The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

terrible thing happened next day. For, when dinner-time came, and

  the Dock-bell rang to strike work, he put his rule into the long

  pocket at the side of his trousers, and there he found a rat - not

  that rat, but another rat. And in his hat, he found another; and

  in his pocket-handkerchief, another; and in the sleeves of his

  coat, when he pulled it on to go to dinner, two more. And from

  that time he found himself so frightfully intimate with all the

  rats in the Yard, that they climbed up his legs when he was at

  work, and sat on his tools while he used them. And they could all

  speak to one another, and he understood what they said. And they

  got into his lodging, and into his bed, and into his teapot, and

  into his beer, and into his boots. And he was going to be married

  to a corn-chandler's daughter; and when he gave her a workbox he

  had himself made for her, a rat jumped out of it; and when he put

  his arm round her waist, a rat clung about her; so the marriage was

  broken off, though the banns were already twice put up - which the

  parish clerk well remembers, for, as he handed the book to the

  clergyman for the second time of asking, a large fat rat ran over

  the leaf. (By this time a special cascade of rats was rolling down

  my back, and the whole of my small listening person was overrun

  with them. At intervals ever since, I have been morbidly afraid of

  my own pocket, lest my exploring hand should find a specimen or two

  of those vermin in it.)

  You may believe that all this was very terrible to Chips; but even

  all this was not the worst. He knew besides, what the rats were

  doing, wherever they were. So, sometimes he would cry aloud, when

  he was at his club at night, 'Oh! Keep the rats out of the

  convicts' burying-ground! Don't let them do that!' Or, 'There's

  one of them at the cheese down-stairs!' Or, 'There's two of them

  smelling at the baby in the garret!' Or, other things of that

  sort. At last, he was voted mad, and lost his work in the Yard,

  and could get no other work. But, King George wanted men, so

  before very long he got pressed for a sailor. And so he was taken

  off in a boat one evening to his ship, lying at Spithead, ready to

  sail. And so the first thing he made out in her as he got near

  her, was the figure-head of the old Seventy-four, where he had seen

  the Devil. She was called the Argonaut, and they rowed right under

  the bowsprit where the figure-head of the Argonaut, with a

  sheepskin in his hand and a blue gown on, was looking out to sea;

  and sitting staring on his forehead was the rat who could speak,

  and his exact words were these: 'Chips ahoy! Old boy! We've

  pretty well eat them too, and we'll drown the crew, and will eat

  them too!' (Here I always became exceedingly faint, and would have

  asked for water, but that I was speechless.)

  The ship was bound for the Indies; and if you don't know where that

  is, you ought to it, and angels will never love you. (Here I felt

  myself an outcast from a future state.) The ship set sail that

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  very night, and she sailed, and sailed, and sailed. Chips's

  feelings were dreadful. Nothing ever equalled his terrors. No

  wonder. At last, one day he asked leave to speak to the Admiral.

  The Admiral giv' leave. Chips went down on his knees in the Great

  State Cabin. 'Your Honour, unless your Honour, without a moment's

  loss of time, makes sail for the nearest shore, this is a doomed

  ship, and her name is the Coffin!' 'Young man, your words are a

  madman's words.' 'Your Honour no; they are nibbling us away.'

  'They?' 'Your Honour, them dreadful rats. Dust and hollowness

  where solid oak ought to be! Rats nibbling a grave for every man

  on board! Oh! Does your Honour love your Lady and your pretty

  children?' 'Yes, my man, to be sure.' 'Then, for God's sake, make

  for the nearest shore, for at this present moment the rats are all

  stopping in their work, and are all looking straight towards you

  with bare teeth, and are all saying to one another that you shall

  never, never, never, never, see your Lady and your children more.'

  'My poor fellow, you are a case for the doctor. Sentry, take care

  of this man!'

  So, he was bled and he was blistered, and he was this and that, for

  six whole days and nights. So, then he again asked leave to speak

  to the Admiral. The Admiral giv' leave. He went down on his knees

  in the Great State Cabin. 'Now, Admiral, you must die! You took

  no warning; you must die! The rats are never wrong in their

  calculations, and they make out that they'll be through, at twelve

  to-night. So, you must die! - With me and all the rest!' And so

  at twelve o'clock there was a great leak reported in the ship, and

  a torrent of water rushed in and nothing could stop it, and they

  all went down, every living soul. And what the rats - being waterrats

  - left of Chips, at last floated to shore, and sitting on him

  was an immense overgrown rat, laughing, that dived when the corpse

  touched the beach and never came up. And there was a deal of

  seaweed on the remains. And if you get thirteen bits of seaweed,

  and dry them and burn them in the fire, they will go off like in

  these thirteen words as plain as plain can be:

  'A Lemon has pips,

  And a Yard has ships,

  And I've got Chips!'

