Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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

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