The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  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, looming 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 backward 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

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  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  eye. Attended to his business himself, he said. Always on the

  spot. When 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 pianoaccordion,

  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 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 conclusive

  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. Victualler, 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. Ring the wonderful 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 fiddle 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. Right and left. (Put a steam on, gib 'um

  powder.) LA-dies' chail. BAL-loon say. Lemonade! TWO. ADwarnse

  and go back (gib 'ell a breakdown, shake it out o' yerselbs,

  keep a movil). SWING-corners, BAL-loon say, and Lemonade! (Hoy!)

  THREE. GENT come for'ard with a lady and go back, hoppersite come

  for'ard 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 meet 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!)'

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  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, doubleshuffled,

  double-double-shuffled, covered the buckle, and beat the

  time out, rarely, dancing with a great show of teeth, and with a

  childish good-humoured 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 neighbouring 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 a gentle fellow. Bearing this in mind, I asked his

  friendly permission to leave him restoration of beer, in wishing

  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 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 parlour 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

  h
eard.

  'Well I 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, 'Meggisson'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?'

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  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  '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. 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 uncommercial

  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 unstimulated 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, regardless 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 parlour 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 curtseying woman of the

  house. 'This is my good man, sir.'

  'You are not registered as a common Lodging House?'

  'No, sir.'

  Sharpeye (in the Move-on tone) puts in the pertinent inquiry, 'Then

  why ain't you?'

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  'Ain't 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 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 Woolwich, Chatham, Portsmouth,

  and Dover. When we get out, my respected fellow-constable

  Sharpeye, addressing Mr. Superintendent, says:

  'You 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 parlour 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?'

  Sweetly, she can assure the dear gentlemen, 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 improvement with

  entertainment, by doing his school-writing afterwards, God be good

  to ye!'

  The copy admonished human nature to subjugate the fire of every

  fierce desire. One might have thought it recommended 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

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  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 circle round

  each eye. I fancy it like the beginning of the development of a

  perverted diabolical halo, and that when it spreads all round her

  head, she will die in the odour of devilry.

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

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

  angrily, 'Show him the child!'

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

  ground. Adjured not to disturb the child, she lets it drop again.

  Thus we find at last that there is one child in the world of

  Entries who goes to bed - if this be bed.

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

  bags?

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

  See the cups and saucers, and the plates.

  'Late? Ay! But we has to 'arn our supper afore we eats it!' Both

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

  Uncommercial measurement with their eyes, as for a charmed windingsheet.

  Some grim discourse ensues, referring to the mistress of

  the cave, who will be released from jail to-morrow. Witches

  pronounce Trampfoot 'right there,' when he deems it a trying

  distance for the old lady to walk; she shall be fetched by niece in

  a spring-cart.

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

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

  hungrily and thirstily looked out beyond me into the dark doorway,

  to see if Jack was there. For, Jack came even here, and the

  mistress had got into jail through deluding Jack.

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

  to keep my mind on comfortable thoughts of Seaman's Homes (not

  overdone with strictness), and improved dock regulations giving

  Jack greater benefit of fire and candle aboard ship, through my

  mind's wandering among the vermin I had seen. Afterwards the same