Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

which, all through the miry year, are pilloried out of recognition

in Gray’s Inn-lane. Then, shall a squalid little trench, with rank

grass and a pump in it, lying between the coffee-house and Southsquare,

be wholly given up to cats and rats, and not, as now, have

its empire divided between those animals and a few briefless bipeds

– surely called to the Bar by voices of deceiving spirits, seeing

that they are wanted there by no mortal – who glance down, with

eyes better glazed than their casements, from their dreary and

lacklustre rooms. Then shall the way Nor’ Westward, now lying

under a short grim colonnade where in summer-time pounce flies from

law-stationering windows into the eyes of laymen, be choked with

rubbish and happily become impassable. Then shall the gardens

where turf, trees, and gravel wear a legal livery of black, run

rank, and pilgrims go to Gorhambury to see Bacon’s effigy as he

sat, and not come here (which in truth they seldom do) to see where

he walked. Then, in a word, shall the old-established vendor of

periodicals sit alone in his little crib of a shop behind the

Holborn Gate, like that lumbering Marius among the ruins of

Carthage, who has sat heavy on a thousand million of similes.

At one period of my uncommercial career I much frequented another

set of chambers in Gray’s Inn-square. They were what is familiarly

called ‘a top set,’ and all the eatables and drinkables introduced

into them acquired a flavour of Cockloft. I have known an unopened

Strasbourg pate fresh from Fortnum and Mason’s, to draw in this

cockloft tone through its crockery dish, and become penetrated with

cockloft to the core of its inmost truffle in three-quarters of an

hour. This, however, was not the most curious feature of those

chambers; that, consisted in the profound conviction entertained by

my esteemed friend Parkle (their tenant) that they were clean.

Whether it was an inborn hallucination, or whether it was imparted

to him by Mrs. Miggot the laundress, I never could ascertain. But,

I believe he would have gone to the stake upon the question. Now,

they were so dirty that I could take off the distinctest impression

of my figure on any article of furniture by merely lounging upon it

for a few moments; and it used to be a private amusement of mine to

print myself off – if I may use the expression – all over the

rooms. It was the first large circulation I had. At other times I

have accidentally shaken a window curtain while in animated

conversation with Parkle, and struggling insects which were

certainly red, and were certainly not ladybirds, have dropped on

the back of my hand. Yet Parkle lived in that top set years, bound

body and soul to the superstition that they were clean. He used to

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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

say, when congratulated upon them, ‘Well, they are not like

chambers in one respect, you know; they are clean.’ Concurrently,

he had an idea which he could never explain, that Mrs. Miggot was

in some way connected with the Church. When he was in particularly

good spirits, he used to believe that a deceased uncle of hers had

been a Dean; when he was poorly and low, he believed that her

brother had been a Curate. I and Mrs. Miggot (she was a genteel

woman) were on confidential terms, but I never knew her to commit

herself to any distinct assertion on the subject; she merely

claimed a proprietorship in the Church, by looking when it was

mentioned, as if the reference awakened the slumbering Past, and

were personal. It may have been his amiable confidence in Mrs.

Miggot’s better days that inspired my friend with his delusion

respecting the chambers, but he never wavered in his fidelity to it

for a moment, though he wallowed in dirt seven years.

Two of the windows of these chambers looked down into the garden;

and we have sat up there together many a summer evening, saying how

pleasant it was, and talking of many things. To my intimacy with

that top set, I am indebted for three of my liveliest personal

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