The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  pretext for extorting money from me. Quires - quires do I say?

  Reams - of forms illegibly printed on whity-brown paper were filled

  up about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping and

  sanding than I had ever seen before. In consequence of which haze

  of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular, and always latent with

  dismal penalties of going back or not going forward, which were

  only to be abated by the silver crossing of a base hand, poked

  shirtless out of a ragged uniform sleeve. Under all

  discouragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my

  resolution that every drop of its contents should reach the

  Bottle's destination.

  The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its

  own separate account. What corkscrews did I see the military power

  bring out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods,

  gauges, and unknown tests and instruments! At some places, they

  persisted in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without

  being opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to

  argue the question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in

  spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy more violent

  shrieking, face-making, and gesticulating, greater vehemence of

  speech and countenance and action, went on about that Bottle than

  would attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It raised

  important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of night. I

  have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to disperse themselves at

  all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning some

  official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat instantly, and

  come and stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that while this

  innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting from little

  town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing

  Italy from end to end.

  Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman

  all of the olden time. The more the Bottle was interfered with,

  the stauncher I became (if possible) in my first determination that

  my countryman should have it delivered to him intact, as the man

  whom he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it

  to me. If ever I had been obstinate in my days - and I may have

  been, say, once or twice - I was obstinate about the Bottle. But,

  I made it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its

  service, and never to be out of temper in its cause. Thus, I and

  the Bottle made our way. Once we had a break-down; rather a bad

  break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a

  tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. We were driving four

  wild horses abreast, Southern fashion, and there was some little

  difficulty in stopping them. I was outside, and not thrown off;

  but no words can describe my feelings when I saw the Bottle -

  travelling inside, as usual - burst the door open, and roll obesely

  out into the road. A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, he

  took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and went on triumphant.

  Page 111

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle must be

  left at this place, or that, and called for again. I never yielded

  to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence,

  consideration, threat, or entreaty. I had no faith in any official

  receipt for the Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one.

  These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the Bottle,

  still triumphant, to Genoa. There, I took a tender and reluctant

  leave of him for a few weeks, and consigned him to a trusty English

  captain, to be conveyed to the Port of London by sea.

  While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping

  Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter. There

  was some stormy weather after I myself had got to England by way of

  Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the

  Bottle might be wrecked. At last to my great joy, I received

  notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint

  Katharine's Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity

  in the Custom House.

  The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous

  Englishman - probably it had been something like vinegar when I

  took it up from Giovanni Carlavero - but not a drop of it was

  spilled or gone. And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in

  his face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to

  him so sweet and sound. And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his

  table. And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him,

  he took me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: 'We

  were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had

  been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero's Bottle.'

  CHAPTER XVIII - THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL

  It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais

  something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my

  malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad

  to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this

  subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a

  maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping

  saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one

  great extremity, sea-sickness - who was a mere bilious torso, with

  a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach - who had been put into

  a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of

  it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times

  have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I

  know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise

  its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its

  ways, and I know - and I can bear - its worst behaviour.

  Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and

  discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on

  that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape

  Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to

  be stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its

  bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer

  quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of

  falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its

  invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think

  you are there - roll, roar, wash! - Calais has retired miles

  inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip

  and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded

  Page 112

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when

  it dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to the

  right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about

  for it!

  Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I par
ticularly

  detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.

  It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more

  brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and

  Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my

  much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the

  comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I

  know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact

  insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I

  know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or

  pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon

  that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I

  am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise,

  for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it

  rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,

  without the officious Warden's interference?

  As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern

  Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be

  illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal

  dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land,

  and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The

  drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would

  rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this

  slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in

  an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of

  Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the

  Third.

  A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty

  Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the

  heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if

  several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by

  circumstances over which they had no control from drinking

  peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated - rumble, hum,

  scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each

  paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of

  the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures

  with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles,

  descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's

  Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen,

  with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a

  few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy

  Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it.

  I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that

  we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant

  in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible

  delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the

  unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is

  to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes

  glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has

  gone to bed before we are off!

  What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from

  an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put

  up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A

  fellow-creature near me - whom I only know to BE a fellow-creature,

  because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of

  cliff, pier, or bulkbead - clutches that instrument with a

  Page 113

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is

  there any analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an

  umbrella up, and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board

  with a flop replies 'Stand by!' 'Stand by, below!' 'Half a turn a

  head!' 'Half a turn a head!' 'Half speed!' 'Half speed!'

  'Port!' 'Port!' 'Steady!' 'Steady!' 'Go on!' 'Go on!'

  A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my

  left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a

  compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers, -

  these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and

  by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of

  France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves

  comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been

  trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three

  shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them

  up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way

  that bodes no good.

  It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no

  bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that

  hated town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past.

  Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm- that

  was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it

  gives a complaining roar.

  The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we

  ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless

  passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted

  out for the laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot

  pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A

  general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am

  aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the

  impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper,

  something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel

  languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am

  under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish

  melodies. 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore,' is the

  particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to

  myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest

  expression. Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the

  hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes,

  but I don't mind it,) and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock

  between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and

  a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English coast; but I

  don't notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred

  of Calais. Then I go on again, 'Rich and rare were the ge-ems shee-

  e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O

  her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond' - I am particularly proud of my

  execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from

  the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature

  at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be -

  'Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-aa-

  a-a-r beyond' - another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature

  with the umbrella down and picked up - 'Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or

  her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the

  paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wa
sh, white wand.'

  As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect

  perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on

  around me becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open

  the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the

  box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light

  of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the

  Page 114

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  hatches and paddle-boxes is THEIR gleam on cottages and haystacks,

  and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the

  splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at

  every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure

  engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which

  I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and

  when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light

  of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so,

  become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where I shall be

  this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance

  to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven.

  What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on,

  I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she

  wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about

  Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first

  went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound

  that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.

  Still, through all this, I must ask her (who WAS she I wonder!) for

  the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to

  stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's

  sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellowcreatures

  at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I feel not the

  least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they

  love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir

  Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more: For

  though they love Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble

  you for your ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!

  I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and

  inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words