run, altering the ship’s time by the meridian, 
 casting the waste food overboard, and attracting the eager 
 gulls that followed in our wake, — these events would sup- 
 press it for awhile. But the instant any break or pause took 
 place in any such diversion, the voice would be at it again. 
 
THE UNCOMMEUCIAL travelleb. 
 
 339 
 
 importuning us to the last extent. A newly married young 
 pair, who walked the deck affectionately some twenty miles 
 per day, would, in the full flush of their exercise, suddenly 
 become stricken by it, and stand trembling, but otherwise 
 immovable, under its reproaches. 
 
 AVhen this terrible monitor was most severe with us was 
 when the time approached for our retiring to our dens for 
 the night ; when the lighted candles in the saloon grew fewer 
 and fewer ; when the deserted glasses with spoons in them 
 grew more and more numerous ; when waifs of toasted cheese 
 and strays of sardines fried in batter slid languidly to and fro 
 in the table-racks ; when the man who always read had shut 
 up his book, and blown out his candle ; when the man who 
 always talked had ceased from troubling ; when the man who 
 was always medically reported as going to have delirium 
 tremens had put it off till to-morrow ; when the man who 
 every night devoted himself to a midnight smoke on deck two 
 hours in length, and who every night was in bed within ten 
 minutes afterwards, was buttoning himself up in his third 
 coat for his hardy vigil : for then, as we fell off one by one, 
 and, entering our several hutches, came into a peculiar atmos- 
 phere of bilge-water and Windsor soap, the voice would shake 
 us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat down on our sofa, 
 watching the swinging candle forever trying and retrying to 
 stand upon his head! or our coat upon its peg, imitating us 
 as we appeared in our gymnastic days by sustaining itself 
 horizontally from the wall, in emulation of the lighter and 
 more facile towels ! Then would the voice especially claim 
 us for its prey, and rend us all to pieces. 
 
 Lights out, we in our births, and the wind rising, the voice 
 grows angrier and deeper. Under the mattress and under the 
 pillow, under the sofa and under the washing-stand, under 
 the ship and under the sea, seeming to rise from the founda- 
 tions under the earth with every scoop of the great Atlantic 
 (and oh ! why scoop so ?), always the voice. Vain to deny 
 its existence in the night season ; impossible to be hard of 
 hearing ; screw, screw, screw ! Sometimes it lifts out of the 
 water, and revolves with a whir, like a ferocious firework, — 
 except that it never expends itself, but is always ready to go 
 
340 
 
 THE unCOUMEnClAL TUAVELLEn, 
 
 off again ; sometimes it seems to be in anguish, and shivers ; 
 sometimes it seems to be terrified by its last plunge, and has 
 a fit which causes it to struggle, quiver, and for an instant 
 stop. And now the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so 
 fiercely screwed through time and space, day and night, fair 
 weather and foul, can roll. 
 
 Did she ever take a roll before like that last ? Did she 
 ever take a roll before like this worse one that is coming now ? 
 Here is the partition at my ear down in the deep on the lee 
 side. Are we ever coming up again together ? I think not ; 
 the partition and I are so long about it that I really do be- 
 lieve we have overdone it this time. Heavens, what a scoop ! 
 What a deep scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long scoop ! 
 Will it ever end, and can we bear the heavy mass of water 
 we have taken on board, and which has let loose all the table 
 furniture in the officers’ mess, and has beaten open the door 
 of the little passage between the purser and me, and is swash- 
 ing about, even there and even here ? The purser snores 
 reassuringly, and the ship’s bells striking, I hear the cheerful 
 All’s well ! ” of the watch, musically given back the length 
 of the deck, as the lately diving partition, now high in air, 
 tries (unsoftened by what we have gone through together) to 
 force me out of bed and berth. 
 
 All’s well ! ” Comforting to know, though surely all 
 might be better. Put aside the rolling and the rush of water, 
 and think of darting through such darkness with such velo- 
 city. Think of any other similar object coming in the oppo- 
 site direction ! 
 
 Whether there may be an attraction in two such moving 
 bodies out at sea, which may help accident to bring them 
 into collision ? Thoughts, too, arise (the voice never silent 
 all the while, but marvellously suggestive) of the gulf below ; 
 of the strange unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys 
 over which we are passing ; of monstrous fish midway ; of the 
 ship’s suddenly altering her course on her own account, and 
 with a wild plunge settling down, and making that voyage 
 with a crew of dead discoverers. How, too, one recalls an 
 almost universal tendency on the part of passengers to 
 stumble, at some time or other in the day, on the topic of a 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 341 
 
 certain large steamer making this same run, which was lost 
 at sea, and never heard of more. Everybody has seemed 
 under a spell, compelling approach to the threshold of the 
 grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture, and pretence of never 
 having been near it. The boatswain’s whistle sounds ! A 
 change in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the watch very 
 busy. Sails come crashing home overhead, ropes (that seem 
 all knot) ditto ; every man engaged appears to have twenty 
 feet, with twenty times the average amount of stamping 
 power in each. Gradually the noise slackens, the hoarse 
 cries die away, the boatswain’s whistle softens into the sooth- 
 ing and contented notes, which rather reluctantly admit that 
 the job is done for the time, and the voice sets in again. 
 
 Thus come unintelligible dreams of up hill and down, and 
 swinging and swaying, until consciousness revives of atmos- 
 pherical Windsor soap and bilge-water, and the voice announces 
 that the giant has come for the water-cure again. 
 
 Such were my fanciful reminiscences as I lay, part of that 
 day, in the Bay of New York, 0 ! Also as we passed clear 
 of the Narrows, and got out to sea; also in many an idle 
 hour at sea in sunny weather ! At length the observations 
 and computations showed that we should make the coast of 
 Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on deck all night to-night, 
 to see how we made the coast of Ireland. 
 
 Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly phosphorescent. 
 Great way on the ship, and double lookout kept. Vigilant 
 captain on the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over the 
 port side, vigilant second officer standing by the quarter- 
 master at the compass, vigilant third officer posted at the 
 stern rail with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet decks, 
 but expectation everywhere nevertheless. The two men at 
 the wheel very steady, very serious, and very prompt to 
 answer orders. An order issued sharply now and then, and 
 echoed back ; otherwise the night drags slowly, silently, and 
 with no change. 
 
 All of a sudden, at the blank hour of two in the morning, 
 a vague movement of relief from a long strain expresses 
 itself in all hands ; the third officer’s lantern twinkles, and 
 he fires a rocket, and another rocket. A sullen solitary light 
 
342 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 is pointed out to me in the black sky yonder. .A change is 
 expected in the light, but none takes place. “ Give them 
 two more rockets, Mr. Vigilant.’’ Two more, and a blue- 
 light burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At last a little 
 toy sky-rocket is flashed up from it ; and, even as that small 
 streak in the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed to 
 Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and back again under 
 the ocean to America. 
 
 Then up come the half-dozen passengers who are going 
 ashore at Queenstown, and up comes the mail-agent in charge 
 of the bags, and up come the men who are to carry the bags 
 into the mail-tender that will come off for them out of the 
 harbor. Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there about the 
 decks, and impeding bulks are knocked away with handspikes ; 
 and the port-side bulwark, barren but a moment ago, bursts 
 into a crop of heads of seamen, stewards, and engineers. 
 
 The light begins to be gained upon, begins to be alongside, 
 begins to be left astern. More rockets, and, between us and 
 the land, steams beautifully the Inman steamship City of 
 Paris, for New York, outward bound. We observe with com- 
 placency that the wind is dead against her (it being with us), 
 and that she rolls and pitches. (The sickest passenger on 
 board is the most delighted by this circumstance.) Time 
 rushes by as we rush on ; and now we see the light in Queens- 
 town Harbor, and now the lights of the mail-tender coming 
 out to us. What vagaries the mail-tender performs on the 
 way, in every point of the compass, especially in those where 
 she has no business, and why she performs them. Heaven 
 only knows ! At length she is seen plunging within a cable’s 
 length of our port broadside, and is being roared at through 
 our speaking-trumpets to do this thing, and not to do that, 
 and to stand by the other, as if she were a very- demented 
 tender indeed. Then, we slackening amidst a deafening rpar 
 of steam, this much-abused tender is made fast to us by 
 hawsers, and the men in readiness carry the bags aboard, and 
 return for more, bending under their burdens, and looking 
 just like the pasteboard figures of the miller and his men in 
 the theatre of our boyhood, and comporting themselves 
 almost as unsteadily. All the while the unfortunate tender 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 343 
 
 plunges high and low, and is roared at. Then the Queens- 
 town passengers are put on board of her, with infinite plun- 
 ging and roaring, and the tender gets heaved up on the sea to 
 that surprising extent that she looks within an ace of washing 
 aboard of us, high and dry. Eoared at with contumely to 
 the last, this wretched tender is at length let go, with a final 
 plunge of great ignominy, and falls spinning into our wake. 
 
 The voice of conscience resumed its dominion as the day 
 climbed up the sky, and kept by all of us passengers into 
 port ; kept by us as we passed other lighthouses, and danger- 
 ous islands off the coast, where some of the officers, with 
 whom I stood my watch, had gone ashore in sailing-ships in 
 fogs (and of which by that token they seemed to have quite 
 an affectionate remembrance), and past the Welsh coast, and 
 past the Cheshire coast, and past everything and everywhere 
 lying between our ship and her own special dock in the 
 Mersey. Off which, at last, at nine of the clock, on a fair 
 evening early in May, we stopped, and the voice ceased. A 
 very curious sensation, not unlike having my own ears 
 stopped, ensued upon that silence ; and it was with a no less 
 curious sensation that I went over the side of the good Cunard 
 ship Russia (whom prosperity attend through all her voy- 
 ages ! ) and surveyed the outer hull of the gracious monster 
 that the voice had inhabited. So, perhaps, shall we all, in 
 the spirit, one day survey the frame that held the busier 
 voice from which my vagrant fancy derived this similitude. 
 
