Reprinted Pieces

by Dickens, Charles

place. We ought to be, for our situation is delightful, our air is

  delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild

  thyme, and decorated with millions of wild flowers, are, on the

  faith of a pedestrian, perfect. In New Pavilionstone we are a

  little too much addicted to small windows with more bricks in them

  than glass, and we are not over-fanciful in the way of decorative

  architecture, and we get unexpected sea-views through cracks in the

  street doors; on the whole, however, we are very snug and

  comfortable, and well accommodated. But the Home Secretary (if

  there be such an officer) cannot too soon shut up the burial-ground

  of the old parish church. It is in the midst of us, and

  Pavilionstone will get no good of it, if it be too long left alone.

  The lion of Pavilionstone is its Great Hotel. A dozen years ago,

  going over to Paris by South-Eastern Tidal Steamer, you used to be

  dropped upon the platform of the main line Pavilionstone Station

  (not a junction then), at eleven o'clock on a dark winter's night,

  in a roaring wind; and in the howling wilderness outside the

  station, was a short omnibus which brought you up by the forehead

  the instant you got in at the door; and nobody cared about you, and

  you were alone in the world. You bumped over infinite chalk, until

  you were turned out at a strange building which had just left off

  being a barn without having quite begun to be a house, where nobody

  expected your coming, or knew what to do with you when you were

  come, and where you were usually blown about, until you happened to

  be blown against the cold beef, and finally into bed. At five in

  the morning you were blown out of bed, and after a dreary

  breakfast, with crumpled company, in the midst of confusion, were

  hustled on board a steamboat and lay wretched on deck until you saw

  France lunging and surging at you with great vehemence over the

  bowsprit.

  Now, you come down to Pavilionstone in a free and easy manner, an

  irresponsible agent, made over in trust to the South-Eastern

  Company, until you get out of the railway-carriage at high-water

  mark. If you are crossing by the boat at once, you have nothing to

  do but walk on board and be happy there if you can - I can't. If

  you are going to our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, the sprightliest

  porters under the sun, whose cheerful looks are a pleasant welcome,

  shoulder your luggage, drive it off in vans, bowl it away in

  trucks, and enjoy themselves in playing athletic games with it. If

  you are for public life at our great Pavilionstone Hotel, you walk

  into that establishment as if it were your club; and find ready for

  you, your news-room, dining-room, smoking-room, billiard-room,

  music-room, public breakfast, public dinner twice a-day (one plain,

  one gorgeous), hot baths and cold baths. If you want to be bored,

  there are plenty of bores always ready for you, and from Saturday

  to Monday in particular, you can be bored (if you like it) through

  and through. Should you want to be private at our Great

  Pavilionstone Hotel, say but the word, look at the list of charges,

  choose your floor, name your figure - there you are, established in

  your castle, by the day, week, month, or year, innocent of all

  comers or goers, unless you have my fancy for walking early in the

  morning down the groves of boots and shoes, which so regularly

  flourish at all the chamber-doors before breakfast, that it seems

  to me as if nobody ever got up or took them in. Are you going

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  across the Alps, and would you like to air your Italian at our

  Great Pavilionstone Hotel? Talk to the Manager - always

  conversational, accomplished, and polite. Do you want to be aided,

  abetted, comforted, or advised, at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel?

  Send for the good landlord, and he is your friend. Should you, or

  any one belonging to you, ever be taken ill at our Great

  Pavilionstone Hotel, you will not soon forget him or his kind wife.

  And when you pay your bill at our Great Pavilionstone Hotel, you

  will not be put out of humour by anything you find in it.

  A thoroughly good inn, in the days of coaching and posting, was a

  noble place. But no such inn would have been equal to the

  reception of four or five hundred people, all of them wet through,

  and half of them dead sick, every day in the year. This is where

  we shine, in our Pavilionstone Hotel. Again - who, coming and

  going, pitching and tossing, boating and training, hurrying in, and

  flying out, could ever have calculated the fees to be paid at an

  old-fashioned house? In our Pavilionstone Hotel vocabulary, there

  is no such word as fee. Everything is done for you; every service

  is provided at a fixed and reasonable charge; all the prices are

  hung up in all the rooms; and you can make out your own bill

  beforehand, as well as the book-keeper.

  In the case of your being a pictorial artist, desirous of studying

  at small expense the physiognomies and beards of different nations,

  come, on receipt of this, to Pavilionstone. You shall find all the

  nations of the earth, and all the styles of shaving and not

  shaving, hair cutting and hair letting alone, for ever flowing

  through our hotel. Couriers you shall see by hundreds; fat

  leathern bags for five-franc pieces, closing with violent snaps,

  like discharges of fire-arms, by thousands; more luggage in a

  morning than, fifty years ago, all Europe saw in a week. Looking

  at trains, steamboats, sick travellers, and luggage, is our great

  Pavilionstone recreation. We are not strong in other public

  amusements. We have a Literary and Scientific Institution, and we

  have a Working Men's Institution - may it hold many gipsy holidays

  in summer fields, with the kettle boiling, the band of music

  playing, and the people dancing; and may I be on the hill-side,

  looking on with pleasure at a wholesome sight too rare in England!

