The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  regulations are as good as the other educational arrangements),

  that when Mr. TUFNELL, the Inspector, first stated it in a report,

  he was supposed, in spite of his high character, to have been

  betrayed into some extraordinary mistake or exaggeration. In the

  moral health of these schools - where corporal punishment is

  unknown - Truthfulness stands high. When the ship was first

  erected, the boys were forbidden to go aloft, until the nets, which

  are now always there, were stretched as a precaution against

  accidents. Certain boys, in their eagerness, disobeyed the

  injunction, got out of window in the early daylight, and climbed to

  the masthead. One boy unfortunately fell, and was killed. There

  was no clue to the others; but all the boys were assembled, and the

  chairman of the Board addressed them. 'I promise nothing; you see

  what a dreadful thing has happened; you know what a grave offence

  it is that has led to such a consequence; I cannot say what will be

  done with the offenders; but, boys, you have been trained here,

  above all things, to respect the truth. I want the truth. Who are

  the delinquents?' Instantly, the whole number of boys concerned,

  separated from the rest, and stood out.

  Now, the head and heart of that gentleman (it is needless to say, a

  good head and a good heart) have been deeply interested in these

  schools for many years, and are so still; and the establishment is

  very fortunate in a most admirable master, and moreover the schools

  of the Stepney Union cannot have got to be what they are, without

  the Stepney Board of Guardians having been earnest and humane men

  strongly imbued with a sense of their responsibility. But what one

  set of men can do in this wise, another set of men can do; and this

  is a noble example to all other Bodies and Unions, and a noble

  example to the State. Followed, and enlarged upon by its

  enforcement on bad parents, it would clear London streets of the

  most terrible objects they smite the sight with - myriads of little

  children who awfully reverse Our Saviour's words, and are not of

  the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.

  Clear the public streets of such shame, and the public conscience

  of such reproach? Ah! Almost prophetic, surely, the child's

  jingle:

  When will that be,

  Say the bells of Step-ney!

  CHAPTER XXII - BOUND FOR THE GREAT SALT LAKE

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  Behold me on my way to an Emigrant Ship, on a hot morning early in

  June. My road lies through that part of London generally known to

  the initiated as 'Down by the Docks.' Down by the Docks, is home

  to a good many people - to too many, if I may judge from the

  overflow of local population in the streets - but my nose

  insinuates that the number to whom it is Sweet Home might be easily

  counted. Down by the Docks, is a region I would choose as my point

  of embarkation aboard ship if I were an emigrant. It would present

  my intention to me in such a sensible light; it would show me so

  many things to be run away from.

  Down by the Docks, they eat the largest oysters and scatter the

  roughest oyster-shells, known to the descendants of Saint George

  and the Dragon. Down by the Docks, they consume the slimiest of

  shell-fish, which seem to have been scraped off the copper bottoms

  of ships. Down by the Docks, the vegetables at green-grocers'

  doors acquire a saline and a scaly look, as if they had been

  crossed with fish and seaweed. Down by the Docks, they 'board

  seamen' at the eating-houses, the public-houses, the slop-shops,

  the coffee-shops, the tally-shops, all kinds of shops mentionable

  and unmentionable - board them, as it were, in the piratical sense,

  making them bleed terribly, and giving no quarter. Down by the

  Docks, the seamen roam in mid-street and mid-day, their pockets

  inside out, and their heads no better. Down by the Docks, the

  daughters of wave-ruling Britannia also rove, clad in silken

  attire, with uncovered tresses streaming in the breeze, bandanna

  kerchiefs floating from their shoulders, and crinoline not wanting.