344 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 A LITTLE DINNER IN AN HOUR. 
 
 It fell out on a day in this last autumn^ that I had to go 
 down from London to a place of seaside resort, on an hour’s 
 business, accompanied by my esteemed friend Bullfinch. Let 
 the place of seaside resort be, for the nonce, called Name- 
 lesston. 
 
 I had been loitering about Paris in very hot weather, 
 pleasantly breakfasting in the open air in the garden of the 
 Palais Eoyal or the Tuileries, pleasantly dining in the open 
 air in the Elysian Pields, pleasantly taking my cigar and 
 lemonade in the open air on the Italian Boulevard towards 
 the small hours after midnight. Bullfinch — an excellent 
 man of business — had summoned me back across the Chan- 
 nel, to transact this said hour’s business at Xamelesston ; 
 and thus it fell out that Bullfinch and I were in a railway 
 carriage together on our way to Xamelesston, each with his 
 return ticket in his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 Says Bullfinch, I have a proposal to make. Let us dine 
 at the Temeraire.” 
 
 I asked Bullfinch, did he recommend the Temeraire ? inas- 
 much as I had not been rated on the books of the Temeraire 
 for many years. 
 
 Bullfinch declined to accept the responsibility of recom- 
 mending the Temeraire, but on the whole was rather sanguine 
 about it. He seemed to remember,” Bullfinch said, that 
 he had dined well there. A plain dinner, but good. Cer- 
 tainly not like a Parisian dinner (here Bullfinch obviously 
 became the prey of want of confidence), but of its kind very 
 fair. 
 
 I appeal to Bullfinch’s intimate knowledge of my wants 
 and ways to decide whether I was usually ready to be pleased 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 345 
 
 with any dinner, or — for the matter of that — with anything 
 that was fair of its kind and really what it claimed to be. 
 Bullfinch doing me the honor to respond in the affirmative, I 
 agreed to ship myself as an able trencherman on board the 
 Temeraire. 
 
 ^^Now, our plan shall be this,’’ says Bullfinch, with his 
 forefinger at his nose. As soon as we get to Namelesston, 
 we’ll drive straight to the Temeraire, and order a little dinner 
 ill an hour. And as we shall not have more than enough 
 time in which to dispose of it comfortably, what do you say 
 to giving the house the best opportunities of serving it hot 
 and quickly by dining in the coffee-room ? ” 
 
 What I had to say was, Certainly. Bullfinch (who is by 
 nature of an hopeful constitution) then began to babble of 
 green geese. But I checked him in that Falstaffian vein, ur- 
 ging considerations of time and cookery. 
 
 In due sequence of events we drove up to the Temeraire, 
 and alighted. A youth in livery received us on the doorstep. 
 Looks well,” said Bullfinch confidentially. And tlien aloud. 
 Coffee-room ! 
 
 The youth in livery (now perceived to be mouldy) conducted 
 us to the desired haven, and was enjoined by Bullfinch to send 
 the waiter at once, as we wished to order a little dinner in an 
 hour. Then Bullfinch and I waited for the waiter, until, the 
 waiter continuing to wait in some unknown and invisible 
 sphere of action, we rang for the waiter ; which ring pro- 
 duced the waiter, who announced himself as not the waiter 
 who ought to wait upon us, and who didn’t wait a moment 
 longer. 
 
 So Bullfinch approached the coffee-room door, and melodi- 
 ously pitching his voice into a bar where two young ladies 
 were keeping the books of the Temeraire, apologetically 
 explained that we wished to order a little dinner in an hour, 
 and that we were debarred from the execution of our inoffen- 
 sive purpose by consignment to solitude. 
 
 Hereupon one of the young ladies rang a bell, which re- 
 produced — at the bar this time — the waiter who was not 
 the waiter who ought to wait upon us ; that extraordinary 
 man, whose life seemed consumed in waiting upon people to 
 
346 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 say that he wouldn’t wait upon them, repeated his former 
 protest with great indignation, and retired. 
 
 Bullfinch, with a fallen countenance, was about to say to 
 me, ^^This won’t do,” when the waiter who ought to wait 
 upon us left off keeping us waiting at last. Waiter,” said 
 Bullfinch piteously, ^^we have been a long time waiting.” 
 The waiter who ought to wait upon us laid the blame upon 
 the waiter who ought not to wait upon us, and said it was all 
 that waiter’s fault. 
 
 ^^We wish,” said Bullfinch, much depressed, ^^to order a 
 little dinner in an hour. What can we have ? ” 
 
 What would you like to have, gentlemen ? ” 
 
 Bullfinch, with extreme mournfulness of speech and action, 
 and with a forlorn old fly-blown bill of fare in his hand which 
 the waiter had given him, and which was a sort of general 
 manuscript index to any cookery-book you please, moved the 
 previous question. 
 
 We could have mock-turtle soup, a sole, curry, and roast 
 duck. Agreed. At this table by this window. Punctually 
 in an hour. 
 
 I had been feigning to look out of this window ; but I had 
 been taking note of the crumbs on all the tables, the dirty 
 table-cloths, the stuffy, soupy, airless atmosphere, the stale 
 leavings everywhere about, the deep gloom of the waiter who 
 ought to wait upon us, and the stomach-ache with which a 
 lonely traveller at a distant table in a corner was too evidently 
 afflicted. I now pointed out to Bullfinch the alarming circum- 
 stance that this traveller had dined. We hurriedly debated 
 whether, without infringement of good breeding, we could ask 
 him to disclose if he had partaken of mock-turtle, sole, curry, 
 or roast duck ? We decided that the thing could not be 
 politely done, and we had set our own stomachs on a cast, 
 and they must stand the hazard of the die. 
 
 I hold phrenology, within certain limits, to be true ; I am 
 much of the same mind as to the subtler expressions of the 
 hand; I hold physiognomy to be infallible; though all these 
 sciences demand rare qualities in the student. But I also hold 
 that there is no more certain index to personal character than 
 the condition of a set of casters is to the character of any 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 347 
 
 hotel. Knowing, and having often tested this theory of mine, 
 Bullfinch resigned himself to the worst, when, laying aside 
 any remaining veil of disguise, I held up before him in suc- 
 cession the cloudy oil and furry vinegar, the clogged cayenne, 
 the dirty salt, the obscene dregs of soy, and the anchovy sauce 
 in a flannel waistcoat of decomposition. 
 
 We went out to transact our business. So inspiriting was 
 the relief of passing into the clean and windy streets of Kame- 
 lesston from the heavy and vapid closeness of the coffee-room 
 of the Temeraire, that hope began to revive within us. We 
 began to consider that perhaps the lonely traveller had taken 
 physic, or done something injudicious to bring his complaint 
 on. Bullfinch remarked that he thought the waiter who ought 
 to wait upon us had brightened a little when suggesting 
 curry ; and although I knew him to have been at that 
 moment the express image of despair, I allowed myself to 
 become elevated in spirits. As we walked by the softly 
 lapping sea, all the notabilities of Kamelesston who are for- 
 ever going up and down with the changelessness of the tides, 
 passed to and fro in procession. Pretty girls on horseback, 
 and with detested riding-masters ; pretty girls on foot ; mature 
 ladies in hats, — spectacled, strong-minded, and glaring at the 
 opposite or weaker sex. The Stock Exchange was strongly 
 represented, Jerusalem was strongly represented, the bores 
 of the prosier London clubs were strongly represented. 
 Fortune-hunters of all denominations were there, from hir- 
 sute insolvency, in a curricle, to closely buttoned swindlery 
 in doubtful boots, on the sharp lookout for any likely young 
 gentleman disposed to play a game at billiards round the 
 corner. Masters of languages, their lessons finished for the 
 day, were going to their homes out of sight of the sea ; mis- 
 tresses of accomplishments, carrying small portfolios, likewise 
 tripped homeward; pairs of scholastic pupils, two and two, 
 went languidly along the beach, surveying the face of the 
 waters as if waiting for some Ark to come and take them off. 
 Spectres of the George the Fourth days flitted unsteadily 
 among the crowd, bearing the outward semblance of ancient 
 dandies, of every one of whom it might be said, not that he had 
 one leg in the grave, or both legs, but that he was steeped in 
 
348 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 grave to the summit of his high shirt-collar, and had nothing 
 real about him but his bones. Alone stationary in the midst 
 of all the movements, the ISTamelesston boatmen leaned against 
 the railings and yawned, and looked out to sea, or looked at 
 the moored fishing-boats and at nothing. Such is the unchan- 
 ging manner of life with this nursery of our hardy seamen ; 
 and very dry nurses they are, and always wanting something 
 to drink. The only two nautical personages detached from 
 the railing were the two fortunate possessors of the celebrated 
 monstrous unknown barking-fish, just caught (frequently just 
 caught off Kamelesston), who carried him about in a hamper, 
 and pressed the scientific to look in at the lid. 
 
 The sands of the hour had all run out when we got back to 
 the Temeraire. Says Bullfinch, then, to the youth in livery, 
 with boldness, Lavatory ! 
 
 When we arrived at the family vault with a skylight, which 
 the youth in livery presented as the institution sought, we 
 had already whisked off our cravats and coats; but finding 
 ourselves in the presence of an evil smell, and no linen but 
 two crumpled towels newly damp from the countenances of 
 two somebody elses, we put on our cravats and coats again, and 
 fled unwashed to the coffee-room. 
 
 There the waiter who ought to wait upon us had set forth 
 our knives and forks and glasses, on the cloth whose dirty 
 acquaintance we had already had the pleasure of making, and 
 which we were pleased to recognize by the familiar expression 
 of its stains. And now there occurred the truly surprising 
 phenomenon, that the waiter who ought not to wait upon us 
 swooped down upon us, clutched our loaf of bread, and vanished 
 with the same. 
 
 Bullfinch, with distracted eyes, was following this unaccount- 
 able figure out at the portal,^’ like the ghost in Hamlet, when 
 the waiter who ought to wait upon us jostled against it, carry- 
 ing a tureen. 
 
