prosaic “season,” he has distinctly the appearance of a man
conscious of money in the savings bank, and taking his stand on his
respectability with both feet. At that time it is as impossible to
associate him with relaxation, or any human weakness, as it is to
meet his eye without feeling guilty of indisposition. In the blest
Arcadian time, how changed! I have seen him, in a pepper-and-salt
jacket – jacket – and drab trousers, with his arm round the waist
of a bootmaker’s housemaid, smiling in open day. I have seen him
at the pump by the Albany, unsolicitedly pumping for two fair young
creatures, whose figures as they bent over their cans, were – if I
may be allowed an original expression – a model for the sculptor.
I have seen him trying the piano in the Doctor’s drawing-room with
his forefinger, and have heard him humming tunes in praise of
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
lovely woman. I have seen him seated on a fire-engine, and going
(obviously in search of excitement) to a fire. I saw him, one
moonlight evening when the peace and purity of our Arcadian west
were at their height, polk with the lovely daughter of a cleaner of
gloves, from the door-steps of his own residence, across Savillerow,
round by Clifford-street and Old Burlington-street, back to
Burlington-gardens. Is this the Golden Age revived, or Iron
London?
The Dentist’s servant. Is that man no mystery to us, no type of
invisible power? The tremendous individual knows (who else does?)
what is done with the extracted teeth; he knows what goes on in the
little room where something is always being washed or filed; he
knows what warm spicy infusion is put into the comfortable tumbler
from which we rinse our wounded mouth, with a gap in it that feels
a foot wide; he knows whether the thing we spit into is a fixture
communicating with the Thames, or could be cleared away for a
dance; he sees the horrible parlour where there are no patients in
it, and he could reveal, if he would, what becomes of the Every-Day
Book then. The conviction of my coward conscience when I see that
man in a professional light, is, that he knows all the statistics
of my teeth and gums, my double teeth, my single teeth, my stopped
teeth, and my sound. In this Arcadian rest, I am fearless of him
as of a harmless, powerless creature in a Scotch cap, who adores a
young lady in a voluminous crinoline, at a neighbouring billiardroom,
and whose passion would be uninfluenced if every one of her
teeth were false. They may be. He takes them all on trust.
In secluded corners of the place of my seclusion, there are little
shops withdrawn from public curiosity, and never two together,
where servants’ perquisites are bought. The cook may dispose of
grease at these modest and convenient marts; the butler, of
bottles; the valet and lady’s maid, of clothes; most servants,
indeed, of most things they may happen to lay hold of. I have been
told that in sterner times loving correspondence, otherwise
interdicted, may be maintained by letter through the agency of some
of these useful establishments. In the Arcadian autumn, no such
device is necessary. Everybody loves, and openly and blamelessly
loves. My landlord’s young man loves the whole of one side of the
way of Old Bond-street, and is beloved several doors up New Bondstreet
besides. I never look out of window but I see kissing of
hands going on all around me. It is the morning custom to glide
from shop to shop and exchange tender sentiments; it is the evening
custom for couples to stand hand in hand at house doors, or roam,
linked in that flowery manner, through the unpeopled streets.
There is nothing else to do but love; and what there is to do, is
done.
In unison with this pursuit, a chaste simplicity obtains in the
domestic habits of Arcadia. Its few scattered people dine early,
live moderately, sup socially, and sleep soundly. It is rumoured
that the Beadles of the Arcade, from being the mortal enemies of