grim stone very difficult to read, let into the front of the centre
house of Titbull’s Alms-Houses, and which stone is ornamented a-top
with a piece of sculptured drapery resembling the effigy of
Titbull’s bath-towel.
Titbull’s Alms-Houses are in the east of London, in a great
highway, in a poor, busy, and thronged neighbourhood. Old iron and
fried fish, cough drops and artificial flowers, boiled pigs’-feet
and household furniture that looks as if it were polished up with
lip-salve, umbrellas full of vocal literature and saucers full of
shell-fish in a green juice which I hope is natural to them when
their health is good, garnish the paved sideways as you go to
Titbull’s. I take the ground to have risen in those parts since
Page 181
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
Titbull’s time, and you drop into his domain by three stone steps.
So did I first drop into it, very nearly striking my brows against
Titbull’s pump, which stands with its back to the thoroughfare just
inside the gate, and has a conceited air of reviewing Titbull’s
pensioners.
‘And a worse one,’ said a virulent old man with a pitcher, ‘there
isn’t nowhere. A harder one to work, nor a grudginer one to yield,
there isn’t nowhere!’ This old man wore a long coat, such as we
see Hogarth’s Chairmen represented with, and it was of that
peculiar green-pea hue without the green, which seems to come of
poverty. It had also that peculiar smell of cupboard which seems
to come of poverty.
‘The pump is rusty, perhaps,’ said I.
‘Not IT,’ said the old man, regarding it with undiluted virulence
in his watery eye. ‘It never were fit to be termed a pump. That’s
what’s the matter with IT.’
‘Whose fault is that?’ said I.
The old man, who had a working mouth which seemed to be trying to
masticate his anger and to find that it was too hard and there was
too much of it, replied, ‘Them gentlemen.’
‘What gentlemen?’
‘Maybe you’re one of ’em?’ said the old man, suspiciously.
‘The trustees?’
‘I wouldn’t trust ’em myself,’ said the virulent old man.
‘If you mean the gentlemen who administer this place, no, I am not
one of them; nor have I ever so much as heard of them.’
‘I wish I never heard of them,’ gasped the old man: ‘at my time of
life – with the rheumatics – drawing water-from that thing!’ Not
to be deluded into calling it a Pump, the old man gave it another
virulent look, took up his pitcher, and carried it into a corner
dwelling-house, shutting the door after him.
Looking around and seeing that each little house was a house of two
little rooms; and seeing that the little oblong court-yard in front
was like a graveyard for the inhabitants, saving that no word was
engraven on its flat dry stones; and seeing that the currents of
life and noise ran to and fro outside, having no more to do with
the place than if it were a sort of low-water mark on a lively
beach; I say, seeing this and nothing else, I was going out at the
gate when one of the doors opened.
‘Was you looking for anything, sir?’ asked a tidy, well-favoured
woman.
Really, no; I couldn’t say I was.
‘Not wanting any one, sir?’
‘No – at least I – pray what is the name of the elderly gentleman
who lives in the corner there?’
The tidy woman stepped out to be sure of the door I indicated, and
she and the pump and I stood all three in a row with our backs to
Page 182
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
the thoroughfare.
‘Oh! HIS name is Mr. Battens,’ said the tidy woman, dropping her
voice.
‘I have just been talking with him.’
‘Indeed?’ said the tidy woman. ‘Ho! I wonder Mr. Battens talked!’
‘Is he usually so silent?’
‘Well, Mr. Battens is the oldest here – that is to say, the oldest
of the old gentlemen – in point of residence.’
She had a way of passing her hands over and under one another as
she spoke, that was not only tidy but propitiatory; so I asked her