 Waiter!’’ said a severe diner, lately finished, perusing his 
 bill fiercely through his eye-glass. 
 
 The waiter put down our tureen on a remote side-table, and 
 went to see what was amiss in this new direction. 
 
 ‘‘ This is not right, you know, waiter. Look here ! here’s 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 349 
 
 yesterday’s sherry, one and eightpence, and here we are again, 
 two shillings. And what does sixpence mean ? ” 
 
 So far from knowing what sixpence meant, the waiter pro- 
 tested that he didn’t know what anything meant. He wiped 
 the perspiration from his clammy brow, and said it was impos- 
 sible to do it, — not particularizing what, — and the kitchen 
 was so far off. 
 
 ^^Take the bill to the bar, and get it altered,” said Mr. 
 Indignation Cocker, so to call him. 
 
 The waiter took it, looked intensely at it, didn’t seem to 
 like the idea of taking it to the bar, and submitted, as a new 
 light upon the case, that perhaps sixpence meant sixpence. 
 
 tell you again,” said Mr. Indignation Cocker, here’s 
 yesterday’s sherry — can’t you see it? — one and eightpence, 
 and here we are again, two shillings. What do you make of 
 one and eightpence and two shillings ? ” 
 
 Totally unable to make anything of one and eightpence and 
 two shillings, the waiter went out to try if anybody else could; 
 merely casting a helpless backward glance at Bullfinch, in 
 acknowledgment of his pathetic entreaties for our soup-tureen. 
 After a pause, during which Mr. Indignation Cocker read a 
 newspaper and coughed defiant coughs. Bullfinch arose to get 
 the tureen, when the waiter reappeared and brought it, — 
 dropping Mr. Indignation Cocker’s altered bill on Mr. Indig- 
 nation Cocker’s table as he came along. 
 
 It’s quite impossible to do it, gentlemen,” murmured the 
 waiter; ‘^and the kitchen is so far off.” 
 
 ‘AVell, you don’t keep the house; it’s not your fault, we 
 suppose. Bring some sherry.” 
 
 ‘AVaiter!” from Mr. Indignation Cocker, with a new and 
 burning sense of injury upon him. 
 
 The waiter, arrested on his way to our sherry, stopped short, 
 and came back to see what was wrong now. 
 
 Will you look here ? This is worse than before. Do you 
 understand ? Here’s yesterday’s sherry, one and eightpence, 
 and here we are again two shillings. And what the devil does 
 ninepence mean ? ” 
 
 This new portent utterly confounded the waiter. He wrung 
 bis napkin, and mutely appealed to the ceiling. 
 
350 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 Waiter, fetch that sherry,’’ says Bullfinch, in open wrath 
 and revolt. 
 
 I want to know,” persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, the 
 meaning of ninepence. I want to know the meaning of sherry 
 one and eightpence yesterday, and of here we are again two 
 shillings. Send somebody.” 
 
 The distracted waiter got out of the room on pretext of 
 sending somebody, and by that means got our wine. But 
 the instant he appeared with our decanter, Mr. Indignation 
 Cocker descended on him again. 
 
 Waiter ! ” 
 
 You will now have the goodness to attend to our dinner, 
 waiter,” said Bullfinch, sternly. 
 
 I am very sorry, but it’s quite impossible to do it, gentle- 
 men,” pleaded the waiter; ‘^and the kitchen” — 
 
 ^•Waiter!” said Mr. Indignation Cocker. 
 
 — Is,” resumed the waiter, so far off, that ” — 
 
 Waiter!” persisted Mr. Indignation Cocker, send some- 
 body.” 
 
 We were not without our fears that the waiter rushed out 
 to hang himself ; and we were much relieved by his fetching 
 somebody, — in graceful, flowing skirts and with a waist, — 
 who very soon settled Mr. Indignation Cocker’s business. 
 
 Oh ! ” said Mr. Cocker, with his fire surprisingly quenched 
 by this apparition; ‘^1 wished to ask about this bill of mine, 
 because it appears to me that there’s a little mistake here. 
 Let me show you. Here’s yesterday’s sherry one and eight- 
 pence, and here we are again two shillings. And how do you 
 explain ninepence ? ” 
 
 However it was explained, in tones too soft to be overheard. 
 Mr. Cocker was heard to say nothing more than ^^Ah-h-h-l 
 Indeed; thank you! Yes,” and shortly afterwards went out, 
 a milder man. 
 
 The lonely traveller with the stomach-ache had all this time 
 suffered severely, drawing up a leg now and then, and sipping 
 hot brandy and water with grated ginger in it. When we tasted 
 our (very) mock-turtle soup, and were instantly seized with 
 symptoms of some disorder simulating apoplexy, and occa- 
 sioned by the surcharge of nose and brain with lukewarm 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 351 
 
 dish-water holding in solution sour flour, poisonous condiments, 
 and (say) seventy-five per cent of miscellaneous kitchen stuff 
 rolled into balls, we were inclined to trace his disorder to that 
 source. On the other hand, there was a silent anguish upon 
 him too strongly resembling the results established within our- 
 selves by the sherry, to be discarded from alarmed considera- 
 tion. Again, we observed him, with terror, to be much overcome 
 by our sole’s being aired in a temporary retreat close to him, 
 while the waiter went out (as we conceived) to see his friends. 
 And when the curry made its appearance he suddenly retired 
 in great disorder. 
 
 In fine, for the uneatable part of this little dinner (as con- 
 tradistinguished from the undrinkable) we paid only seven 
 shillings and sixpence each. And Bullfinch and I agreed unan- 
 imously, that no such ill-served, ill-appointed, ill-cooked, nasty 
 little dinner could be got for the money anywhere else under 
 the sun. With that comfort to our backs, we turned them on 
 the dear old Temeraire, the charging Temeraire, and resolved 
 (in the Scotch dialect) to gang nae mair to the flabby Temeraire. 
 
352 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 MR. BARLOW. 
 
 A GREAT reader of good fiction at an unusually early age, 
 it seems to me as though I had been born under the super- 
 intendence of the estimable but terrific gentleman whose 
 name stands at the head of my present reflections. The 
 instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow, will be remembered 
 as the tutor of Master Harry Sandford and Master Tommy 
 Merton. He knew everything, and didactically improved 
 all sorts of occasions, from the consumption of a plate of 
 cherries to the contemplation of a starlight night. What 
 youth came to without Mr. Barlow was displayed in the 
 history of Sandford and Merton, by the example of a certain 
 awful Master Mash. This young wretch wore buckles and 
 powder, conducted himself with insupportable levity at the 
 theatre, had no idea of facing a mad bull single-handed (in 
 which I think him less reprehensible, as remotely reflecting 
 my own character), and was a frightful instance of the ener- 
 vating effects of luxury upon the human race. 
 
 Strange destiny on the part of Mr. Barlow, to go down to 
 posterity as childhood’s experience of a bore. Immortal Mr. 
 Barlow, boring his way through the verdant freshness of ages ! 
 
 My personal indictment against Mr. Barlow is one of many 
 counts. I will proceed to set forth a few of the injuries he 
 has done me. 
 
 In the first place, he never made or took a joke. This 
 insensibility on Mr. Barlow’s part not only cast its own 
 gloom over my boyhood, but blighted even the sixpenny 
 jest-books of the time ; for, groaning under a moral spell 
 constraining me to refer all things to Mr. Barlow, I could not 
 choose but ask myself in a whisper when tickled by a printed 
 jest, What would he think of it ? What would he see in it ? ” 
 The point of the jest immediately became a sting, and stung 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 353 
 
 my conscience. For my mind’s eye saw him stolid, frigid, 
 perchance taking from its shelf some dreary Greek book, and 
 translating at full length what some dismal sage said (and 
 touched up afterwards, perhaps, for publication), when he 
 banished some unlucky joker from Athens. 
 
 The incompatibility of Mr. Barlow with all other portions 
 of my young life but himself, the adamantine inadaptability 
 of the man to my favorite fancies and amusements, is the 
 thing for which I hate him most. What right had he to 
 bore his way into my Arabian Nights ? Yet he did. He 
 was always hinting doubts of the veracity of Sindbad the 
 Sailor. If he could have got hold of the Wonderful Lamp, 
 I knew he would have trimmed it and lighted it, and deliv^ 
 ered a lecture over it on the qualities of sperm-oil, with a 
 glance at the whale fisheries. He would so soon have found 
 out — on mechanical principles — the peg in the neck of the 
 Enchanted Horse, and would have turned it the right way 
 in so workmanlike a manner, that the horse could never 
 have got any height into the air, and the story couldn’t have 
 been. He would have proved, by map and compass, that 
 there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom of 
 Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would have caused 
 that hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment, 
 — with the aid of a temporary building in the garden and 
 a dummy, — demonstrating that you couldn’t let a choked 
 hunchback down an Eastern chimney with a cord, and leave 
 him upright on the hearth to terrify the sultan’s purveyor. 
 
 The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropoli- 
 tan pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow.. 
 Click click, ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, 
 bang ! I recall the chilling air that ran across my frame and 
 cooled my hot delight, as the thought occurred to me, This 
 would never do for Mr. Barlow ! ” After the curtain drew 
 up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow’s considering the costumes 
 of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being sufficiently opaque, 
 obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In the clown I per- 
 ceived two persons ; one a fascinating unaccountable creature 
 of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in 
 intellect, with flashes of brilliancy ; the other a pupil for Mr. 
 
354 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 Barlow. I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early 
 in the morning, and butter the pavement for him^ and, when 
 he had brought him down, would look severely out of his 
 study window and ask him how he enjoyed the fun. 
 
