doors in Greek caps, sample in hand, and mysteriously salute the
public – the female public with a pressing tenderness – to come in
and be ‘took’? What did they do with their greasy blandishments,
before the era of cheap photography? Of what class were their
previous victims, and how victimised? And how did they get, and
how did they pay for, that large collection of likenesses, all
purporting to have been taken inside, with the taking of none of
which had that establishment any more to do than with the taking of
Delhi?
But, these are small oases, and I am soon back again in
metropolitan Arcadia. It is my impression that much of its serene
and peaceful character is attributable to the absence of customary
Talk. How do I know but there may be subtle influences in Talk, to
vex the souls of men who don’t hear it? How do I know but that
Talk, five, ten, twenty miles off, may get into the air and
Page 103
Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
disagree with me? If I rise from my bed, vaguely troubled and
wearied and sick of my life, in the session of Parliament, who
shall say that my noble friend, my right reverend friend, my right
honourable friend, my honourable friend, my honourable and learned
friend, or my honourable and gallant friend, may not be responsible
for that effect upon my nervous system? Too much Ozone in the air,
I am informed and fully believe (though I have no idea what it is),
would affect me in a marvellously disagreeable way; why may not too
much Talk? I don’t see or hear the Ozone; I don’t see or hear the
Talk. And there is so much Talk; so much too much; such loud cry,
and such scant supply of wool; such a deal of fleecing, and so
little fleece! Hence, in the Arcadian season, I find it a
delicious triumph to walk down to deserted Westminster, and see the
Courts shut up; to walk a little further and see the Two Houses
shut up; to stand in the Abbey Yard, like the New Zealander of the
grand English History (concerning which unfortunate man, a whole
rookery of mares’ nests is generally being discovered), and gloat
upon the ruins of Talk. Returning to my primitive solitude and
lying down to sleep, my grateful heart expands with the
consciousness that there is no adjourned Debate, no ministerial
explanation, nobody to give notice of intention to ask the noble
Lord at the head of her Majesty’s Government five-and-twenty
bootless questions in one, no term time with legal argument, no
Nisi Prius with eloquent appeal to British Jury; that the air will
to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, remain untroubled by this
superabundant generating of Talk. In a minor degree it is a
delicious triumph to me to go into the club, and see the carpets
up, and the Bores and the other dust dispersed to the four winds.
Again, New Zealander-like, I stand on the cold hearth, and say in
the solitude, ‘Here I watched Bore A 1, with voice always
mysteriously low and head always mysteriously drooped, whispering
political secrets into the ears of Adam’s confiding children.
Accursed be his memory for ever and a day!’
But, I have all this time been coming to the point, that the happy
nature of my retirement is most sweetly expressed in its being the
abode of Love. It is, as it were, an inexpensive Agapemone:
nobody’s speculation: everybody’s profit. The one great result of
the resumption of primitive habits, and (convertible terms) the not
having much to do, is, the abounding of Love.
The Klem species are incapable of the softer emotions; probably, in
that low nomadic race, the softer emotions have all degenerated
into flue. But, with this exception, all the sharers of my retreat
make love.
I have mentioned Saville-row. We all know the Doctor’s servant.
We all know what a respectable man he is, what a hard dry man, what
a firm man, what a confidential man: how he lets us into the
waiting-room, like a man who knows minutely what is the matter with
us, but from whom the rack should not wring the secret. In the