from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I
have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came
out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with
those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been
towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now
begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen.
Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the
boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour
undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining.
Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to
Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will
stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent
stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,
asks me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive
me!) a very agreeable place indeed - rather hilly than otherwise.
So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly - though
still I seem to have been on board a week - that I am bumped,
rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her
maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When
blest for ever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of
the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy
timbers - covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids'
favourite combing-place - where one crawls to the surface of the
jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbour to
the Railway Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out
among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a
furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the
wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their
vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come
struggling against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief
and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a
prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of
the Dentist's hands. And now we all know for the first time how
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wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais
with my heart of hearts!
'Hotel Dessin!' (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is
but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of
that best of inns). 'Hotel Meurice!' 'Hotel de France!' 'Hotel
de Calais!' 'The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!' 'You going to
Parry, Sir?' 'Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?' Bless ye, my
Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed
mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or
night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never
see you get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey;
permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my
travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my
change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of
chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written
on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me,
Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast
devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable.
Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother
and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the
names! May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black
surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat,
surmounting his round, smiling, patient face! Let us embrace, my
dearest brother. I am yours e tout jamais - for the whole of ever.
Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and
dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of 'an ancient and fishlike
smell' about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais
represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee,
cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting
persons with a monomania for changing money - though I never shall
be able to understand in my present state of existence how they
live by it, but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency
question - Calais EN GROS, and Calais EN DETAIL, forgive one who
has deeply wronged you. - I was not fully aware of it on the other
side, but I meant Dover.
Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. Ascend
then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai,
Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of
the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest. The train is
light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellowtravellers;
one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it
a quite unaccountable thing that they don't keep 'London time' on a
French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the
possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a
young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, who
feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the
network above his head, where he advances twittering, to his front
wires, and seems to address me in an electioneering manner. The
compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some
person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately species of
rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who
joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have
it all to ourselves.
A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric
telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with
the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the
Guard comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at
full speed (a really horrible performance in an express train,
though he holds on to the open window by his elbows in the most
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deliberate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him
fast by the collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go.
Still, when he is gone, the small, small bird remains at his front
wires feebly twittering to me - twittering and twittering, until,
leaning back in my place and looking at him in drowsy fascination,
I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along.
Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in
their idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp and dyke,
as through many other odd places; and about here, as you very well
know, are the queer old stone farm-houses, approached by
drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats. Here, are
the lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from
field to field, and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses
where the stone dove-cotes i
n the littered yards are as strong as
warders' towers in old castles. Here, are the long monotonous
miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted,
and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead,
sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to
see. Scattered through this country are mighty works of VAUBAN,
whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard
of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these
flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long,
grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you
remember blackening the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy
trees. And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead,
recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from
the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest
inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobbyhorses,
with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in
the Fair was a Religious Richardson's - literally, on its own
announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which
improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of 'all the
interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the
Tomb;' the principal female character, without any reservation or
exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming
the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next
principal female character took the money, and the Young Saint John
disported himself upside down on the platform.
Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every
particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and
has put his head under his wing. Therefore, in my different way I
follow the good example.
CHAPTER XIX - SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY
I had parted from the small bird at somewhere about four o'clock in
the morning, when he had got out at Arras, and had been received by
two shovel-hats in waiting at the station, who presented an
appropriately ornithological and crow-like appearance. My
compatriot and I had gone on to Paris; my compatriot enlightening
me occasionally with a long list of the enormous grievances of
French railway travelling: every one of which, as I am a sinner,
was perfectly new to me, though I have as much experience of French
railways as most uncommercials. I had left him at the terminus
(through his conviction, against all explanation and remonstrance,
that his baggage-ticket was his passenger-ticket), insisting in a
very high temper to the functionary on duty, that in his own
personal identity he was four packages weighing so many kilogrammes
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- as if he had been Cassim Baba! I had bathed and breakfasted, and
was strolling on the bright quays. The subject of my meditations
was the question whether it is positively in the essence and nature
of things, as a certain school of Britons would seem to think it,
that a Capital must be ensnared and enslaved before it can be made
beautiful: when I lifted up my eyes and found that my feet,
straying like my mind, had brought me to Notre-Dame.
That is to say, Notre-Dame was before me, but there was a large
open space between us. A very little while gone, I had left that
space covered with buildings densely crowded; and now it was
cleared for some new wonder in the way of public Street, Place,
Garden, Fountain, or all four. Only the obscene little Morgue,
slinking on the brink of the river and soon to come down, was left
there, looking mortally ashamed of itself, and supremely wicked. I
had but glanced at this old acquaintance, when I beheld an airy
procession coming round in front of Notre-Dame, past the great
hospital. It had something of a Masaniello look, with fluttering
striped curtains in the midst of it, and it came dancing round the
cathedral in the liveliest manner.
