pretext for extorting money from me. Quires - quires do I say?
Reams - of forms illegibly printed on whity-brown paper were filled
up about the Bottle, and it was the subject of more stamping and
sanding than I had ever seen before. In consequence of which haze
of sand, perhaps, it was always irregular, and always latent with
dismal penalties of going back or not going forward, which were
only to be abated by the silver crossing of a base hand, poked
shirtless out of a ragged uniform sleeve. Under all
discouragements, however, I stuck to my Bottle, and held firm to my
resolution that every drop of its contents should reach the
Bottle's destination.
The latter refinement cost me a separate heap of troubles on its
own separate account. What corkscrews did I see the military power
bring out against that Bottle; what gimlets, spikes, divining rods,
gauges, and unknown tests and instruments! At some places, they
persisted in declaring that the wine must not be passed, without
being opened and tasted; I, pleading to the contrary, used then to
argue the question seated on the Bottle lest they should open it in
spite of me. In the southern parts of Italy more violent
shrieking, face-making, and gesticulating, greater vehemence of
speech and countenance and action, went on about that Bottle than
would attend fifty murders in a northern latitude. It raised
important functionaries out of their beds, in the dead of night. I
have known half-a-dozen military lanterns to disperse themselves at
all points of a great sleeping Piazza, each lantern summoning some
official creature to get up, put on his cocked-hat instantly, and
come and stop the Bottle. It was characteristic that while this
innocent Bottle had such immense difficulty in getting from little
town to town, Signor Mazzini and the fiery cross were traversing
Italy from end to end.
Still, I stuck to my Bottle, like any fine old English gentleman
all of the olden time. The more the Bottle was interfered with,
the stauncher I became (if possible) in my first determination that
my countryman should have it delivered to him intact, as the man
whom he had so nobly restored to life and liberty had delivered it
to me. If ever I had been obstinate in my days - and I may have
been, say, once or twice - I was obstinate about the Bottle. But,
I made it a rule always to keep a pocket full of small coin at its
service, and never to be out of temper in its cause. Thus, I and
the Bottle made our way. Once we had a break-down; rather a bad
break-down, on a steep high place with the sea below us, on a
tempestuous evening when it blew great guns. We were driving four
wild horses abreast, Southern fashion, and there was some little
difficulty in stopping them. I was outside, and not thrown off;
but no words can describe my feelings when I saw the Bottle -
travelling inside, as usual - burst the door open, and roll obesely
out into the road. A blessed Bottle with a charmed existence, he
took no hurt, and we repaired damage, and went on triumphant.
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A thousand representations were made to me that the Bottle must be
left at this place, or that, and called for again. I never yielded
to one of them, and never parted from the Bottle, on any pretence,
consideration, threat, or entreaty. I had no faith in any official
receipt for the Bottle, and nothing would induce me to accept one.
These unmanageable politics at last brought me and the Bottle,
still triumphant, to Genoa. There, I took a tender and reluctant
leave of him for a few weeks, and consigned him to a trusty English
captain, to be conveyed to the Port of London by sea.
While the Bottle was on his voyage to England, I read the Shipping
Intelligence as anxiously as if I had been an underwriter. There
was some stormy weather after I myself had got to England by way of
Switzerland and France, and my mind greatly misgave me that the
Bottle might be wrecked. At last to my great joy, I received
notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint
Katharine's Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity
in the Custom House.
The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous
Englishman - probably it had been something like vinegar when I
took it up from Giovanni Carlavero - but not a drop of it was
spilled or gone. And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in
his face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to
him so sweet and sound. And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his
table. And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him,
he took me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: 'We
were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had
been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero's Bottle.'
CHAPTER XVIII - THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL
It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my
malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad
to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this
subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a
maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping
saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one
great extremity, sea-sickness - who was a mere bilious torso, with
a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach - who had been put into
a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of
it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times
have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I
know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise
its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its
ways, and I know - and I can bear - its worst behaviour.
Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and
discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on
that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape
Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to
be stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its
bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer
quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of
falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its
invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think
you are there - roll, roar, wash! - Calais has retired miles
inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip
and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded
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to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when
it dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to the
right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about
for it!
Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I par
ticularly
detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.
It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more
brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and
Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my
much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the
comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I
know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact
insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I
know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or
pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon
that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I
am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise,
for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it
rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,
without the officious Warden's interference?
As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern
Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be
illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal
dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land,
and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The
drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would
rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this
slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in
an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of
Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the
Third.
A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty
Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the
heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if
several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by
circumstances over which they had no control from drinking
peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated - rumble, hum,
scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each
paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of
the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures
with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles,
descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's
Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen,
with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a
few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy
Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it.
I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that
we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant
in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible
delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the
unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is
to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes
glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has
gone to bed before we are off!
What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from
an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put
up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A
fellow-creature near me - whom I only know to BE a fellow-creature,
because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of
cliff, pier, or bulkbead - clutches that instrument with a
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desperate grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is
there any analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an
umbrella up, and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board
with a flop replies 'Stand by!' 'Stand by, below!' 'Half a turn a
head!' 'Half a turn a head!' 'Half speed!' 'Half speed!'
'Port!' 'Port!' 'Steady!' 'Steady!' 'Go on!' 'Go on!'
A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my
left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a
compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers, -
these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and
by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of
France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves
comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been
trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three
shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them
up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way
that bodes no good.
It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no
bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that
hated town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past.
Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm- that
was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it
gives a complaining roar.
The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we
ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless
passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted
out for the laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot
general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am
aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the
impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper,
something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel
languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am
under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish
melodies. 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore,' is the
particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to
myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest
expression. Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the
hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes,
but I don't mind it,) and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock
between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and
a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English coast; but I
don't notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred
of Calais. Then I go on again, 'Rich and rare were the ge-ems shee-
e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O
her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond' - I am particularly proud of my
execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from
the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature
at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be -
'Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-aa-
a-a-r beyond' - another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature
with the umbrella down and picked up - 'Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or
her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the
paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wa
sh, white wand.'
As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on
around me becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open
the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the
box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light
of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the
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hatches and paddle-boxes is THEIR gleam on cottages and haystacks,
and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the
splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at
every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure
engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which
I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and
when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light
of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so,
become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where I shall be
this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance
to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven.
What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on,
I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she
wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about
Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first
went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound
that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.
Still, through all this, I must ask her (who WAS she I wonder!) for
the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to
stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's
sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellowcreatures
at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I feel not the
least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they
love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir
Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more: For
though they love Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble
you for your ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!
I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words