among the fire-irons, lest post-horse company should overstir the
fire, was NOT there, as of old.
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Pursuing my researches in the Dolphin’s Head, I found it sorely
shrunken. When J. Mellows came into possession, he had walled off
half the bar, which was now a tobacco-shop with its own entrance in
the yard – the once glorious yard where the postboys, whip in hand
and always buttoning their waistcoats at the last moment, used to
come running forth to mount and away. A ‘Scientific Shoeing –
Smith and Veterinary Surgeon,’ had further encroached upon the
yard; and a grimly satirical jobber, who announced himself as
having to Let ‘A neat one-horse fly, and a one-horse cart,’ had
established his business, himself, and his family, in a part of the
extensive stables. Another part was lopped clean off from the
Dolphin’s Head, and now comprised a chapel, a wheelwright’s, and a
Young Men’s Mutual Improvement and Discussion Society (in a loft):
the whole forming a back lane. No audacious hand had plucked down
the vane from the central cupola of the stables, but it had grown
rusty and stuck at N-Nil: while the score or two of pigeons that
remained true to their ancestral traditions and the place, had
collected in a row on the roof-ridge of the only outhouse retained
by the Dolphin, where all the inside pigeons tried to push the
outside pigeon off. This I accepted as emblematical of the
struggle for post and place in railway times.
Sauntering forth into the town, by way of the covered and pillared
entrance to the Dolphin’s Yard, once redolent of soup and stablelitter,
now redolent of musty disuse, I paced the street. It was a
hot day, and the little sun-blinds of the shops were all drawn
down, and the more enterprising tradesmen had caused their
‘Prentices to trickle water on the pavement appertaining to their
frontage. It looked as if they had been shedding tears for the
stage-coaches, and drying their ineffectual pocket-handkerchiefs.
Such weakness would have been excusable; for business was – as one
dejected porkman who kept a shop which refused to reciprocate the
compliment by keeping him, informed me – ‘bitter bad.’ Most of the
harness-makers and corn-dealers were gone the way of the coaches,
but it was a pleasant recognition of the eternal procession of
Children down that old original steep Incline, the Valley of the
Shadow, that those tradesmen were mostly succeeded by vendors of
sweetmeats and cheap toys. The opposition house to the Dolphin,
once famous as the New White Hart, had long collapsed. In a fit of
abject depression, it had cast whitewash on its windows, and
boarded up its front door, and reduced itself to a side entrance;
but even that had proved a world too wide for the Literary
Institution which had been its last phase; for the Institution had
collapsed too, and of the ambitious letters of its inscription on
the White Hart’s front, all had fallen off but these:
L Y INS T
– suggestive of Lamentably Insolvent. As to the neighbouring
market-place, it seemed to have wholly relinquished marketing, to
the dealer in crockery whose pots and pans straggled half across
it, and to the Cheap Jack who sat with folded arms on the shafts of
his cart, superciliously gazing around; his velveteen waistcoat,
evidently harbouring grave doubts whether it was worth his while to
stay a night in such a place.
The church bells began to ring as I left this spot, but they by no
means improved the case, for they said, in a petulant way, and
speaking with some difficulty in their irritation, WHAT’S-be-comeof-
THE-coach-ES!’ Nor would they (I found on listening) ever vary
their emphasis, save in respect of growing more sharp and vexed,
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but invariably went on, ‘WHAT’S-be-come-of-THE-coach-ES!’ – always
beginning the inquiry with an unpolite abruptness. Perhaps from
their elevation they saw the railway, and it aggravated them.
Coming upon a coachmaker’s workshop, I began to look about me with
a revived spirit, thinking that perchance I might behold there some
remains of the old times of the town’s greatness. There was only