The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  fall upon the stones that pave the way to Waterloo-bridge; it being

  in the houseless mind to have a halfpenny worth of excuse for

  saying 'Good-night' to the toll-keeper, and catching a glimpse of

  his fire. A good fire and a good great-coat and a good woollen

  neck-shawl, were comfortable things to see in conjunction with the

  toll-keeper; also his brisk wakefulness was excellent company when

  he rattled the change of halfpence down upon that metal table of

  his, like a man who defied the night, with all its sorrowful

  thoughts, and didn't care for the coming of dawn. There was need

  of encouragement on the threshold of the bridge, for the bridge was

  dreary. The chopped-up murdered man, had not been lowered with a

  rope over the parapet when those nights were; he was alive, and

  slept then quietly enough most likely, and undisturbed by any dream

  of where he was to come. But the river had an awful look, the

  buildings on the banks were muffled in black shrouds, and the

  reflected lights seemed to originate deep in the water, as if the

  spectres of suicides were holding them to show where they went

  down. The wild moon and clouds were as restless as an evil

  conscience in a tumbled bed, and the very shadow of the immensity

  of London seemed to lie oppressively upon the river.

  Between the bridge and the two great theatres, there was but the

  distance of a few hundred paces, so the theatres came next. Grim

  and black within, at night, those great dry Wells, and lonesome to

  imagine, with the rows of faces faded out, the lights extinguished,

  and the seats all empty. One would think that nothing in them knew

  itself at such a time but Yorick's skull. In one of my night

  walks, as the church steeples were shaking the March winds and rain

  with the strokes of Four, I passed the outer boundary of one of

  these great deserts, and entered it. With a dim lantern in my

  hand, I groped my well-known way to the stage and looked over the

  orchestra - which was like a great grave dug for a time of

  pestilence - into the void beyond. A dismal cavern of an immense

  aspect, with the chandelier gone dead like everything else, and

  nothing visible through mist and fog and space, but tiers of

  winding-sheets. The ground at my feet where, when last there, I

  had seen the peasantry of Naples dancing among the vines, reckless

  of the burning mountain which threatened to overwhelm them, was now

  in possession of a strong serpent of engine-hose, watchfully lying

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  in wait for the serpent Fire, and ready to fly at it if it showed

  its forked tongue. A ghost of a watchman, carrying a faint corpse

  candle, haunted the distant upper gallery and flitted away.

  Retiring within the proscenium, and holding my light above my head

  towards the rolled-up curtain - green no more, but black as ebony -

  my sight lost itself in a gloomy vault, showing faint indications

  in it of a shipwreck of canvas and cordage. Methought I felt much

  as a diver might, at the bottom of the sea.

  In those small hours when there was no movement in the streets, it

  afforded matter for reflection to take Newgate in the way, and,

  touching its rough stone, to think of the prisoners in their sleep,

  and then to glance in at the lodge over the spiked wicket, and see

  the fire and light of the watching turnkeys, on the white wall.

  Not an inappropriate time either, to linger by that wicked little

  Debtors' Door - shutting tighter than any other door one ever saw -

  which has been Death's Door to so many. In the days of the

  uttering of forged one-pound notes by people tempted up from the

  country, how many hundreds of wretched creatures of both sexes -

  many quite innocent - swung out of a pitiless and inconsistent

  world, with the tower of yonder Christian church of Saint Sepulchre

  monstrously before their eyes! Is there any haunting of the Bank

  Parlour, by the remorseful souls of old directors, in the nights of

  these later days, I wonder, or is it as quiet as this degenerate

  Aceldama of an Old Bailey?

  To walk on to the Bank, lamenting the good old times and bemoaning

  the present evil period, would be an easy next step, so I would

  take it, and would make my houseless circuit of the Bank, and give

  a thought to the treasure within; likewise to the guard of soldiers

  passing the night there, and nodding over the fire. Next, I went

  to Billingsgate, in some hope of market-people, but it proving as

  yet too early, crossed London-bridge and got down by the water-side

  on the Surrey shore among the buildings of the great brewery.

  There was plenty going on at the brewery; and the reek, and the

  smell of grains, and the rattling of the plump dray horses at their

  mangers, were capital company. Quite refreshed by having mingled

  with this good society, I made a new start with a new heart,

  setting the old King's Bench prison before me for my next object,

  and resolving, when I should come to the wall, to think of poor

  Horace Kinch, and the Dry Rot in men.

