Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller

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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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