Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

himself, has the effect of rendering him rather more like himself

than he was at first.

There were peep-shows in this Fair, and I had the pleasure of

recognising several fields of glory with which I became well

acquainted a year or two ago as Crimean battles, now doing duty as

Mexican victories. The change was neatly effected by some extra

smoking of the Russians, and by permitting the camp followers free

range in the foreground to despoil the enemy of their uniforms. As

no British troops had ever happened to be within sight when the

artist took his original sketches, it followed fortunately that

none were in the way now.

The Fair wound up with a ball. Respecting the particular night of

the week on which the ball took place, I decline to commit myself;

merely mentioning that it was held in a stable-yard so very close

to the railway, that it was a mercy the locomotive did not set fire

to it. (In Scotland, I suppose, it would have done so.) There, in

a tent prettily decorated with looking-glasses and a myriad of toy

flags, the people danced all night. It was not an expensive

recreation, the price of a double ticket for a cavalier and lady

being one and threepence in English money, and even of that small

sum fivepence was reclaimable for ‘consommation:’ which word I

venture to translate into refreshments of no greater strength, at

the strongest, than ordinary wine made hot, with sugar and lemon in

it. It was a ball of great good humour and of great enjoyment,

though very many of the dancers must have been as poor as the

fifteen subjects of the P. Salcy Family.

In short, not having taken my own pet national pint pot with me to

this Fair, I was very well satisfied with the measure of simple

enjoyment that it poured into the dull French-Flemish country life.

How dull that is, I had an opportunity of considering – when the

Fair was over – when the tri-coloured flags were withdrawn from the

windows of the houses on the Place where the Fair was held – when

the windows were close shut, apparently until next Fair-time – when

the Hotel de Ville had cut off its gas and put away its eagle –

when the two paviours, whom I take to form the entire paving

population of the town, were ramming down the stones which had been

pulled up for the erection of decorative poles – when the jailer

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had slammed his gate, and sulkily locked himself in with his

charges. But then, as I paced the ring which marked the track of

the departed hobby-horses on the market-place, pondering in my mind

how long some hobby-horses do leave their tracks in public ways,

and how difficult they are to erase, my eyes were greeted with a

goodly sight. I beheld four male personages thoughtfully pacing

the Place together, in the sunlight, evidently not belonging to the

town, and having upon them a certain loose cosmopolitan air of not

belonging to any town. One was clad in a suit of white canvas,

another in a cap and blouse, the third in an old military frock,

the fourth in a shapeless dress that looked as if it had been made

out of old umbrellas. All wore dust-coloured shoes. My heart beat

high; for, in those four male personages, although complexionless

and eyebrowless, I beheld four subjects of the Family P. Salcy.

Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful

smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a

‘Whitechapel shave’ (and which is, in fact, whitening, judiciously

applied to the jaws with the palm of the hand), I recognised them.

As I stood admiring, there emerged from the yard of a lowly

Cabaret, the excellent Ma Mere, Ma Mere, with the words, ‘The soup

is served;’ words which so elated the subject in the canvas suit,

that when they all ran in to partake, he went last, dancing with

his hands stuck angularly into the pockets of his canvas trousers,

after the Pierrot manner. Glancing down the Yard, the last I saw

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