CHAPTER IX – CITY OF LONDON CHURCHES
If the confession that I have often travelled from this Covent
Garden lodging of mine on Sundays, should give offence to those who
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
never travel on Sundays, they will be satisfied (I hope) by my
adding that the journeys in question were made to churches.
Not that I have any curiosity to hear powerful preachers. Time
was, when I was dragged by the hair of my head, as one may say, to
hear too many. On summer evenings, when every flower, and tree,
and bird, might have better addressed my soft young heart, I have
in my day been caught in the palm of a female hand by the crown,
have been violently scrubbed from the neck to the roots of the hair
as a purification for the Temple, and have then been carried off
highly charged with saponaceous electricity, to be steamed like a
potato in the unventilated breath of the powerful Boanerges Boiler
and his congregation, until what small mind I had, was quite
steamed out of me. In which pitiable plight I have been haled out
of the place of meeting, at the conclusion of the exercises, and
catechised respecting Boanerges Boiler, his fifthly, his sixthly,
and his seventhly, until I have regarded that reverend person in
the light of a most dismal and oppressive Charade. Time was, when
I was carried off to platform assemblages at which no human child,
whether of wrath or grace, could possibly keep its eyes open, and
when I felt the fatal sleep stealing, stealing over me, and when I
gradually heard the orator in possession, spinning and humming like
a great top, until he rolled, collapsed, and tumbled over, and I
discovered to my burning shame and fear, that as to that last stage
it was not he, but I. I have sat under Boanerges when he has
specifically addressed himself to us – us, the infants – and at
this present writing I hear his lumbering jocularity (which never
amused us, though we basely pretended that it did), and I behold
his big round face, and I look up the inside of his outstretched
coat-sleeve as if it were a telescope with the stopper on, and I
hate him with an unwholesome hatred for two hours. Through such
means did it come to pass that I knew the powerful preacher from
beginning to end, all over and all through, while I was very young,
and that I left him behind at an early period of life. Peace be
with him! More peace than he brought to me!
Now, I have heard many preachers since that time – not powerful;
merely Christian, unaffected, and reverential – and I have had many
such preachers on my roll of friends. But, it was not to hear
these, any more than the powerful class, that I made my Sunday
journeys. They were journeys of curiosity to the numerous churches
in the City of London. It came into my head one day, here had I
been cultivating a familiarity with all the churches of Rome, and I
knew nothing of the insides of the old churches of London! This
befell on a Sunday morning. I began my expeditions that very same
day, and they lasted me a year.
I never wanted to know the names of the churches to which I went,
and to this hour I am profoundly ignorant in that particular of at
least nine-tenths of them. Indeed, saying that I know the church
of old GOWER’S tomb (he lies in effigy with his head upon his
books) to be the church of Saint Saviour’s, Southwark; and the
church of MILTON’S tomb to be the church of Cripplegate; and the
church on Cornhill with the great golden keys to be the church of
Saint Peter; I doubt if I could pass a competitive examination in
any of the names. No question did I ever ask of living creature
concerning these churches, and no answer to any antiquarian
question on the subject that I ever put to books, shall harass the
reader’s soul. A full half of my pleasure in them arose out of