The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  bringing the stars quite down upon us as yet, - and went my way

  upon my beat, noting how oddly characteristic neighbourhoods are

  divided from one another, hereabout, as though by an invisible line

  across the way. Here shall cease the bankers and the moneychangers;

  here shall begin the shipping interest and the nauticalinstrument

  shops; here shall follow a scarcely perceptible

  flavouring of groceries and drugs; here shall come a strong

  infusion of butchers; now, small hosiers shall be in the ascendant;

  henceforth, everything exposed for sale shall have its ticketed

  price attached. All this as if specially ordered and appointed.

  A single stride at Houndsditch Church, no wider than sufficed to

  cross the kennel at the bottom of the Canon-gate, which the debtors

  in Holyrood sanctuary were wont to relieve their minds by skipping

  over, as Scott relates, and standing in delightful daring of

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  catchpoles on the free side, - a single stride, and everything is

  entirely changed in grain and character. West of the stride, a

  table, or a chest of drawers on sale, shall be of mahogany and

  French-polished; east of the stride, it shall be of deal, smeared

  with a cheap counterfeit resembling lip-salve. West of the stride,

  a penny loaf or bun shall be compact and self-contained; east of

  the stride, it shall be of a sprawling and splay-footed character,

  as seeking to make more of itself for the money. My beat lying

  round by Whitechapel Church, and the adjacent sugar-refineries, -

  great buildings, tier upon tier, that have the appearance of being

  nearly related to the dock-warehouses at Liverpool, - I turned off

  to my right, and, passing round the awkward corner on my left, came

  suddenly on an apparition familiar to London streets afar off.

  What London peripatetic of these times has not seen the woman who

  has fallen forward, double, through some affection of the spine,

  and whose head has of late taken a turn to one side, so that it now

  droops over the back of one of her arms at about the wrist? Who

  does not know her staff, and her shawl, and her basket, as she

  gropes her way along, capable of seeing nothing but the pavement,

  never begging, never stopping, for ever going somewhere on no

  business? How does she live, whence does she come, whither does

  she go, and why? I mind the time when her yellow arms were naught

  but bone and parchment. Slight changes steal over her; for there

  is a shadowy suggestion of human skin on them now. The Strand may

  be taken as the central point about which she revolves in a halfmile

  orbit. How comes she so far east as this? And coming back

  too! Having been how much farther? She is a rare spectacle in

  this neighbourhood. I receive intelligent information to this

  effect from a dog - a lop-sided mongrel with a foolish tail,

  plodding along with his tail up, and his ears pricked, and

  displaying an amiable interest in the ways of his fellow-men, - if

  I may be allowed the expression. After pausing at a pork-shop, he

  is jogging eastward like myself, with a benevolent countenance and

  a watery mouth, as though musing on the many excellences of pork,

  when he beholds this doubled-up bundle approaching. He is not so

  much astonished at the bundle (though amazed by that), as the

  circumstance that it has within itself the means of locomotion. He

  stops, pricks his ears higher, makes a slight point, stares, utters

  a short, low growl, and glistens at the nose, - as I conceive with

  terror. The bundle continuing to approach, he barks, turns tail,

  and is about to fly, when, arguing with himself that flight is not

  becoming in a dog, he turns, and once more faces the advancing heap

  of clothes. After much hesitation, it occurs to him that there may

  be a face in it somewhere. Desperately resolving to undertake the

  adventure, and pursue the inquiry, he goes slowly up to the bundle,

  goes slowly round it, and coming at length upon the human

  countenance down there where never human countenance should be,

  gives a yelp of horror, and flies for the East India Docks.

  Being now in the Commercial Road district of my beat, and

  bethinking myself that Stepney Station is near, I quicken my pace

  that I may turn out of the road at that point, and see how my small

  eastern star is shining.

  The Children's Hospital, to which I gave that name, is in full

  force. All its beds are occupied. There is a new face on the bed

  where my pretty baby lay, and that sweet little child is now at

  rest for ever. Much kind sympathy has been here since my former

  visit, and it is good to see the walls profusely garnished with

  dolls. I wonder what Poodles may think of them, as they stretch

  out their arms above the beds, and stare, and display their

  splendid dresses. Poodles has a greater interest in the patients.

  I find him making the round of the beds, like a house-surgeon,

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  attended by another dog, - a friend, - who appears to trot about

  with him in the character of his pupil dresser. Poodles is anxious

  to make me known to a pretty little girl looking wonderfully

  healthy, who had had a leg taken off for cancer of the knee. A

  difficult operation, Poodles intimates, wagging his tail on the

  counterpane, but perfectly successful, as you see, dear sir! The

  patient, patting Poodles, adds with a smile, 'The leg was so much

  trouble to me, that I am glad it's gone.' I never saw anything in

  doggery finer than the deportment of Poodles, when another little

  girl opens her mouth to show a peculiar enlargement of the tongue.

