Ducasse), where the people - really THE PEOPLE - dance on the green
turf in the open air, round a little orchestra, that seems itself
to dance, there is such an airy motion of flags and streamers all
about it. And we do not suppose that between the Torrid Zone and
the North Pole there are to be found male dancers with such
astonishingly loose legs, furnished with so many joints in wrong
places, utterly unknown to Professor Owen, as those who here
disport themselves. Sometimes, the fete appertains to a particular
trade; you will see among the cheerful young women at the joint
Ducasse of the milliners and tailors, a wholesome knowledge of the
art of making common and cheap things uncommon and pretty, by good
sense and good taste, that is a practical lesson to any rank of
society in a whole island we could mention. The oddest feature of
these agreeable scenes is the everlasting Roundabout (we preserve
an English word wherever we can, as we are writing the English
language), on the wooden horses of which machine grown-up people of
all ages are wound round and round with the utmost solemnity, while
the proprietor's wife grinds an organ, capable of only one tune, in
the centre.
As to the boarding-houses of our French watering-place, they are
Legion, and would require a distinct treatise. It is not without a
sentiment of national pride that we believe them to contain more
bores from the shores of Albion than all the clubs in London. As
you walk timidly in their neighbourhood, the very neckcloths and
hats of your elderly compatriots cry to you from the stones of the
streets, 'We are Bores - avoid us!' We have never overheard at
street corners such lunatic scraps of political and social
discussion as among these dear countrymen of ours. They believe
everything that is impossible and nothing that is true. They carry
rumours, and ask questions, and make corrections and improvements
on one another, staggering to the human intellect. And they are
Page 27
Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces
for ever rushing into the English library, propounding such
incomprehensible paradoxes to the fair mistress of that
establishment, that we beg to recommend her to her Majesty's
gracious consideration as a fit object for a pension.
The English form a considerable part of the population of our
French watering-place, and are deservedly addressed and respected
in many ways. Some of the surface-addresses to them are odd
enough, as when a laundress puts a placard outside her house
announcing her possession of that curious British instrument, a
'Mingle;' or when a tavern-keeper provides accommodation for the
celebrated English game of 'Nokemdon.' But, to us, it is not the
least pleasant feature of our French watering-place that a long and
constant fusion of the two great nations there, has taught each to
like the other, and to learn from the other, and to rise superior
to the absurd prejudices that have lingered among the weak and
ignorant in both countries equally.
Drumming and trumpeting of course go on for ever in our French
watering-place. Flag-flying is at a premium, too; but, we
cheerfully avow that we consider a flag a very pretty object, and
that we take such outward signs of innocent liveliness to our heart
of hearts. The people, in the town and in the country, are a busy
people who work hard; they are sober, temperate, good-humoured,
light-hearted, and generally remarkable for their engaging manners.
Few just men, not immoderately bilious, could see them in their
recreations without very much respecting the character that is so
easily, so harmlessly, and so simply, pleased.
BILL-STICKING
IF I had an enemy whom I hated - which Heaven forbid! - and if I
knew of something which sat heavy on his conscience, I think I
would introduce that something into a Posting-Bill, and place a
large impression in the hands of an active sticker. I can scarcely
imagine a more terrible revenge. I should haunt him, by this
means, night and day. I do not mean to say that I would publish
his secret, in red letters two feet high, for all the town to read:
I would darkly refer to it. It should be between him, and me, and
the Posting-Bill. Say, for example, that, at a certain period of
his life, my enemy had surreptitiously possessed himself of a key.
I would then embark my capital in the lock business, and conduct
that business on the advertising principle. In all my placards and
advertisements, I would throw up the line SECRET KEYS. Thus, if my
enemy passed an uninhabited house, he would see his conscience
glaring down on him from the parapets, and peeping up at him from
the cellars. If he took a dead wall in his walk, it would be alive
with reproaches. If he sought refuge in an omnibus, the panels
thereof would become Belshazzar's palace to him. If he took boat,
in a wild endeavour to escape, he would see the fatal words lurking
under the arches of the bridges over the Thames. If he walked the
streets with downcast eyes, he would recoil from the very stones of
the pavement, made eloquent by lamp-black lithograph. If he drove
or rode, his way would be blocked up by enormous vans, each
proclaiming the same words over and over again from its whole
extent of surface. Until, having gradually grown thinner and
paler, and having at last totally rejected food, he would miserably
perish, and I should be revenged. This conclusion I should, no
doubt, celebrate by laughing a hoarse laugh in three syllables, and
folding my arms tight upon my chest agreeably to most of the
Page 28
Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces
examples of glutted animosity that I have had an opportunity of
observing in connexion with the Drama - which, by-the-by, as
involving a good deal of noise, appears to me to be occasionally
confounded with the Drummer.
