The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  sheep entirely into his own hands, has merely remarked with

  respectful firmness, 'That instruction would place them under an

  omnibus; you had better confine your attention to yourself - you

  will want it all;' and has driven his charge away, with an

  intelligence of ears and tail, and a knowledge of business, that

  has left his lout of a man very, very far behind.

  As the dogs of shy neighbourhoods usually betray a slinking

  consciousness of being in poor circumstances - for the most part

  manifested in an aspect of anxiety, an awkwardness in their play,

  and a misgiving that somebody is going to harness them to

  something, to pick up a living - so the cats of shy neighbourhoods

  exhibit a strong tendency to relapse into barbarism. Not only are

  they made selfishly ferocious by ruminating on the surplus

  population around them, and on the densely crowded state of all the

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  avenues to cat's meat; not only is there a moral and politicoeconomical

  haggardness in them, traceable to these reflections; but

  they evince a physical deterioration. Their linen is not clean,

  and is wretchedly got up; their black turns rusty, like old

  mourning; they wear very indifferent fur; and take to the shabbiest

  cotton velvet, instead of silk velvet. I am on terms of

  recognition with several small streets of cats, about the Obelisk

  in Saint George's Fields, and also in the vicinity of Clerkenwellgreen,

  and also in the back settlements of Drury-lane. In

  appearance, they are very like the women among whom they live.

  They seem to turn out of their unwholesome beds into the street,

  without any preparation. They leave their young families to

  stagger about the gutters, unassisted, while they frouzily quarrel

  and swear and scratch and spit, at street corners. In particular,

  I remark that when they are about to increase their families (an

  event of frequent recurrence) the resemblance is strongly expressed

  in a certain dusty dowdiness, down-at-heel self-neglect, and

  general giving up of things. I cannot honestly report that I have

  ever seen a feline matron of this class washing her face when in an

  interesting condition.

  Not to prolong these notes of uncommercial travel among the lower

  animals of shy neighbourhoods, by dwelling at length upon the

  exasperated moodiness of the tom-cats, and their resemblance in

  many respects to a man and a brother, I will come to a close with a

  word on the fowls of the same localities.

  That anything born of an egg and invested with wings, should have

  got to the pass that it hops contentedly down a ladder into a

  cellar, and calls THAT going home, is a circumstance so amazing as

  to leave one nothing more in this connexion to wonder at.

  Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls

  have become separated from all the birds of the air - have taken to

  grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud - have forgotten all about

  live trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows,

  oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing

  concerning them, and take them as they are. I accept as products

  of Nature and things of course, a reduced Bantam family of my

  acquaintance in the Hackney-road, who are incessantly at the

  pawnbroker's. I cannot say that they enjoy themselves, for they

  are of a melancholy temperament; but what enjoyment they are

  capable of, they derive from crowding together in the pawnbroker's

  side-entry. Here, they are always to be found in a feeble flutter,

  as if they were newly come down in the world, and were afraid of

  being identified. I know a low fellow, originally of a good family

  from Dorking, who takes his whole establishment of wives, in single

  file, in at the door of the jug Department of a disorderly tavern

  near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them among the company's legs,

  emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and so passes his life:

  seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in the morning.

  Over Waterloo-bridge, there is a shabby old speckled couple (they

  belong to the wooden French-bedstead, washing-stand, and towelhorse-

  making trade), who are always trying to get in at the door of

  a chapel. Whether the old lady, under a delusion reminding one of

  Mrs. Southcott, has an idea of entrusting an egg to that particular

  denomination, or merely understands that she has no business in the

  building and is consequently frantic to enter it, I cannot

  determine; but she is constantly endeavouring to undermine the

  principal door: while her partner, who is infirm upon his legs,

  walks up and down, encouraging her and defying the Universe. But,

  the family I have been best acquainted with, since the removal from

  this trying sphere of a Chinese circle at Brentford, reside in the

  densest part of Bethnal-green. Their abstraction from the objects

  among which they live, or rather their conviction that those

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  objects have all come into existence in express subservience to

  fowls, has so enchanted me, that I have made them the subject of

  many journeys at divers hours. After careful observation of the

  two lords and the ten ladies of whom this family consists, I have

  come to the conclusion that their opinions are represented by the

  leading lord and leading lady: the latter, as I judge, an aged

  personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and visibility of

  quill, that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office pens.

