As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough
Mechanics' Institution, I thought I would go and look at that
establishment next. There had been no such thing in the town, in
my young day, and it occurred to me that its extreme prosperity
might have brought adversity upon the Drama. I found the
Institution with some difficulty, and should scarcely have known
that I had found it if I had judged from its external appearance
only; but this was attributable to its never having been finished,
and having no front: consequently, it led a modest and retired
existence up a stable-yard. It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a
most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the
town: two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all
impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it,
and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots. It had a
large room, which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the
builder having declined to construct the intended staircase,
without a present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though
profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unaccountably
bashful about subscribing. The large room had cost - or would,
when paid for - five hundred pounds; and it had more mortar in it
and more echoes, than one might have expected to get for the money.
It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools,
including a large black board of a menacing appearance. On
referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given
in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting
that human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be
relieved and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor makeweight
piece of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise. Thus, I
observed that it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the
head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological
periods, Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and
Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those
unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court costume of
the reign of George the Second. Likewise, that they must be
stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal evidence in
Shakespeare's works, to prove that his uncle by the mother's side
lived for some years at Stoke Newington, before they were broughtto
by a Miscellaneous Concert. But, indeed, the masking of
entertainment, and pretending it was something else - as people
mask bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms,
and make believe that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of
drawers, anything rather than bedsteads - was manifest even in the
pretence of dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves
felt obliged in decency to put forth when they came here. One very
agreeable professional singer, who travelled with two professional
ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those ladies to
sing the ballad 'Comin' through the Rye' without prefacing it
himself, with some general remarks on wheat and clover; and even
then, he dared not for his life call the song, a song, but
disguised it in the bill as an 'Illustration.' In the library,
also - fitted with shelves for three thousand books, and containing
upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies mostly),
seething their edges in damp plaster - there was such a painfully
apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read Travels, Popular
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Dickens, Charles - The Uncommercial Traveller
Biography, and mere Fiction descriptive of the aspirations of the
hearts and souls of mere human creatures like themselves; and such
an elaborate parade of 2 bright examples who had had down Euclid
after the day's occupation and confinement; and 3 who had had down
Metaphysics after ditto; and 1 who had had down Theology after
ditto; and 4 who had worried Grammar, Political Economy, Botany,
and Logarithms all at once after ditto; that I suspected the
boasted class to be one man, who had been hired to do it.
Emerging from the Mechanics' Institution and continuing my walk
about the town, I still noticed everywhere the prevalence, to an
for amusement out of sight, as some untidy housekeepers put dust,
and pretending that it was swept away. And yet it was ministered
to, in a dull and abortive manner, by all who made this feint.
Looking in at what is called in Dullborough 'the serious
bookseller's,' where, in my childhood, I had studied the faces of
numbers of gentlemen depicted in rostrums with a gaslight on each
side of them, and casting my eyes over the open pages of certain
printed discourses there, I found a vast deal of aiming at jocosity
and dramatic effect, even in them - yes, verily, even on the part
of one very wrathful expounder who bitterly anathematised a poor
little Circus. Similarly, in the reading provided for the young
people enrolled in the Lasso of Love, and other excellent unions, I
found the writers generally under a distressing sense that they
must start (at all events) like story-tellers, and delude the young
persons into the belief that they were going to be interesting. As
I looked in at this window for twenty minutes by the clock, I am in
a position to offer a friendly remonstrance - not bearing on this
particular point - to the designers and engravers of the pictures
in those publications. Have they considered the awful consequences
likely to flow from their representations of Virtue? Have they
asked themselves the question, whether the terrific prospect of
acquiring that fearful chubbiness of head, unwieldiness of arm,
feeble dislocation of leg, crispiness of hair, and enormity of
shirt-collar, which they represent as inseparable from Goodness,
may not tend to confirm sensitive waverers, in Evil? A most
impressive example (if I had believed it) of what a Dustman and a
Sailor may come to, when they mend their ways, was presented to me
in this same shop-window. When they were leaning (they were
intimate friends) against a post, drunk and reckless, with
surpassingly bad hats on, and their hair over their foreheads, they
were rather picturesque, and looked as if they might be agreeable
men, if they would not be beasts. But, when they had got over
their bad propensities, and when, as a consequence, their heads had
swelled alarmingly, their hair had got so curly that it lifted
their blown-out cheeks up, their coat-cuffs were so long that they
never could do any work, and their eyes were so wide open that they
never could do any sleep, they presented a spectacle calculated to
plunge a timid nature into the depths of Infamy.
