Selected Short Fiction

by Charles Dickens

  You were conveyed, ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside - you were conveyed, by surreptitious means, into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Your mother was married to your father (himself a distant Waiter) in the profoundest secresy; for a Waitress known to be married would ruin the best of businesses- it is the same as on the stage. Hence your being smuggled into the pantry, and that - to add to the infliction - by an unwilling grandmother. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother’s shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish-covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all. At length she was no longer spared, and could have been thankfully spared much sooner. When your brothers began to appear in succession, your mother retired, left off her smart dressing (she had previously been a smart dresser), and her dark ringlets (which had previously been flowing), and haunted your father late of nights, lying in wait for him, through all weathers, up the shabby court which led to the back door of the Royal Old Dust-Binn (said to have been so named by George the Fourth), where your father was Head. But the Dust-Binn was going down then, and your father took but little — excepting from a liquid point of view. Your mother’s object in those visits was of a housekeeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father out. Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his existence which was unconnected with open Waitering, was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to be a close secret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of you, and would scarcely have confessed under torture that you knew your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which wasn’t his name, though he was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this mystery, combined with your father’s having a damp compartment to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust-Binn - a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack and a bottle-rack, and three windows that didn’t match each other or anything else, and no day-light - caused your young mind to feel convinced that you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your sister. Every one of you felt convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your career, what was your feelings one day when your father came home to your mother in open broad daylight- of itself an act of Madness on the part of a Waiter- and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family’s bed), with the statement that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a day and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being, ‘Two and two is five. And three is sixpence.’ Interred in the parochial department of the neighbouring churchyard, and accompanied to the grave by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely, one), your bereaved form was attired in a white neckankecher, and you was took on from motives of benevolence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates (which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed awake, and by day was set to polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust; your counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neckankecher (or correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments of knowledge from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk on the back of the corner-box-partition, until such time as you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained to manhood and to be the Waiter that you find yourself.

  I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the calling so long the calling of myself and family, and the public interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No, we are not. Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine P.M., and that the repleter you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your business when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and fresh (say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy and melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that - each of ‘em going on as if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world. Then look what you are expected to know. You are never out, but they seem to think you regularly attend everywhere. ‘What’s this, Christopher, that I hear about the smashed Excursion Train?’ - ‘How are they doing at the Italian Opera, Christopher?’ - ‘Christopher, what are the real particulars of this business at the Yorkshire Bank?’ Similarly a ministry gives me more trouble than it gives the Queen. As to Lord Palmerston,I the constant and wearing connexion into which I have been brought with his lordship during the last few years, is deserving of a pension. Then look at the Hypocrites we are made, and the lies (white, I hope) that are forced upon us! Why must a sedentary-pursuited Waiter be considered to be a judge of horseflesh, and to have a most tremenjous interest in horse-training and racing? Yet it would be half our little incomes out of our pockets if we didn’t take on to have those sporting tastes. It is the same (inconceivable why!) with Farming. Shooting, equally so. I am sure that so regular as the months of August, September, and October come round, I am ashamed of myself in my own private bosom for the way in which I make believe to care whether or not the grouse is strong on the wing (much their wings or drumsticks either signifies to me, uncooked!), and whether the partridges is plentiful among the turnips, and whether the pheasants is shy or bold, or anything else you please to mention. Yet you may see me, or any other Waiter of my standing, holding on by the back of the box and leaning over a gentleman with his purse out and his bill before him, discussing these points in a confidential tone of voice, as if my happiness in life entirely depended on ’em.

