The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  of command from the Skipper of this ship - a mahogany-faced Old

  Salt, with the indispensable quid in his cheek, the true nautical

  roll, and all wonderfully complete - the rigging was covered with a

  swarm of boys: one, the first to spring into the shrouds,

  outstripping all the others, and resting on the truck of the maintopmast

  in no time.

  And now we stood out to sea, in a most amazing manner; the Skipper

  himself, the whole crew, the Uncommercial, and all hands present,

  implicitly believing that there was not a moment to lose, that the

  wind had that instant chopped round and sprung up fair, and that we

  were away on a voyage round the world. Get all sail upon her!

  With a will, my lads! Lay out upon the main-yard there! Look

  alive at the weather earring! Cheery, my boys! Let go the sheet,

  now! Stand by at the braces, you! With a will, aloft there!

  Belay, starboard watch! Fifer! Come aft, fifer, and give 'em a

  tune! Forthwith, springs up fifer, fife in hand - smallest boy

  ever seen - big lump on temple, having lately fallen down on a

  paving-stone - gives 'em a tune with all his might and main. Hooroar,

  fifer! With a will, my lads! Tip 'em a livelier one, fifer!

  Fifer tips 'em a livelier one, and excitement increases. Shake 'em

  out, my lads! Well done! There you have her! Pretty, pretty!

  Every rag upon her she can carry, wind right astarn, and ship

  cutting through the water fifteen knots an hour!

  At this favourable moment of her voyage, I gave the alarm 'A man

  overboard!' (on the gravel), but he was immediately recovered, none

  the worse. Presently, I observed the Skipper overboard, but

  forbore to mention it, as he seemed in no wise disconcerted by the

  accident. Indeed, I soon came to regard the Skipper as an

  amphibious creature, for he was so perpetually plunging overboard

  to look up at the hands aloft, that he was oftener in the bosom of

  the ocean than on deck. His pride in his crew on those occasions

  was delightful, and the conventional unintelligibility of his

  orders in the ears of uncommercial landlubbers and loblolly boys,

  though they were always intelligible to the crew, was hardly less

  pleasant. But we couldn't expect to go on in this way for ever;

  dirty weather came on, and then worse weather, and when we least

  expected it we got into tremendous difficulties. Screw loose in

  the chart perhaps - something certainly wrong somewhere - but here

  we were with breakers ahead, my lads, driving head on, slap on a

  lee shore! The Skipper broached this terrific announcement in such

  great agitation, that the small fifer, not fifeing now, but

  standing looking on near the wheel with his fife under his arm,

  seemed for the moment quite unboyed, though he speedily recovered

  his presence of mind. In the trying circumstances that ensued, the

  Skipper and the crew proved worthy of one another. The Skipper got

  dreadfully hoarse, but otherwise was master of the situation. The

  man at the wheel did wonders; all hands (except the fifer) were

  turned up to wear ship; and I observed the fifer, when we were at

  our greatest extremity, to refer to some document in his waistcoatpocket,

  which I conceived to be his will. I think she struck. I

  was not myself conscious of any collision, but I saw the Skipper so

  very often washed overboard and back again, that I could only

  impute it to the beating of the ship. I am not enough of a seaman

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  to describe the manoeuvres by which we were saved, but they made

  the Skipper very hot (French polishing his mahogany face) and the

  crew very nimble, and succeeded to a marvel; for, within a few

  minutes of the first alarm, we had wore ship and got her off, and

  were all a-tauto - which I felt very grateful for: not that I knew

  what it was, but that I perceived that we had not been all a-tauto

  lately. Land now appeared on our weather-bow, and we shaped our

  course for it, having the wind abeam, and frequently changing the

  man at the helm, in order that every man might have his spell. We

  worked into harbour under prosperous circumstances, and furled our

  sails, and squared our yards, and made all ship-shape and handsome,

  and so our voyage ended. When I complimented the Skipper at

  parting on his exertions and those of his gallant crew, he informed

  me that the latter were provided for the worst, all hands being

  taught to swim and dive; and he added that the able seaman at the

  main-topmast truck especially, could dive as deep as he could go

  high.

  The next adventure that befell me in my visit to the Short-Timers,

  was the sudden apparition of a military band. I had been

  inspecting the hammocks of the crew of the good ship, when I saw

  with astonishment that several musical instruments, brazen and of

  great size, appeared to have suddenly developed two legs each, and

  to be trotting about a yard. And my astonishment was heightened

  when I observed a large drum, that had previously been leaning

  helpless against a wall, taking up a stout position on four legs.

