flavour in them) cheese. I know their name, through the chance of
having called the wife’s attention, at half-past nine on the second
evening of our acquaintance, to the circumstance of there being
some one at the house door; when she apologetically explained,
‘It’s only Mr. Klem.’ What becomes of Mr. Klem all day, or when he
goes out, or why, is a mystery I cannot penetrate; but at half-past
nine he never fails to turn up on the door-step with the flat pint
of beer. And the pint of beer, flat as it is, is so much more
important than himself, that it always seems to my fancy as if it
had found him drivelling in the street and had humanely brought him
home. In making his way below, Mr. Klem never goes down the middle
of the passage, like another Christian, but shuffles against the
wall as if entreating me to take notice that he is occupying as
little space as possible in the house; and whenever I come upon him
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
face to face, he backs from me in fascinated confusion. The most
extraordinary circumstance I have traced in connexion with this
aged couple, is, that there is a Miss Klem, their daughter,
apparently ten years older than either of them, who has also a bed
and smells of it, and carries it about the earth at dusk and hides
it in deserted houses. I came into this piece of knowledge through
Mrs. Klem’s beseeching me to sanction the sheltering of Miss Klem
under that roof for a single night, ‘between her takin’ care of the
upper part in Pall Mall which the family of his back, and a ‘ouse
in Serjameses-street, which the family of leaves towng ter-morrer.’
I gave my gracious consent (having nothing that I know of to do
with it), and in the shadowy hours Miss Klem became perceptible on
the door-step, wrestling with a bed in a bundle. Where she made it
up for the night I cannot positively state, but, I think, in a
sink. I know that with the instinct of a reptile or an insect, she
stowed it and herself away in deep obscurity. In the Klem family,
I have noticed another remarkable gift of nature, and that is a
power they possess of converting everything into flue. Such broken
victuals as they take by stealth, appear (whatever the nature of
the viands) invariably to generate flue; and even the nightly pint
of beer, instead of assimilating naturally, strikes me as breaking
out in that form, equally on the shabby gown of Mrs. Klem, and the
threadbare coat of her husband.
Mrs. Klem has no idea of my name – as to Mr. Klem he has no idea of
anything – and only knows me as her good gentleman. Thus, if
doubtful whether I am in my room or no, Mrs. Klem taps at the door
and says, ‘Is my good gentleman here?’ Or, if a messenger desiring
to see me were consistent with my solitude, she would show him in
with ‘Here is my good gentleman.’ I find this to be a generic
custom. For, I meant to have observed before now, that in its
Arcadian time all my part of London is indistinctly pervaded by the
Klem species. They creep about with beds, and go to bed in miles
of deserted houses. They hold no companionship except that
sometimes, after dark, two of them will emerge from opposite
houses, and meet in the middle of the road as on neutral ground, or
will peep from adjoining houses over an interposing barrier of area
railings, and compare a few reserved mistrustful notes respecting
their good ladies or good gentlemen. This I have discovered in the
course of various solitary rambles I have taken Northward from my
retirement, along the awful perspectives of Wimpole-street, Harleystreet,
and similar frowning regions. Their effect would be
scarcely distinguishable from that of the primeval forests, but for
the Klem stragglers; these may be dimly observed, when the heavy
shadows fall, flitting to and fro, putting up the door-chain,
taking in the pint of beer, lowering like phantoms at the dark
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