  I have mentioned our little incomes. Look at the most unreasonable point of all, and the point on which the greatest injustice is done us! Whether it is owing to our always carrying so much change in our right-hand trousers-pocket, and so many halfpence in our coat-tails, or whether it is human nature (which I were loathe to believe), what is meant by the everlasting fable that Head Waiters is rich? How did that fable get into circulation? Who first put it about, and what are the facts to establish the unblushing statement? Come forth, thou slanderer, and refer the public to the Waiter’s will in Doctors’ Commons supporting thy malignant hiss! Yet this is so commonly dwelt upon-especially by the screws2 who give Waiters the least - that denial is vain, and we are obliged, for our credit’s sake, to carry our heads as if we were going into a business, when of the two we are much more likely to go into a union.3 There was formerly
a screw as frequented the Slamjam ere yet the present writer had quitted that establishment on a question of tea-ing his assistant staff out of his own pocket, which screw carried the taunt to its bitterest heighth. Never soaring above threepence, and as often as not grovelling on the earth a penny lower, he yet represented the present writer as a large holder of Consols,4 a lender of money on mortgage, a Capitalist. He has been overheard to dilate to other customers on the allegation that the present writer put out thousands of pounds at interest, in Distilleries and Breweries. ‘Well, Christopher,’ he would say (having grovelled his lowest on the earth, half a moment before), ‘looking out for a House to open, eh? Can’t find a business to be disposed of, on a scale as is up to your resources, humph?’ To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found himself under the obligation to fall into it through so many years that his own wife (for he had an unbeknown old lady in that capacity towards himself) believed it! And what was the consequence? When he was borne to his grave on the shoulders of six picked Waiters, with six more for change, six more acting as pall-bearers, all keeping step in a pouring shower without a dry eye visible, and a concourse only inferior to Royalty, his pantry and lodgings was equally ransacked high and low for property and none was found! How could it be found, when, beyond his last monthly collection of walking-sticks, umbrellas, and pocket-handkerchiefs (which happened to have been not yet disposed of, though he had ever been through life punctual in clearing off his collections by the month), there was no property existing? Such, however, is the force of this universal libel, that the widow of Old Charles, at the present hour an inmate of the Almshouses of the Cork-Cutters’ Company, in Blue Anchor-road (identified sitting at the door of one of ’em, in a clean cap and a Windsor armchair, only last Monday), expects John’s hoarded wealth to be found hourly! Nay, ere yet he had succumbed to the grisly dart, and when his portrait was painted in oils, life-size, by subscription of the frequenters of the West Country, to hang over the coffee-room chimney-piece, there were not wanting those who contended that what is termed the accessories of such portrait ought to be the Bank of England out of window, and a strong-box on the table. And but for better-regulated minds contending for a bottle and screw and the attitude of drawing - and carrying their point - it would have been so handed down to posterity.

  I am now brought to the title of the present remarks. Having, I hope without offence to any quarter, offered such observations as I felt it my duty to offer, in a free country which has ever dominated the seas, on the general subject, I will now proceed to wait on the particular question.

  At a momentous period of my life, when I was off, so far as concerned notice given, with a House that shall be nameless - for the question on which I took my departing stand was a fixed charge for Waiters, and no House as commits itself to that eminently Un-English act of more than foolishness and baseness shall be advertised by me - I repeat, at a momentous crisis when I was off with a House too mean for mention, and not yet on with that to which I have ever since had the honour of being attached in the capacity of Head,v I was casting about what to do next. Then it were that proposals were made to me on behalf of my present establishment. Stipulations were necessary on my part, emendations were necessary on my part; in the end, ratifications ensued on both sides, and I entered on a new career.

  We are a bed business, and a coffee-room business. We are not a general dining business, nor do we wish it. In consequence, when diners drop in, we know what to give ‘em as will keep ’em away another time. We are a Private Room or Family business also; but Coffee Room principal. Me and the Directory and the Writing Materials and cetrer occupy a place to ourselves: a place fended off up a step or two at the end of the Coffee Room, in what I call the good old-fashioned style. The good old-fashioned style is, that whatever you want, down to a wafer, you must be olely and solely dependent on the Head Waiter for. You must put yourself a newborn Child into his hands. There is no other way in which a business untinged with Continental Vice can be conducted. (It were bootless to add that if languages is required to be jabbered and English is not good enough, both families and gentlemen had better go somewhere else.)

  When I began to settle down in this right-principled and well-conducted House, I noticed under the bed in No. 24 B (which it is up a angle off the staircase, and usually put off upon the lowly-minded), a heap of things in a comer. I asked our Head Chambermaid in the course of the day:

  ‘What are them things in 24 B?’

  To which she answered with a careless air:

  ‘Somebody’s Luggage.’

  Regarding her with a eye not free from severity, I says: ‘Whose Luggage?’

  Evading my eye, she replied:

  ‘Lor! How should I know!’

  — Being, it may be right to mention, a female of some pertness, though acquainted with her business.