  A very curious disease the Dry Rot in men, and difficult to detect

  the beginning of. It had carried Horace Kinch inside the wall of

  the old King's Bench prison, and it had carried him out with his

  feet foremost. He was a likely man to look at, in the prime of

  life, well to do, as clever as he needed to be, and popular among

  many friends. He was suitably married, and had healthy and pretty

  children. But, like some fair-looking houses or fair-looking

  ships, he took the Dry Rot. The first strong external revelation

  of the Dry Rot in men, is a tendency to lurk and lounge; to be at

  street-corners without intelligible reason; to be going anywhere

  when met; to be about many places rather than at any; to do nothing

  tangible, but to have an intention of performing a variety of

  intangible duties to-morrow or the day after. When this

  manifestation of the disease is observed, the observer will usually

  connect it with a vague impression once formed or received, that

  the patient was living a little too hard. He will scarcely have

  had leisure to turn it over in his mind and form the terrible

  suspicion 'Dry Rot,' when he will notice a change for the worse in

  the patient's appearance: a certain slovenliness and

  deterioration, which is not poverty, nor dirt, nor intoxication,

  nor ill-health, but simply Dry Rot. To this, succeeds a smell as

  of strong waters, in the morning; to that, a looseness respecting

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  money; to that, a stronger smell as of strong waters, at all times;

  to that, a looseness respecting everything; to that, a trembling of

  the limbs, somnolency, misery, and crumbling to pieces. As it is

  in wood, so it is in men. Dry Rot advances at a compound usury

  quite incalculable. A plank is found infected with it, and the

  whole structure is devoted. Thus it had been with the unhappy

  Horace Kinch, lately buried by a small subscription. Those who

  knew hi
m had not nigh done saying, 'So well off, so comfortably

  established, with such hope before him - and yet, it is feared,

  with a slight touch of Dry Rot!' when lo! the man was all Dry Rot

  and dust.

  From the dead wall associated on those houseless nights with this

  too common story, I chose next to wander by Bethlehem Hospital;

  partly, because it lay on my road round to Westminster; partly,

  because I had a night fancy in my head which could be best pursued

  within sight of its walls and dome. And the fancy was this: Are

  not the sane and the insane equal at night as the sane lie a

  dreaming? Are not all of us outside this hospital, who dream, more

  or less in the condition of those inside it, every night of our

  lives? Are we not nightly persuaded, as they daily are, that we

  associate preposterously with kings and queens, emperors and

  empresses, and notabilities of all sorts? Do we not nightly jumble

  events and personages and times and places, as these do daily? Are

  we not sometimes troubled by our own sleeping inconsistencies, and

  do we not vexedly try to account for them or excuse them, just as

  these do sometimes in respect of their waking delusions? Said an

  afflicted man to me, when I was last in a hospital like this, 'Sir,

  I can frequently fly.' I was half ashamed to reflect that so could

  I - by night. Said a woman to me on the same occasion, 'Queen

  Victoria frequently comes to dine with me, and her Majesty and I

  dine off peaches and maccaroni in our night-gowns, and his Royal

  Highness the Prince Consort does us the honour to make a third on

  horseback in a Field-Marshal's uniform.' Could I refrain from

  reddening with consciousness when I remembered the amazing royal

  parties I myself had given (at night), the unaccountable viands I

  had put on table, and my extraordinary manner of conducting myself

  on those distinguished occasions? I wonder that the great master

  who knew everything, when he called Sleep the death of each day's

  life, did not call Dreams the insanity of each day's sanity.

  By this time I had left the Hospital behind me, and was again

  setting towards the river; and in a short breathing space I was on

  Westminster-bridge, regaling my houseless eyes with the external

  walls of the British Parliament - the perfection of a stupendous

  institution, I know, and the admiration of all surrounding nations

  and succeeding ages, I do not doubt, but perhaps a little the

  better now and then for being pricked up to its work. Turning off

  into Old Palace-yard, the Courts of Law kept me company for a

  quarter of an hour; hinting in low whispers what numbers of people

  they were keeping awake, and how intensely wretched and horrible

  they were rendering the small hours to unfortunate suitors.

  Westminster Abbey was fine gloomy society for another quarter of an

  hour; suggesting a wonderful procession of its dead among the dark

  arches and pillars, each century more amazed by the century

  following it than by all the centuries going before. And indeed in

  those houseless night walks - which even included cemeteries where

  watchmen went round among the graves at stated times, and moved the

  tell-tale handle of an index which recorded that they had touched

  it at such an hour - it was a solemn consideration what enormous

  hosts of dead belong to one old great city, and how, if they were

  raised while the living slept, there would not be the space of a

  pin's point in all the streets and ways for the living to come out

  into. Not only that, but the vast armies of dead would overflow

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  the hills and valleys beyond the city, and would stretch away all

  round it, God knows how far.

  When a church clock strikes, on houseless ears in the dead of the

  night, it may be at first mistaken for company and hailed as such.