  The same female bard - descended, possibly, from those terrible old

  Scalds who seem to have existed for the express purpose of addling

  the brains of mankind when they begin to investigate languages -

  made a standing pretence which greatly assisted in forcing me back

  to a number of hideous places that I would by all means have

  avoided. This pretence was, that all her ghost stories had

  occurred to her own relations. Politeness towards a meritorious

  family, therefore, forbade my doubting them, and they acquired an

  air of authentication that impaired my digestive powers for life.

  There was a narrative concerning an unearthly animal foreboding

  death, which appeared in the open street to a parlour-maid who

  'went to fetch the beer' for supper: first (as I now recall it)

  assuming the likeness of a black dog, and gradually rising on its

  hind-legs and swelling into the semblance of some quadruped greatly

  surpassing a hippopotamus: which apparition - not because I deemed

  it in the least improbable, but because I felt it to be really too

  large to bear - I feebly endeavoured to explain away. But, on

  Mercy's retorting with wounded dignity that the parlour-maid was

  her own sister-in-law, I perceived there was no hope, and resigned

  myself to this zoological phenomenon as one of my many pursuers.

  There was another narrative describing the apparition of a young

  woman who came out of a glass-case and haunted another young woman

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  until the other young woman questioned it and elicited that its

  bones (Lord! To think of its being so particular about its bones!)

  were buried un
der the glass-case, whereas she required them to be

  interred, with every Undertaking solemnity up to twenty-four pound

  ten, in another particular place. This narrative I considered - I

  had a personal interest in disproving, because we had glass-cases

  at home, and how, otherwise, was I to be guaranteed from the

  intrusion of young women requiring ME TO bury them up to twentyfour

  pound ten, when I had only twopence a week? But my

  remorseless nurse cut the ground from under my tender feet, by

  informing me that She was the other young woman; and I couldn't say

  'I don't believe you;' it was not possible.

  Such are a few of the uncommercial journeys that I was forced to

  make, against my will, when I was very young and unreasoning. And

  really, as to the latter part of them, it is not so very long ago -

  now I come to think of it - that I was asked to undertake them once

  again, with a steady countenance.

  CHAPTER XVI - ARCADIAN LONDON

  Being in a humour for complete solitude and uninterrupted

  meditation this autumn, I have taken a lodging for six weeks in the

  most unfrequented part of England - in a word, in London.

  The retreat into which I have withdrawn myself, is Bond-street.

  From this lonely spot I make pilgrimages into the surrounding

  wilderness, and traverse extensive tracts of the Great Desert. The

  first solemn feeling of isolation overcome, the first oppressive

  consciousness of profound retirement conquered, I enjoy that sense

  of freedom, and feel reviving within me that latent wildness of the

  original savage, which has been (upon the whole somewhat

  frequently) noticed by Travellers.

  My lodgings are at a hatter's - my own hatter's. After exhibiting

  no articles in his window for some weeks, but sea-side wide-awakes,

  shooting-caps, and a choice of rough waterproof head-gear for the

  moors and mountains, he has put upon the heads of his family as

  much of this stock as they could carry, and has taken them off to

  the Isle of Thanet. His young man alone remains - and remains

  alone in the shop. The young man has let out the fire at which the

  irons are heated, and, saving his strong sense of duty, I see no

  reason why he should take the shutters down.

  Happily for himself and for his country the young man is a

  Volunteer; most happily for himself, or I think he would become the

  prey of a settled melancholy. For, to live surrounded by human

  hats, and alienated from human heads to fit them on, is surely a

  great endurance. But, the young man, sustained by practising his

  exercise, and by constantly furbishing up his regulation plume (it

  is unnecessary to observe that, as a hatter, he is in a cock'sfeather

  corps), is resigned, and uncomplaining. On a Saturday,

  when he closes early and gets his Knickerbockers on, he is even

  cheerful. I am gratefully particular in this reference to him,

  because he is my companion through many peaceful hours.

  My hatter has a desk up certain steps behind his counter, enclosed

  like the clerk's desk at Church. I shut myself into this place of

  seclusion, after breakfast, and meditate. At such times, I observe

  the young man loading an imaginary rifle with the greatest

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  precision, and maintaining a most galling and destructive fire upon

  the national enemy. I thank him publicly for his companionship and

  his patriotism.

