satisfaction, I communicated it to the driver. So far from being
responsive, he surveyed me – he was naturally a bottled-nosed, redfaced
man – with a blanched countenance. And as he drove me back,
he ever and again glanced in over his shoulder through the little
front window of his carriage, as mistrusting that I was a fare
originally from a grave in the churchyard of Saint Ghastly Grim,
who might have flitted home again without paying.
Page 146
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
Sometimes, the queer Hall of some queer Company gives upon a
churchyard such as this, and, when the Livery dine, you may hear
them (if you are looking in through the iron rails, which you never
are when I am) toasting their own Worshipful prosperity.
Sometimes, a wholesale house of business, requiring much room for
stowage, will occupy one or two or even all three sides of the
enclosing space, and the backs of bales of goods will lumber up the
windows, as if they were holding some crowded trade-meeting of
themselves within. Sometimes, the commanding windows are all
blank, and show no more sign of life than the graves below – not so
much, for THEY tell of what once upon a time was life undoubtedly.
Such was the surrounding of one City churchyard that I saw last
summer, on a Volunteering Saturday evening towards eight of the
clock, when with astonishment I beheld an old old man and an old
old woman in it, making hay. Yes, of all occupations in this
world, making hay! It was a very confined patch of churchyard
lying between Gracechurch-street and the Tower, capable of
yielding, say an apronful of hay. By what means the old old man
and woman had got into it, with an almost toothless hay-making
rake, I could not fathom. No open window was within view; no
window at all was within view, sufficiently near the ground to have
enabled their old legs to descend from it; the rusty churchyardgate
was locked, the mouldy church was locked. Gravely among the
graves, they made hay, all alone by themselves. They looked like
Time and his wife. There was but the one rake between them, and
they both had hold of it in a pastorally-loving manner, and there
was hay on the old woman’s black bonnet, as if the old man had
recently been playful. The old man was quite an obsolete old man,
in knee-breeches and coarse grey stockings, and the old woman wore
mittens like unto his stockings in texture and in colour. They
took no heed of me as I looked on, unable to account for them. The
old woman was much too bright for a pew-opener, the old man much
too meek for a beadle. On an old tombstone in the foreground
between me and them, were two cherubim; but for those celestial
embellishments being represented as having no possible use for
knee-breeches, stockings, or mittens, I should have compared them
with the hay-makers, and sought a likeness. I coughed and awoke
the echoes, but the hay-makers never looked at me. They used the
rake with a measured action, drawing the scanty crop towards them;
and so I was fain to leave them under three yards and a half of
darkening sky, gravely making hay among the graves, all alone by
themselves. Perhaps they were Spectres, and I wanted a Medium.
In another City churchyard of similar cramped dimensions, I saw,
that selfsame summer, two comfortable charity children. They were
making love – tremendous proof of the vigour of that immortal
article, for they were in the graceful uniform under which English
Charity delights to hide herself – and they were overgrown, and
their legs (his legs at least, for I am modestly incompetent to
speak of hers) were as much in the wrong as mere passive weakness
of character can render legs. O it was a leaden churchyard, but no
doubt a golden ground to those young persons! I first saw them on
a Saturday evening, and, perceiving from their occupation that
Saturday evening was their trysting-time, I returned that evening
se’nnight, and renewed the contemplation of them. They came there