keys of the rotting fire-ladders are kept and were never asked for,
and where there is a ragged, white-seamed, out-at-elbowed bagatelle
board on the first floor.
In one of these City churches, and only in one, I found an
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
individual who might have been claimed as expressly a City
personage. I remember the church, by the feature that the
clergyman couldn’t get to his own desk without going through the
clerk’s, or couldn’t get to the pulpit without going through the
reading-desk – I forget which, and it is no matter – and by the
presence of this personage among the exceedingly sparse
congregation. I doubt if we were a dozen, and we had no exhausted
charity school to help us out. The personage was dressed in black
of square cut, and was stricken in years, and wore a black velvet
cap, and cloth shoes. He was of a staid, wealthy, and dissatisfied
aspect. In his hand, he conducted to church a mysterious child: a
child of the feminine gender. The child had a beaver hat, with a
stiff drab plume that surely never belonged to any bird of the air.
The child was further attired in a nankeen frock and spencer, brown
boxing-gloves, and a veil. It had a blemish, in the nature of
currant jelly, on its chin; and was a thirsty child. Insomuch that
the personage carried in his pocket a green bottle, from which,
when the first psalm was given out, the child was openly refreshed.
At all other times throughout the service it was motionless, and
stood on the seat of the large pew, closely fitted into the corner,
like a rain-water pipe.
The personage never opened his book, and never looked at the
clergyman. He never sat down either, but stood with his arms
leaning on the top of the pew, and his forehead sometimes shaded
with his right hand, always looking at the church door. It was a
long church for a church of its size, and he was at the upper end,
but he always looked at the door. That he was an old bookkeeper,
or an old trader who had kept his own books, and that he might be
seen at the Bank of England about Dividend times, no doubt. That
he had lived in the City all his life and was disdainful of other
localities, no doubt. Why he looked at the door, I never
absolutely proved, but it is my belief that he lived in expectation
of the time when the citizens would come back to live in the City,
and its ancient glories would be renewed. He appeared to expect
that this would occur on a Sunday, and that the wanderers would
first appear, in the deserted churches, penitent and humbled.
Hence, he looked at the door which they never darkened. Whose
child the child was, whether the child of a disinherited daughter,
or some parish orphan whom the personage had adopted, there was
nothing to lead up to. It never played, or skipped, or smiled.
Once, the idea occurred to me that it was an automaton, and that
the personage had made it; but following the strange couple out one
Sunday, I heard the personage say to it, ‘Thirteen thousand
pounds;’ to which it added in a weak human voice, ‘Seventeen and
fourpence.’ Four Sundays I followed them out, and this is all I
ever heard or saw them say. One Sunday, I followed them home.
They lived behind a pump, and the personage opened their abode with
an exceeding large key. The one solitary inscription on their
house related to a fire-plug. The house was partly undermined by a
deserted and closed gateway; its windows were blind with dirt; and
it stood with its face disconsolately turned to a wall. Five great
churches and two small ones rang their Sunday bells between this
house and the church the couple frequented, so they must have had
some special reason for going a quarter of a mile to it. The last
time I saw them, was on this wise. I had been to explore another
church at a distance, and happened to pass the church they