Reprinted Pieces. Чарльз Диккенс
– enforcing the benevolent moral, ‘Better to be bald as a Dutch cheese than come to this,’ – undoes me. Have I no sore places in my mind which Mechi touches – which Nicoll probes – which no registered article whatever lacerates? Does no discordant note within me thrill responsive to mysterious watchwords, as ‘Revalenta Arabica,’ or ‘Number One St. Paul’s Churchyard’? Then may I enjoy life, and be happy.
Lifting up my eyes, as I was musing to this effect, I beheld advancing towards me (I was then on Cornhill, near to the Royal Exchange), a solemn procession of three advertising vans, of first-class dimensions, each drawn by a very little horse. As the cavalcade approached, I was at a loss to reconcile the careless deportment of the drivers of these vehicles, with the terrific announcements they conducted through the city, which being a summary of the contents of a Sunday newspaper, were of the most thrilling kind. Robbery, fire, murder, and the ruin of the United Kingdom – each discharged in a line by itself, like a separate broad-side of red-hot shot – were among the least of the warnings addressed to an unthinking people. Yet, the Ministers of Fate who drove the awful cars, leaned forward with their arms upon their knees in a state of extreme lassitude, for want of any subject of interest. The first man, whose hair I might naturally have expected to see standing on end, scratched his head – one of the smoothest I ever beheld – with profound indifference. The second whistled. The third yawned.
Pausing to dwell upon this apathy, it appeared to me, as the fatal cars came by me, that I descried in the second car, through the portal in which the charioteer was seated, a figure stretched upon the floor. At the same time, I thought I smelt tobacco. The latter impression passed quickly from me; the former remained. Curious to know whether this prostrate figure was the one impressible man of the whole capital who had been stricken insensible by the terrors revealed to him, and whose form had been placed in the car by the charioteer, from motives of humanity, I followed the procession. It turned into Leadenhall-market, and halted at a public-house. Each driver dismounted. I then distinctly heard, proceeding from the second car, where I had dimly seen the prostrate form, the words:
‘And a pipe!’
The driver entering the public-house with his fellows, apparently for purposes of refreshment, I could not refrain from mounting on the shaft of the second vehicle, and looking in at the portal. I then beheld, reclining on his back upon the floor, on a kind of mattress or divan, a little man in a shooting-coat. The exclamation ‘Dear me’ which irresistibly escaped my lips caused him to sit upright, and survey me. I found him to be a good-looking little man of about fifty, with a shining face, a tight head, a bright eye, a moist wink, a quick speech, and a ready air. He had something of a sporting way with him.
He looked at me, and I looked at him, until the driver displaced me by handing in a pint of beer, a pipe, and what I understand is called ‘a screw’ of tobacco – an object which has the appearance of a curl-paper taken off the barmaid’s head, with the curl in it.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said I, when the removed person of the driver again admitted of my presenting my face at the portal. ‘But – excuse my curiosity, which I inherit from my mother – do you live here?’
‘That’s good, too!’ returned the little man, composedly laying aside a pipe he had smoked out, and filling the pipe just brought to him.
‘Oh, you don’t live here then?’ said I.
He shook his head, as he calmly lighted his pipe by means of a German tinder-box, and replied, ‘This is my carriage. When things are flat, I take a ride sometimes, and enjoy myself. I am the inventor of these wans.’
His pipe was now alight. He drank his beer all at once, and he smoked and he smiled at me.
‘It was a great idea!’ said I.
‘Not so bad,’ returned the little man, with the modesty of merit.
‘Might I be permitted to inscribe your name upon the tablets of my memory?’ I asked.
‘There’s not much odds in the name,’ returned the little man, ‘ – no name particular – I am the King of the Bill-Stickers.’
‘Good gracious!’ said I.
The monarch informed me, with a smile, that he had never been crowned or installed with any public ceremonies, but that he was peaceably acknowledged as King of the Bill-Stickers in right of being the oldest and most respected member of ‘the old school of bill-sticking.’ He likewise gave me to understand that there was a Lord Mayor of the Bill-Stickers, whose genius was chiefly exercised within the limits of the city. He made some allusion, also, to an inferior potentate, called ‘Turkey-legs;’ but I did not understand that this gentleman was invested with much power. I rather inferred that he derived his title from some peculiarity of gait, and that it was of an honorary character.
‘My father,’ pursued the King of the Bill-Stickers, ‘was Engineer, Beadle, and Bill-Sticker to the parish of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. My father stuck bills at the time of the riots of London.’
‘You must be acquainted with the whole subject of bill-sticking, from that time to the present!’ said I.
‘Pretty well so,’ was the answer.
‘Excuse me,’ said I; ‘but I am a sort of collector – ’
‘‘Not Income-tax?’ cried His Majesty, hastily removing his pipe from his lips.
‘No, no,’ said I.
‘Water-rate?’ said His Majesty.
‘No, no,’ I returned.
‘Gas? Assessed? Sewers?’ said His Majesty.
‘You misunderstand me,’ I replied, soothingly. ‘Not that sort of collector at all: a collector of facts.’
‘Oh, if it’s only facts,’ cried the King of the Bill-Stickers, recovering his good-humour, and banishing the great mistrust that had suddenly fallen upon him, ‘come in and welcome! If it had been income, or winders, I think I should have pitched you out of the wan, upon my soul!’
Readily complying with the invitation, I squeezed myself in at the small aperture. His Majesty, graciously handing me a little three-legged stool on which I took my seat in a corner, inquired if I smoked.
‘I do; – that is, I can,’ I answered.
‘Pipe and a screw!’ said His Majesty to the attendant charioteer. ‘Do you prefer a dry smoke, or do you moisten it?’
As unmitigated tobacco produces most disturbing effects upon my system (indeed, if I had perfect moral courage, I doubt if I should smoke at all, under any circumstances), I advocated moisture, and begged the Sovereign of the Bill-Stickers to name his usual liquor, and to concede to me the privilege of paying for it. After some delicate reluctance on his part, we were provided, through the instrumentality of the attendant charioteer, with a can of cold rum-and-water, flavoured with sugar and lemon. We were also furnished with a tumbler, and I was provided with a pipe. His Majesty, then observing that we might combine business with conversation, gave the word for the car to proceed; and, to my great delight, we jogged away at a foot pace.
I say to my great delight, because I am very fond of novelty, and it was a new sensation to be jolting through the tumult of the city in that secluded Temple, partly open to the sky, surrounded by the roar without, and seeing nothing but the clouds. Occasionally, blows from whips fell heavily on the Temple’s walls, when by stopping up the road longer than usual, we irritated carters and coachmen to madness; but they fell harmless upon us within and disturbed not the serenity of our peaceful retreat. As I looked upward, I felt, I should imagine, like the Astronomer Royal. I was enchanted by the contrast between the freezing nature of our external mission on the blood of the populace, and the perfect composure reigning within those sacred precincts: where His Majesty, reclining easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe and drank his rum-and-water from his own side of the tumbler, which stood impartially between us. As I looked down from the clouds and caught his royal eye, he understood my reflections. ‘I have an idea,’ he observed, with an upward glance, ