Reprinted Pieces

by Dickens, Charles

  their larger manner when the wind blows. But the ocean lies

  winking in the sunlight like a drowsy lion - its glassy waters

  scarcely curve upon the shore - the fishing-boats in the tiny

  harbour are all stranded in the mud - our two colliers (our

  watering-place has a maritime trade employing that amount of

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  shipping) have not an inch of water within a quarter of a mile of

  them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, like faint fish of an

  antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, ropes and rings,

  undermost parts of posts and piles and confused timber-defences

  against the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled

  sea-weed and fallen cliff which looks as if a family of giants had

  been making tea here for ages, and had observed an untidy custom of

  throwing their tea-leaves on the shore.

  In truth, our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high and

  dry by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, we

  must reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little

  semicircular sweep of houses, tapering off at the end of the wooden

  pier into a point in the sea, was a gay place, and when the

  lighthouse overlooking it shone at daybreak on company dispersing

  from public balls, is but dimly traditional now. There is a bleak

  chamber in our watering-place which is yet called the Assembly

  'Rooms,' and understood to be available on hire for balls or

  concerts; and, some few seasons since, an ancient little gentleman

  came down and stayed at the hotel, who said that he had danced

  there, in bygone ages, with the Honourable Miss Peepy, well known

  to have been the Beauty of her day and the cruel occasion of

  innumerable duels. But he was so old and shrivelled, and so very

  rheumatic in the legs, that it demanded more imagination than our

  watering-place can usually muster, to believe him; therefore,

  except the Master of the 'Rooms' (who to this hour wears kneebreeches,

  and who confirmed the statement with tears in his eyes),

  nobody did believe in the little lame old gentleman, or even in the

  Honourable Miss Peepy, long deceased.

  As to subscription balls in the Assembly Rooms of our wateringplace

  now, red-hot cannon balls are less improbable. Sometimes, a

  misguided wanderer of a Ventriloquist, or an Infant Phenomenon, or

  a juggler, or somebody with an Orrery that is several stars behind

  the time, takes the place for a night, and issues bills with the

  name of his last town lined out, and the name of ours ignominiously

  written in, but you may be sure this never happens twice to the

  same unfortunate person. On such occasions the discoloured old

  Billiard Table that is seldom played at (unless the ghost of the

  Honourable Miss Peepy plays at pool with other ghosts) is pushed

  into a corner, and benches are solemnly constituted into front

  seats, back seats, and reserved seats - which are much the same

  after you have paid - and a few dull candles are lighted - wind

  permitting - and the performer and the scanty audience play out a

  short match which shall make the other most low-spirited - which is

  usually a drawn game. After that, the performer instantly departs

  with maledictory expressions, and is never heard of more.

  But the most wonderful feature of our Assembly Rooms, is, that an

  annual sale of 'Fancy and other China,' is announced here with

  mysterious constancy and perseverance. Where the china comes from,

  where it goes to, why it is annually put up to auction when nobody

  ever thinks of bidding for it, how it comes to pass that it is

  always the same china, whether it would not have been cheaper, with

  the sea at hand, to have thrown it away, say in eighteen hundred

  and thirty, are standing enigmas. Every year the bills come out,

  every year the Master of the Rooms gets into a little pulpit on a

  table, and offers it for sale, every year nobody buys it, every

  year it is put away somewhere till next year, when it appears again

  as if the whole thing were a new idea. We have a faint remembrance

  of an unearthly collection of clocks, purporting to be the work of

  Parisian and Genevese artists - chiefly bilious-faced clocks,

  supported on sickly white crutches, with their pendulums dangling

  like lame legs - to which a similar course of events occurred for

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  several years, until they seemed to lapse away, of mere imbecility.

  Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a library. There is a wheel of

  fortune in it, but it is rusty and dusty, and never turns. A large

  doll, with moveable eyes, was put up to be raffled for, by fiveand-

  twenty members at two shillings, seven years ago this autumn,

  and the list is not full yet. We are rather sanguine, now, that

  the raffle will come off next year. We think so, because we only

  want nine members, and should only want eight, but for number two

  having grown up since her name was entered, and withdrawn it when

  she was married. Down the street, there is a toy-ship of

  considerable burden, in the same condition. Two of the boys who

  were entered for that raffle have gone to India in real ships,

  since; and one was shot, and died in the arms of his sister's

  lover, by whom he sent his last words home.