But, the clock that had so degenerated since I saw it last,
admonished me that I had stayed here long enough; and I resumed my
walk.
I had not gone fifty paces along the street when I was suddenly
brought up by the sight o
f a man who got out of a little phaeton at
the doctor's door, and went into the doctor's house. Immediately,
the air was filled with the scent of trodden grass, and the
perspective of years opened, and at the end of it was a little
likeness of this man keeping a wicket, and I said, 'God bless my
soul! Joe Specks!'
Through many changes and much work, I had preserved a tenderness
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for the memory of Joe, forasmuch as we had made the acquaintance of
Roderick Random together, and had believed him to be no ruffian,
but an ingenuous and engaging hero. Scorning to ask the boy left
in the phaeton whether it was really Joe, and scorning even to read
the brass plate on the door - so sure was I - I rang the bell and
informed the servant maid that a stranger sought audience of Mr.
Specks. Into a room, half surgery, half study, I was shown to
await his coming, and I found it, by a series of elaborate
accidents, bestrewn with testimonies to Joe. Portrait of Mr.
Specks, bust of Mr. Specks, silver cup from grateful patient to Mr.
Specks, presentation sermon from local clergyman, dedication poem
from local poet, dinner-card from local nobleman, tract on balance
of power from local refugee, inscribed HOMMAGE DE L'AUTEUR E
SPECKS.
When my old schoolfellow came in, and I informed him with a smile
that I was not a patient, he seemed rather at a loss to perceive
any reason for smiling in connexion with that fact, and inquired to
what was he to attribute the honour? I asked him with another
smile, could he remember me at all? He had not (he said) that
pleasure. I was beginning to have but a poor opinion of Mr.
Specks, when he said reflectively, 'And yet there's a something
too.' Upon that, I saw a boyish light in his eyes that looked
well, and I asked him if he could inform me, as a stranger who
desired to know and had not the means of reference at hand, what
the name of the young lady was, who married Mr. Random? Upon that,
he said 'Narcissa,' and, after staring for a moment, called me by
my name, shook me by the hand, and melted into a roar of laughter.
'Why, of course, you'll remember Lucy Green,' he said, after we had
talked a little. 'Of course,' said I. 'Whom do you think she
married?' said he. 'You?' I hazarded. 'Me,' said Specks, 'and you
shall see her.' So I saw her, and she was fat, and if all the hay
in the world had been heaped upon her, it could scarcely have
altered her face more than Time had altered it from my remembrance
of the face that had once looked down upon me into the fragrant
dungeons of Seringapatam. But when her youngest child came in
after dinner (for I dined with them, and we had no other company
than Specks, Junior, Barrister-at-law, who went away as soon as the
cloth was removed, to look after the young lady to whom he was
going to be married next week), I saw again, in that little
daughter, the little face of the hayfield, unchanged, and it quite
touched my foolish heart. We talked immensely, Specks and Mrs.
Specks, and I, and we spoke of our old selves as though our old
selves were dead and gone, and indeed, indeed they were - dead and
gone as the playing-field that had become a wilderness of rusty
iron, and the property of S.E.R.