I was speculating on a marriage in Blouse-life, or a Christening,
or some other domestic festivity which I would see out, when I
found, from the talk of a quick rush of Blouses past me, that it
was a Body coming to the Morgue. Having never before chanced upon
this initiation, I constituted myself a Blouse likewise, and ran
into the Morgue with the rest. It was a very muddy day, and we
took in a quantity of mire with us, and the procession coming in
upon our heels brought a quantity more. The procession was in the
highest spirits, and consisted of idlers who had come with the
curtained litter from its starting-place, and of all the
reinforcements it had picked up by the way. It set the litter down
in the midst of the Morgue, and then two Custodians proclaimed
aloud that we were all 'invited' to go out. This invitation was
rendered the more pressing, if not the more flattering, by our
being shoved out, and the folding-gates being barred upon us.
Those who have never seen the Morgue, may see it perfectly, by
presenting to themselves on indifferently paved coach-house
accessible from the street by a pair of folding-gates; on the left
of the coach-house, occupying its width, any large London tailor's
or linendraper's plate-glass window reaching to the ground; within
the window, on two rows of inclined plane, what the coach-house has
to show; hanging above, like irregular stalactites from the roof of
a cave, a quantity of clothes - the clothes of the dead and buried
shows of the coach-house.
We had been excited in the highest degree by seeing the Custodians
pull off their coats and tuck up their shirt-sleeves, as the
procession came along. It looked so interestingly like business.
Shut out in the muddy street, we now became quite ravenous to know
all about it. Was it river, pistol, knife, love, gambling,
robbery, hatred, how many stabs, how many bullets, fresh or
decomposed, suicide or murder? All wedged together, and all
staring at one another with our heads thrust forward, we propounded
these inquiries and a hundred more such. Imperceptibly, it came to
be known that Monsieur the tall and sallow mason yonder, was
acquainted with the facts. Would Monsieur the tall and sallow
mason, surged at by a new wave of us, have the goodness to impart?
It was but a poor old man, passing along the street under one of
the new buildings, on whom a stone had fallen, and who had tumbled
dead. His age? Another wave surged up against the tall and sallow
mason, and our wave swept on and broke, and he was any age from
sixty-five to ninety.
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An old man was not much: moreover, we could have wished he had
been killed by human agency - his own, or somebody else's: the
latter, preferable - but our comfort was, that he had nothing about
him to lead to his identification, and that his people must seek
him here. Perhaps they were waiting dinner for him even now? We
like
d that. Such of us as had pocket-handkerchiefs took a slow,
intense, protracted wipe at our noses, and then crammed our
handkerchiefs into the breast of our blouses. Others of us who had
no handkerchiefs administered a similar relief to our overwrought
minds, by means of prolonged smears or wipes of our mouths on our
sleeves. One man with a gloomy malformation of brow - a homicidal
worker in white-lead, to judge from his blue tone of colour, and a
certain flavour of paralysis pervading him - got his coat-collar
between his teeth, and bit at it with an appetite. Several decent
women arrived upon the outskirts of the crowd, and prepared to
launch themselves into the dismal coach-house when opportunity
should come; among them, a pretty young mother, pretending to bite
the forefinger of her baby-boy, kept it between her rosy lips that
it might be handy for guiding to point at the show. Meantime, all
faces were turned towards the building, and we men waited with a
fixed and stern resolution:- for the most part with folded arms.
Surely, it was the only public French sight these uncommercial eyes
had seen, at which the expectant people did not form EN QUEUE. But
there was no such order of arrangement here; nothing but a general
determination to make a rush for it, and a disposition to object to
some boys who had mounted on the two stone posts by the hinges of
the gates, with the design of swooping in when the hinges should
turn.
Now, they turned, and we rushed! Great pressure, and a scream or
two from the front. Then a laugh or two, some expressions of
disappointment, and a slackening of the pressure and subsidence of
the struggle. - Old man not there.
'But what would you have?' the Custodian reasonably argues, as he
looks out at his little door. 'Patience, patience! We make his
toilette, gentlemen. He will be exposed presently. It is
necessary to proceed according to rule. His toilette is not made
all at a blow. He will be exposed in good time, gentlemen, in good
time.' And so retires, smoking, with a wave of his sleeveless arm
towards the window, importing, 'Entertain yourselves in the
meanwhile with the other curiosities. Fortunately the Museum is
not empty to-day.'
Who would have thought of public fickleness even at the Morgue?
But there it was, on that occasion. Three lately popular articles
The Uncommercial Traveller Page 27