  Approaching this drum and looking over it, I found two boys behind

  it (it was too much for one), and then I found that each of the

  brazen instruments had brought out a boy, and was going to

  discourse sweet sounds. The boys - not omitting the fifer, now

  playing a new instrument - were dressed in neat uniform, and stood

  up in a circle at their music-stands, like any other Military Band.

  They played a march or two, and then we had Cheer boys, Cheer, and

  then we had Yankee Doodle, and we finished, as in loyal duty bound,

  with God save the Queen. The band's proficiency was perfectly

  wonderful, and it was not at all wonderful that the whole body

  corporate of Short-Timers listened with faces of the liveliest

  interest and pleasure.

  What happened next among the Short-Timers? As if the band had

  blown me into a great class-room out of their brazen tubes, IN a

  great class-room I found myself now, with the whole choral force of

  Short-Timers singing the praises of a summer's day to the

  harmonium, and my small but highly respected friend the fifer

  blazing away vocally, as if he had been saving up his wind for the

  last twelvemonth; also the whole crew of the good ship Nameless

  swarming up and down the scale as if they had never swarmed up and

  down the rigging. This done, we threw our whole power into God

  bless the Prince of Wales, and blessed his Royal Highness to such

  an extent that, for my own Uncommercial part, I gasped again when

  it was over. The moment this was done, we formed, with surpassing

  freshness, into hollow squares, and fell to work at oral lessons as

  if we never did, and had never thought of doing, anything else.

  Let a veil be drawn over the self-committals into which the

  Uncommercial Traveller would have been betrayed but for a discreet

  reticence, coupled with an air of absolute wisdom on the part of

  that artful personage. Take the square of five, multiply it by

  fifteen,
divide it by three, deduct eight from it, add four dozen

  to it, give me the result in pence, and tell me how many eggs I

  could get for it at three farthings apiece. The problem is hardly

  stated, when a dozen small boys pour out answers. Some wide, some

  very nearly right, some worked as far as they go with such

  accuracy, as at once to show what link of the chain has been

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  dropped in the hurry. For the moment, none are quite right; but

  behold a labouring spirit beating the buttons on its corporeal

  waistcoat, in a process of internal calculation, and knitting an

  accidental bump on its corporeal forehead in a concentration of

  mental arithmetic! It is my honourable friend (if he will allow me

  to call him so) the fifer. With right arm eagerly extended in

  token of being inspired with an answer, and with right leg

  foremost, the fifer solves the mystery: then recalls both arm and

  leg, and with bump in ambush awaits the next poser. Take the

  square of three, multiply it by seven, divide it by four, add fifty

  to it, take thirteen from it, multiply it by two, double it, give

  me the result in pence, and say how many halfpence. Wise as the

  serpent is the four feet of performer on the nearest approach to

  that instrument, whose right arm instantly appears, and quenches

  this arithmetical fire. Tell me something about Great Britain,

  tell me something about its principal productions, tell me

  something about its ports, tell me something about its seas and

  rivers, tell me something about coal, iron, cotton, timber, tin,

  and turpentine. The hollow square bristles with extended right

  arms; but ever faithful to fact is the fifer, ever wise as the

  serpent is the performer on that instrument, ever prominently

  buoyant and brilliant are all members of the band. I observe the

  player of the cymbals to dash at a sounding answer now and then

  rather than not cut in at all; but I take that to be in the way of

  his instrument. All these questions, and many such, are put on the

  spur of the moment, and by one who has never examined these boys.

  The Uncommercial, invited to add another, falteringly demands how

  many birthdays a man born on the twenty-ninth of February will have

  had on completing his fiftieth year? A general perception of trap

  and pitfall instantly arises, and the fifer is seen to retire

  behind the corduroys of his next neighbours, as perceiving special

  necessity for collecting himself and communing with his mind.

  Meanwhile, the wisdom of the serpent suggests that the man will

  have had only one birthday in all that time, for how can any man

  have more than one, seeing that he is born once and dies once? The

  blushing Uncommercial stands corrected, and amends the formula.

  Pondering ensues, two or three wrong answers are offered, and

  Cymbals strikes up 'Six!' but doesn't know why. Then modestly

  emerging from his Academic Grove of corduroys appears the fifer,

  right arm extended, right leg foremost, bump irradiated. 'Twelve,

  and two over!'

  The feminine Short-Timers passed a similar examination, and very

  creditably too. Would have done better perhaps, with a little more

  geniality on the part of their pupil-teacher; for a cold eye, my

  young friend, and a hard, abrupt manner, are not by any means the

  powerful engines that your innocence supposes them to be. Both

  girls and boys wrote excellently, from copy and dictation; both

  could cook; both could mend their own clothes; both could clean up

  everything about them in an orderly and skilful way, the girls

  having womanly household knowledge superadded. Order and method

  began in the songs of the Infant School which I visited likewise,

  and they were even in their dwarf degree to be found in the

  Nursery, where the Uncommercial walking-stick was carried off with

  acclamations, and where 'the Doctor' - a medical gentleman of two,

  who took his degree on the night when he was found at an

  apothecary's door - did the honours of the establishment with great

  urbanity and gaiety.