  The simple character of my life, and the calm nature of the scenes

  by which I am surrounded, occasion me to rise early. I go forth in

  my slippers, and promenade the pavement. It is pastoral to feel

  the freshness of the air in the uninhabited town, and to appreciate

  the shepherdess character of the few milkwomen who purvey so little

  milk that it would be worth nobody's while to adulterate it, if

  anybody were left to undertake the task. On the crowded sea-shore,

  the great demand for milk, combined with the strong local

  temptation of chalk, would betray itself in the lowered quality of

  the article. In Arcadian London I derive it from the cow.

  The Arcadian simplicity of the metropolis altogether, and the

  primitive ways into which it has fallen in this autumnal Golden

  Age, make it entirely new to me. Within a few hundred yards of my

  retreat, is the house of a friend who maintains a most sumptuous

  butler. I never, until yesterday, saw that butler out of superfine

  black broadcloth. Until yesterday, I never saw him off duty, never

  saw him (he is the best of butlers) with the appearance of having

  any mind for anything but the glory of his master and his master's

  friends. Yesterday morning, walking in my slippers near the house

  of which he is the prop and ornament - a house now a waste of

  shutters - I encountered that butler, also in his slippers, and in

  a shooting suit of one colour, and in a low-crowned straw-hat,

  smoking an early cigar. He felt that we had formerly met in

  another state of existence, and that we were translated into a new

  sphere. Wisely and well, he passed me without recognition. Under

  his arm he carried the morning paper, and shortly afterwards I saw

  him sitting on a rail in the pleasant open landscape of Regentstreet,

  perusing it at his ease under the ripening sun.

  My landlord having taken his whole establishment to be salted down,

  I am waited on by an elderly woman labouring under a chronic sniff,

  who, at the shadowy hour of half-past nine o'clock of every

  evening, gives admittance at the street door to a meagre and mouldy

  old man whom I have never yet seen detached from a flat pint of

  beer in a pewter pot. The meagre and mouldy old man is her

  husband, and the pair have a dejected consciousness that they are

  not justified in appearing on the surface of the earth. They come

  out of some hole when London empties itself, and go in again when

  it fills. I saw them arrive on the evening when I myself took

  possession, and they arrived with the flat pint of beer, and their

  bed in a bundle. The old man is a weak old man, and appeared to me

  to get the bed down the kitchen stairs by tumbling down with and

  upon it. They make their bed in the lowest and remotest corner of

  the basement, and they smell of bed, and have no possession but

  bed: unless it be (which I rather infer from an under-current of

  flavour in them) cheese. I know their name, through the chance of

  having called the wife's attention, at half-past nine on the second

  evening of our acquaintance, to the circumstance of there being

  some one at the house door; when she apologetically explained,

  'It's only Mr. Klem.' What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or when he

  goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but at half-past

  nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step with the flat pint

  of beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much more

  important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy as if it

  had found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought him

  home. In making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the middler />
  of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against the

  wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is occupying as

  little space as possible in the house; and whenever I come upon him

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  face to face, he backs from me in fascinated confusion. The most

  extraordinary circumstance I have traced in connexion with this

  aged couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter,

  apparently ten years older than either of them, who has also a bed

  and smells of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides

  it in deserted houses. I came into this piece of knowledge through

  Mrs. Klem's beseeching me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem

  under that roof for a single night, 'between her takin' care of the

  upper part in Pall Mall which the family of his back, and a 'ouse

  in Serjameses-street, which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.'

  I gave my gracious consent (having nothing that I know of to do

  with it), and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became perceptible on

  the door-step, wrestling with a bed in a bundle. Where she made it

  up for the night I cannot positively state, but, I think, in a

  sink. I know that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she

  stowed it and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family,

  I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a

  power they possess of converting everything into flue. Such broken

  victuals as they take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of

  the viands) invariably to generate flue; and even the nightly pint

  of beer, instead of assimilating naturally, strikes me as breaking

  out in that form, equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem, and the

  threadbare coat of her husband.

  Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name - as to Mr. Klem he has no idea of

  anything - and only knows me as her good gentleman. Thus, if

  doubtful whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door

  and says, 'Is my good gentleman here?' Or, if a messenger desiring

  to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would show him in

  with 'Here is my good gentleman.' I find this to be a generic

  custom. For, I meant to have observed before now, that in its

  Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly pervaded by the

  Klem species. They creep about with beds, and go to bed in miles