  A Head Waiter must be either Head or Tail. He must be at one extremity or the other of the social scale. He cannot be at the waist of it, or anywhere else but the extremities. It is for him to decide which of the extremities.

  On the eventful occasion under consideration, I give Mrs Pratchett so distinctly to understand my decision that I broke her spirit as towards myself, then and there, and for good. Let not inconsistency be suspected on account of my mentioning Mrs Pratchett as ‘Mrs’, and having formerly remarked that a waitress must not be married. Readers are respectfully requested to notice that Mrs Pratchett was not a waitress, but a chambermaid. Now, a chambermaid may be married: if Head, generally is married — or says so. It comes to the same thing as expressing what is customary. (N.B. Mr Pratchett is in Australia, and his address there is ‘the Bush’.)

  Having took Mrs Pratchett down as many pegs as was essential to the future happiness of all parties, I requested her to explain herself.

  ‘For instance,’ I says, to give her a little encouragement, ‘who is Somebody?’

  ‘I give you my sacred honour, Mr Christopher,’ answers Pratchett, ‘that I haven’t the faintest notion.’

  But for the manner in which she settled her cap-strings, I should have doubted this; but in respect of positiveness it was hardly to be discriminated from an affidavit.

  ‘Then you never saw him?’ I followed her up with.

  ‘Nor yet,’ said Mrs Pratchett, shutting her eyes and making as if she had just took a pill of unusual circumference - which gave a remarkable force to her denial - ‘nor yet any servant in this house. All have been changed, Mr Christopher, within five year, and Somebody left his Luggage here before then.’

  Inquiry of Miss Martin yielded (in the language of the Bard of A I) ‘confirmation strong’. So it had really and truly happened. Miss Martin is the young lady at the bar as makes out our bills; and though higher than I could wish, considering her station, is perfectly well behaved.

  Further investigations led to the disclosure that there was a bill against this Luggage to the amount of two sixteen six. The Luggage had been lying under the bedstead in 24 B, over six year. The bedstead is a four-poster, with a deal of old hanging and valance, and is, as I once said, probably connected with more than 24 Bs - which I remember my hearers was pleased to laugh at, at the time.

  I don’t know why - when DO we know why? - but this Luggage laid heavy on my mind. I fell a wondering about Somebody, and what he had got and been up to. I couldn’t satisfy my thoughts why he should leave so much Luggage against so small a bill. For I had the Luggage out within a day or two and turned it over, and the following were the items: — A black portmanteau, a black bag, a desk, a dressing-case, a brown-paper parcel, a hat-box, and an umbrella strapped to a walking-stick. It was all very dusty and fluey. I had our porter up to get under the bed and fetch it out; and though he habitually wallows in dust-swims in it from morning to night, and wears a close-fitting waistcoat with black calimanco5 slee
ves for the purpose - it made him sneeze again, and the throat was that hot with it, that it was obliged to be cooled with a drink of Allsopp’s draft.

  The Luggage so got the better of me, that instead of having it put back when it was well dusted and washed with a wet cloth — previous to which it was so covered with feathers, that you might have thought it was turning into poultry, and would by-and-by begin to Lay - I say, instead of having it put back, I had it carried into one of my places down stairs. There from time to time I stared at it and stared at it, till it seemed to grow big and grow little, and come forward at me and retreat again, and go through all manner of performances resembling intoxication. When this had lasted weeks — I may say, months, and not be far out - I one day thought of asking Miss Martin for the particulars of the Two sixteen six total. She was so obliging as to extract from it the books - it dating before her time - and here follows a true copy:

  6 Mem.: January ist, 1857. He went out after dinner, directing Luggage to be ready when he called for it. Never called.

  So far from throwing a light upon the subject, this bill appeared to me, if I may so express my doubts, to involve it in a yet more lurid halo. Speculating it over with the Mistress, she informed me that the luggage had been advertised in the Master’s time as being to be sold after such and such a day to pay expenses, but no further steps had been taken. (I may here remark that the Mistress is a widow in her fourth year. The Master was possessed of one of those unfortunate constitutions in which Spirits turns to Water, and rises in the ill-starred Victim.)

  My speculating it over, not then only but repeatedly, sometimes with the Mistress, sometimes with one, sometimes with another, led up to the Mistress’s saying to me- whether at first in joke or in earnest, or half joke and half earnest, it matters not: