The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  cart them off, the general mind was much unsettled in arriving at a

  conclusion. As a way out of this difficulty, it concentrated

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  itself on the acknowledged Beauty of the party, every stitch in

  whose dress was verbally unripped by the old ladies then and there,

  and whose 'goings on' with another and a thinner personage in a

  white hat might have suffused the pump (where they were principally

  discussed) with blushes, for months afterwards. Herein Titbull's

  was to Titbull's true, for it has a constitutional dislike of all

  strangers. As concerning innovations and improvements, it is

  always of opinion that what it doesn't want itself, nobody ought to

  want. But I think I have met with this opinion outside Titbull's.

  Of the humble treasures of furniture brought into Titbull's by the

  inmates when they establish themselves in that place of

  contemplation for the rest of their days, by far the greater and

  more valuable part belongs to the ladies. I may claim the honour

  of having either crossed the threshold, or looked in at the door,

  of every one of the nine ladies, and I have noticed that they are

  all particular in the article of bedsteads, and maintain favourite

  and long-established bedsteads and bedding as a regular part of

  their rest. Generally an antiquated chest of drawers is among

  their cherished possessions; a tea-tray always is. I know of at

  least two rooms in which a little tea-kettle of genuine burnished

  copper, vies with the cat in winking at the fire; and one old lady

  has a tea-urn set forth in state on the top of her chest of

  drawers, which urn is used as her library, and contains four

  duodecimo volumes, and a black-bordered newspaper giving an account

  of the funeral of Her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte. Among

  the poor old gentlemen there are no such niceties. Their furniture

  has the air of being contributed, like some obsolete Literary

  Miscellany, 'by several hands;' their few chairs never match; old

  patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy

  habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes. When I recall one

  old gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and

  blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegances of that

  side of the building.

  On the occurrence of a death in Titbull's, it is invariably agreed

  among the survivors - and it is the only subject on which they do

  agree - that the departed did something 'to bring it on.' Judging

  by Titbull's, I should say the human race need never die, if they

  took care. But they don't take care, and they do die, and when

  they die in Titbull's they are buried at the cost of the

  Foundation. Some provision has been made for the purpose, in

  virtue of which (I record this on the strength of having seen the

  funeral of Mrs. Quinch) a lively neighbouring undertaker dresses up

  four of the old men, and four of the old women, hustles them into a

  procession of four couples, and leads off with a large black bow at

  the back of his hat, looking over his shoulder at them airily from

  time to time to see that no member of the party has got lost, or

  has tumbled down; as if they were a company of dim old dolls.

  Resignation of a dwelling is of very rare occurrence in Titbull's.

  A story does obtain there, how an old lady's son once drew a prize

  of Thirty Thousand Pounds in the Lottery, and presently drove to

  the gate in his own carriage, with French Horns playing up behind,

  and whisked his mother away, and left ten guineas for a Feast. But

  I have been unable to substantiate it by any evidence, and regard

  it as an Alms-House Fairy Tale. It is curious that the only proved

  case of resignation happened within my knowledge.

  It happened on this wise. There is a sharp competition among the

  ladies respecting the gentility of their visitors, and I have so

  often observed visitors to be dressed as for a holiday occasion,

  that I suppose the ladies to have besought them to make all

  possible display when they come. In these circumstances much

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  excitement was one day occasioned by Mrs. Mitts receiving a visit

  from a Greenwich Pensioner. He was a Pensioner of a bluff and

  warlike appearance, with an empty coat-sleeve, and he was got up

  with unusual care; his coat-buttons were extremely bright, he wore

  his empty coat-sleeve in a graceful festoon, and he had a walkingstick

  in his hand that must have cost money. When, with the head

  of his walking-stick, he knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door - there are

  no knockers in Titbull's - Mrs. Mitts was overheard by a next-door

  neighbour to utter a cry of surprise expressing much agitation; and

  the same neighbour did afterwards solemnly affirm that when he was

  admitted into Mrs. Mitts's room, she heard a smack. Heard a smack

  which was not a blow.

  There was an air about this Greenwich Pensioner when he took his

  departure, which imbued all Titbull's with the conviction that he

  was coming again. He was eagerly looked for, and Mrs. Mitts was

  closely watched. In the meantime, if anything could have placed

  the unfortunate six old gentlemen at a greater disadvantage than

  that at which they chronically stood, it would have been the

  apparition of this Greenwich Pensioner. They were well shrunken

  already, but they shrunk to nothing in comparison with the

  Pensioner. Even the poor old gentlemen themselves seemed conscious

  of their inferiority, and to know submissively that they could

  never hope to hold their own against the Pensioner with his warlike

  and maritime experience in the past, and his tobacco money in the

  present: his chequered career of blue water, black gunpowder, and

  red bloodshed for England, home, and beauty.

