The Uncommercial Traveller

by Dickens, Charles

  tool-house, summer-house, or dwelling-house, I could not discover,

  for there was nobody at home at the post-chaise when I knocked, but

  it was certainly used for something, and locked up. In the wonder

  of this discovery, I walked round and round the post-chaise many

  times, and sat down by the post-chaise, waiting for further

  elucidation. None came. At last, I made my way back to the old

  London road by the further end of the allotment-gardens, and

  consequently at a point beyond that from which I had diverged. I

  had to scramble through a hedge and down a steep bank, and I nearly

  came down a-top of a little spare man who sat breaking stones by

  the roadside.

  He stayed his hammer, and said, regarding me mysteriously through

  his dark goggles of wire:

  'Are you aware, sir, that you've been trespassing?'

  'I turned out of the way,' said I, in explanation, 'to look at that

  odd post-chaise. Do you happen to know anything about it?'

  'I know it was many a year upon the road,' said he.

  'So I supposed. Do you know to whom it belongs?'

  The stone-breaker bent his brows and goggles over his heap of

  stones, as if he were considering whether he should answer the

  question or not. Then, raising his barred eyes to my features as

  before, he said:

  'To me.'

  Being quite unprepared for the reply, I received it with a

  sufficiently awkward 'Indeed! Dear me!' Presently I added, 'Do

  you - ' I was going to say 'live there,' but it seemed so absurd a

  question, that I substituted 'live near here?'

  The stone-breaker, who had not broken a fragment since we began to

  converse, then did as follows. He raised himself by poising his

  finger on his hammer, and took his coat, on which he had been

  seated, over his arm. He then backed to an easier part of the bank

  than that by which I had come down, keeping his dark goggles

  silently upon me all the time, and then shouldered his hammer,

  suddenly turned, ascended, and was gone. His face was so small,

  and his goggles were so large, that he left me wholly uninformed as

  to his countenance; but he left me a profound impression that the

  curved legs I had seen from behind as he vanished, were the legs of

  an old postboy. It was not until then that I noticed he had been

  working by a grass-grown milestone, which looked like a tombstone

  erected over the grave of the London road.

  My dinner-hour being close at hand, I had no leisure to pursue the

  goggles or the subject then, but made my way back to the Dolphin's

  Head. In the gateway I found J. Mellows, looking at nothing, and

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  apparently experiencing that it failed to raise his spirits.

  'I don't care for the town,' said J. Mellows, when I complimented

  him on the sanitary advantages it may or may not possess; 'I wish I

  had never seen the town!'

  'You don't belong to it, Mr. Mellows?'

  'Belong to it!' repeated Mellows. 'If I didn't belong to a better

  style of town than this, I'd take and drown myself in a pail.' It

  then occurred to me that Mellows, having so little to do, was

  habitually thrown back on his internal resources - by which I mean

  the Dolphin's cellar.

  'What we want,' said Mellows, pulling off his hat, and making as if

  he emptied it of the last load of Disgust that had exuded from his

  brain, before he put it on again for another load; 'what we want,

  is a Branch. The Petition for the Branch Bill is in the coffeeroom.

  Would you put your name to it? Every little helps.'

  I found the document in question stretched out flat on the coffeeroom

  table by the aid of certain weights from the kitchen, and I

  gave it the additional weight of my uncommercial signature. To the

  best of my belief, I bound myself to the modest statement that

  universal traffic, happiness, prosperity, and civilisation,

  together with unbounded national triumph in competition with the

  foreigner, would infallibly flow from the Branch.

  Having achieved this constitutional feat, I asked Mr. Mellows if he

  could grace my dinner with a pint of good wine? Mr. Mellows thus

  replied.

  'If I couldn't give you a pint of good wine, I'd - there! - I'd

  take and drown myself in a pail. But I was deceived when I bought

  this business, and the stock was higgledy-piggledy, and I haven't

  yet tasted my way quite through it with a view to sorting it.

  Therefore, if you order one kind and get another, change till it

  comes right. For what,' said Mellows, unloading his hat as before,

  'what would you or any gentleman do, if you ordered one kind of

  wine and was required to drink another? Why, you'd (and naturally

  and properly, having the feelings of a gentleman), you'd take and

  drown yourself in a pail!'

