The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  well ventilated, clean, and cheerful. They consisted of three

  large rooms. That on the basement story was the kitchen; that on

  the ground floor was the general dining-room; that on the floor

  above was the Upper Room referred to in the hand-bill, where the

  Public Dinner at fourpence-halfpenny a head was provided every day.

  The cooking was done, with much economy of space and fuel, by

  American cooking-stoves, and by young women not previously, brought

  up as cooks; the walls and pillars of the two dining-rooms were

  agreeably brightened with ornamental colours; the tables were

  capable of accommodating six or eight persons each; the attendants

  were all young women, becomingly and neatly dressed, and dressed

  alike. I think the whole staff was female, with the exception of

  the steward or manager.

  My first inquiries were directed to the wages of this staff;

  because, if any establishment claiming to be self-supporting, live

  upon the spoliation of anybody or anything, or eke out a feeble

  existence by poor mouths and beggarly resources (as too many socalled

  Mechanics' Institutions do), I make bold to express my

  Uncommercial opinion that it has no business to live, and had

  better die. It was made clear to me by the account books, that

  every person employed was properly paid. My next inquiries were

  directed to the quality of the provisions purchased, and to the

  terms on which they were bought. It was made equally clear to me

  that the quality was the very best, and that all bills were paid

  weekly. My next inquiries were directed to the balance-sheet for

  the last two weeks - only the third and fourth of the

  establishment's career. It was made equally clear to me, that

  after everything bought was paid for, and after each week was

  charged with its full share of wages, rent and taxes, depreciation

  of plant in use, and interest on capital at the rate of four per

  cent. per annum, the last week had yielded a profit of (in round

  numbers) one pound ten; and the previous week a profit of six

  pounds ten. By this time I felt that I had a healthy appetite for

  the dinners.

  It had just struck twelve, and a quick succession of faces had

  already begun to appear at a little window in the wall of the

  partitioned space where I sat looking over the books. Within this

  little window, like a pay-box at a theatre, a neat and brisk young

  woman presided to take money and issue tickets. Every one coming

  in must take a ticket. Either the fourpence-halfpenny ticket for

  the upper room (the most popular ticket, I think), or a penny

  ticket for a bowl of soup, or as many penny tickets as he or she

  choose to buy. For three penny tickets one had quite a wide range

  of choice. A plate of cold boiled beef and potatoes; or a plate of

  Page 160

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  cold ham and potatoes; or a plate of hot minced beef and potatoes;

  or a bowl of soup, bread and cheese, and a plate of plum-pudding.

  Touching what they should have, some customers on taking their

  seats fell into a reverie - became mildly distracted - postponed

  decision, and said in bewilderment, they would think of it. One

  old man I noticed when I sat among the tables in the lower room,

  who was startled by the bill of fare, and sat contemplating it as

  if it were something of a ghostly nature. The decision of the boys

  was as rapid as their execution, and always included pudding.

  There were several women among the diners, and several clerks and

  shopmen. There were carpenters and painters from the neighbouring

  buildings under repair, and there were nautical men, and there

  were, as one diner observed to me, 'some of most sorts.' Some were

  solitary, some came two together, some dined in parties of three or

  four, or six. The latter talked together, but assuredly no one was

  louder than at my club in Pall-Mall. One young fellow whistled in

  rather a shrill manner while he waited for his dinner, but I was

  gratified to observe that he did so in evident defiance of my

  Uncommercial individuality. Quite agreeing with him, on

  consideration, that I had no business to be there, unless I dined

  like the rest, 'I went in,' as the phrase is, for fourpencehalfpenny.

  The room of the fourpence-halfpenny banquet had, like the lower

  room, a counter in it, on which were ranged a great number of cold

  portions ready for distribution. Behind this counter, the fragrant

  soup was steaming in deep cans, and the best-cooked of potatoes

  were fished out of similar receptacles. Nothing to eat was touched

  with his hand. Every waitress had her own tables to attend to. As

  soon as she saw a new customer seat himself at one of her tables,

  she took from the counter all his dinner - his soup, potatoes,

  meat, and pudding - piled it up dexterously in her two hands, set

  it before him, and took his ticket. This serving of the whole

  dinner at once, had been found greatly to simplify the business of

  attendance, and was also popular with the customers: who were thus

  enabled to vary the meal by varying the routine of dishes:

  beginning with soup-to-day, putting soup in the middle to-morrow,

  putting soup at the end the day after to-morrow, and ringing

  similar changes on meat and pudding. The rapidity with which every

  new-comer got served, was remarkable; and the dexterity with which

  the waitresses (quite new to the art a month before) discharged

  their duty, was as agreeable to see, as the neat smartness with

  which they wore their dress and had dressed their hair.

