Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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 particularly

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,

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