  CHAPTER XXV - THE BOILED BEEF OF NEW ENGLAND

  The shabbiness of our English capital, as compared with Paris,

  Bordeaux, Frankfort, Milan, Geneva - almost any important town on

  the continent of Europe - I find very striking after an absence of

  any duration in foreign parts. London is shabby in contrast with

  Edinburgh, with Aberdeen, with Exeter, with Liverpool, with a

  bright little town like Bury St. Edmunds. London is shabby in

  contrast with New York, with Boston, with Philadelphia. In detail,

  one would say it can rarely fail to be a disappointing piece of

  shabbiness, to a stranger from any of those places. There is

  nothing shabbier than Drury-lane, in Rome itself. The meanness of

  Regent-street, set against the great line of Boulevards in Paris,

  is as striking as the abortive ugliness of Trafalgar-square, set

  against the gallant beauty of the Place de la Concorde. London is

  shabby by daylight, and shabbier by gaslight. No Englishman knows

  what gaslight is, until he sees the Rue de Rivoli and the Palais

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  Royal after dark.

  The mass of London people are shabby. The absence of distinctive

  dress has, no doubt, something to do with it. The porters of the

  Vintners' Company, the draymen, and the butchers, are about the

  only people who wear distinctive dresses; and even these do not

  wear them on holidays. We have nothing which for cheapness,

  cleanliness, convenience, or picturesqueness, can compare with the

  belted blouse. As to our women; - next Easter or Whitsuntide, look

  at the bonnets at the British Museum or the National Gallery, and

  think of the pretty white French cap, the Spanish mantilla, or the

  Genoese mezzero.

  Probably there are not more second-hand clothes sold in London than

  in Paris, and yet the mass of the London population have a secondhand

  look which is not to be detected on the mass of the Parisian

  population. I think this is mainly because a Parisian workman does

  not in the least trouble himself about what is worn by a Parisian

  idler, but dresses in the way of his own class, and for his own

  comfort. In London, on the contrary, the fashions descend; and you

  neve
r fully know how inconvenient or ridiculous a fashion is, until

  you see it in its last descent. It was but the other day, on a

  race-course, that I observed four people in a barouche deriving

  great entertainment from the contemplation of four people on foot.

  The four people on foot were two young men and two young women; the

  four people in the barouche were two young men and two young women.

  The four young women were dressed in exactly the same style; the

  four young men were dressed in exactly the same style. Yet the two

  couples on wheels were as much amused by the two couples on foot,

  as if they were quite unconscious of having themselves set those

  fashions, or of being at that very moment engaged in the display of

  them.

  Is it only in the matter of clothes that fashion descends here in

  London - and consequently in England - and thence shabbiness

  arises? Let us think a little, and be just. The 'Black Country'

  round about Birmingham, is a very black country; but is it quite as

  black as it has been lately painted? An appalling accident

  happened at the People's Park near Birmingham, this last July, when

  it was crowded with people from the Black Country - an appalling

  accident consequent on a shamefully dangerous exhibition. Did the

  shamefully dangerous exhibition originate in the moral blackness of

  the Black Country, and in the Black People's peculiar love of the

  excitement attendant on great personal hazard, which they looked on

  at, but in which they did not participate? Light is much wanted in

  the Black Country. O we are all agreed on that. But, we must not

  quite forget the crowds of gentlefolks who set the shamefully

  dangerous fashion, either. We must not quite forget the

  enterprising Directors of an Institution vaunting mighty

  educational pretences, who made the low sensation as strong as they

  possibly could make it, by hanging the Blondin rope as high as they

  possibly could hang it. All this must not be eclipsed in the

  Blackness of the Black Country. The reserved seats high up by the

  rope, the cleared space below it, so that no one should be smashed

  but the performer, the pretence of slipping and falling off, the

  baskets for the feet and the sack for the head, the photographs

  everywhere, and the virtuous indignation nowhere - all this must

  not be wholly swallowed up in the blackness of the jet-black

  country.

  Whatsoever fashion is set in England, is certain to descend. This

  is a text for a perpetual sermon on care in setting fashions. When

  you find a fashion low down, look back for the time (it will never

  be far off) when it was the fashion high up. This is the text for

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  a perpetual sermon on social justice. From imitations of Ethiopian

  Serenaders, to imitations of Prince's coats and waistcoats, you

  will find the original model in St. James's Parish. When the

  Serenaders become tiresome, trace them beyond the Black Country;

  when the coats and waistcoats become insupportable, refer them to

  their source in the Upper Toady Regions.

  Gentlemen's clubs were once maintained for purposes of savage party

  warfare; working men's clubs of the same day assumed the same

  character. Gentlemen's clubs became places of quiet inoffensive

  recreation; working men's clubs began to follow suit. If working

  men have seemed rather slow to appreciate advantages of combination

  which have saved the pockets of gentlemen, and enhanced their

  comforts, it is because working men could scarcely, for want of

  capital, originate such combinations without help; and because help

  has not been separable from that great impertinence, Patronage.