 I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the 
 house, and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him 
 better acquainted with the properties of incandescent iron, 
 on which he (Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pictured Mr. 
 Barlow’s instituting a comparison between the clown’s con- 
 duct at his studies, — drinking up the ink, licking his copy- 
 book, and using his head for blotting-paper, — and that of the 
 already mentioned young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at the 
 Barlovian feet, sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of 
 youthful knowledge. I thought how soon Mr. Barlow would 
 smooth the clown’s hair down, instead of letting it stand 
 erect in three tall tufts ; and how, after a couple of years or 
 so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his legs close together 
 when he walked, and would take his hands out of his big 
 loose pockets, and wouldn’t have a jump left in him. 
 
 That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the 
 universe are made of, and how they are made, is another of 
 my charges against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me 
 of developing into a Harry, and with a further dread upon me 
 of being Barlowed if I made inquiries, by bringing down 
 upon myself a cold shower-bath of explanations and experi- 
 ments, I forbore enlightenment in my youth, and became, 
 as they say in melodramas, ^^the wreck you now behold.” 
 That I consorted with idlers and dunces is another of the 
 melancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible. 
 That pragmatical prig, Harry, became so detestable in my 
 sight, that, he being reported studious in the South, I would 
 have fled idle to the extremest North. Better to learn mis- 
 conduct from a Master Mash than science and statistics from 
 a Sandford ! So I took the path, which, but for Mr. Barlow, 
 I might never have trodden. Thought I, with a shudder, 
 Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an immense constructive power 
 of making bores. His prize specimen is a bore. He seeks 
 to make a bore of me. That knowledge is power I am not 
 prepared to gainsay ; but, with Mr. Barlow, knowledge is 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 355 
 
 power to bore/’ Therefore I took refuge in the caves of 
 ignorance, wherein I have resided ever since, and which are 
 still my private address. 
 
 But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. 
 Barlow is, that he still walks the earth in various disguises, 
 seeking to make a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irre- 
 pressible, instructive monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life 
 with pitfalls, and lies hiding at the bottom to burst out upon 
 me when I least expect him. 
 
 A few of these dismal experiences of mine shall suffice. 
 
 Knowing Mr. Barlow to have invested largely in the 
 moving panorama trade, and having on various occasions 
 identified him in the dark with a long wand in his hand, 
 holding forth in his old way (made more appalling in this 
 connection by his sometimes cracking a piece of Mr. Carlyle’s 
 own Dead-Sea fruit in mistake for r joke), I systematically 
 shun pictorial entertainment on rollers. Similarly, I should 
 demand responsible bail and guarant y against the appearance 
 of Mr. Barlow, before committing myself to attendance at 
 any assemblage of my fellow-creatures where a bottle of 
 water and a note-book were conspicuous objects ; for in either 
 of those associations, I should expressly expect him. But 
 such is the designing nature of the man, that he steals in 
 where no reasoning precaution or prevision could expect him. 
 As in the following case : — 
 
 Adjoining the Caves of Ignorance is a country town. In 
 this country town the Mississippi Momuses, nine in number, 
 were announced to appear in the town-hall, for the general 
 delectation, this last Christmas week. Knowing Mr. Barlow 
 to be unconnected with the Mississippi, though holding 
 republican opinions, and deeming myself secure, I took a stall. 
 My object was to hear and see the Mississippi Momuses in 
 what the bills described as their National ballads, planta- 
 tion break-downs, nigger part-songs, choice conundrums, 
 sparkling repartees, etc.” I found the nine dressed alike in 
 the black coat and trousers, white waistcoat, very large shirt- 
 front, very large shirt-collar, and very large white tie and 
 wristbands, which constitute the dress of the mass of the 
 African race, and which has been observed by travellers to 
 
356 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 prevail over a vast number of degrees of latitude. All the 
 nine rolled their eyes exceedingly, and had very red lips. At 
 the extremities of the curve they formed, seated in their 
 chairs, were the performers on the tambourine and bones. 
 The centre Momus, a black of melancholy aspect (who 
 inspired me with a vague uneasiness for which I could not 
 then account) performed on a Mississippi instrument closely 
 resembling what was once called in this island a hurdy-gurdy. 
 The Momuses on either side of him had each another instru- 
 ment peculiar to the Father of Waters, which may be likened 
 to a stringed weather-glass held upside down. There were 
 likewise a little flute and a violin. All went well for a 
 while, and we had had several sparkling repartees exchanged 
 between the performers on the tambourine and bones, when 
 the black of melancholy aspect, turning to the latter, and 
 addressing him in a deep and improving voice as Bones, 
 sir,” delivered certain grave remarks to him concerning the 
 juveniles present, and the season of the year ; whereon I 
 perceived that I was in the presence of Mr. Barlow, — corked ! 
 
 Another night — and this was in London — I attended the 
 representation of a little comedy. As the characters were 
 lifelike (and consequently not improving), and as they went 
 upon their several ways and designs without personally 
 addressing themselves to me, I felt rather confldent of coming 
 through it without being regarded as Tommy, the more so, 
 as we were clearly getting close to the end. But I deceived 
 myself. All of a sudden, and apropos of nothing, everybody 
 concerned came to a check and halt, advanced to the foot- 
 lights in a general rally to take dead aim at me, and brought 
 me down with a moral homily, in which I detected the dread 
 hand of Barlow. 
 
 Nay, so intricate and subtle are the toils of this hunter, 
 that on the very next night after that, I was again entrapped, 
 where no vestige of a spring could have been apprehended 
 by the timidest. It was a burlesque that I saw performed ; 
 an uncompromising burlesque, where everybody concerned, 
 but especially the ladies, carried on at a very considerable rate 
 indeed. Most prominent and active among the corps of 
 performers was what I took to be (and she really gave me 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 357 
 
 very fair opportunities of coming to a right conclusion) a 
 young lady of a pretty figure. She was dressed as a pic- 
 turesque young gentleman whose pantaloons had been cut 
 off in their infancy ; and she had very neat knees and very 
 neat satin boots. Immediately after singing a slang song 
 and dancing a slang dance, this engaging figure approached 
 the fatal lamps, and, bending over them, delivered in a 
 thrilling voice a random eulogium on, and exhortation to 
 pursue, the virtues. Great Heaven ! was my exclama- 
 tion ; Barlow ! 
 
 There is still another aspect in which Mr. Barlow per- 
 petually insists on my sustaining the character of Tommy, 
 which is more unendurable yet, on account of its extreme 
 aggressiveness. For the purposes of a review or newspaper, 
 he will get up an abstruse subject with infinite pains, will 
 Barlow, utterly regardless of the price of midnight oil, 
 and indeed of everything else, save cramming himself to 
 the eyes. 
 
 But mark. When Mr. Barlow blows his information off, 
 he is not contented with having rammed it home, and dis- 
 charged it upon me. Tommy, his target, but he pretends that 
 he was always in possession of it, and made nothing of it, — 
 that he imbibed it with mother’s milk, — and that I, the 
 wretched Tommy, am most abjectly behind-hand in not having 
 done the same. I ask, why is Tommy to be always the foil 
 of Mr. Barlow to this extent ? What Mr. Barlow had not 
 the slightest notion of himself, a week ago, it surely cannot 
 be any very heavy backsliding in me not to have at my 
 fingers’ ends to-day ! And yet Mr. Barlow systematically 
 carries it over me with a high hand, and will tauntingly ask 
 me, in his articles, whether it is possible that I am not aware 
 that every schoolboy knows that the fourteenth turning on 
 the left in the steppes of Kussia will conduct to such and 
 such a wandering tribe ! with other disparaging questions of 
 like nature. So, when Mr. Barlow addresses a letter to any 
 journal as a volunteer correspondent (which I frequently find 
 him doing), he will previously have gotten somebody to tell 
 him some tremendous technicality, and will write in the 
 coolest manner, ^^How, sir, I may assume that every reader 
 
358 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 of your columns, possessing average information and intelli- 
 gence, knows as well as I do that ” — say that the draught 
 from the touch-hole of a cannon of such a calibre bears such 
 a proportion in the nicest fractions to the draught from the 
 muzzle ; or some equally familiar little fact. But whatever 
 it is, be certain that it always tends to the exaltation of 
 Mr. Barlow, and the depression of his enforced and enslaved 
 pupil. 
 
 Mr. Barlow’s knowledge of my own pursuits 1 find to be 
 so profound, that my own knowledge of them becomes as 
 nothing. Mr. Barlow (disguised and bearing a feigned 
 name, but detected by me) has occasionally taught me, in a 
 sonorous voice, from end to end of a long dinner-table, trifles 
 that I took the liberty of teaching him five and twenty years 
 ago. My closing article of impeachment against Mr. Barlow 
 is, that he goes out to breakfast, goes out to dinner, goes out 
 everywhere, high and low, and that he will preach to me, 
 and that I can’t get rid of him. He makes of me a Prome- 
 thean Tommy, bound; and he is the vulture that gorges itself 
 upon the liver of my uninstructed mind. 
 
THE UNCOMMEECIAL TEAVELLEB. 
 
 359 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 ON AN AMATEUR BEAT. 
 
 It is one of my fancies, that even my idlest walk must 
 always have its appointed destination. I set myself a task 
 before I leave my lodging in Covent-garden on a street 
 expedition, and should no more think of altering my route 
 by the way, or turning back and leaving a part of it un- 
 achieved, than I should think of fraudulently violating an 
 agreement entered into with somebody else. The other day, 
 finding myself under this kind of obligation to proceed to 
 Limehouse, I started punctually at noon, in compliance with 
 the terms of the contract with myself to which my good faith 
 was pledged. 
 
 On such an occasion, it is my habit to regard my walk as 
 my beat, and myself as a higher sort of police-constable doing 
 duty on the same. There is many a ruffian in the streets 
 whom I mentally collar and clear out of them, who would see 
 mighty little of London, I can tell him, if I could deal with 
 him physically. 
 
