away, and fell twice in going down-stairs. From that hour he was
never heard of. Whether he was a ghost, or a spectral illusion of
conscience, or a drunken man who had no business there, or the
drunken rightful owner of the furniture, with a transitory gleam of
memory; whether he got safe home, or had no time to get to; whether
he died of liquor on the way, or lived in liquor ever afterwards;
he never was heard of more. This was the story, received with the
furniture and held to be as substantial, by its second possessor in
an upper set of chambers in grim Lyons Inn.
It is to be remarked of chambers in general, that they must have
been built for chambers, to have the right kind of loneliness. You
may make a great dwelling-house very lonely, but isolating suites
of rooms and calling them chambers, but you cannot make the true
kind of loneliness. In dwelling-houses, there have been family
festivals; children have grown in them, girls have bloomed into
women in them, courtships and marriages have taken place in them.
True chambers never were young, childish, maidenly; never had dolls
in them, or rocking-horses, or christenings, or betrothals, or
little coffins. Let Gray’s Inn identify the child who first
touched hands and hearts with Robinson Crusoe, in any one of its
many ‘sets,’ and that child’s little statue, in white marble with a
golden inscription, shall be at its service, at my cost and charge,
as a drinking fountain for the spirit, to freshen its thirsty
square. Let Lincoln’s produce from all its houses, a twentieth of
the procession derivable from any dwelling-house one-twentieth of
its age, of fair young brides who married for love and hope, not
settlements, and all the Vice-Chancellors shall thenceforward be
kept in nosegays for nothing, on application to the writer hereof.
It is not denied that on the terrace of the Adelphi, or in any of
the streets of that subterranean-stable-haunted spot, or about
Bedford-row, or James-street of that ilk (a grewsome place), or
anywhere among the neighbourhoods that have done flowering and have
run to seed, you may find Chambers replete with the accommodations
of Solitude, Closeness, and Darkness, where you may be as lowspirited
as in the genuine article, and might be as easily
murdered, with the placid reputation of having merely gone down to
the sea-side. But, the many waters of life did run musical in
those dry channels once; – among the Inns, never. The only popular
legend known in relation to any one of the dull family of Inns, is
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
a dark Old Bailey whisper concerning Clement’s, and importing how
the black creature who holds the sun-dial there, was a negro who
slew his master and built the dismal pile out of the contents of
his strong box – for which architectural offence alone he ought to
have been condemned to live in it. But, what populace would waste
fancy upon such a place, or on New Inn, Staple Inn, Barnard’s Inn,
or any of the shabby crew?
The genuine laundress, too, is an institution not to be had in its
entirety out of and away from the genuine Chambers. Again, it is
not denied that you may be robbed elsewhere. Elsewhere you may
have – for money – dishonesty, drunkenness, dirt, laziness, and
profound incapacity. But the veritable shining-red-faced shameless
laundress; the true Mrs. Sweeney – in figure, colour, texture, and
smell, like the old damp family umbrella; the tip-top complicated
abomination of stockings, spirits, bonnet, limpness, looseness, and
larceny; is only to be drawn at the fountain-head. Mrs. Sweeney is
beyond the reach of individual art. It requires the united efforts
of several men to ensure that great result, and it is only
developed in perfection under an Honourable Society and in an Inn
of Court.
CHAPTER XV – NURSE’S STORIES
There are not many places that I find it more agreeable to revisit
when I am in an idle mood, than some places to which I have never
been. For, my acquaintance with those spots is of such long
standing, and has ripened into an intimacy of so affectionate a