  - and we have two or three churches, and more chapels than I have

  yet added up. But public amusements are scarce with us. If a poor

  theatrical manager comes with his company to give us, in a loft,

  Mary Bax, or the Murder on the Sand Hills, we don't care much for

  him - starve him out, in fact. We take more kindly to wax-work,

  especially if it moves; in which case it keeps much clearer of the

  second commandment than when it is still. Cooke's Circus (Mr.

  Cooke is my friend, and always leaves a good name behind him) gives

  us only a night in passing through. Nor does the travelling

  menagerie think us worth a longer visit. It gave us a look-in the

  other day, bringing with it the residentiary van with the stained

  glass windows, which Her Majesty kept ready-made at Windsor Castle,

  until she found a suitable opportunity of submitting it for the

  proprietor's acceptance. I brought away five wonderments from this

  exhibition. I have wondered ever since, Whether the beasts ever do

  get used to those small places of confinement; Whether the monkeys

  have that very horrible flavour in thei
r free state; Whether wild

  animals have a natural ear for time and tune, and therefore every

  four-footed creature began to howl in despair when the band began

  to play; What the giraffe does with his neck when his cart is shut

  up; and, Whether the elephant feels ashamed of himself when he is

  brought out of his den to stand on his head in the presence of the

  whole Collection.

  We are a tidal harbour at Pavilionstone, as indeed I have implied

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  already in my mention of tidal trains. At low water, we are a heap

  of mud, with an empty channel in it where a couple of men in big

  boots always shovel and scoop: with what exact object, I am unable

  to say. At that time, all the stranded fishing-boats turn over on

  their sides, as if they were dead marine monsters; the colliers and

  other shipping stick disconsolate in the mud; the steamers look as

  if their white chimneys would never smoke more, and their red

  paddles never turn again; the green sea-slime and weed upon the

  rough stones at the entrance, seem records of obsolete high tides

  never more to flow; the flagstaff-halyards droop; the very little

  wooden lighthouse shrinks in the idle glare of the sun. And here I

  may observe of the very little wooden lighthouse, that when it is

  lighted at night, - red and green, - it looks so like a medical

  man's, that several distracted husbands have at various times been

  found, on occasions of premature domestic anxiety, going round and

  round it, trying to find the Nightbell.

  But, the moment the tide begins to make, the Pavilionstone Harbour

  begins to revive. It feels the breeze of the rising water before

  the water comes, and begins to flutter and stir. When the little

  shallow waves creep in, barely overlapping one another, the vanes

  at the mastheads wake, and become agitated. As the tide rises, the

  fishing-boats get into good spirits and dance, the flagstaff hoists

  a bright red flag, the steamboat smokes, cranes creak, horses and

  carriages dangle in the air, stray passengers and luggage appear.

  Now, the shipping is afloat, and comes up buoyantly, to look at the

  wharf. Now, the carts that have come down for coals, load away as

  hard as they can load. Now, the steamer smokes immensely, and

  occasionally blows at the paddle-boxes like a vaporous whalegreatly

  disturbing nervous loungers. Now, both the tide and the

  breeze have risen, and you are holding your hat on (if you want to

  see how the ladies hold THEIR hats on, with a stay, passing over

  the broad brim and down the nose, come to Pavilionstone). Now,

  everything in the harbour splashes, dashes, and bobs. Now, the

  Down Tidal Train is telegraphed, and you know (without knowing how

  you know), that two hundred and eighty-seven people are coming.

  Now, the fishing-boats that have been out, sail in at the top of

  the tide. Now, the bell goes, and the locomotive hisses and

  shrieks, and the train comes gliding in, and the two hundred and

  eighty-seven come scuffling out. Now, there is not only a tide of

  water, but a tide of people, and a tide of luggage - all tumbling

  and flowing and bouncing about together. Now, after infinite

  bustle, the steamer steams out, and we (on the Pier) are all

  delighted when she rolls as if she would roll her funnel out, and

  all are disappointed when she don't. Now, the other steamer is

  coming in, and the Custom House prepares, and the wharf-labourers

  assemble, and the hawsers are made ready, and the Hotel Porters

  come rattling down with van and truck, eager to begin more Olympic

  games with more luggage. And this is the way in which we go on,

  down at Pavilionstone, every tide. And, if you want to live a life

  of luggage, or to see it lived, or to breathe sweet air which will

  send you to sleep at a moment's notice at any period of the day or

  night, or to disport yourself upon or in the sea, or to scamper

  about Kent, or to come out of town for the enjoyment of all or any

  of these pleasures, come to Pavilionstone.