 Issuing forth upon this very beat, and following with my 
 eyes three hulking garroters on their way home, — which 
 home I could confidently swear to be within so many yards 
 of Drury Lane, in such a narrow and restricted direction 
 (though they live in their lodging quite as undisturbed as I 
 in mine), — I went on duty with a consideration which I 
 respectfully offer to the new Chief Commissioner, — in whom 
 I thoroughly confide as a tried and efficient public servant. 
 How often (thought I) have I been forced to swallow, in 
 police-reports, the intolerable stereotyped pill of nonsense, 
 how that the police-constable informed the worth}^ magistrate 
 how that the associates of the prisoner did, at that present 
 speaking, dwetl in a street or court which no man dared go 
 down, and how that the worthy magistrate had heard of the 
 
360 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 dark reputation of such street or court, and how that our 
 readers would doubtless remember that it was always the 
 same street or court which was thus edifyingly discoursed 
 about, say once a fortnight. 
 
 Now, suppose that a Chief Commissioner sent round a 
 circular to every division of police employed in London, 
 requiring instantly the names in all districts of all such 
 much-puffed streets or courts which no man durst go down ; 
 and suppose that in such circular he gave plain warning. 
 If those places really exist, they are a proof of police ineffi- 
 ciency which I mean to punish ; and if they do not exist, but 
 are a conventional fiction, then they are a proof of lazy tacit 
 police connivance with professional crime, which I also mean 
 to punish — what then ? Fictions or realities, could they 
 survive the touchstone of this atom of common-sense ? To 
 tell us in open court, until it has become as trite a feature of 
 news as the great gooseberry, that a costly police-system such 
 as was never before heard of, has left in London, in the days 
 of steam and gas and photographs of thieves and electric 
 telegraphs, the sanctuaries and stews of the Stuarts ! Why, 
 a parity of practice, in all departments, would bring back the 
 Plague in two summers, and the Druids in a century ! 
 
 Walking faster under nxy share of this public injury, I 
 overturned a wretched little creature, who, clutching at the 
 rags of a pair of trousers with one of its claws, and at its 
 ragged hair with the other, pattered with bare feet over the 
 muddy stones. I stopped to raise and succor this poor weep- 
 ing wretch, and fifty like it, but of both sexes, were about me 
 in a moment, begging, tumbling, fighting, clamoring, yelling, 
 shivering in their nakedness and hunger. The piece of 
 money I had put into the claw of the child I had overturned 
 was clawed out of it, and was again clawed out of that wolfish 
 gripe, and again out of that, and soon I had no notion in what 
 part of the obscene scuffle in the mud, of rags and legs and 
 arms and dirt, the money might be. In raising the child, I 
 had drawn it aside out of the main thoroughfare, and this took 
 place among some wooden hoardings and barriers and ruins of 
 demolished buildings, hard by Temple Bar. 
 
 Unexpectedly, from among them emerged a genuine police 
 
POODLES GOING THE ROUND. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 361 
 
 constable, before whom the dreadful brood dispersed in various 
 directions, he making feints and darts in this direction and in 
 that, and catching nothing. When all were frightened away, 
 he took off his hat, pulled out a handkerchief from it, wiped 
 his heated brow, and restored the handkerchief and hat to 
 their places, with the air of a man who had discharged a great 
 moral duty, — as indeed he had, in doing what was set down 
 for him. I looked at him, and I looked about at the dis- 
 orderly traces in the mud, and I thought of the drops of rain 
 and the footprints of an extinct creature, hoary ages upon 
 ages old, that geologists have identified on the face of a clift ; 
 and this speculation came over me : If this mud could petrify 
 at this moment, and could lie concealed here for ten thousand 
 years, I wonder whether the race of men then to be our suc- 
 cessors on the earth, could, from these or any marks, by the 
 utmost force of the human intellect unassisted by tradition, 
 deduce such an astounding inference as the existence of a 
 polished state of society that bore with the public savagery of 
 neglected children in the streets of its capital city, and was 
 proud of its power by sea and land, and never used its power 
 to seize and save them ! 
 
 After this, when I came to the Old Bailey and glanced up 
 it towards Newgate, I found that the prison had an inconsist- 
 ent look. There seemed to be some unlucky inconsistency in 
 the atmosphere that day ; for though the proportions of St. 
 Pauks cathedral are very beautiful, it had an air of being 
 somewhat out of drawing, in my eyes. I felt as though the 
 cross were too high up, and perched upon the intervening 
 golden ball too far away. 
 
 Facing eastward, I left behind me Smithfield and old 
 Bailey, — fire and fagot, condemned hold, public hanging, 
 whipping through the city at the cart-tail, pillory, branding- 
 iron, and other beautiful ancestral landmarks, which rude 
 hands have rooted up, without bringing the stars quite down 
 upon us as yet, — and went my way upon my beat, noting 
 how oddly characteristic neighborhoods are divided from one 
 another, hereabout, as though by an invisible line across the 
 way. Here shall cease the bankers and the money-changers ; 
 here shall begin the shipping interest and the na\itical-instru- 
 
362 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 merit shops ; here shall follow a scarcely perceptible flavoring 
 of groceries and drugs ; here shall come a strong infusion of 
 butchers ; now, small hosiers shall be in the ascendent ; hence- 
 forth, everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed 
 price attached. All this as if specially ordered and appointed. 
 
 A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than 
 sufflced to cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, 
 which the debtors in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve 
 their minds by skipping over, as Scott relates, and standing 
 in delightful daring of catchpoles on the free side, — a single 
 stride, and everything is entirely changed in grain and char- 
 acter. West of the stride, a table, or a chest of drawers on 
 sale, shall be of mahogany and French-polished ; east of the 
 stride, it shall be of deal, smeared with a cheap counterfeit 
 resembling lip-salve. West of the stride, a penny loaf or bun 
 shall be compact and self-contained ; east of the stride, it shall 
 be of a sprawling and splay-footed character, as seeking to 
 make more of itself for the money. My beat lying round by 
 Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries, — 
 great buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of 
 being nearly related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool, — 
 I turned off to my right, and passing round the awkward 
 corner on my left, came suddenly on an apparition familiar to 
 London streets afar off. 
 
 What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the 
 woman who has fallen forward, double, through some affec- 
 tion of the spine, and whose head has of late taken a turn to 
 one side, so that it now droops over the back of one of her 
 arms at about the wrist ? Who does not know her staff, and 
 her shawl, and her basket, as she gropes her way along, capa- 
 ble of seeing nothing but the pavement, never begging, never 
 stopping, forever going somewhere on no business ? How 
 does she live, whence does she come, whither does she go, and 
 why ? I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught 
 but bone and parchment. Slight changes steal over her ; for 
 there is a shadowy suggestion of human skin on them now. 
 The Strand may be taken as the central point about which 
 she revolves in a half-mile orbit. How comes she so far east 
 as this ? And coming back too ! Having been how much 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 363 
 
 farther? She is a rare spectacle in this neighborhood. I 
 receive intelligent information to this effect from a dog, — a 
 lop-sided mongrel with a foolish tail, plodding along with his 
 tail up, and his ears pricked, and displaying an amiable inter- 
 est in the ways of his fellow-men, — if I may be allowed the 
 expression. After pausing at a pork-shop, he is jogging east- 
 ward like myself, with a benevolent countenance and a watery 
 mouth, as though musing on the many excellences of pork, 
 when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching. He is 
 not so much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that), 
 as the circumstance that it has within itself the means of loco- 
 motion. He stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, 
 stares, utters a short, low growl, and glistens at the nose, — 
 as I conceive with terror. The bundle continuing to approach, 
 he barks, turns tail, and is about to fly, when, arguing with 
 himself that flight is not becoming in a dog, he turns, and once 
 more faces the advancing heap of clothes. After much hesi- 
 tation, it occurs to him that there may be a face in it some- 
 where. Desperately resolving to undertake the adventure, 
 and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle, goes 
 slowly round it, and coming at length upon the human coun- 
 tenance down there where never human countenance should 
 be, gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East India Docks. 
 
 Being now in the Commercial Boad district of my beat, and 
 bethinking myself that Stepney station is near, I quicken my 
 pace that I may turn out of the road at that point, and see 
 how my small eastern star is shining. 
 
 The Children’s Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in 
 full force. All its beds are occupied. There is a new face 
 on the bed where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little 
 child is now at rest forever. Much kind sympathy has been 
 here since my former visit, and it is good to see the walls pro- 
 fusely garnished with dolls. I wonder what Poodles may 
 think of them, as they stretch out their arms above the beds, 
 and stare, and display their splendid dresses. Poodles has a 
 greater interest in the patients. I find him making the 
 round of the beds, like a house-surgeon, attended by another 
 dog, — a friend, — who appears to trot about with him in the 
 character of his pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious to make 
 
364 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully healthy 
 who had had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee. A diffi- 
 cult operation^ Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the 
 counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you see, dear sir ! 
 The patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile, ^^The leg 
 was so much trouble to me, that I am glad it’s gone.” I 
 never saw anything in doggery finer than the deportment of 
 Poodles, when another little girl opens her mouth to show a 
 peculiar enlargement of the tongue. Poodles (at that time 
 on a table, to be on a level with the occasion) looks at the 
 tongue (with his own sympathetically out) so very gravely 
 and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand in my 
 waistcoat pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper. 
 
 On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its ter- 
 mination, I found myself near to certain Lead-Mills.” Struck 
 by the name, which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on 
 inquiry, that these same lead-mills were identified with those 
 same lead-mills of which I made mention when I first visited 
 the East London Children’s Hospital and its neighborhood as 
 Uncommercial Traveller, I resolved to have a look at them. 
 
 Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and 
 partners with their father in the concern, and who testified 
 every desire to show their works to me freely, I went over 
 the lead-mills. The purport of such works is the conversion 
 of pig-lead into white-lead. This conversion is brought about 
 by the slow and gradual effecting of certain successive chemi- 
 cal changes in the lead itself. The processes are picturesque 
 and interesting — the most so, being the burying of the lead, 
 at a certain stage of preparation, in pots, each pot containing 
 a certain quantity of acid besides, and all the pots being buried 
 in vast numbers, in layers, under tan, for some ten weeks. 
 
 Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated 
 perches, until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a 
 bird or a bricklayer, I became conscious of standing on noth- 
 ing particular, looking down into one of a series of large 
 cocklofts, with the outer day peeping in through the chinks 
 ill the tiled roof above. A number of women were ascending 
 to, and descending from, this cockloft, each carrying on the 
 upward journey a pot of prepared lead and acid for deposi- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 365 
 
 tion under the smoking tan. When one layer of pots was 
 completely filled, it was carefully covered in with planks, and 
 those were carefully covered with tan again, and then another 
 layer of pots was begun above ; sufficient means of ventila- 
 tion being preserved through wooden tubes. Going down 
 into the cockloft then filling, I found the heat of the tan to 
 be surprisingly great, and also the odor of the lead and acid 
 to be not absolutely exquisite, though I believe not noxious at 
 that stage. In other cocklofts, where the pots were being 
 exhumed, the heat of the steaming tan was much greater, 
 and the smell was penetrating and peculiar. There were 
 cocklofts in all stages ; full and empty, half filled and half 
 emptied ; strong, active women were clambering about them 
 busily ; and the whole thing had rather the air of the upper 
 part of the house of some immensely rich old Turk, whose 
 faithful seraglio were hiding his money because the sultan or 
 the pasha was coming. 
 
 As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the in- 
 stance of this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, 
 washing, grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of 
 these are unquestionably inimical to health, the danger aris- 
 ing from inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact 
 between the lead and the touch, or both. Against these 
 dangers, I found good respirators provided (simply made of 
 flannel and muslin, so as to be inexpensively renewed, and 
 in some instances washed with scented soap), and gauntlet 
 gloves, and loose gowns. Everywhere, there was as much 
 fresh air as windows, well placed and open, could possibly 
 admit. And it was explained that the precaution of fre- 
 quently changing the women employed in the worst parts of 
 the work (a precaution originating in their own experience or 
 apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary. They had 
 a mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and 
 nose covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the 
 simile of the old Turk and the seraglio all the better for the 
 disguise. 
 
 At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resus- 
 citated, and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and 
 washed and ground, and rolled and pressed, is subjected to 
 
366 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the action of intense fiery heat. A row of women, dressed 
 as above described, stood, let us say, in a large stone bake- 
 house, passing on the baking-dishes as they were given out 
 by the cooks, from hand to hand, into the ovens. The oven, 
 or stove, cold as yet, looked as high as an ordinary house, 
 and was full of men and women on temporary footholds, 
 briskly passing up and stowing away the dishes. The door 
 of another oven, or stove, about to be cooled and emptied, 
 was opened from above, for the uncommercial countenance to 
 peer down into. The uncommercial countenance withdrew 
 itself, with expedition and a sense of suffocation, from the 
 dull-glowing heat and the overpowering smell. On the whole, 
 perhaps the going into these stoves to work, when they are 
 freshly opened, may be the worst part of the occupation. 
 
 But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of 
 these lead-mills honestly and sedulously try to reduce the 
 dangers of the occupation to the lowest point. 
 
 A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there 
 might have been more towels), and a room in which they hang 
 their clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a 
 good fire-range and fire, and a female attendant to help them, 
 and to watch that they do not neglect the cleansing of their 
 hands before touching their food. An experienced medical 
 attendant is provided for them, and any premonitory symptoms 
 of lead-poisoning are carefully treated. Their teapots and 
 such things were set out on tables ready for their afternoon 
 meal, when I saw their room ; and it had a homely look. It 
 is found that they bear the work much better than men : some 
 few of them have been at it for years, and the great majority 
 of those I observed were strong and active. On the other 
 hand, it should be remembered that most of them are very 
 capricious and irregular in their attendance. 
 
 American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before 
 very long white-lead may be made entirely by machinery. 
 The sooner, the better. In the mean time, I parted from my 
 two frank conductors over the mills, by telling them that 
 they had nothing there to be concealed, and nothing to be 
 blamed for. As to the rest, the philosophy of the matter of 
 lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to me to have been 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 367 
 
 pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I quoted 
 in my former paper : Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon, 
 and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not 
 many, niver; and ’tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; 
 and some constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.’’ 
 
 Ketracing my footsteps over my beat, I went off duty. 
 
368 
 
 TEE UNCOMMEECIAL TBAVELLEB. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 A PLEA FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE. 
 
 One day this last Whitsuntide, at precisely eleven o’clock in 
 the forenoon, there suddenly rode into the field of view com- 
 manded by the windows of my lodging an equestrian phe- 
 nomenon. It was a fellow-creature on horseback, dressed in 
 the absurdest manner. The fellow-creature wore high boots ; 
 some other (and much larger) fellow-creature’s breeches, of 
 a slack-baked doughy color and a baggy form ; a blue shirt, 
 whereof the skirt, or tail, was puffily tucked into the waist- 
 band of the said breeches ; no coat ; a red shoulder-belt ; and 
 a demi-semi-military scarlet hat, with a feathered ornament 
 in front, which, to the uninstructed human vision, had the 
 appearance of a moulting shuttlecock. I laid down the news- 
 paper with which I had been occupied, and surveyed the 
 fellow-man in question with astonishment. Whether he had 
 been sitting to any painter as a frontispiece for a new edition 
 of Sartor Resartus ; ” whether the husk or shell of him,” 
 as the esteemed Herr Teufelsdroch might put it, were founded 
 on a jockey, on a circus, on General Garibaldi, on cheap por- 
 celain, on a toy-shop, on Guy Fawkes, on wax-work, on gold- 
 digging, on Bedlam, or on all, — were doubts that greatly 
 exercised my mind. Meanwhile, my fellow-man stumbled and 
 slided, excessively against his will, on the slippery stones of 
 my Covent-garden Street, and elicited shrieks from several 
 sympathetic females, by convulsively restraining himself from 
 pitching over his horse’s head. In the very crisis of these 
 evolutions, and indeed at the trying moment when his 
 charger’s tail was in a tobacconist’s shop, and his head any- 
 where about town, this cavalier was joined by two similar 
 portents, who, likewise stumbling and sliding, caused him to 
 stumble and slide the more distressingly. At length this 
 Gilpinian triumvirate effected a halt, and, looking northward, 
 
THE XJNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 369 
 
 waved their three right hands as commanding unseen troops, 
 to Up, guards ! and at ’em.’’ Hereupon a brazen band burst 
 forth, which caused them to be instantly bolted with to some 
 remote spot of earth in the direction of the Surrey Hills. 
 
 Judging from these appearances that a procession was 
 under way, I threw up my window, and, craning out, had the 
 satisfaction of beholding it advancing along the streets. It 
 was a Teetotal procession, as I learnt from its banners, and 
 was long enough to consume twenty minutes in passing. 
 There were a great number of children in it, some of them 
 so very young in their mothers’ arms as to be in the act of 
 practically exemplifying their abstinence from fermented 
 liquors, and attachment to an unintoxicating drink, while 
 the procession defiled. The display was, on the whole, 
 pleasant to see, as any good-humored holiday assemblage of 
 clean, cheerful, and well-conducted people should be. It was 
 bright with ribbons, tinsel, and shoulder-belts, and abounded 
 in flowers, as if those latter trophies had come up in profusion 
 under much watering. The day being breezy, the insubordi- 
 nation of the large banners was very reprehensible. Each of 
 these being borne aloft on two poles and stayed with some 
 half-dozen lines, was carried, as polite books in the last cen- 
 tury used to be written, by various hands,” and the anxiety 
 expressed in the upturned faces of those officers, — something 
 between the anxiety attendant on the balancing art, and that 
 inseparable from the pastime of kite-flying, with a touch of 
 the angler’s quality in landing his scaly prey, — much im- 
 pressed me. Suddenly, too, a banner would shiver in the 
 wind, and go about in the most inconvenient manner. This 
 always happened oftenest with such gorgeous standards as 
 those representing a gentleman in black, corpulent with tea 
 and water, in the laudable act of summarily reforming a 
 family feeble and pinched with beer. The gentleman in 
 black distended by wind would then conduct himself with 
 the most unbecoming levity, while the beery family, growing 
 beerier, would frantically try to tear themselves away from 
 his ministration. Some of the inscriptions accompanying the 
 banners were of a highly determined character, as We never, 
 never will give up the temperance cause,” with similar sound 
 
370 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 resolutions rather suggestive to the profane mind of Mrs. 
 Micawber’s I never will desert Mr. Micawber,’’ and of Mr. 
 Micawber’s retort, Really, my dear, I am not aware that you 
 were ever required by any human. being to do anything of the 
 sort.’^ 
 
 At intervals, a gloom would fall on the passing members of 
 the procession, for which I was at first unable to account. 
 But this I discovered, after a little observation, to be occa- 
 sioned by the coming on of the executioners, — the terrible 
 official beings who were to make the speeches by and by, — 
 who were distributed in open carriages at various points of 
 the cavalcade. A dark cloud and a sensation of dampness, 
 as from many wet blankets, invariably preceded the rolling 
 on of the dreadful cars containing these headsmen; and I 
 noticed that the wretched people who closely followed them, 
 and who vere in a manner forced to contemplate their folded 
 arms, complacent countenances, and threatening lips, were 
 more overshadowed by the cloud and damp than those in 
 front. Indeed, I perceived in some of these so moody an 
 implacability towards the magnates of the scaffold, and so 
 plain a desire to tear them limb from limb, that I would 
 respectfully suggest to the managers the expediency of con- 
 veying the executioners to the scene of their dismal labors by 
 unfrequented ways, and in closely tilted carts next Whitsun- 
 tide. 
 