  Down by the Docks, you may hear the Incomparable Joe Jackson sing

  the Standard of England, with a hornpipe, any night; or any day may

  see at the waxwork, for a penny and no waiting, him as killed the

  policeman at Acton and suffered for it. Down by the Docks, you may

  buy polonies, saveloys, and sausage preparations various, if you

  are not particular what they are made of besides seasoning. Down

  by the Docks, the children of Israel creep into any gloomy cribs

  and entries they can hire, and hang slops there - pewter watches,

  sou'-wester hats, waterproof overalls - 'firtht rate articleth,

  Thjack.' Down by the Docks, such dealers exhibiting on a frame a

  complete nautical suit without the refinement of a waxen visage in

  the hat, present the imaginary wearer as drooping at the yard-arm,

  with his seafaring and earthfaring troubles over. Down by the

  Docks, the placards in the shops apostrophise the customer, knowing

  him familiarly beforehand, as, 'Look here, Jack!' 'Here's your

  sort, my lad!' 'Try our sea-going mixed, at two and nine!' 'The

  right kit for the British tar!' 'Ship ahoy!' 'Splice the mainbrace,

  brother!' 'Come, cheer up, my lads. We've the best liquors

  here, And you'll find something new In our wonderful Beer!' Down

  by the Docks, the pawnbroker lends money on Union-Jack pockethandkerchiefs,

  on watches with little ships pitching fore and aft

  on the dial, on telescopes, nautical instruments in cases, and

  such-like. Down by the Docks, the apothecary sets up in business

  on the wretchedest scale - chiefly on lint and plaster for the

  strapping of wounds - and with no bright bottles, and with no

  little drawers. Down by the Docks, the shabby undertaker's shop

  will bury you for next to nothing, after the Malay or Chinaman has

  stabbed you for nothing at all: so you can hardly hope to make a

  cheaper end. Down by the Docks, anybody drunk will quarrel with

  anybody drunk or sober, and everybody else will have a hand in it,

  and on the shortest notice you may revolve in a whirlpool of red

  shirts, shaggy beards, wild heads of hair, bare tattooed arms,

  Britannia's daughters, malice, mud, maundering, and madness. Down

  by the Docks, scraping fiddles go in the public-houses all day

  long, and, shrill above their din and all the din, rises the

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  screeching of innumerable parrots brought from foreign parts, who

  appear to be very much astonished by what they find on these native

  shores of ours. Possibly the parrots don't know, possibly they do,

  that Down by the Docks is the road to the Pacific Ocean, with its

  lovely islands, where the savage girls plait flowers, and the

  savage boys carve cocoa-nut shells, and the grim blind idols muse

  in their shady groves to exactly the same purpose as the priests

  and chiefs. And possibly the parrots don't know, possibly the
y do,

  that the noble savage is a wearisome impostor wherever he is, and

  has five hundred thousand volumes of indifferent rhyme, and no

  reason, to answer for.

  Shadwell church! Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air

  down the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another,

  playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire. Gigantic in

  the basin just beyond the church, looms my Emigrant Ship: her

  name, the Amazon. Her figure-head is not disfigured as those

  beauteous founders of the race of strong-minded women are fabled to

  have been, for the convenience of drawing the bow; but I sympathise

  with the carver:

  A flattering carver who made it his care

  To carve busts as they ought to be - not as they were.

  My Emigrant Ship lies broadside-on to the wharf. Two great

  gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the wharf; and

  up and down these gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in

  and out, like ants, are the Emigrants who are going to sail in my

  Emigrant Ship. Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some

  with cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes,

  beds, and bundles, some with babies - nearly all with children -

  nearly all with bran-new tin cans for their daily allowance of

  water, uncomfortably suggestive of a tin flavour in the drink. To

  and fro, up and down, aboard and ashore, swarming here and there

  and everywhere, my Emigrants. And still as the Dock-Gate swings

  upon its hinges, cabs appear, and carts appear, and vans appear,

  bringing more of my Emigrants, with more cabbages, more loaves,

  more cheese and butter, more milk and beer, more boxes, beds, and

  bundles, more tin cans, and on those shipping investments

  accumulated compound interest of children.

  I go aboard my Emigrant Ship. I go first to the great cabin, and

  find it in the usual condition of a Cabin at that pass. Perspiring

  landsmen, with loose papers, and with pens and inkstands, pervade

  it; and the general appearance of things is as if the late Mr.

  Amazon's funeral had just come home from the cemetery, and the

  disconsolate Mrs. Amazon's trustees found the affairs in great

  disorder, and were looking high and low for the will. I go out on

  the poop-deck, for air, and surveying the emigrants on the deck

  below (indeed they are crowded all about me, up there too), find

  more pens and inkstands in action, and more papers, and

  interminable complication respecting accounts with individuals for

  tin cans and what not. But nobody is in an ill-temper, nobody is

  the worse for drink, nobody swears an oath or uses a coarse word,

  nobody appears depressed, nobody is weeping, and down upon the deck

  in every corner where it is possible to find a few square feet to

  kneel, crouch, or lie in, people, in every unsuitable attitude for

  writing, are writing letters.

  Now, I have seen emigrant ships before this day in June. And these

  people are so strikingly different from all other people in like

  circumstances whom I have ever seen, that I wonder aloud, 'What

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  WOULD a stranger suppose these emigrants to be!'

  The vigilant, bright face of the weather-browned captain of the

  Amazon is at my shoulder, and he says, 'What, indeed! The most of

  these came aboard yesterday evening. They came from various parts

  of England in small parties that had never seen one another before.

  Yet they had not been a couple of hours on board, when they

  established their own police, made their own regulations, and set

  their own watches at all the hatchways. Before nine o'clock, the

  ship was as orderly and as quiet as a man-of-war.'