  Before three weeks were out, the Pensioner reappeared. Again he

  knocked at Mrs. Mitts's door with the handle of his stick, and

  again was he admitted. But not again did he depart alone; for Mrs.

  Mitts, in a bonnet identified as having been re-embellished, went

  out walking with him, and stayed out till the ten o'clock beer,

  Greenwich time.

  There was now a truce, even as to the troubled waters of Mrs.

  Saggers's pail; nothing was spoken of among the ladies but the

  conduct of Mrs. Mitts and its blighting influence on the reputation

  of Titbull's. It was agreed that Mr. Battens 'ought to take it

  up,' and Mr. Battens was communicated with on the subject. That

  unsatisfactory individual replied 'that he didn't see his way yet,'

  and it was unanimously voted by the ladies that aggravation was in

  his nature.

  How it came to pass, with some appearance of inconsistency, that

  Mrs. Mitts was cut by all the ladies and the Pensioner admired by

  all the ladies, matters not. Before another week was out,

  Titbull's was startled by another phenomenon. At ten o'clock in

  the forenoon appeared a cab, containing not only the Greenwich

  Pensioner with one arm, but, to boot, a Chelsea
Pensioner with one

  leg. Both dismounting to assist Mrs. Mitts into the cab, the

  Greenwich Pensioner bore her company inside, and the Chelsea

  Pensioner mounted the box by the driver: his wooden leg sticking

  out after the manner of a bowsprit, as if in jocular homage to his

  friend's sea-going career. Thus the equipage drove away. No Mrs.

  Mitts returned that night.

  What Mr. Battens might have done in the matter of taking it up,

  goaded by the infuriated state of public feeling next morning, was

  anticipated by another phenomenon. A Truck, propelled by the

  Greenwich Pensioner and the Chelsea Pensioner, each placidly

  smoking a pipe, and pushing his warrior breast against the handle.

  The display on the part of the Greenwich Pensioner of his

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  'marriage-lines,' and his announcement that himself and friend had

  looked in for the furniture of Mrs. G. Pensioner, late Mitts, by no

  means reconciled the ladies to the conduct of their sister; on the

  contrary, it is said that they appeared more than ever exasperated.

  Nevertheless, my stray visits to Titbull's since the date of this

  occurrence, have confirmed me in an impression that it was a

  wholesome fillip. The nine ladies are smarter, both in mind and

  dress, than they used to be, though it must be admitted that they

  despise the six gentlemen to the last extent. They have a much

  greater interest in the external thoroughfare too, than they had

  when I first knew Titbull's. And whenever I chance to be leaning

  my back against the pump or the iron railings, and to be talking to

  one of the junior ladies, and to see that a flush has passed over

  her face, I immediately know without looking round that a Greenwich

  Pensioner has gone past.

  CHAPTER XXX - THE RUFFIAN

  I entertain so strong an objection to the euphonious softening of

  Ruffian into Rough, which has lately become popular, that I restore

  the right word to the heading of this paper; the rather, as my

  object is to dwell upon the fact that the Ruffian is tolerated

  among us to an extent that goes beyond all unruffianly endurance.

  I take the liberty to believe that if the Ruffian besets my life, a

  professional Ruffian at large in the open streets of a great city,

  notoriously having no other calling than that of Ruffian, and of

  disquieting and despoiling me as I go peacefully about my lawful

  business, interfering with no one, then the Government under which

  I have the great constitutional privilege, supreme honour and

  happiness, and all the rest of it, to exist, breaks down in the

  discharge of any Government's most simple elementary duty.

  What did I read in the London daily papers, in the early days of

  this last September? That the Police had 'AT LENGTH SUCCEEDED IN

  CAPTURING TWO OF THE NOTORIOUS GANG THAT HAVE SO LONG INVESTED THE

  WATERLOO ROAD.' Is it possible? What a wonderful Police! Here is

  a straight, broad, public thoroughfare of immense resort; half a

  mile long; gas-lighted by night; with a great gas-lighted railway

  station in it, extra the street lamps; full of shops; traversed by

  two popular cross thoroughfares of considerable traffic; itself the

  main road to the South of London; and the admirable Police have,

  after long infestment of this dark and lonely spot by a gang of

  Ruffians, actually got hold of two of them. Why, can it be doubted

  that any man of fair London knowledge and common resolution, armed

  with the powers of the Law, could have captured the whole

  confederacy in a week?

  It is to the saving up of the Ruffian class by the Magistracy and

  Police - to the conventional preserving of them, as if they were

  Partridges - that their number and audacity must be in great part

  referred. Why is a notorious Thief and Ruffian ever left at large?