 The procession was composed of a series of smaller proces- 
 sions, which had come together, each from its own Metropoli- 
 tan district. An infusion of allegory became perceptible 
 when patriotic Peckham advanced. So I judged, from the 
 circumstance of Peckham’s unfurling a silken banner that 
 fanned heaven and earth with the words, The Peckham Life- 
 boat.’’ No boat being in attendance, though life, in the like- 
 ness of a gallant, gallant crew,” in nautical uniform followed 
 the flag, I was led to meditate on the fact that Peckham is 
 described by geographers as an inland settlement, with no 
 larger or nearer shore-line than the towing-path of the Surrey 
 Canal, on which stormy station I had been given to under- 
 stand no life-boat exists. Thus I deduced an allegorical 
 meaning, and came to the conclusion, that if patriotic Peck- 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 371 
 
 ham picked a peck of pickled poetry, this was the peck of 
 pickled poetry which patriotic Peckham picked. 
 
 I have observed that the aggregate procession was on the 
 whole pleasant to see. I made use of that qualified expres- 
 sion with a direct meaning, which I will now explain. It 
 involves the title of this paper, and a little fair trying of 
 teetotalism by its own tests. There were many people on 
 foot, and many people in vehicles of various kinds. The 
 former were pleasant to see, and the latter were not pleasant 
 to see; for the reason that I never, on any occasion or under 
 any circumstances, have beheld heavier overloading of horses 
 than in this public show. Unless the imposition of a great 
 van laden with from ten to twenty people on a single horse 
 be a moderate tasking of the poor creature, then the temperate 
 use of horses was immoderate and cruel. From the smallest 
 and lightest horse to the largest and heaviest, there were 
 many instances in which the beast of burden was so shame- 
 fully overladen, that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Animals have frequently interposed in less gross cases. 
 
 Now, I have always held that there may be, and that there 
 unquestionably is, such a thing as use without abuse, and that 
 therefore the total abolitionists are irrational and wrong- 
 headed. But the procession completely converted me. For 
 so large a number of the people using draught-horses in it 
 were so clearly unable to use them without abusing them, 
 that I perceived total abstinence from horseflesh to be the 
 only remedy of which the case admitted. As it is all one to 
 teetotallers whether you take half a pint of beer or half a 
 gallon, so it was all one here whether the beast of burden 
 were a pony or a cart-horse. Indeed, my case had the special 
 strength that the half-pint quadruped underwent as much 
 suffering as the half-gallon quadruped. Moral: total absti- 
 nence from horseflesh through the whole length and breadth 
 of the scale. This pledge will be in course of administration 
 to all teetotal processionists, not pedestrians, at the publish- 
 ing office of “All the Year Eound,’^ on the 1st day of April, 
 1870. 
 
 Observe a point for consideration. This procession com- 
 prised many persons in their gigs, broughams, tax-carts. 
 
372 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 barouches, chaises, and what not, who were merciful to the 
 dumb beasts that drew them, and did not overcharge their 
 strength. What is to be done with those unoffending per- 
 sons ? I will not run a muck and vilify and defame them, as 
 teetotal tracts and platforms would most assuredly do, if the 
 question were one of drinking instead of driving : I merely 
 ask what is to be done with them? The reply admits of no 
 dispute whatever. Manifestly, in strict accordance with tee- 
 total doctrines, they must come in too, and take the total 
 abstinence from horseflesh pledge. It is not pretended that 
 those members of the procession misused certain auxiliaries 
 which in most countries and all ages have been bestowed upon 
 man for his use, but it is undeniable that other members of the 
 procession did. Teetotal mathematics demonstrate that the 
 less includes the greater; that the guilty include the inno- 
 cent, the blind the seeing, the deaf the hearing, the dumb the 
 speaking, the drunken the sober. If any of the moderate 
 users of draught-cattle in question should deem that there is 
 any gentle violence done to their reason by these elements of 
 logic, they are invited to come out of the procession next Whit- 
 suntide, and look at it from my window. 
 
THE UNCOMMEBCIAL TBAVELLER. 
 
 373 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 THE RUFFIAIf. 
 
 I ENTERTAIN SO stroHg an objection to the euphonious 
 softening of Euffian into Kough, which has lately become 
 popular, that I restore the right word to the heading of this 
 paper; the rather, as my object is to dwell upon the fact that 
 the Euffian is tolerated among us to an extent that goes 
 beyond all unruffianly endurance. I take the liberty to 
 believe that if the Euffian besets my life, a professional 
 Euffian at large in the open streets of a great city, notoriously 
 having no other calling than that of Euffian, and of dis- 
 quieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my 
 lawful business, interfering with no one, then the Govern- 
 ment under which I have the great constitutional privilege, 
 supreme honor and happiness, and all the rest of it, to exist, 
 breaks down in the discharge of any Government’s most 
 simple elementary duty. 
 
 What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early 
 days of this last September ? That the Police had At 
 
 LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN CAPTURING TwO OF THE NOTORIOUS 
 GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INFESTED THE WATERLOO EoAD.” 
 
 Is it possible ? What a wonderful Police ! Here is a straight, 
 broad, public thoroughfare of immense resort; half a mile 
 long ; gas-lighted by night ; with a great gas-lighted railway 
 station in it, extra the street lamps ; full of shops ; traversed 
 by two popular cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic ; 
 itself the main road to the South of London ; and the admira- 
 ble Police have, after long infestment of this dark and lonely 
 spot by a gang of Euffians, actually got hold of two of them. 
 Why, can it be doubted that any man of fair London knowl- 
 edge and common resolution, armed with the powers of the 
 Law, could have captured the whole confederacy in a week ? 
 
 It is to the saving-up of the Euffian class by the Magis- 
 
374 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 tracy and Police — to the conventional preserving of them, as 
 if they were Partridges — that their number and audacity 
 must be in great part referred. Why is a notorious Thief 
 and Euffian ever left at large ? He never turns his liberty 
 to any account but violence and plunder, he never did a day’s 
 work out of jail, he never will do a day’s work out of jail. 
 As a proved notorious Thief he is always consignable to 
 prison for three months. When he comes out, he is surely 
 as notorious a Thief as he was when he went in. Then send 
 him back again. Just Heaven !” cries the Society for the 
 protection of remonstrant Euffians. This is equivalent to a 
 sentence of perpetual imprisonment ! ” Precisely for that 
 reason it has my advocacy. I demand to have the Euffian 
 kept out of my way, and out of the way of all decent people. 
 I demand to have the Euffian employed, perforce, in hewing 
 wood and drawing water somewhere for the general service, 
 instead of hewing at her Majesty’s subjects and drawing 
 their watches out of their pockets. If this be termed an 
 unreasonable demand, then the tax-gatherer’s demand on 
 me must be far more unreasonable, and cannot be otherwise 
 than extortionate and unjust. 
 
 It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Euffian as one. 
 I do so, because I know the two characters to be one, in the 
 vast majority of cases, just as well as the Police know it. 
 (As to the Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they know 
 nothing about it but what the Police choose to tell them.) 
 There are disorderly classes of men who are not thieves ; as 
 railway-navigators, brickmakers, wood-sawyers, costermongers. 
 These classes are often disorderly and troublesome ; but it 
 is mostly among themselves, and at any rate they have their 
 industrious avocations, they work early and late, and work 
 hard. The generic Euffian — honorable member for what is 
 tenderly called the Eough Element — is either a Thief, or the 
 companion of Thieves. When he infamously molests women 
 coming out of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would 
 have his back scarified often and deep) it is not only for the 
 gratification of his pleasant instincts, but that there may be 
 a confusion raised by which either he or his friends may 
 profit, in the commission of highway robberies or in picking 
 
THE UNC03IMEECIAL TBAVELLER, 
 
 375 
 
 pockets. When he gets a police-constable down and kicks 
 him helpless for life, it is because that constable once did his 
 duty in bringing him to justice. When he rushes into the 
 bar of a public-house and scoops an eye out of one of the 
 company there, or bites his ear off, it is because the man he 
 maims gave evidence against him. When he and a line of 
 comrades extending across the footway — say of that solitary 
 mountain-spur of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Koad — advance 
 towards me skylarking ’’ among themselves, my purse or 
 shirt-pin is in predestined peril from his playfulness. Always 
 a Euffian, always a Thief. Always a Thief, always a Kuffian. 
 
 Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know 
 them daily on the evidence of my senses and experience ; 
 when I know that the Euffian never jostles a lady in the 
 street, or knocks a hat off, but in order that the Thief may 
 profit, is it surprising that I should require from those who 
 are paid to know these things, prevention of them ? 
 
 Look at this group at a street corner. Number one is a 
 shirking fellow of five and twenty, in an ill-favored and ill- 
 savored suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some 
 indiscernible groundwork for the deposition of grease, his 
 neckerchief like an eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his 
 mangy fur cap pulled low upon his beetle brows to hide the 
 prison cut of his hair. His hands are in his pockets. He 
 puts them there when they are idle, as naturally as in other 
 people’s pockets when they are busy, for he knows that they 
 are not roughened by work, and that they tell a tale. Hence, 
 whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve across his nose — 
 which is often, for he has weak eyes and a constitutional cold 
 in his head — he restores it to its pocket immediately after- 
 wards. Number two is a burly brute of five and thirty, in a 
 tall stiff hat ; is a composite as to his clothes of betting-man 
 and fighting-man ; is whiskered ; has a staring pin in his 
 breast, along with his right hand ; has insolent and cruel 
 eyes ; large shoulders ; strong legs, booted and tipped for 
 kicking. Number three is forty years of age ; is short, thick- 
 set, strong, and bow-legged; wears knee cords and white 
 stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat, a very large necker- 
 chief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a crumpled 
 
376 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face. This fellow 
 looks like an executed j)ostboy of other days, cut down from 
 the gallows too soon, and restored and preserved by express 
 diabolical agency. Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, 
 idle, slouching young men, patched and shabby, too short in 
 the sleeves and too tight in the legs, slimily clothed, foul- 
 spoken, repulsive wretches inside and out. In all the party 
 there obtains a certain twitching character of mouth and 
 furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward is lurking under 
 the bully. The hint is quite correct, for they are a slinking 
 sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their backs and 
 kick out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for it. 
 (This may account for the street mud on the backs of Num- 
 bers five, six, and seven, being much fresher than the stale 
 splashes on their legs.) 
 