The foregoing reflections presented themselves to my mind, the
other day, as I contemplated (being newly come to London from the
East Riding of Yorkshire, on a house-hunting expedition for next
May), an old warehouse which rotting paste and rotting paper had
brought down to the condition of an old cheese. It would have been
impossible to say, on the most conscientious survey, how much of
its front was brick and mortar, and how much decaying and decayed
plaster. It was so thickly encrusted with fragments of bills, that
no ship's keel after a long voyage could be half so foul. All
traces of the broken windows were billed out, the doors were billed
across, the water-spout was billed over. The building was shored
up to prevent its tumbling into the street; and the very beams
erected against it were less wood than paste and paper, they had
been so continually posted and reposted. The forlorn dregs of old
posters so encumbered this wreck, that there was no hold for new
posters, and the stickers had abandoned the place in despair,
except one enterprising man who had hoisted the last
masquerade to
a clear spot near the level of the stack of chimneys where it waved
and drooped like a shattered flag. Below the rusty cellar-grating,
crumpled remnants of old bills torn down, rotted away in wasting
heaps of fallen leaves. Here and there, some of the thick rind of
the house had peeled off in strips, and fluttered heavily down,
littering the street; but, still, below these rents and gashes,
layers of decomposing posters showed themselves, as if they were
interminable. I thought the building could never even be pulled
down, but in one adhesive heap of rottenness and poster. As to
getting in - I don't believe that if the Sleeping Beauty and her
Court had been so billed up, the young Prince could have done it.
Knowing all the posters that were yet legible, intimately, and
pondering on their ubiquitous nature, I was led into the
reflections with which I began this paper, by considering what an
awful thing it would be, ever to have wronged - say M. JULLIEN for
example - and to have his avenging name in characters of fire
incessantly before my eyes. Or to have injured MADAME TUSSAUD, and
undergo a similar retribution. Has any man a self-reproachful
thought associated with pills, or ointment? What an avenging
spirit to that man is PROFESSOR HOLLOWAY! Have I sinned in oil?
CABBURN pursues me. Have I a dark remembrance associated with any
gentlemanly garments, bespoke or ready made? MOSES and SON are on
my track. Did I ever aim a blow at a defenceless fellow-creature's
head? That head eternally being measured for a wig, or that worse
head which was bald before it used the balsam, and hirsute
afterwards - enforcing the benevolent moral, 'Better to be bald as
a Dutch cheese than come to this,' - undoes me. Have I no sore
places in my mind which MECHI touches - which NICOLL probes - which
no registered article whatever lacerates? Does no discordant note
within me thrill responsive to mysterious watchwords, as 'Revalenta
Arabica,' or 'Number One St. Paul's Churchyard'? Then may I enjoy
life, and be happy.
Lifting up my eyes, as I was musing to this effect, I beheld
advancing towards me (I was then on Cornhill, near to the Royal
Exchange), a solemn procession of three advertising vans, of firstclass
dimensions, each drawn by a very little horse. As the
cavalcade approached, I was at a loss to reconcile the careless
deportment of the drivers of these vehicles, with the terrific
announcements they conducted through the city, which being a
summary of the contents of a Sunday newspaper, were of the most
Page 29
Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces
thrilling kind. Robbery, fire, murder, and the ruin of the United
Kingdom - each discharged in a line by itself, like a separate
broad-side of red-hot shot - were among the least of the warnings
addressed to an unthinking people. Yet, the Ministers of Fate who
drove the awful cars, leaned forward with their arms upon their
knees in a state of extreme lassitude, for want of any subject of
interest. The first man, whose hair I might naturally have
expected to see standing on end, scratched his head - one of the
smoothest I ever beheld - with profound indifference. The second
whistled. The third yawned.
Pausing to dwell upon this apathy, it appeared to me, as the fatal
cars came by me, that I descried in the second car, through the
portal in which the charioteer was seated, a figure stretched upon
the floor. At the same time, I thought I smelt tobacco. The
latter impression passed quickly from me; the former remained.
Curious to know whether this prostrate figure was the one
impressible man of the whole capital who had been stricken
insensible by the terrors revealed to him, and whose form had been
placed in the car by the charioteer, from motives of humanity, I
followed the procession. It turned into Leadenhall-market, and
halted at a public-house. Each driver dismounted. I then
distinctly heard, proceeding from the second car, where I had dimly
seen the prostrate form, the words:
'And a pipe!'
The driver entering the public-house with his fellows, apparently
for purposes of refreshment, I could not refrain from mounting on
the shaft of the second vehicle, and looking in at the portal. I
then beheld, reclining on his back upon the floor, on a kind of
mattress or divan, a little man in a shooting-coat. The
exclamation 'Dear me' which irresistibly escaped my lips caused him
to sit upright, and survey me. I found him to be a good-looking
little man of about fifty, with a shining face, a tight head, a
bright eye, a moist wink, a quick speech, and a ready air. He had
something of a sporting way with him.
He looked at me, and I looked at him, until the driver displaced me
by handing in a pint of beer, a pipe, and what I understand is
called 'a screw' of tobacco - an object which has the appearance of
a curl-paper taken off the barmaid's head, with the curl in it.
'I beg your pardon,' said I, when the removed person of the driver
again admitted of my presenting my face at the portal. 'But -
excuse my curiosity, which I inherit from my mother - do you live
here?'
'That's good, too!' returned the little man, composedly laying
aside a pipe he had smoked out, and filling the pipe just brought
to him.
'Oh, you DON'T live here then?' said I.
He shook his head, as he calmly lighted his pipe by means of a
German tinder-box, and replied, 'This is my carriage. When things
are flat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy myself. I am the
inventor of these wans.'
His pipe was now alight. He drank his beer all at once, and he
smoked and he smiled at me.
'It was a great idea!' said I.
Page 30
Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces
'Not so bad,' returned the little man, with the modesty of merit.
'Might I be permitted to inscribe your name upon the tablets of my
memory?' I asked.
'There's not much odds in the name,' returned the little man, ' -
no name particular - I am the King of the Bill-Stickers.'
'Good gracious!' said I.
The monarch informed me, with a smile, that he had never been
crowned or installed with any public ceremonies, but that he was
peaceably acknowledged as King of the Bill-Stickers in right of
being the oldest and most respected member of 'the old school of
bill-sticking.' He likewise gave me to understand that there was a
Lord Mayor of the Bill-Stickers, whose genius was chiefly exercised
within the limits of the city. He made some allusion, also, to an
inferior potentate, called 'Turkey-legs;' but I did not understand
that this gentleman was invested with much power. I rather
inferred that he derived his title from some peculiarity of gait,
and that it was of an honorary character.
'My father,' pursued the King of the Bill-Stickers, 'was Engineer,
Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in
the y
ear one thousand seven hundred and eighty. My father stuck
bills at the time of the riots of London.'
'You must be acquainted with the whole subject of bill-sticking,
from that time to the present!' said I.
'Pretty well so,' was the answer.
'Excuse me,' said I; 'but I am a sort of collector - '
''Not Income-tax?' cried His Majesty, hastily removing his pipe
from his lips.
'No, no,' said I.
'Water-rate?' said His Majesty.
'No, no,' I returned.
'Gas? Assessed? Sewers?' said His Majesty.
'You misunderstand me,' I replied, soothingly. 'Not that sort of
collector at all: a collector of facts.'
'Oh, if it's only facts,' cried the King of the Bill-Stickers,
recovering his good-humour, and banishing the great mistrust that
had suddenly fallen upon him, 'come in and welcome! If it had been
income, or winders, I think I should have pitched you out of the
wan, upon my soul!'
Readily complying with the invitation, I squeezed myself in at the
small aperture. His Majesty, graciously handing me a little threelegged
stool on which I took my seat in a corner, inquired if I
smoked.
'I do; - that is, I can,' I answered.
'Pipe and a screw!' said His Majesty to the attendant charioteer.
'Do you prefer a dry smoke, or do you moisten it?'
Page 31
Dickens, Charles - Reprinted Pieces
As unmitigated tobacco produces most disturbing effects upon my
system (indeed, if I had perfect moral courage, I doubt if I should
smoke at all, under any circumstances), I advocated moisture, and
begged the Sovereign of the Bill-Stickers to name his usual liquor,
and to concede to me the privilege of paying for it. After some
delicate reluctance on his part, we were provided, through the
instrumentality of the attendant charioteer, with a can of cold
rum-and-water, flavoured with sugar and lemon. We were also
furnished with a tumbler, and I was provided with a pipe. His
Majesty, then observing that we might combine business with
conversation, gave the word for the car to proceed; and, to my
great delight, we jogged away at a foot pace.
I say to my great delight, because I am very fond of novelty, and
it was a new sensation to be jolting through the tumult of the city
in that secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, surrounded by the
roar without, and seeing nothing but the clouds. Occasionally,
Reprinted Pieces Page 7