The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  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 occasionally 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 experience in the state between sleeping and

  waking, that I 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

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  goal at a round pace; one, objectless, loitering, and purely

  vagabond. In the latter state, no gipsy 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 neighbourhoods 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 coloured in fighting 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 halfboots;

  while Mr. Sayers is impelled to the administration of his

  favourite 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 entwined 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

  neighbourhoods when leisure and opportunity serve.

  Nothing in shy neighbourhoods 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 neighbourhoods, 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 dwellinghouse,

  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 appealed 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.

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  Donkeys again. I know shy neighbourhoods 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, nobility, Royalty, 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 donkeys, in a

  state of nature; but in the shy neighbourhood state, you shall see

  them always in the same hands and always developing 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 Surrey

  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 knowledge 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 periwinkles, and forgotten, he went off idling. Her />
  prowled among his usual low haunts for some time, gratifying his

  depraved tastes, until, not taking the cart into his calculations,

  he endeavoured 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 broken and his cart extensively

  shattered, twitching his mouth and shaking his hanging head, a

  picture of disgrace and obduracy. I have seen boys being taken to

  station-houses, who were as like him as his own brother.

  The dogs of shy neighbourhoods, 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 neighbourhood 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) represents 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

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  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 interest 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

  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 foot-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 off 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. From this Covent-garden window 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 commanded 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 wink of sleep, when up comes Punch with Toby. He

  was darting to Toby for consolation and advice, when he saw the

  frill, and stopped, in the 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

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  been brought up at Oxford, too. The dog kept the gentleman

  entirely for his glorification, and the gentleman never talked

  about anything but the terrier. This, however, was not in a shy

  neighbourhood, and is a digression consequently.

  There are a great many dogs in shy neighbourhoods, 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 mysterious knowledge of the art of fishing,

  and they consider themselves incompletely equipped for the

  Hampstead ponds, with a pickle-jar and 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, haling the blind man away on

  expeditions wholly uncontemplated by, and unintelligible to, the

  man: wholly of the dog's conception and execution. Contrariwise,

  when the man has projects, the dog will sit down in a crowded

  thoroughfare and meditate. I saw him yesterday, wearing the moneytray

  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 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

  appointments among blind men at about two or three o'clock in the

  afternoon. 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 neighbourhood

  (there is no reason for suppressing the name; it is by Nottinghill,

  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 occasions, 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 satisfaction 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