  When a railway goods van that would crush an elephant comes round

  the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from

  under the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a

  passing property in the air, which may have left something to eat

  behind it. They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and

  saucepans, and fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric

  discharge, for fowls to peck at. Peg-tops and hoops they account,

  I think, as a sort of hail; shuttlecocks, as rain, or dew.

  Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I

  have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the

  early public-house at the corner has superseded the sun. I have

  established it as a certain fact, that they always begin to crow

  when the public-house shutters begin to be taken down, and that

  they salute the potboy, the instant he appears to perform that

  duty, as if he were Phoebus in person.

  CHAPTER XI - TRAMPS

  The chance use of the word 'Tramp' in my last paper, brought that

  numerous fraternity so vividly before my mind's eye, that I had no

  sooner laid down my pen than a compulsion was upon me to take it up

  again, and make notes of the Tramps whom I perceived on all the

  summer roads in all directions.

  Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his

  legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very

  often indeed), he goes to sleep on his back. Yonde
r, by the high

  road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit

  of turf under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the

  highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. He lies on

  the broad of his back, with his face turned up to the sky, and one

  of his ragged arms loosely thrown across his face. His bundle

  (what can be the contents of that mysterious bundle, to make it

  worth his while to carry it about?) is thrown down beside him, and

  the waking woman with him sits with her legs in the ditch, and her

  back to the road. She wears her bonnet rakishly perched on the

  front of her head, to shade her face from the sun in walking, and

  she ties her skirts round her in conventionally tight tramp-fashion

  with a sort of apron. You can seldom catch sight of her, resting

  thus, without seeing her in a despondently defiant manner doing

  something to her hair or her bonnet, and glancing at you between

  her fingers. She does not often go to sleep herself in the

  daytime, but will sit for any length of time beside the man. And

  his slumberous propensities would not seem to be referable to the

  fatigue of carrying the bundle, for she carries it much oftener and

  further than he. When they are afoot, you will mostly find him

  slouching on ahead, in a gruff temper, while she lags heavily

  behind with the burden. He is given to personally correcting her,

  too - which phase of his character develops itself oftenest, on

  benches outside alehouse doors - and she appears to become strongly

  attached to him for these reasons; it may usually be noticed that

  when the poor creature has a bruised face, she is the most

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  affectionate. He has no occupation whatever, this order of tramp,

  and has no object whatever in going anywhere. He will sometimes

  call himself a brickmaker, or a sawyer, but only when he takes an

  imaginary flight. He generally represents himself, in a vague way,

  as looking out for a job of work; but he never did work, he never

  does, and he never will. It is a favourite fiction with him,

  however (as if he were the most industrious character on earth),

  that YOU never work; and as he goes past your garden and sees you

  looking at your flowers, you will overhear him growl with a strong

  sense of contrast, 'YOU are a lucky hidle devil, YOU are!'

  The slinking tramp is of the same hopeless order, and has the same

  injured conviction on him that you were born to whatever you

  possess, and never did anything to get it: but he is of a less

  audacious disposition. He will stop before your gate, and say to

  his female companion with an air of constitutional humility and

  propitiation - to edify any one who may be within hearing behind a

  blind or a bush - 'This is a sweet spot, ain't it? A lovelly spot!

  And I wonder if they'd give two poor footsore travellers like me

  and you, a drop of fresh water out of such a pretty gen-teel crib?

  We'd take it wery koind on 'em, wouldn't us? Wery koind, upon my

  word, us would?' He has a quick sense of a dog in the vicinity,

  and will extend his modestly-injured propitiation to the dog

  chained up in your yard; remarking, as he slinks at the yard gate,

  'Ah! You are a foine breed o' dog, too, and YOU ain't kep for

  nothink! I'd take it wery koind o' your master if he'd elp a

  traveller and his woife as envies no gentlefolk their good fortun,

  wi' a bit o' your broken wittles. He'd never know the want of it,

  nor more would you. Don't bark like that, at poor persons as never

  done you no arm; the poor is down-trodden and broke enough without

  that; O DON'T!' He generally heaves a prodigious sigh in moving

  away, and always looks up the lane and down the lane, and up the

  road and down the road, before going on.

  Both of these orders of tramp are of a very robust habit; let the

  hard-working labourer at whose cottage-door they prowl and beg,

  have the ague never so badly, these tramps are sure to be in good

  health.