  He never turns his liberty to any account but violence and plunder,

  he never did a day's work out of gaol, he never will do a day's

  work out of gaol. As a proved notorious Thief he is always

  consignable to prison for three months. When he comes out, he is

  surely as notorious a Thief as he was when he went in. Then send

  him back again. 'Just Heaven!' cries the Society for the

  protection of remonstrant Ruffians. 'This is equivalent to a

  sentence of perpetual imprisonment!' Precisely for that reason it

  has my advocacy. I demand to have the Ruffian kept out of my way,

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  and out of the way of all decent people. I demand to have the

  Ruffian employed, perforce, in hewing wood and drawing water

  somewhere for the general service, instead of hewing at her

  Majesty's subjects and drawing their watches out of their pockets.

  If this be termed an unreasonable demand, then the tax-gatherer's

  demand on me must be far more unreasonable, and cannot be otherwise

  than extortionate and unjust.

  It will be seen that I treat of the Thief and Ruffian as one. I do

  so, because I know the two characters to be one, in the vast

  majority of cases, just as well as the Police know it. (As to the

  Magistracy, with a few exceptions, they know nothing about it but

  what the Police choose to tell them.) There are disorderly classes

  of men who are not thieves; as railway-navigators, brickmakers,

  wood-sawyers, costermongers. These classes are often disorderly

  and troublesome; but it is mostly among themselves, and at any rate

  they have their industrious avocations, they work early and late,

  and work hard. The generic Ruffian - honourable member for what is

  tenderly called the Rough Element - is either a Thief, or the

  companion of Thieves. When he infamously molests women coming out

  of chapel on Sunday evenings (for which I would have his back

  scarified often and deep) it is not only for the gratification of

  his pleasant instincts, but that there may be a confusion raised by

  which either he or his friends may profit, in the commission of

  highway robberies or in picking pockets. When he gets a policeconstable

  down and kicks him helpless for life, it is because that

  constable once did his duty in bringing him to justice. When he

  rushes into the bar of a public-house and scoops an eye out of one

  of the company there, or bites his ear off, it is because the man

  he maims gave evidence against him. When he and a line of comrades

  extending across the footway - say of that solitary mountain-spur

  of the Abruzzi, the Waterloo Road - advance towards me 'skylarking'

  among themselves, my purse or shirt-pin is in predestined peril

  from his playfulness. Always a Ruffian, always a Thief. Always a

  Thief, always a Ruffian.

  Now, when I, who am not paid to know these things, know them daily

  on the evidence of my senses and experience; when I know that the

  Ruffian never jostles a lady in the streets, or knocks a hat off,

  but in order that the Thief may profit, is it surprising that I

  should require from those who ARE paid to know these things,

  prevention of them?

&
nbsp; Look at this group at a street corner. Number one is a shirking

  fellow of five-and-twenty, in an ill-favoured and ill-savoured

  suit, his trousers of corduroy, his coat of some indiscernible

  groundwork for the deposition of grease, his neckerchief like an

  eel, his complexion like dirty dough, his mangy fur cap pulled low

  upon his beetle brows to hide the prison cut of his hair. His

  hands are in his pockets. He puts them there when they are idle,

  as naturally as in other people's pockets when they are busy, for

  he knows that they are not roughened by work, and that they tell a

  tale. Hence, whenever he takes one out to draw a sleeve across his

  nose - which is often, for he has weak eyes and a constitutional

  cold in his head - he restores it to its pocket immediately

  afterwards. Number two is a burly brute of five-and-thirty, in a

  tall stiff hat; is a composite as to his clothes of betting-man and

  fighting-man; is whiskered; has a staring pin in his breast, along

  with his right hand; has insolent and cruel eyes: large shoulders;

  strong legs booted and tipped for kicking. Number three is forty

  years of age; is short, thick-set, strong, and bow-legged; wears

  knee cords and white stockings, a very long-sleeved waistcoat, a

  very large neckerchief doubled or trebled round his throat, and a

  crumpled white hat crowns his ghastly parchment face. This fellow

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  looks like an executed postboy of other days, cut down from the

  gallows too soon, and restored and preserved by express diabolical

  agency. Numbers five, six, and seven, are hulking, idle, slouching

  young men, patched and shabby, too short in the sleeves and too

  tight in the legs, slimily clothed, foul-spoken, repulsive wretches

  inside and out. In all the party there obtains a certain twitching

  character of mouth and furtiveness of eye, that hint how the coward

  is lurking under the bully. The hint is quite correct, for they

  are a slinking sneaking set, far more prone to lie down on their

  backs and kick out, when in difficulty, than to make a stand for

  it. (This may account for the street mud on the backs of Numbers

  five, six, and seven, being much fresher than the stale splashes on

  their legs.)

  These engaging gentry a Police-constable stands contemplating. His