  This is the library for the Minerva Press. If you want that kind

  of reading, come to our watering-place. The leaves of the

  romances, reduced to a condition very like curl-paper, are thickly

  studded with notes in pencil: sometimes complimentary, sometimes

  jocose. Some of these commentators, like commentators in a more

  extensive way, quarrel with one another. One young gentleman who

  sarcastically writes 'O!!!' after every sentimental passage, is

  pursued through his literary career by another, who writes

  'Insulting Beast!' Miss Julia Mills has read the whole collection

  of these books. She has left marginal notes on the pages, as 'Is

  not this truly touching? J. M.' 'How thrilling! J. M.'

  'Entranced here by the Magician's potent spell. J. M.' She has

  also italicised her favourite traits in the description of the

  hero, as 'his hair, which was DARK and WAVY, clustered in RICH

  PROFUSION around a MARBLE BROW, whose lofty paleness bespoke the

  intellect within.' It reminds her of another hero. She adds, 'How

  like B. L. Can this be mere coincidence? J. M.'

  You would hardly guess which is the main street of our wateringplace,

  but you may know it by its being always stopped up with

  donkey-chaises. Whenever you come here, and see harnessed donkeys

  eating clover out of barrows drawn completely across a narrow

  thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are in our High Street.

  Our Police you may know by his uniform, likewise by his never on

  any account interfering with anybody - especially the tramps and

  vagabonds. In our fancy shops we have a capital collection of

  damaged goods, among which the flies of countless summers 'have

  been roaming.' We are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pincush
ions,

  and in rickety camp-stools, and in exploded cutlery, and

  in miniature vessels, and in stunted little telescopes, and in

  objects made of shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminutive

  spades, barrows, and baskets, are our principal articles of

  commerce; but even they don't look quite new somehow. They always

  seem to have been offered and refused somewhere else, before they

  came down to our watering-place.

  Yet, it must not be supposed that our watering-place is an empty

  place, deserted by all visitors except a few staunch persons of

  approved fidelity. On the contrary, the chances are that if you

  came down here in August or September, you wouldn't find a house to

  lay your head in. As to finding either house or lodging of which

  you could reduce the terms, you could scarcely engage in a more

  hopeless pursuit. For all this, you are to observe that every

  season is the worst season ever known, and that the householding

  population of our watering-place are ruined regularly every autumn.

  They are like the farmers, in regard that it is surprising how much

  ruin they will bear. We have an excellent hotel - capital baths,

  warm, cold, and shower - first-rate bathing-machines - and as good

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  butchers, bakers, and grocers, as heart could desire. They all do

  business, it is to be presumed, from motives of philanthropy - but

  it is quite certain that they are all being ruined. Their interest

  in strangers, and their politeness under ruin, bespeak their

  amiable nature. You would say so, if you only saw the baker

  helping a new comer to find suitable apartments.

  So far from being at a discount as to company, we are in fact what

  would be popularly called rather a nobby place. Some tip-top

  'Nobbs' come down occasionally - even Dukes and Duchesses. We have

  known such carriages to blaze among the donkey-chaises, as made

  beholders wink. Attendant on these equipages come resplendent

  creatures in plush and powder, who are sure to be stricken

  disgusted with the indifferent accommodation of our watering-place,

  and who, of an evening (particularly when it rains), may be seen

  very much out of drawing, in rooms far too small for their fine

  figures, looking discontentedly out of little back windows into

  bye-streets. The lords and ladies get on well enough and quite

  good-humouredly: but if you want to see the gorgeous phenomena who

  wait upon them at a perfect non-plus, you should come and look at

  the resplendent creatures with little back parlours for servants'

  halls, and turn-up bedsteads to sleep in, at our watering-place.

  You have no idea how they take it to heart.