  But, as the spreading circles of vibration, which you may perceive

  at such a time with great clearness, go opening out, for ever and

  ever afterwards widening perhaps (as the philosopher has suggested)

  in eternal space, the mistake is rectified and the sense of

  loneliness is profounder. Once - it was after leaving the Abbey

  and turning my face north - I came to the great steps of St.

  Martin's church as the clock was striking Three. Suddenly, a thing

  that in a moment more I should have trodden upon without seeing,

  rose up at my feet with a cry of loneliness and houselessness,

  struck out of it by the bell, the like of which I never heard. We

  then stood face to face looking at one another, frightened by one

  another. The creature was like a beetle-browed hair-lipped youth

  of twenty, and it had a loose bundle of rags on, which it held

  together with one of its hands. It shivered from head to foot, and

  its teeth chattered, and as it stared at me - persecutor, devil,

  ghost, whatever it thought me - it made with its whining mouth as

  if it were snapping at me, like a worried dog. Intending to give

  this ugly object money, I put out my hand to stay it - for it

  recoiled as it whined and snapped - and laid my hand upon its

  shoulder. Instantly, it twisted out of its garment, like the young

  man in the New Testament, and left me standing alone with its rags

  in my hands.

  Covent-garden Market, when it was market morning, was wonderful

  company. The great waggons of cabbages, with growers' men and boys

  lying asleep under them, and with sharp dogs from market-garden

  neighbourhoods looking after the whole, were as good as a party.

  But one of the worst night sights I know in London, is to be found

  in the children who prowl about this place; who sleep in the

  baskets, fight for the offal, dart at any object they think they

  can lay their their thieving hands on, dive under the carts and

  barrows, dodge the constables, and are perpetually making a blunt

  pattering on the pavement of the Piazza with the rain of their

  naked feet. A painful and unnatural result comes of the comparison

  one is forced to institute between the growth of corruption as

  displayed in the so much improved and cared for fruits of the

  earth, and the growth of corruption as displayed in these all

  uncared for (except inasmuch as ever-hunted) savages.

  There was early coffee to be got about Covent-garden Market, and

  that was more company - warm company, too, which was better. Toast

  of a very substantial quality, was likewise procurable: though the

  towzled-headed man who made it, in an inner chamber within the

  coffee-room, hadn't got his coat on yet, and was so heavy with

  sleep that in every interval of toast and coffee he went off anew

  behind the partition into complicated cross-roads of choke and

  snore, and lost his way directly. Into one of these establishments

  (among the earliest) near Bow-street, there came one morning as I

  sat over my houseless cup, pondering where to go next, a man in a

  high and long snuff-coloured coat, and shoes, and, to the best of

  my belief, nothing else but a hat, who took out of his hat a large

 
cold meat pudding; a meat pudding so large that it was a very tight

  fit, and brought the lining of the hat out with it. This

  mysterious man was known by his pudding, for on his entering, the

  man of sleep brought him a pint of hot tea, a small loaf, and a

  large knife and fork and plate. Left to himself in his box, he

  stood the pudding on the bare table, and, instead of cutting it,

  stabbed it, overhand, with the knife, like a mortal enemy; then

  took the knife out, wiped it on his sleeve, tore the pudding

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  asunder with his fingers, and ate it all up. The remembrance of

  this man with the pudding remains with me as the remembrance of the

  most spectral person my houselessness encountered. Twice only was

  I in that establishment, and twice I saw him stalk in (as I should

  say, just out of bed, and presently going back to bed), take out

  his pudding, stab his pudding, wipe the dagger, and eat his pudding

  all up. He was a man whose figure promised cadaverousness, but who

  had an excessively red face, though shaped like a horse's. On the

  second occasion of my seeing him, he said huskily to the man of

  sleep, 'Am I red to-night?' 'You are,' he uncompromisingly

  answered. 'My mother,' said the spectre, 'was a red-faced woman

  that liked drink, and I looked at her hard when she laid in her

  coffin, and I took the complexion.' Somehow, the pudding seemed an

  unwholesome pudding after that, and I put myself in its way no

  more.

  When there was no market, or when I wanted variety, a railway

  terminus with the morning mails coming in, was remunerative

  company. But like most of the company to be had in this world, it

  lasted only a very short time. The station lamps would burst out

  ablaze, the porters would emerge from places of concealment, the

  cabs and trucks would rattle to their places (the post-office carts

  were already in theirs), and, finally, the bell would strike up,

  and the train would come banging in. But there were few passengers

  and little luggage, and everything scuttled away with the greatest

  expedition. The locomotive post-offices, with their great nets -

  as if they had been dragging the country for bodies - would fly

  open as to their doors, and would disgorge a smell of lamp, an

  exhausted clerk, a guard in a red coat, and their bags of letters;