The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  waiter has to communicate with a lady who lives behind a sashwindow

  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 distracted 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 reminds 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 again 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

  frouziness up-stairs and down-stairs, its old-established cookery,

  and its old-established principles of plunder. Count up your

  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 oldestablished

  Bull's Head stringy 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 pastry - 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 which

  the Bull's Head set the glasses and D'Oyleys on, and held that

  Liquid Gout to the three-and-sixpenny wax-candle, as if its oldestablished

  colour 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

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  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  how the ghost of mortar passes into our sandwich, stirs our negus,

  goes up to bed with us, ascends the pale bedroom 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 informs 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 connexion 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 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 division.

  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 superstitions I have glanced at remain in existence.

  CHAPTER 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 Road, 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 Rochester,

  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.

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  'Holloa!' said I, to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'

  'At Chatham,' says he.

  'What do you do there?' says I.

  'I go to school,' says he.

  I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the ve
ry

  queer small boy says, 'This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where

  Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.'

  'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I.

  'All about him,' said the very queer small boy. 'I 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 Romans used to

  march, over the road where the old Canterbury 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, cornfields,

  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 lightkeeper

  in an anxious state of mind were interposed every halfminute,

  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.

  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 labourer, 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

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  as on a burning-glass, I felt that now, indeed, I was in the dear

  old France of my affections. I should have known it, without the

  well-remembered bottle of rough ordinary wine, the cold roast fowl,

  the loaf, and the pinch of salt, on which I lunched with

  unspeakable satisfaction, from one of the stuffed pockets of the

  chariot.

  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 assurance that

  France stood where I had left it. There were the posting-houses,

  with their archways, dirty stable-yards, and clean post-masters'

  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 grey 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 desiring 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 grey

  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 Rue 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,

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  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 grey man lying all alone on his cold

  bed, with a tap of water turned on over
his grey 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 Morning (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 forehead 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 anything 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 colours, 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.

  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