sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellowcreatures
at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I feel not the
least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they
love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir
Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more: For
though they love Stewards with a bull’s eye bright, they’ll trouble
you for your ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!
I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words
from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I
have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came
out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with
those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been
towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now
begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen.
Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the
boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour
undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining.
Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to
Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will
stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent
stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,
asks me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive
me!) a very agreeable place indeed – rather hilly than otherwise.
So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly – though
still I seem to have been on board a week – that I am bumped,
rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her
maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When
blest for ever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of
the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy
timbers – covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids’
favourite combing-place – where one crawls to the surface of the
jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbour to
the Railway Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out
among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a
furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the
wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their
vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come
struggling against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief
and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a
prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of
the Dentist’s hands. And now we all know for the first time how
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais
with my heart of hearts!
‘Hotel Dessin!’ (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is
but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of
that best of inns). ‘Hotel Meurice!’ ‘Hotel de France!’ ‘Hotel
de Calais!’ ‘The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!’ ‘You going to
Parry, Sir?’ ‘Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?’ Bless ye, my
Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed
mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or
night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never
see you get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey;
permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my
travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my
change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of
chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written
on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me,