 These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contem- 
 plating. His Station, with a Keserve of assistance, is very 
 near at hand. They cannot pretend to any trade, not even 
 to be porters or messengers. It would be idle if they did, 
 for he knows them, and they know that he knows them, to 
 be nothing but professed Thieves and Kuffians. He knows 
 where they resort, knows by what slang names they call one 
 another, knows how often they have been in prison, and how 
 long, and for what. All this is known at his Station, too, 
 and is (or ought to be) known at Scotland Yard, too. But 
 does he know, or does his Station know, or does Scotland 
 Yard know, or does anybody know, why these fellows should 
 be here at liberty, when, as reputed Thieves to whom a whole 
 Division of Police could swear, they might all be under lock 
 and key at hard labor? Not he; truly he would be a wise 
 man if he did ! He only knows that these are members of 
 the notorious gang,’’ which, according to the newspaper 
 Police-office reports of this last past September, ^^have so 
 long infested” the awful solitudes of the, Waterloo Eoad, and 
 out of which almost impregnable fastnesses the Police have 
 at length dragged Two, to the unspeakable admiration of all 
 good civilians. 
 
 The consequences of this contemplative habit on the part 
 of the Executive — a habit to be looked for in a hermit, but 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 377 
 
 not in a Police System — are familiar to us all. The Euffian 
 becomes one of the established orders of the body politic. 
 Under the playful name of Eough (as if he were merely a 
 practical joker) his movements and successes are recorded on 
 public occasions. Whether he mustered in large numbers, 
 or small ; whether he was in good spirits, or depressed ; 
 whether he turned his generous exertions to very prosperous 
 account, or Fortune was against him ; whether he was in a 
 sanguinary mood, or robbed with amiable horse-play and 
 a gracious consideration for life and limb ; all this is chroni- 
 cled as if he were an Institution. Is there any city in Europe, 
 out of England, in which these terms are held with the pests 
 of Society ? Or in which, at this day, such violent robberies 
 from the person are constantly committed as in London ? 
 
 The Preparatory Schools of Kuffianism are similarly borne 
 with. The young Puffians of London — not Thieves yet, but 
 training for scholarships and fellowships in the Criminal 
 Court Universities — molest quiet people and their property 
 to an extent that is hardly credible. The throwing of stones 
 in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive offence, 
 which surely could have got to no greater height though we 
 had had no Police but our own riding-whips and walking- 
 sticks — the Police to which I myself appeal on these occa- 
 sions. The throwing of stones at the windows ^f railway 
 carriages in motion — an act of wanton wickedness with the 
 very Arch-Fiend’s hand in it — had become a crying evil, 
 when the railway companies forced it on Police notice. 
 Constabular contemplation had until then been the order of 
 the day. 
 
 Within these twelve months, there arose among the young 
 gentlemen of London aspiring to Kuffianism, and cultivating 
 that much-encouraged social art, a facetious cry of I’ll have 
 this ! ” accompanied with a clutch at some article of a passing 
 lady’s dress. I have known a lady’s veil to be thus humor- 
 ously torn from her face and carried off in the open streets at 
 noon ; and I have had the honor of myself giving chase, on 
 Westminster Bridge, to another young Kuffian, who, in full 
 daylight early on a summer evening, had nearly thrown a 
 modest young woman into a swoon of indignation and confu- 
 
378 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 sion, by his shameful manner of attacking her with this cry 
 as she harmlessly passed along before me. Mr. Carlyle, 
 some time since, awakened a little pleasantry by writing of 
 his own experience of the Euffian of the streets. I have seen 
 the Euffian act in exact accordance with Mr. Carlyle’s descrip- 
 tion, innumerable times, and I never saw him checked. 
 
 The blaring use of the very worst language possible, in 
 our public thoroughfares — especially in those set apart for 
 recreation — is another disgrace to us, and another result of 
 constabular contemplation, the like of which I have never 
 heard in any other country to which my uncommercial travels 
 have extended. Years ago, when 1 had a near interest in 
 certain children who were sent with their nurses, for air and 
 exercise, into the Eegent’s Park, I found this evil to be so 
 abhorrent and horrible there, that I called public attention 
 to it, and also to its contemplative reception by the Police. 
 Looking afterwards into the newest Police Act, and finding 
 that the offence was punishable under it, I resolved, when 
 striking occasion should arise, to try my hand as prosecutor. 
 The occasion arose soon enough, and I ran the following 
 gantlet. 
 
 The utterer of the base coin in question was a girl of 
 seventeen or eighteen, who, with a suitable attendance of 
 blackguards, youths, and boys, was flaunting along the streets, 
 returning from an Irish funeral, in a progress interspersed 
 with singing and dancing. She had turned round to me and 
 expressed herself in the most audible manner, to the great 
 delight of that select circle. I attended the party, on the 
 opposite side of the way, for a mile further, and then encoun- 
 tered a Police-constable. The party had made themselves 
 merry at my expense until now, but seeing me speak to the 
 constable, its male members instantly took to their heels, 
 leaving the girl alone. I asked the constable did he know 
 my name? Yes, he did. ^^Take that girl into custody, on 
 my charge, for using bad language in the streets.” ^ He had 
 never heard of such a charge. I had. Would he take my 
 word that he should get into no trouble ? Yes, sir, he would 
 do that. So he took the girl, and I went home for my 
 Police Act. 
 
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER, 
 
 379 
 
 With this potent instrument in my pocket, I literally as 
 well as figuratively returned to the charge,’’ and presented 
 myself at the Police Station of the district. There, I found 
 on duty a very intelligent Inspector (they are all intelligent 
 men), who, likewise, had never heard of such a charge. I 
 showed him my clause, and we went over it together twice or 
 thrice. It was plain, and I engaged to wait upon the suburban 
 Magistrate to-morrow morning at ten o’clock. 
 
 In the morning, I put my Police Act in my pocket again, 
 and waited on the suburban Magistrate. I was not quite so 
 courteously received by him as I should have been by The 
 Lord Chancellor or The Lord Chief Justice, but that was a 
 question of good breeding on the suburban Magistrate’s part, 
 and I had my clause ready with its leaf turned down. Which 
 was enough for me. 
 
 Conference took place between the Magistrate and clerk 
 respecting the charge. During conference I was evidently 
 regarded as a much more objectionable person than the pris- 
 oner ; — one giving trouble by coming there voluntarily, 
 which the prisoner could not be accused of doing. The 
 prisoner had been got up, since I last had the pleasure of 
 seeing her, with a great effect of white apron and straw 
 bonnet. She reminded me of an elder sister of Ked Riding 
 Hood, and I seemed to remind the sympathizing Chimney 
 Sweep by whom she was attended, of the Wolf. 
 
 The Magistrate was doubtful, Mr. Uncommercial Traveller, 
 whether this charge could be entertained. It was not known. 
 Mr. Uncommercial Traveller replied that he wished it were 
 better known, and that, if he could afford the leisure, he 
 would use his endeavors to make it so. There was no 
 question about it, however, he contended. Here was the 
 clause. 
 
 The clause was handed in, and more conference resulted. 
 After which I was asked the extraordinary question : Mr. 
 Uncommercial, do you really wish this girl to be sent to 
 prison ? ” To which I grimly answered, staring : if I 
 didn’t, why should I take the trouble to come here ? ” 
 Finally, I was sworn, and gave my agreeable evidence in 
 detail, and White Riding Hood was fined ten shillings, under 
 
380 
 
 THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 the clause, or sent to prison for so many days. Why, Lord 
 bless you, sir,’^ said the Police-officer, who showed me out, 
 with a great enjoyment of the jest of her having been got up 
 so effectively, and caused so much hesitation: ^^if she goes 
 to prison, that will be nothing new to her. She comes from 
 Charles Street, Drury Lane ! ’’ 
 
 The Police, all things considered, are an excellent force, 
 and I have borne my small testimony to their merits. Con- 
 stabular contemplation is the result of a bad system ; a 
 system which is administered, not invented, by the man in 
 constable’s uniform, employed at twenty shillings a week. 
 He has his orders, and would be marked for discouragement 
 if he overstepped them. That the system is bad, there needs 
 no lengthened argument to prove, because the fact is self- 
 evident. If it were anything else, the results that have 
 attended it could not possibly have come to pass. Who will 
 say that under a good system, our streets could have got into 
 their present state ? 
 
 The objection to the whole Police system, as concerning 
 the Puffian, may be stated, and its failure exemplified, as 
 follows. It is well known that on all great occasions, when 
 they come together in numbers, the mass of the English 
 people are their own trustworthy Police. It is well known 
 that wheresoever there is collected together any fair general 
 representation of the people, a respect for law and order, and 
 a determination to discountenance lawlessness and disorder, 
 may be relied upon. As to one another, the people are a 
 very good Police, and yet are quite willing in their good- 
 nature that the stipendiary Police should have the credit of 
 the people’s moderation. But we are all of us powerless 
 against the Ruffian, because we submit to the law, and it is 
 his only trade, by superior force and by violence to defy it. 
 Moreover, we are constantly admonished from high places 
 (like so many Sunday-school children out for a holiday of 
 buns and milk and water) that we are not to take the law 
 into our own hands, but are to hand our defence over to it. 
 It is clear that the common enemy to be punished and exter- 
 minated first of all is the Ruffian. It is clear that he is, of . 
 all others, the offender for whose repressal we maintain a ^ 
 
THE VNCOMMEUCIAL TRAVELLER. 
 
 381 
 
 costly system of Police. Him, therefore, we expressly pre- 
 sent to the Police to deal with, conscious that, on the whole, 
 we can, and do, deal reasonably well with one another. Him 
 the Police deal with so inefficiently and absurdly that he 
 flourishes, and multiplies, and, with all his evil deeds upon 
 his head as notoriously as his hat is, pervades the streets 
 with no more let or hindrance than ourselves. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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