The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

the engine would blow and heave and perspire, 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 were 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 tossingpurchase

  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

  workpeople 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 breakfastsellers.

  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.

  CHAPTER 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

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  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 mysterious 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 passed 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 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 small-pox.

  This set of chambers (as I have gradually discovered, when I have

  had restless occasion to make inquiries or leave messages, 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 neighbouring 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

  pertinacity - that the late Mr. Sweeney was a ticket-porter under

  the Honourable Society of Gray's Inn, and that, in consideration of

  his long and valuable services, Mrs. Sweeney was appointed to her

  present post. For, though devoid of personal charms, I have

  observed this lady to exercise a fascination over the elderly

  ticker-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

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  with certain stone remains, 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, with the ugly old tiled-topped tenements, the

  dirty windows, the bills To Let, To Let, the door-posts inscribed

  like gravestones, the crazy gateway giving upon the filthy Lane,

  the scowling, iron-barred prison-like passage into Verulambuildings,

  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 fulness of time when the staircases shall have quite

  tumbled down - they are daily wearing into an ill-savoured 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 Southsquare,

  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, with

  eyes better glazed than their casements, from their dreary and

  lacklustre rooms. Then shall the way Nor' 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 impassable. Then shall the gardens

  where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black, run

  rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury 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 vendor of

  periodicals sit alone 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 flavour 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, consisted 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 question. Now,

  they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest 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 certainly 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

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  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 that 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 assertion on the subject; she merely

  claimed a proprietorship in the Church, by looking when it was

  mentioned, as if the reference awakened the slumbering Past, and

  were personal. It may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs.

  Miggot's better days that inspired my friend with his delusion

  respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his fidelity to it

  for a moment, 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 summer 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 meeting another leech

  - also entirely alone, and also proceeding in a westerly direction,

  though with less decision of purpose. Ruminating on this

  extraordinary circumstance, and endeavouring 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 demented

  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 endeavouring 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 adjurations of my friend to 'Stick 'em on, sir!' I

  referred the phenomenon 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 carefully 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

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  three or four years, Parkl
e rather knew of him than knew him, but

  after that - for Englishmen - short pause of consideration, they

  began to speak. Parkle exchanged 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 thousand years. One dry,

  hot autumn evening at twilight, this 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 remained 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