had knocked two or three houses down on each side of Timpson’s, and
then had knocked the whole into one great establishment with a pair
of big gates, in and out of which, his (Pickford’s) waggons are, in
these days, always rattling, with their drivers sitting up so high,
that they look in at the second-floor windows of the old-fashioned
houses in the High-street as they shake the town. I have not the
honour of Pickford’s acquaintance, but I felt that he had done me
an injury, not to say committed an act of boyslaughter, in running
over my Childhood in this rough manner; and if ever I meet Pickford
driving one of his own monsters, and smoking a pipe the while
(which is the custom of his men), he shall know by the expression
of my eye, if it catches his, that there is something wrong between
us.
Moreover, I felt that Pickford had no right to come rushing into
Dullborough and deprive the town of a public picture. He is not
Napoleon Bonaparte. When he took down the transparent stage-coach,
he ought to have given the town a transparent van. With a gloomy
conviction that Pickford is wholly utilitarian and unimaginative, I
proceeded on my way.
It is a mercy I have not a red and green lamp and a night-bell at
my door, for in my very young days I was taken to so many lyings-in
that I wonder I escaped becoming a professional martyr to them in
after-life. I suppose I had a very sympathetic nurse, with a large
circle of married acquaintance. However that was, as I continued
my walk through Dullborough, I found many houses to be solely
associated in my mind with this particular interest. At one little
greengrocer’s shop, down certain steps from the street, I remember
to have waited on a lady who had had four children (I am afraid to
write five, though I fully believe it was five) at a birth. This
meritorious woman held quite a reception in her room on the morning
when I was introduced there, and the sight of the house brought
vividly to my mind how the four (five) deceased young people lay,
side by side, on a clean cloth on a chest of drawers; reminding me
by a homely association, which I suspect their complexion to have
assisted, of pigs’ feet as they are usually displayed at a neat
tripe-shop. Hot candle was handed round on the occasion, and I
further remembered as I stood contemplating the greengrocer’s, that
a subscription was entered into among the company, which became
extremely alarming to my consciousness of having pocket-money on my
person. This fact being known to my conductress, whoever she was,
I was earnestly exhorted to contribute, but resolutely declined:
therein disgusting the company, who gave me to understand that I
must dismiss all expectations of going to Heaven.
How does it happen that when all else is change wherever one goes,
there yet seem, in every place, to be some few people who never
alter? As the sight of the greengrocer’s house recalled these
trivial incidents of long ago, the identical greengrocer appeared
on the steps, with his hands in his pockets, and leaning his
shoulder against the door-post, as my childish eyes had seen him
many a time; indeed, there was his old mark on the door-post yet,
as if his shadow had become a fixture there. It was he himself; he
might formerly have been an old-looking young man, or he might now
be a young-looking old man, but there he was. In walking along the
street, I had as yet looked in vain for a familiar face, or even a
transmitted face; here was the very greengrocer who had been
weighing and handling baskets on the morning of the reception. As
he brought with him a dawning remembrance that he had had no
proprietary interest in those babies, I crossed the road, and
accosted him on the subject. He was not in the least excited or
gratified, or in any way roused, by the accuracy of my
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recollection, but said, Yes, summut out of the common – he didn’t