  There is another kind of tramp, whom you encounter this bright

  summer day - say, on a road with the sea-breeze making its dust

  lively, and sails of ships in the blue distance beyond the slope of

  Down. As you walk enjoyingly on, you descry in the perspective at

  the bottom of a steep hill up which your way lies, a figure that

  appears to be sitting airily on a gate, whistling in a cheerful and

  disengaged manner. As you approach nearer to it, you observe the

  figure to slide down from the gate, to desist from whistling, to

  uncock its hat, to become tender of foot, to depress its head and

  elevate its shoulders, and to present all the characteristics of

  profound despondency. Arriving at the bottom of the hill and

  coming close to the figure, you observe it to be the figure of a

  shabby young man. He is moving painfully forward, in the direction

  in which you are going, and his mind is so preoccupied with his

  misfortunes that he is not aware of your approach until you are

  close upon him at the hill-foot. When he is aware of you, you

  discover him to be a remarkably well-behaved young man, and a

  remarkably well-spoken young man. You know him to be well-behaved,

  by his respectful manner of touching his hat: you know him to be

  well-spoken, by his smooth manner of expressing himself. He says

  in a flowing confidential voice, and without punctuation, 'I ask

  your pardon sir but if you would excuse the liberty of being so

  addressed upon the public Iway by one who is almost reduced to rags

  though it as not always been so and by no fault of his own but

  through ill elth in his family and many unmerited sufferings it

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  would be a great obligation sir to know the time.' You give the

  well-spoken young man the time. The well-spoken young man, keeping

  well up with you, resumes: 'I am aware sir that it is a liberty to

  intrude a further question on a gentleman walking for his

  entertainment but might I make so bold as ask the favour of the way

  to Dover sir and about the distance?' You inform the well-spoken

  young man that the way to Dover is straight on, and the distance

  some eighteen miles. The well-spoken young man becomes greatly

  agitated. 'In the condition to which I am reduced,' says he, 'I

  could not ope to reach Dover before dark even if my shoes were in a

  state to take me there or my feet were in a state to old out over

  the flinty road and were not on the bare ground of which any

  gentleman has the means to satisfy himself by looking Sir may I

  take the liberty of speaking to you?' As the well-spoken young man

  keeps so well up with you that you can't prevent his taking the

  liberty of speaking to you, he goes on, with fluency: 'Sir it is

  not begging that is my intention for I was brought up by the best

  of mothers and begging is not my trade I should not know sir how to

  follow it as a trade if such were my shameful wishes for the best

  of mothers long taught otherwise and in the best of omes
though now

  reduced to take the present liberty on the Iway Sir my business was

  the law-stationering and I was favourably known to the Solicitor-

  General the Attorney-General the majority of the judges and the ole

  of the legal profession but through ill elth in my family and the

  treachery of a friend for whom I became security and he no other

  than my own wife's brother the brother of my own wife I was cast

  forth with my tender partner and three young children not to beg

  for I will sooner die of deprivation but to make my way to the seaport

  town of Dover where I have a relative i in respect not only

  that will assist me but that would trust me with untold gold Sir in

  appier times and hare this calamity fell upon me I made for my

  amusement when I little thought that I should ever need it

  excepting for my air this' - here the well-spoken young man put his

  hand into his breast - 'this comb! Sir I implore you in the name

  of charity to purchase a tortoiseshell comb which is a genuine

  article at any price that your humanity may put upon it and may the

  blessings of a ouseless family awaiting with beating arts the

  return of a husband and a father from Dover upon the cold stone

  seats of London-bridge ever attend you Sir may I take the liberty

  of speaking to you I implore you to buy this comb!' By this time,

  being a reasonably good walker, you will have been too much for the

  well-spoken young man, who will stop short and express his disgust

  and his want of breath, in a long expectoration, as you leave him

  behind.

  Towards the end of the same walk, on the same bright summer day, at

  the corner of the next little town or village, you may find another

  kind of tramp, embodied in the persons of a most exemplary couple

  whose only improvidence appears to have been, that they spent the

  last of their little All on soap. They are a man and woman,

  spotless to behold - John Anderson, with the frost on his short

  smock-frock instead of his 'pow,' attended by Mrs. Anderson. John

  is over-ostentatious of the frost upon his raiment, and wears a

  curious and, you would say, an almost unnecessary demonstration of

  girdle of white linen wound about his waist - a girdle, snowy as

  Mrs. Anderson's apron. This cleanliness was the expiring effort of

  the respectable couple, and nothing then remained to Mr. Anderson

  but to get chalked upon his spade in snow-white copy-book