frequented, at about two of the afternoon when that edifice was
closed. But, a little side-door, which I had never observed
before, stood open, and disclosed certain cellarous steps.
Methought ‘They are airing the vaults to-day,’ when the personage
and the child silently arrived at the steps, and silently
descended. Of course, I came to the conclusion that the personage
had at last despaired of the looked-for return of the penitent
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
citizens, and that he and the child went down to get themselves
buried.
In the course of my pilgrimages I came upon one obscure church
which had broken out in the melodramatic style, and was got up with
various tawdry decorations, much after the manner of the extinct
London may-poles. These attractions had induced several young
priests or deacons in black bibs for waistcoats, and several young
ladies interested in that holy order (the proportion being, as I
estimated, seventeen young ladies to a deacon), to come into the
City as a new and odd excitement. It was wonderful to see how
these young people played out their little play in the heart of the
City, all among themselves, without the deserted City’s knowing
anything about it. It was as if you should take an empty countinghouse
on a Sunday, and act one of the old Mysteries there. They
had impressed a small school (from what neighbourhood I don’t know)
to assist in the performances, and it was pleasant to notice
frantic garlands of inscription on the walls, especially addressing
those poor innocents in characters impossible for them to decipher.
There was a remarkably agreeable smell of pomatum in this
congregation.
But, in other cases, rot and mildew and dead citizens formed the
uppermost scent, while, infused into it in a dreamy way not at all
displeasing, was the staple character of the neighbourhood. In the
churches about Mark-lane, for example, there was a dry whiff of
wheat; and I accidentally struck an airy sample of barley out of an
aged hassock in one of them. From Rood-lane to Tower-street, and
thereabouts, there was often a subtle flavour of wine: sometimes,
of tea. One church near Mincing-lane smelt like a druggist’s
drawer. Behind the Monument the service had a flavour of damaged
oranges, which, a little further down towards the river, tempered
into herrings, and gradually toned into a cosmopolitan blast of
fish. In one church, the exact counterpart of the church in the
Rake’s Progress where the hero is being married to the horrible old
lady, there was no speciality of atmosphere, until the organ shook
a perfume of hides all over us from some adjacent warehouse.
Be the scent what it would, however, there was no speciality in the
people. There were never enough of them to represent any calling
or neighbourhood. They had all gone elsewhere over-night, and the
few stragglers in the many churches languished there
inexpressively.
Among the Uncommercial travels in which I have engaged, this year
of Sunday travel occupies its own place, apart from all the rest.
Whether I think of the church where the sails of the oyster-boats
in the river almost flapped against the windows, or of the church
where the railroad made the bells hum as the train rushed by above
the roof, I recall a curious experience. On summer Sundays, in the
gentle rain or the bright sunshine – either, deepening the idleness
of the idle City – I have sat, in that singular silence which
belongs to resting-places usually astir, in scores of buildings at
the heart of the world’s metropolis, unknown to far greater numbers
of people speaking the English tongue, than the ancient edifices of
the Eternal City, or the Pyramids of Egypt. The dark vestries and
registries into which I have peeped, and the little hemmed-in
churchyards that have echoed to my feet, have left impressions on
my memory as distinct and quaint as any it has in that way
received. In all those dusty registers that the worms are eating,
there is not a line but made some hearts leap, or some tears flow,
in their day. Still and dry now, still and dry! and the old tree