Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

mysterious constancy and perseverance. Where the china comes from,

where it goes to, why it is annually put up to auction when nobody

ever thinks of bidding for it, how it comes to pass that it is

always the same china, whether it would not have been cheaper, with

the sea at hand, to have thrown it away, say in eighteen hundred

and thirty, are standing enigmas. Every year the bills come out,

every year the Master of the Rooms gets into a little pulpit on a

table, and offers it for sale, every year nobody buys it, every

year it is put away somewhere till next year, when it appears again

as if the whole thing were a new idea. We have a faint remembrance

of an unearthly collection of clocks, purporting to be the work of

Parisian and Genevese artists – chiefly bilious-faced clocks,

supported on sickly white crutches, with their pendulums dangling

like lame legs – to which a similar course of events occurred for

Page 15

Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces

several years, until they seemed to lapse away, of mere imbecility.

Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a library. There is a wheel of

fortune in it, but it is rusty and dusty, and never turns. A large

doll, with moveable eyes, was put up to be raffled for, by fiveand-

twenty members at two shillings, seven years ago this autumn,

and the list is not full yet. We are rather sanguine, now, that

the raffle will come off next year. We think so, because we only

want nine members, and should only want eight, but for number two

having grown up since her name was entered, and withdrawn it when

she was married. Down the street, there is a toy-ship of

considerable burden, in the same condition. Two of the boys who

were entered for that raffle have gone to India in real ships,

since; and one was shot, and died in the arms of his sister’s

lover, by whom he sent his last words home.

This is the library for the Minerva Press. If you want that kind

of reading, come to our watering-place. The leaves of the

romances, reduced to a condition very like curl-paper, are thickly

studded with notes in pencil: sometimes complimentary, sometimes

jocose. Some of these commentators, like commentators in a more

extensive way, quarrel with one another. One young gentleman who

sarcastically writes ‘O!!!’ after every sentimental passage, is

pursued through his literary career by another, who writes

‘Insulting Beast!’ Miss Julia Mills has read the whole collection

of these books. She has left marginal notes on the pages, as ‘Is

not this truly touching? J. M.’ ‘How thrilling! J. M.’

‘Entranced here by the Magician’s potent spell. J. M.’ She has

also italicised her favourite traits in the description of the

hero, as ‘his hair, which was DARK and WAVY, clustered in RICH

PROFUSION around a MARBLE BROW, whose lofty paleness bespoke the

intellect within.’ It reminds her of another hero. She adds, ‘How

like B. L. Can this be mere coincidence? J. M.’

You would hardly guess which is the main street of our wateringplace,

but you may know it by its being always stopped up with

donkey-chaises. Whenever you come here, and see harnessed donkeys

eating clover out of barrows drawn completely across a narrow

thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are in our High Street.

Our Police you may know by his uniform, likewise by his never on

any account interfering with anybody – especially the tramps and

vagabonds. In our fancy shops we have a capital collection of

damaged goods, among which the flies of countless summers ‘have

been roaming.’ We are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pincushions,

and in rickety camp-stools, and in exploded cutlery, and

in miniature vessels, and in stunted little telescopes, and in

objects made of shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminutive

spades, barrows, and baskets, are our principal articles of

commerce; but even they don’t look quite new somehow. They always

seem to have been offered and refused somewhere else, before they

came down to our watering-place.

Yet, it must not be supposed that our watering-place is an empty