notice of his safe arrival, and immediately went down to Saint
Katharine’s Docks, and found him in a state of honourable captivity
in the Custom House.
The wine was mere vinegar when I set it down before the generous
Englishman – probably it had been something like vinegar when I
took it up from Giovanni Carlavero – but not a drop of it was
spilled or gone. And the Englishman told me, with much emotion in
his face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to
him so sweet and sound. And long afterwards, the Bottle graced his
table. And the last time I saw him in this world that misses him,
he took me aside in a crowd, to say, with his amiable smile: ‘We
were talking of you only to-day at dinner, and I wished you had
been there, for I had some Claret up in Carlavero’s Bottle.’
CHAPTER XVIII – THE CALAIS NIGHT MAIL
It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my
malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad
to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this
subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a
maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping
saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one
great extremity, sea-sickness – who was a mere bilious torso, with
a mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach – who had been put into
a horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of
it on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times
have changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I
know where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise
its landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its
ways, and I know – and I can bear – its worst behaviour.
Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and
discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on
that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape
Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to
be stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its
bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer
quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of
falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its
invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think
you are there – roll, roar, wash! – Calais has retired miles
inland, and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip
and slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded
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to the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when
it dives under the boat’s keel, and comes up a league or two to the
right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about
for it!
Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly
detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.
It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more
brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and
Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my
much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the
comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I
know it is a good house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact
insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I
know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or
pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon
that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I
am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise,
for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it
rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,