Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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

from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I

have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came

out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with

those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been

towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now

begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen.

Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the

boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour

undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining.

Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to

Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will

stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent

stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,

asks me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive

me!) a very agreeable place indeed – rather hilly than otherwise.

So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly – though

still I seem to have been on board a week – that I am bumped,

rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her

maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When

blest for ever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of

the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy

timbers – covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids’

favourite combing-place – where one crawls to the surface of the

jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbour to

the Railway Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out

among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a

furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the

wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their

vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come

struggling against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief

and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a

prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of

the Dentist’s hands. And now we all know for the first time how

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais

with my heart of hearts!

‘Hotel Dessin!’ (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is

but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of

that best of inns). ‘Hotel Meurice!’ ‘Hotel de France!’ ‘Hotel

de Calais!’ ‘The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!’ ‘You going to

Parry, Sir?’ ‘Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?’ Bless ye, my

Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed

mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or

night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never

see you get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey;

permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my

travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my

change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of

chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,

except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written

on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me,

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