  I looked about me again, and saw the letter-writing going on with

  the most curious composure. Perfectly abstracted in the midst of

  the crowd; while great casks were swinging aloft, and being lowered

  into the hold; while hot agents were hurrying up and down,

  adjusting the interminable accounts; while two hundred strangers

  were searching everywhere for two hundred other strangers, and were

  asking questions about them of two hundred more; while the children

  played up and down all the steps, and in and out among all the

  people's legs, and were beheld, to the general dismay, toppling

  over all the dangerous places; the letter-writers wrote on calmly.

  On the starboard side of the ship, a grizzled man dictated a long

  letter to another grizzled man in an immense fur cap: which letter

  was of so profound a quality, that it became necessary for the

  amanuensis at intervals to take off his fur cap in both his hands,

  for the ventilation of his brain, and stare at him who dictated, as

  a man of many mysteries who was worth looking at. On the lar-board

  side, a woman had covered a belaying-pin with a white cloth to make

  a neat desk of it, and was sitting on a little box, writing with

  the deliberation of a bookkeeper. Down, upon her breast on the

  planks of the deck at this woman's feet, with her head diving in

  under a beam of the bulwarks on that side, as an eligible place of

  refuge for her sheet of paper, a neat and pretty girl wrote for a

  good hour (she fainted at last), only rising to the surface

  occasionally for a dip of ink. Alongside the boat, close to me on

  the poop-deck, another girl, a fresh, well-grown country girl, was

  writing another letter on the bare deck. Later in the day, when

  this self-same boat was filled with a choir who sang glees and

  catches for a long time, one of the singers, a girl, sang her part

  mechanically all the while, and wrote a letter in the bottom of the

  boat while doing so.

  'A stranger would be puzzled to guess the right name for these

  people, Mr. Uncommercial,' says the captain.

  'Indeed he would.'

  'If you hadn't known, could you ever have supposed - ?'

  'How could I! I should have said they were in their degree, the

  pick and flower of England.'

  'So should I,' says the captain.

  'How many are they?'

  'Eight hundred in round numbers.'

  I went between-decks, where the families with children swarmed in

  the dark, where unavoidable confusion had been caused by the last

  arrivals, and where the confusion was increased by the little

  preparations for dinner that were going on in each group. A few

  women here and there, had got lost, and were laughing at it, and

  asking their way to their own people, or out on deck again. A few

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  of the poor children were crying; but otherwise the universal

  cheerfulness was amazing. 'We shall shake down by to-morrow.' 'We

  shall come all right in a day or so.' 'We shall have more light at

  sea.' Such phrases I heard everywhere, as I groped my way among

  chests and barrels and beams and unstowed cargo and ring-bolts and

  Emigrants, down to the lower-deck, and thence up to the light of

  day again, and to my former station.

  Surely, an extraordinary people in their power of sel
f-abstraction!

  All the former letter-writers were still writing calmly, and many

  more letter-writers had broken out in my absence. A boy with a bag

  of books in his hand and a slate under his arm, emerged from below,

  concentrated himself in my neighbourhood (espying a convenient

  skylight for his purpose), and went to work at a sum as if he were

  stone deaf. A father and mother and several young children, on the

  main deck below me, had formed a family circle close to the foot of

  the crowded restless gangway, where the children made a nest for

  themselves in a coil of rope, and the father and mother, she

  suckling the youngest, discussed family affairs as peaceably as if

  they were in perfect retirement. I think the most noticeable

  characteristic in the eight hundred as a mass, was their exemption

  from hurry.

  Eight hundred what? 'Geese, villain?' EIGHT HUNDRED MORMONS. I,

  Uncommercial Traveller for the firm of Human Interest Brothers, had

  come aboard this Emigrant Ship to see what Eight hundred Latter-day

  Saints were like, and I found them (to the rout and overthrow of

  all my expectations) like what I now describe with scrupulous

  exactness.

  The Mormon Agent who had been active in getting them together, and

  in making the contract with my friends the owners of the ship to

  take them as far as New York on their way to the Great Salt Lake,

  was pointed out to me. A compactly-made handsome man in black,

  rather short, with rich brown hair and beard, and clear bright

  eyes. From his speech, I should set him down as American.

  Probably, a man who had 'knocked about the world' pretty much. A

  man with a frank open manner, and unshrinking look; withal a man of

  great quickness. I believe he was wholly ignorant of my

  Uncommercial individuality, and consequently of my immense

  Uncommercial importance.

  UNCOMMERCIAL. These are a very fine set of people you have brought

  together here.

  MORMON AGENT. Yes, sir, they are a VERY fine set of people.

  UNCOMMERCIAL (looking about). Indeed, I think it would be

  difficult to find Eight hundred people together anywhere else, and

  find so much beauty and so much strength and capacity for work

  among them.

  MORMON AGENT (not looking about, but looking steadily at

  Uncommercial). I think so. - We sent out about a thousand more,