  Poodles (at that time on a table, to be on a level with the

  occasion) looks at the tongue (with his own sympathetically out) so

  very gravely and knowingly, that I feel inclined to put my hand in

  my waistcoat-pocket, and give him a guinea, wrapped in paper.

  On my beat again, and close to Limehouse Church, its termination, I

  found myself near to certain 'Lead-Mills.' Struck by the name,

  which was fresh in my memory, and finding, on inquiry, that these

  same lead-mills were identified with those same lead-mills of which

  I made mention when I first visited the East London Children's

  Hospital and its neighbourhood as Uncommercial Traveller, I

  resolved to have a look at them.

  Received by two very intelligent gentlemen, brothers, and partners

  with their father in the concern, and who testified every desire to

  show their works to me freely, I went over the lead-mills. The

  purport of such works is the conversion of pig-lead into whitelead.

  This conversion is brought about by the slow and gradual

  effecting of certain successive chemical changes in the lead

  itself. The processes are picturesque and interesting, - the most

  so, being the burying of the lead, at a certain stage of

  preparation, in pots, each pot containing a certain quantity of

  acid besides, and all the pots being buried in vast numbers, in

  layers, under ta
n, for some ten weeks.

  Hopping up ladders, and across planks, and on elevated perches,

  until I was uncertain whether to liken myself to a bird or a bricklayer,

  I became conscious of standing on nothing particular,

  looking down into one of a series of large cocklofts, with the

  outer day peeping in through the chinks in the tiled roof above. A

  number of women were ascending to, and descending from, this

  cockloft, each carrying on the upward journey a pot of prepared

  lead and acid, for deposition under the smoking tan. When one

  layer of pots was completely filled, it was carefully covered in

  with planks, and those were carefully covered with tan again, and

  then another layer of pots was begun above; sufficient means of

  ventilation being preserved through wooden tubes. Going down into

  the cockloft then filling, I found the heat of the tan to be

  surprisingly great, and also the odour of the lead and acid to be

  not absolutely exquisite, though I believe not noxious at that

  stage. In other cocklofts, where the pots were being exhumed, the

  heat of the steaming tan was much greater, and the smell was

  penetrating and peculiar. There were cocklofts in all stages; full

  and empty, half filled and half emptied; strong, active women were

  clambering about them busily; and the whole thing had rather the

  air of the upper part of the house of some immensely rich old Turk,

  whose faithful seraglio were hiding his money because the sultan or

  the pasha was coming.

  As is the case with most pulps or pigments, so in the instance of

  this white-lead, processes of stirring, separating, washing,

  grinding, rolling, and pressing succeed. Some of these are

  unquestionably inimical to health, the danger arising from

  inhalation of particles of lead, or from contact between the lead

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  and the touch, or both. Against these dangers, I found good

  respirators provided (simply made of flannel and muslin, so as to

  be inexpensively renewed, and in some instances washed with scented

  soap), and gauntlet gloves, and loose gowns. Everywhere, there was

  as much fresh air as windows, well placed and opened, could

  possibly admit. And it was explained that the precaution of

  frequently changing the women employed in the worst parts of the

  work (a precaution originating in their own experience or

  apprehension of its ill effects) was found salutary. They had a

  mysterious and singular appearance, with the mouth and nose

  covered, and the loose gown on, and yet bore out the simile of the

  old Turk and the seraglio all the better for the disguise.

  At last this vexed white-lead, having been buried and resuscitated,

  and heated and cooled and stirred, and separated and washed and

  ground, and rolled and pressed, is subjected to the action of

  intense fiery heat. A row of women, dressed as above described,

  stood, let us say, in a large stone bakehouse, passing on the

  baking-dishes as they were given out by the cooks, from hand to

  hand, into the ovens. The oven, or stove, cold as yet, looked as

  high as an ordinary house, and was full of men and women on

  temporary footholds, briskly passing up and stowing away the

  dishes. The door of another oven, or stove, about to be cooled and

  emptied, was opened from above, for the uncommercial countenance to

  peer down into. The uncommercial countenance withdrew itself, with

  expedition and a sense of suffocation, from the dull-glowing heat

  and the overpowering smell. On the whole, perhaps the going into

  these stoves to work, when they are freshly opened, may be the

  worst part of the occupation.

