the wood,’ and there was no possible stowage for the wood anywhere
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
else. Evidently, he was by degrees eating the establishment away
to the core, and would soon have sole possession of it. It was To
Let, and hopelessly so, for its old purposes; and there had been no
entertainment within its walls for a long time except a Panorama;
and even that had been announced as ‘pleasingly instructive,’ and I
know too well the fatal meaning and the leaden import of those
terrible expressions. No, there was no comfort in the Theatre. It
was mysteriously gone, like my own youth. Unlike my own youth, it
might be coming back some day; but there was little promise of it.
As the town was placarded with references to the Dullborough
Mechanics’ Institution, I thought I would go and look at that
establishment next. There had been no such thing in the town, in
my young day, and it occurred to me that its extreme prosperity
might have brought adversity upon the Drama. I found the
Institution with some difficulty, and should scarcely have known
that I had found it if I had judged from its external appearance
only; but this was attributable to its never having been finished,
and having no front: consequently, it led a modest and retired
existence up a stable-yard. It was (as I learnt, on inquiry) a
most flourishing Institution, and of the highest benefit to the
town: two triumphs which I was glad to understand were not at all
impaired by the seeming drawbacks that no mechanics belonged to it,
and that it was steeped in debt to the chimney-pots. It had a
large room, which was approached by an infirm step-ladder: the
builder having declined to construct the intended staircase,
without a present payment in cash, which Dullborough (though
profoundly appreciative of the Institution) seemed unaccountably
bashful about subscribing. The large room had cost – or would,
when paid for – five hundred pounds; and it had more mortar in it
and more echoes, than one might have expected to get for the money.
It was fitted up with a platform, and the usual lecturing tools,
including a large black board of a menacing appearance. On
referring to lists of the courses of lectures that had been given
in this thriving Hall, I fancied I detected a shyness in admitting
that human nature when at leisure has any desire whatever to be
relieved and diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor makeweight
piece of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise. Thus, I
observed that it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the
head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological
periods, Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and
Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those
unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court costume of
the reign of George the Second. Likewise, that they must be
stunned by a weighty inquiry whether there was internal evidence in
Shakespeare’s works, to prove that his uncle by the mother’s side
lived for some years at Stoke Newington, before they were broughtto
by a Miscellaneous Concert. But, indeed, the masking of
entertainment, and pretending it was something else – as people
mask bedsteads when they are obliged to have them in sitting-rooms,
and make believe that they are book-cases, sofas, chests of
drawers, anything rather than bedsteads – was manifest even in the
pretence of dreariness that the unfortunate entertainers themselves
felt obliged in decency to put forth when they came here. One very
agreeable professional singer, who travelled with two professional
ladies, knew better than to introduce either of those ladies to
sing the ballad ‘Comin’ through the Rye’ without prefacing it
himself, with some general remarks on wheat and clover; and even
then, he dared not for his life call the song, a song, but
disguised it in the bill as an ‘Illustration.’ In the library,
also – fitted with shelves for three thousand books, and containing
upwards of one hundred and seventy (presented copies mostly),
seething their edges in damp plaster – there was such a painfully
apologetic return of 62 offenders who had read Travels, Popular