  These have long been excellent schools; long before the days of the

  Short-Time. I first saw them, twelve or fifteen years ago. But

  since the introduction of the Short-Time system it has been proved

  here that eighteen hours a week of book-learning are more

  profitable than thirty-six, and that the pupils are far quicker and

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  brighter than of yore. The good influences of music on the whole

  body of children have likewise been surprisingly proved. Obviously

  another of the immense advantages of the Short-Time system to the

  cause of good education is the great diminution of its cost, and of

  the period of time over which it extends. The last is a most

  important consideration, as poor parents are always impatient to

  profit by their children's labour.

  It will be objected: Firstly, that this is all very well, but

  special local advantages and special selection of children must be

  necessary to such success. Secondly, that this is all very well,

  but must be very expensive. Thirdly, that this is all very well,

  but we have no proof of the results, sir, no proof.

  On the first head of local advantages and special selection. Would

  Limehouse Hole be picked out for the site of a Children's Paradise?

  Or would the legitimate and illegitimate pauper children of the

  long-shore population of such a riverside district, be regarded as

  unusually favourable specimens to work with? Yet these schools are

  at Limehouse, and are the Pauper Schools of the Stepney Pauper

  Union.

  On the second head of expense. Would sixpence a week be considered

  a very large cost for the education of each pupil, including all

  salaries of teachers and rations of teachers? But supposing the

  cost were not sixpence a week, not fivepence? it is FOURPENCEHALFPENNY.

  On the third head of no proof, sir, no proof. Is there any proof

  in the facts that Pupil Teachers more in number, and more highly

  qualified, have been produced here under the Short-Time system than

  under the Long-Time system? That the Short-Timers, in a writing

  competition, beat the Long-Timers of a first-class National School?

  That the sailor-boys are in such demand for merchant ships, that

  whereas, before they were trained, 10L. premium used to be given

  with each boy - too often to some greedy brute of a drunken

  skipper, who disappeared before the term of apprenticeship was out,

  if the ill-used boy didn't - captains of the best character now

  take these boys more than willingly, with no premium at all? That

  they are also much esteemed in the Royal Navy, which they prefer,

  'because everything is so neat and clean and orderly'? Or, is

  there any proof in Naval captains writing 'Your little fellows are

  all that I can desire'? Or, is there any proof in such testimony

  as this: 'The owner of a vessel called at the school, and said

  that as his ship was going down Channel on her last voy
age, with

  one of the boys from the school on board, the pilot said, "It would

  be as well if the royal were lowered; I wish it were down."

  Without waiting for any orders, and unobserved by the pilot, the

  lad, whom they had taken on board from the school, instantly

  mounted the mast and lowered the royal, and at the next glance of

  the pilot to the masthead, he perceived that the sail had been let

  down. He exclaimed, "Who's done that job?" The owner, who was on

  board, said, "That was the little fellow whom I put on board two

  days ago." The pilot immediately said, "Why, where could he have

  been brought up?" The boy had never seen the sea or been on a real

  ship before'? Or, is there any proof in these boys being in

  greater demand for Regimental Bands than the Union can meet? Or,

  in ninety-eight of them having gone into Regimental Bands in three

  years? Or, in twelve of them being in the band of one regiment?

  Or, in the colonel of that regiment writing, 'We want six more

  boys; they are excellent lads'? Or, in one of the boys having

  risen to be band-corporal in the same regiment? Or, in employers

  of all kinds chorusing, 'Give us drilled boys, for they are prompt,

  obedient, and punctual'? Other proofs I have myself beheld with

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  these Uncommercial eyes, though I do not regard myself as having a

  right to relate in what social positions they have seen respected

  men and women who were once pauper children of the Stepney Union.

  Into what admirable soldiers others of these boys have the

  capabilities for being turned, I need not point out. Many of them

  are always ambitious of military service; and once upon a time when

  an old boy came back to see the old place, a cavalry soldier all

  complete, WITH HIS SPURS ON, such a yearning broke out to get into

  cavalry regiments and wear those sublime appendages, that it was

  one of the greatest excitements ever known in the school. The

  girls make excellent domestic servants, and at certain periods come

  back, a score or two at a time, to see the old building, and to

  take tea with the old teachers, and to hear the old band, and to

  see the old ship with her masts towering up above the neighbouring

  roofs and chimneys. As to the physical health of these schools, it

  is so exceptionally remarkable (simply because the sanitary