Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

known brick-layers on tramp, coming up with bricklayers at work, to

be so sensible of the indispensability of lookers-on, that they

themselves have sat up in that capacity, and have been unable to

subside into the acceptance of a proffered share in the job, for

two or three days together. Sometimes, the ‘navvy,’ on tramp, with

an extra pair of half-boots over his shoulder, a bag, a bottle, and

a can, will take a similar part in a job of excavation, and will

look at it without engaging in it, until all his money is gone.

The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

to want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a

pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time honoured with

the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at

six.

Who can be familiar with any rustic highway in summer-time, without

storing up knowledge of the many tramps who go from one oasis of

town or village to another, to sell a stock in trade, apparently

not worth a shilling when sold? Shrimps are a favourite commodity

for this kind of speculation, and so are cakes of a soft and spongy

character, coupled with Spanish nuts and brandy balls. The stock

is carried on the head in a basket, and, between the head and the

basket, are the trestles on which the stock is displayed at trading

times. Fleet of foot, but a careworn class of tramp this, mostly;

with a certain stiffness of neck, occasioned by much anxious

balancing of baskets; and also with a long, Chinese sort of eye,

which an overweighted forehead would seem to have squeezed into

that form.

On the hot dusty roads near seaport towns and great rivers, behold

the tramping Soldier. And if you should happen never to have asked

yourself whether his uniform is suited to his work, perhaps the

poor fellow’s appearance as he comes distressfully towards you,

with his absurdly tight jacket unbuttoned, his neck-gear in his

hand, and his legs well chafed by his trousers of baize, may

suggest the personal inquiry, how you think YOU would like it.

Much better the tramping Sailor, although his cloth is somewhat too

thick for land service. But, why the tramping merchant-mate should

put on a black velvet waistcoat, for a chalky country in the dogdays,

is one of the great secrets of nature that will never be

discovered.

I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side

by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the

trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance

on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river

stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man’s life. To gain

the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells,

and wild roses, would soon render illegible but for peering

travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must come up a

steep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps with carts

or caravans – the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the Cheap Jack –

find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, and all

turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot. Bless

the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have

scorched its grass! What tramp children do I see here, attired in

a handful of rags, making a gymnasium of the shafts of the cart,

making a feather-bed of the flints and brambles, making a toy of

the hobbled old horse who is not much more like a horse than any

cheap toy would be! Here, do I encounter the cart of mats and

brooms and baskets – with all thoughts of business given to the

evening wind – with the stew made and being served out – with Cheap

Jack and Dear Jill striking soft music out of the plates that are

rattled like warlike cymbals when put up for auction at fairs and

markets – their minds so influenced (no doubt) by the melody of the