The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough

  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 attributable 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 learnt, on inquiry) a

  most flourishing 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 belonged 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 black board 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 makeweight

  piece of amusement, shame-facedly 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

  unaccountable 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, before they were broughtto

  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 professional

  ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those ladies to

  sing the ballad 'Comin' through the Rye' 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

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  Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the

  hearts and souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such

  an elaborate 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 1 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 prevalence, to an

  extraordinary degree, of this custom of putting the natural demand

  for amusement out of sight, as some untidy 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 gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each

  side of them, and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain

  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 anathematised 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 position to offer a friendly remonstrance - not bearing on this

  particular point - to the designers and engravers of the pictures

  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, crispiness of hair, and enormity of

  shirt-collar, which they represent 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

  surpassingly 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 consequence, 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 suddenly

  brought up by the sight o
f a man who got out of a 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

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  for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of

  Roderick Random together, and had believed 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 L'AUTEUR E

  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 connexion with that fact, and inquired to

  what was he to attribute the honour? 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. Random? Upon that,

  he said 'Narcissa,' and, after staring for a 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. 'Whom do you think she

  married?' said he. 'You?' I hazarded. 'Me,' said Specks, 'and you

  shall 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 married 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 wilderness of rusty

  iron, and the property of S.E.R.

  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 observe 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

  considering 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 Roderick Random, and that he confounded

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  Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever

  intimate with Pickle.

  When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks

  had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was

  in a more charitable mood with Dullborough 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!

  CHAPTER XIII - 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 perspective 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 brawling 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 Haymarket, 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 was seldom violently

  broken. But, it was always the case that London,
as if in

  imitation of individual citizens belonging to 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 fraternise 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

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  street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly

  into a little property, come unexpectedly 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, Houselessness 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 inspector looking after his men.

  Now and then in the night - but rarely - Houselessness would 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 houseless shadow would