  The instinctive revolt of his spirit against patronage, is a

  quality much to be respected in the English working man. It is the

  base of the base of his best qualities. Nor is it surprising that

  he should be unduly suspicious of patronage, and sometimes

  resentful of it even where it is not, seeing what a flood of washy

  talk has been let loose on his devoted head, or with what

  complacent condescension the same devoted head has been smoothed

  and patted. It is a proof to me of his self-control that he never

  strikes out pugilistically, right and left, when addressed as one

  of 'My friends,' or 'My assembled friends;' that he does not become

  inappeasable, and run amuck like a Malay, whenever he sees a biped

  in broadcloth getting on a platform to talk to him; that any

  pretence of improving his mind, does not instantly drive him out of

  his mind, and cause him to toss his obliging patron like a mad

  bull.

  For, how often have I heard the unfortunate working man lectured,

  as if he were a little charity-child, humid as to his nasal

  development, strictly literal as to his Catechism, and called by

  Providence to walk all his days in a station in life represented on

  festive occasions by a mug of warm milk-and-water and a bun! What

  popguns of jokes have these ears tingled to hear let off at him,

  what asinine sentiments, what impotent conclusions, what spellingbook

  moralities, what adaptations of the orator's insufferable

  tediousness to the assumed level of his understanding! If his

  sledge-hammers, his spades and pick-axes, his saws and chisels, his

  paint-pots and brushes, his forges, furnaces, and engines, the

  horses that he drove at his work, and the machines that drove him

  at his work, were all toys in one little paper box, and he the baby

  who played with them, he could not have been discoursed to, more

  impertinently and absurdly than I have heard him discoursed to

  times innumerable. Consequently, not being a fool or a fawner, he

  has come to acknowledge his patronage by virtually saying: 'Let me

  alone. If you understand me no better than THAT, sir and madam,

  let me alone. You mean very well, I dare say, but I don't like it,

  and I won't come here again to have any more of it.'

  Whatever is done for the comfort and advancement of the working man

  must be so far done by himself as that it is maintained by himself.

  And there must be in it no touch of condescension, no shadow of

  patronage. In the great working districts, this truth is studied

  and understood. When the American civil war rendered it necessary,

  first in Glasgow, and afterwards in Manchester, that the working

  people should be shown how to avail themselves of the advantages

  derivable from system, and from the combination of numbers, in the

  purchase and the cooking of their food, this truth was above all

  things borne in mind. The quick consequence was, that suspicion

  and reluctance were vanquished, and that the effort resulted in an

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  astonishing and a complete success.

  Such thoughts passed through my mind on a July morning of this

  summer, as I walked towards Commercial Street (not Uncommercial

  Street), Whitechapel. The Glasgow and Manchester system had been

  lately set a-going there, by certain gentlemen who felt an inter
est

  in its diffusion, and I had been attracted by the following handbill

  printed on rose-coloured paper:

  SELF-SUPPORTING

  COOKING DEPOT

  FOR THE WORKING CLASSES

  Commercial-street, Whitechapel,

  Where Accommodation is provided for Dining comfortably

  300 Persons at a time.

  Open from 7 A.M. till 7 P.M.

  PRICES.

  All Articles of the BEST QUALITY.

  Cup of Tea or Coffee One Penny

  Bread and Butter One Penny

  Bread and Cheese One Penny

  Slice of bread One half-penny or

  One Penny

  Boiled Egg One Penny

  Ginger Beer One Penny

  The above Articles always ready.

  Besides the above may be had, from 12 to 3 o'clock,

  Bowl of Scotch Broth One Penny

  Bowl of Soup One Penny

  Plate of Potatoes One Penny

  Plate of Minced Beef Twopence

  Plate of Cold Beef Twopence

  Plate of Cold Ham Twopence

  Plate of Plum Pudding or Rice One Penny

  As the Economy of Cooking depends greatly upon the simplicity of

  the arrangements with which a great number of persons can be served

  at one time, the Upper Room of this Establishment will be

  especially set apart for a

  PUBLIC DINNER EVERY DAY

  From 12 till 3 o'clock,

  CONSISTING OF THE FOLLOWING DISHES,

  Bowl of Broth, or Soup,

  Plate of Cold Beef or Ham,

  Plate of Potatoes,

  Plum Pudding, or Rice.

  FIXED CHARGE 4.5D.

  THE DAILY PAPERS PROVIDED.

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  N.B. - This Establishment is conducted on the strictest business

  principles, with the full intention of making it self-supporting,

  so that every one may frequent it with a feeling of perfect

  independence.

  The assistance of all frequenting the Depot is confidently expected

  in checking anything interfering with the comfort, quiet, and

  regularity of the establishment.

  Please do not destroy this Hand Bill, but hand it to some other

  person whom it may interest.

  The Self-Supporting Cooking Depot (not a very good name, and one

  would rather give it an English one) had hired a newly-built

  warehouse that it found to let; therefore it was not established in

  premises specially designed for the purpose. But, at a small cost

  they were exceedingly well adapted to the purpose: being light,