  But I made it out to be indubitable that the owners of these leadmills

  honestly and sedulously try to reduce the dangers of the

  occupation to the lowest point.

  A washing-place is provided for the women (I thought there might

  have been more towels), and a room in which they hang their

  clothes, and take their meals, and where they have a good firerange

  and fire, and a female attendant to help them, and to watch

  that they do not neglect the cleansing of their hands before

  touching their food. An experienced medical attendant is provided

  for them, and any premonitory symptoms of lead-poisoning are

  carefully treated. Their teapots and such things were set out on

  tables ready for their afternoon meal, when I saw their room; and

  it had a homely look. It is found that they bear the work much

  better than men: some few of them have been at it for years, and

  the great majority of those I observed were strong and active. On

  the other hand, it should be remembered that most of them are very

  capricious and irregular in their attendance.

  American inventiveness would seem to indicate that before very long

  white-lead may be made entirely by machinery. The sooner, the

  better. In the meantime, I parted from my two frank conductors

  over the mills, by telling them that they had nothing there to be

  concealed, and nothing to be blamed for. As to the rest, the

  philosophy of the matter of lead-poisoning and workpeople seems to

  me to have been pretty fairly summed up by the Irishwoman whom I

  quoted in my former paper: 'Some of them gets lead-pisoned soon,

  and some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and some, but not many,

  niver; and 'tis all according to the constitooshun, sur; and some

  constitooshuns is strong and some is weak.' Retracing my footsteps

  over my beat, I went off duty.

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  CHAPTER XXXVI - A FLY-LEAF IN A LIFE

  Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in a pursuit (no

  matter what), which could be transacted by myself alone; in which I

  could have no help; which imposed a constant strain on the

  attention, memory, observation, and physical powers; and which

  involved an almost fabulous amount of change of place and rapid

  railway travelling. I had followed this pursuit through an

  exceptionally trying winter in an always trying climate, and had

  resumed it in England after but a brief repose. Thus it came to be

  prolonged until, at length - and, as it seemed, all of a sudden -

  it so wore me out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful

  confidence, upon myself to achieve the constantly recurring task,

  and began to feel (for the first time in my life) giddy, jarred,

  shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and sight and tread and touch,

  and dull of spirit. The medical advice I sought within a few

  hours, was given in two words: 'instant rest.' Being accustomed

  to observe myself as curiously as if I were another man, and

  knowing the advice to meet my only need, I instantly halted in the

  pursuit of which I speak, and rested.

  My intention was, to interpose, as it were, a fly-leaf in the book

  of my life, in which nothing should be written from without for a

  brief season of a few weeks. But some very singular experiences

  recorded themselves on this same fly-leaf, and I am going to relate

 
them literally. I repeat the word: literally.

  My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence between

  my case, in the general mind, and one Mr. Merdle's as I find it

  recorded in a work of fiction called LITTLE DORRIT. To be sure,

  Mr. Merdle was a swindler, forger, and thief, and my calling had

  been of a less harmful (and less remunerative) nature; but it was

  all one for that.

  Here is Mr. Merdle's case:

  'At first, he was dead of all the diseases that ever were known,

  and of several bran-new maladies invented with the speed of Light

  to meet the demand of the occasion. He had concealed a dropsy from

  infancy, he had inherited a large estate of water on the chest from

  his grandfather, he had had an operation performed upon him every

  morning of his life for eighteen years, he had been subject to the

  explosion of important veins in his body after the manner of

  fireworks, he had had something the matter with his lungs, he had

  had something the matter with his heart, he had had something the

  matter with his brain. Five hundred people who sat down to

  breakfast entirely uninformed on the whole subject, believed before

  they had done breakfast, that they privately and personally knew

  Physician to have said to Mr. Merdle, "You must expect to go out,

  some day, like the snuff of a candle;" and that they knew Mr.

  Merdle to have said to Physician, "A man can die but once." By

  about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter with the

  brain, became the favourite theory against the field; and by twelve

  the something had been distinctly ascertained to be "Pressure."

  'Pressure was so entirely satisfactory to the public mind, and

  seemed to make every one so comfortable, that it might have lasted

  all day but for Bar's having taken the real state of the case into

  Court at half-past nine. Pressure, however, so far from being

  overthrown by the discovery, became a greater favourite than ever.

  There was a general moralising upon Pressure, in every street. All

  the people who had tried to make money and had not been able to do

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  it, said, There you were! You no sooner began to devote yourself

  to the pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure. The idle people

  improved the occasion in a similar manner. See, said they, what