Specks, however, illuminated Dullborough with the rays of interest
that I wanted and should otherwise have missed in it, and linked
its present to its past, with a highly agreeable chain. And in
Specks's society I had new occasion to observe what I had before
noticed in similar communications among other men. All the
schoolfellows and others of old, whom I inquired about, had either
done superlatively well or superlatively ill - had either become
uncertificated bankrupts, or been felonious and got themselves
transported; or had made great hits in life, and done wonders. And
this is so commonly the case, that I never can imagine what becomes
of all the mediocre people of people's youth - especially
considering that we find no lack of the species in our maturity.
But, I did not propound this difficulty to Specks, for no pause in
the conversation gave me an occasion. Nor, could I discover one
single flaw in the good doctor - when he reads this, he will
receive in a friendly spirit the pleasantly meant record - except
that he had forgotten his Roderick Random, and that he confounded
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Strap with Lieutenant Hatchway; who never knew Random, howsoever
intimate with Pickle.
When I went alone to the Railway to catch my train at night (Specks
had meant to go with me, but was inopportunely called out), I was
in a more charitable mood with Dullborough than I had been all day;
and yet in my heart I had loved it all day too. Ah! who was I that
I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I
myself had come back, so changed, to it! All my early readings and
early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so
full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought
them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the
worse!
CHAPTER XIII - NIGHT WALKS
Some years ago, a temporary inability to sleep, referable to a
distressing impression, caused me to walk about the streets all
night, for a series of several nights. The disorder might have
taken a long time to conquer, if it had been faintly experimented
on in bed; but, it was soon defeated by the brisk treatment of
getting up directly after lying down, and going out, and coming
home tired at sunrise.
In the course of those nights, I finished my education in a fair
amateur experience of houselessness. My principal object being to
get through the night, the pursuit of it brought me into
sympathetic relations with people who have no other object every
night in the year.
The month was March, and the weather damp, cloudy, and cold. The
sun not rising before half-past five, the night perspective looked
sufficiently long at half-past twelve: which was about my time for
confronting it.
The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles
and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first
entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people.
It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship
when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the
potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but
stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we
were very lucky, a policeman's rattle sprang and a fray turned up;
but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was
provided. Except in the Haymarket, which is the worst kept part of
London, and about Kent-street in the Borough, and along a portion
of the line of the Old Kent-road, the peace was seldom violently
broken. But, it was always the case that London,
as if in
imitation of individual citizens belonging to it, had expiring fits
and starts of restlessness. After all seemed quiet, if one cab
rattled by, half-a-dozen would surely follow; and Houselessness
even observed that intoxicated people appeared to be magnetically
attracted towards each other; so that we knew when we saw one
drunken object staggering against the shutters of a shop, that
another drunken object would stagger up before five minutes were
out, to fraternise or fight with it. When we made a divergence
from the regular species of drunkard, the thin-armed, puff-faced,
leaden-lipped gin-drinker, and encountered a rarer specimen of a
more decent appearance, fifty to one but that specimen was dressed
in soiled mourning. As the street experience in the night, so the
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street experience in the day; the common folk who come unexpectedly
into a little property, come unexpectedly into a deal of liquor.
At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out - the
last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman
or hot-potato man - and London would sink to rest. And then the
yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company,
any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one
being up - nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked
out for lights in windows.
Walking the streets under the pattering rain, Houselessness would
walk and walk and walk, seeing nothing but the interminable tangle
of streets, save at a corner, here and there, two policemen in
conversation, or the sergeant or inspector looking after his men.
Now and then in the night - but rarely - Houselessness would become
aware of a furtive head peering out of a doorway a few yards before
him, and, coming up with the head, would find a man standing bolt
upright to keep within the doorway's shadow, and evidently intent
upon no particular service to society. Under a kind of
fascination, and in a ghostly silence suitable to the time,
Houselessness and this gentleman would eye one another from head to
foot, and so, without exchange of speech, part, mutually
suspicious. Drip, drip, drip, from ledge and coping, splash from
pipes and water-spouts, and by-and-by the houseless shadow would