  OUT OF THE SEASON

  IT fell to my lot, this last bleak Spring, to find myself in a

  watering-place out of the Season. A vicious north-east squall blew

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  me into it from foreign parts, and I tarried in it alone for three

  days, resolved to be exceedingly busy.

  On the first day, I began business by looking for two hours at the

  sea, and staring the Foreign Militia out of countenance. Having

  disposed of these important engagements, I sat down at one of the

  two windows of my room, intent on doing something desperate in the

  way of literary composition, and writing a chapter of unheard-of

  excellence - with which the present essay has no connexion.

  It is a remarkable quality in a watering-place out of the season,

  that everything in it, will and must be looked at. I had no

  previous suspicion of this fatal truth but, the moment I sat down

  to write, I began to perceive it. I had scarcely fallen into my

  most promising attitude, and dipped my pen in the ink, when I found

  the clock upon the pier - a red-faced clock with a white rim -

  importuning me in a highly vexatious manner to consult my watch,

  and see how I was off for Greenwich time. Having no intention of

  making a voyage or taking an observation, I had not the least need

  of Greenwich time, and could have put up with watering-place time

  as a sufficiently accurate article. The pier-clock, however,

  persisting, I felt it necessary to lay down my pen, compare my

  watch with him, and fall into a grave solicitude about halfseconds.

  I had taken up my pen again, and was about to commence

  that valuable chapter, when a Custom-house cutter under the window

  requested that I would hold a naval review of her, immediately.

  It was impossible, under the circumstances, for any mental

  resolution, merely human, to dismiss the Custom-house cutter,

  because the shadow of her topmast fell upon my paper, and the vane

  played on the masterly blank chapter. I was therefore under the

  necessity of going to the other window; sitting astride of the

  chair there, like Napoleon bivouacking in the print; and inspecting

  the cutter as she lay, all that day, in the way of my chapter, O!

  She was rigged to carry a quantity of canvas, but her hull was so

  very small that four giants aboard of her (three men and a boy) who

  were vigilantly scraping at her, all together, inspired me with a

  terror lest they should scrape her away. A fifth giant, who

  appeared to consider himself 'below' - as indeed he was, from the

  waist downwards - meditated, in such close proximity with the

  little gusty chimney-pipe, that he seemed to be smoking it.

  Several boys looked on from the wharf, and, when the gigantic

  attention appeared to be fully occupied, one or other of these

  would furtively swing himself in mid-air over the Custom-house

  cutter, by means of a line pendant from her rigging, like a young

  spirit of the storm. Presently, a sixth hand brought down two


  little water-casks; presently afterwards, a truck came, and

  delivered a hamper. I was now under an obligation to consider that

  the cutter was going on a cruise, and to wonder where she was

  going, and when she was going, and why she was going, and at what

  date she might be expected back, and who commanded her? With these

  pressing questions I was fully occupied when the Packet, making

  ready to go across, and blowing off her spare steam, roared, 'Look

  at me!'

  It became a positive duty to look at the Packet preparing to go

  across; aboard of which, the people newly come down by the railroad

  were hurrying in a great fluster. The crew had got their

  tarry overalls on - and one knew what THAT meant - not to mention

  the white basins, ranged in neat little piles of a dozen each,

  behind the door of the after-cabin. One lady as I looked, one

  resigning and far-seeing woman, took her basin from the store of

  crockery, as she might have taken a refreshment-ticket, laid

  herself down on deck with that utensil at her ear, muffled her feet

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  in one shawl, solemnly covered her countenance after the antique

  manner with another, and on the completion of these preparations

  appeared by the strength of her volition to become insensible. The

  mail-bags (O that I myself had the sea-legs of a mail-bag!) were

  tumbled aboard; the Packet left off roaring, warped out, and made

  at the white line upon the bar. One dip, one roll, one break of

  the sea over her bows, and Moore's Almanack or the sage Raphael

  could not have told me more of the state of things aboard, than I

  knew.

  The famous chapter was all but begun now, and would have been quite

  begun, but for the wind. It was blowing stiffly from the east, and

  it rumbled in the chimney and shook the house. That was not much;

  but, looking out into the wind's grey eye for inspiration, I laid

  down my pen again to make the remark to myself, how emphatically

  everything by the sea declares that it has a great concern in the

  state of the wind. The trees blown all one way; the defences of

  the harbour reared highest and strongest against the raging point;

  the shingle flung up on the beach from the same direction; the

  number of arrows pointed at the common enemy; the sea tumbling in

  and rushing towards them as if it were inflamed by the sight. This