  If I seldom saw better waiting, so I certainly never ate better

  meat, potatoes, or pudding. And the soup was an honest and stout

  soup, with rice and barley in it, and 'little matters for the teeth

  to touch,' as had been observed to me by my friend below stairs

  already quoted. The dinner-service, too, was neither conspicuously

  hideous for High Art nor for Low Art, but was of a pleasant and

  pure appearance. Concerning the viands and their cookery, one last

  remark. I dined at my club in Pall-Mall aforesaid, a few days

  afterwards, for exactly twelve times the money, and not half as

  well.

  The company thickened after one o'clock struck, and changed pretty

  quickly. Although experience of the place had been so recently

  attainable, and although there was still considerable curiosity out

  in the street and about the entrance, the general tone was as good

  as could be, and the customers fell easily into the ways of the

  place. It was clear to me, however, that they were there to have

  what they paid for, and to be on an independent footing. To the

  best of my judgment, they might be patronised out of the building

  Page 161

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  in a month. With judicious visiting, and by dint of being

  questioned, read to, and talked at, they might even be got rid of

  (for the next quarter of a century) in half the time.

  This disinterested and wise movement is fraught with so many

  wholesome changes in
the lives of the working people, and with so

  much good in the way of overcoming that suspicion which our own

  unconscious impertinence has engendered, that it is scarcely

  gracious to criticise details as yet; the rather, because it is

  indisputable that the managers of the Whitechapel establishment

  most thoroughly feel that they are upon their honour with the

  customers, as to the minutest points of administration. But,

  although the American stoves cannot roast, they can surely boil one

  kind of meat as well as another, and need not always circumscribe

  their boiling talents within the limits of ham and beef. The most

  enthusiastic admirer of those substantials, would probably not

  object to occasional inconstancy in respect of pork and mutton:

  or, especially in cold weather, to a little innocent trifling with

  Irish stews, meat pies, and toads in holes. Another drawback on

  the Whitechapel establishment, is the absence of beer. Regarded

  merely as a question of policy, it is very impolitic, as having a

  tendency to send the working men to the public-house, where gin is

  reported to be sold. But, there is a much higher ground on which

  this absence of beer is objectionable. It expresses distrust of

  the working man. It is a fragment of that old mantle of patronage

  in which so many estimable Thugs, so darkly wandering up and down

  the moral world, are sworn to muffle him. Good beer is a good

  thing for him, he says, and he likes it; the Depot could give it

  him good, and he now gets it bad. Why does the Depot not give it

  him good? Because he would get drunk. Why does the Depot not let

  him have a pint with his dinner, which would not make him drunk?

  Because he might have had another pint, or another two pints,

  before he came. Now, this distrust is an affront, is exceedingly

  inconsistent with the confidence the managers express in their

  hand-bills, and is a timid stopping-short upon the straight

  highway. It is unjust and unreasonable, also. It is unjust,

  because it punishes the sober man for the vice of the drunken man.

  It is unreasonable, because any one at all experienced in such

  things knows that the drunken workman does not get drunk where he

  goes to eat and drink, but where he goes to drink - expressly to

  drink. To suppose that the working man cannot state this question

  to himself quite as plainly as I state it here, is to suppose that

  he is a baby, and is again to tell him in the old wearisome,

  condescending, patronising way that he must be goody-poody, and do

  as he is toldy-poldy, and not be a manny-panny or a voter-poter,

  but fold his handy-pandys, and be a childy-pildy.

  I found from the accounts of the Whitechapel Self-Supporting

  Cooking Depot, that every article sold in it, even at the prices I

  have quoted, yields a certain small profit! Individual speculators

  are of course already in the field, and are of course already

  appropriating the name. The classes for whose benefit the real

  depots are designed, will distinguish between the two kinds of

  enterprise.

  CHAPTER XXVI - CHATHAM DOCKYARD

  There are some small out-of-the-way landing places on the Thames

  and the Medway, where I do much of my summer idling. Running water

  is favourable to day-dreams, and a strong tidal river is the best

  Page 162

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  of running water for mine. I like to watch the great ships

  standing out to sea or coming home richly laden, the active little

  steam-tugs confidently puffing with them to and from the seahorizon,

  the fleet of barges that seem to have plucked their brown

  and russet sails from the ripe trees in the landscape, the heavy

  old colliers, light in ballast, floundering down before the tide,

  the light screw barks and schooners imperiously holding a straight

  course while the others patiently tack and go about, the yachts

  with their tiny hulls and great white sheets of canvas, the little

  sailing-boats bobbing to and fro on their errands of pleasure or

  business, and - as it is the nature of little people to do - making

  a prodigious fuss about their small affairs. Watching these

  objects, I still am under no obligation to think about them, or

  even so much as to see them, unless it perfectly suits my humour.