  We have a pier - a queer old wooden pier, fortunately without the

  slightest pretensions to architecture, and very picturesque in

  consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all

  over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sails, ballast,

  and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of it. For ever

  hovering about this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or

  leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to the sea, gazing

  through telescopes which they carry about in the same profound

  receptacles, are the Boatmen of our watering-place. Looking at

  them, you would say that surely these must be the laziest boatmen

  in the world. They lounge about, in obstinate and inflexible

  pantaloons that are apparently made of wood, the whole season

  through. Whether talking together about the shipping in the

  Channel, or gruffly unbending over mugs of beer at the publichouse,

  you would consider them the slowest of men. The chances are

  a thousand to one that you might stay here for ten seasons, and

  never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain expression about his

  loose hands, when they are not in his pockets, as if he were

  carrying a considerable lump of iron in each, without any

  inconvenience, suggests strength, but he never seems to use it. He

  has the appearance of perpetually strolling - running is too

  inappropriate a word to be thought of - to seed. The only subject

  on which he seems to feel any approach to enthusiasm, is pitch. He

  pitches everything he can lay hold of, - the pier, the palings, his

  boat, his house, - when there is nothing else left he turns to and

  even pitches his hat, or his rough-weather clothing. Do not judge

  him by deceitful appearances. These are among the bravest and most

  skilful mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a

  storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever

  beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket

  in the night, or let them hear through the angry roar the signalguns

  of a ship in distress, and these men spring up into activity

  so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that the world cannot surpass

  it. Cavillers may object that they chiefly live upon the salvage

  of valuable cargoes. So they do, and God knows it is no great

  living that they get out of the deadly risks they run. But put

  that hope of gain aside. Let these rough fellows be asked, in any

  storm, who volunteers for the life-boat to save some perishing

  souls, as poor and empty-handed as themselves, whose lives the

  perfection of human reason does not rate at the value of a farthing

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  each; and that boat will be manned, as surely and as cheerfully, as

  if a thousand pounds were told down on the weather-beaten pier.

  For this, and for the recollection of their comrades whom we have

  known, whom the raging sea has engulfed before their children's

  eyes in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand has buried, we

  hold the boatmen of our watering-place in our love and honour, and

  are tender of the fame they well deserve.

  So many children are brought down to our watering-place that, when

  they are not out of doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it

  is wonderful where they are put: the whole village seeming much too

  small to hold them under cover. In the afternoons, you see no end

  of salt and sandy little boots drying on upper window-sills. At

  bathing-time in the morning, the little bay re-echoes with every

  shrill variety of shriek and splash - after which, if the weather

  be at all fresh, the sands teem with small blue mottled legs. The

  sands are the children's great resort. They cluster there, like

  ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles

  with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is

  curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea,

  foreshadows the realities of their after lives.

  It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of approach that

  there seems to be between the children and the boatmen. They

  mutually make acquaintance, and take individual likings, without

  any help. You will come upon one of those slow heavy fellows

  sitting down patiently mending a little ship for a mite of a boy,

  whom he could crush to death by throwing his lightest pair of


  trousers on him. You will be sensible of the oddest contrast

  between the smooth little creature, and the rough man who seems to

  be carved out of hard-grained wood - between the delicate hand

  expectantly held out, and the immense thumb and finger that can

  hardly feel the rigging of thread they mend - between the small

  voice and the gruff growl - and yet there is a natural propriety in

  the companionship: always to be noted in confidence between a child

  and a person who has any merit of reality and genuineness: which is

  admirably pleasant.

  We have a preventive station at our watering-place, and much the

  same thing may be observed - in a lesser degree, because of their

  official character - of the coast blockade; a steady, trusty, wellconditioned,

  well-conducted set of men, with no misgiving about

  looking you full in the face, and with a quiet thorough-going way

  of passing along to their duty at night, carrying huge sou'-wester

  clothing in reserve, that is fraught with all good prepossession.

  They are handy fellows - neat about their houses - industrious at

  gardening - would get on with their wives, one thinks, in a desert

  island - and people it, too, soon.

  As to the naval officer of the station, with his hearty fresh face,

  and his blue eye that has pierced all kinds of weather, it warms

  our hearts when he comes into church on a Sunday, with that bright

  mixture of blue coat, buff waistcoat, black neck-kerchief, and gold

  epaulette, that is associated in the minds of all Englishmen with

  brave, unpretending, cordial, national service. We like to look at

  him in his Sunday state; and if we were First Lord (really

  possessing the indispensable qualification for the office of

  knowing nothing whatever about the sea), we would give him a ship

  to-morrow.

  We have a church, by-the-by, of course - a hideous temple of flint,

  like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary,

  who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time and

  money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, shrewd,

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  healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional difficulties

  with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a pestilent trick of

  being right. Under a new regulation, he has yielded the church of

  our watering-place to another clergyman. Upon the whole we get on