  As little am I obliged to hear the plash and flop of the tide, the

  ripple at my feet, the clinking windlass afar off, or the humming

  steam-ship paddles further away yet. These, with the creaking

  little jetty on which I sit, and the gaunt high-water marks and

  low-water marks in the mud, and the broken causeway, and the broken

  bank, and the broken stakes and piles leaning forward as if they

  were vain of their personal appearance and looking for their

  reflection in the water, will melt into any train of fancy.

  Equally adaptable to any purpose or to none, are the posturing

  sheep and kine upon the marshes, the gulls that wheel and dip

  around me, the crows (well out of gunshot) going home from the rich

  harvest-fields, the heron that has been out a-fishing and looks as

  melancholy, up there in the sky, as if it hadn't agreed with him.

  Everything within the range of the senses will, by the aid of the

  running water, lend itself to everything beyond that range, and

  work into a drowsy whole, not unlike a kind of tune, but for which

  there is no exact definition.

  One of these landing-places is near an old fort (I can see the Nore

  Light from it with my pocket-glass), from which fort mysteriously

  emerges a boy, to whom I am much indebted for additions to my

  scanty stock of knowledge. He is a young boy, with an intelligent

  face burnt to a dust colour by the summer sun, and with crisp hair

  of the same hue. He is a boy in whom I have perceived nothing

  incompatible with habits of studious inquiry and meditation, unless

  an evanescent black eye (I was delicate of inquiring how

  occasioned) should be so considered. To him am I indebted for

  ability to identify a Custom-house boat at any distance, and for

  acquaintance with all the forms and ceremonies observed by a

  homeward-bound Indiaman coming up the river, when the Custom-house

  officers go aboard her. But for him, I might never have heard of

  'the dumb-ague,' respecting which malady I am now learned. Had I

  never sat at his feet, I might have finished my mortal career and

  never known that when I see a white horse on a barge's sail, that

  barge is a lime barge. For precious secrets in reference to beer,

  am I likewise beholden to him, involving warning against the beer

  of a certain establishment, by reason of its having turned sour

  through failure in point of demand: though my young sage is not of

  opinion that similar deterioration has befallen the ale. He has

  also enlightened me touching the mushrooms of the marshes, and has

  gently reproved my ignorance in having supposed them to be

  impregnated with salt. His manner of imparting information, is

  thoughtful, and appropriate to the scene. As he reclines beside

  me, he pitches into the river, a little
stone or piece of grit, and

  then delivers himself oracularly, as though he spoke out of the

  centre of the spreading circle that it makes in the water. He

  never improves my mind without observing this formula.

  With the wise boy - whom I know by no other name than the Spirit of

  the Fort - I recently consorted on a breezy day when the river

  Page 163

  Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller

  leaped about us and was full of life. I had seen the sheaved corn

  carrying in the golden fields as I came down to the river; and the

  rosy farmer, watching his labouring-men in the saddle on his cob,

  had told me how he had reaped his two hundred and sixty acres of

  long-strawed corn last week, and how a better week's work he had

  never done in all his days. Peace and abundance were on the

  country-side in beautiful forms and beautiful colours, and the

  harvest seemed even to be sailing out to grace the never-reaped sea

  in the yellow-laden barges that mellowed the distance.

  It was on this occasion that the Spirit of the Fort, directing his

  remarks to a certain floating iron battery lately lying in that

  reach of the river, enriched my mind with his opinions on naval

  architecture, and informed me that he would like to be an engineer.

  I found him up to everything that is done in the contracting line

  by Messrs. Peto and Brassey - cunning in the article of concrete -

  mellow in the matter of iron - great on the subject of gunnery.

  When he spoke of pile-driving and sluice-making, he left me not a

  leg to stand on, and I can never sufficiently acknowledge his

  forbearance with me in my disabled state. While he thus

  discoursed, he several times directed his eyes to one distant

  quarter of the landscape, and spoke with vague mysterious awe of

  'the Yard.' Pondering his lessons after we had parted, I bethought

  me that the Yard was one of our large public Dockyards, and that it

  lay hidden among the crops down in the dip behind the windmills, as

  if it modestly kept itself out of view in peaceful times, and

  sought to trouble no man. Taken with this modesty on the part of

  the Yard, I resolved to improve the Yard's acquaintance.

  My good opinion of the Yard's retiring character was not dashed by

  nearer approach. It resounded with the noise of hammers beating

  upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty menof-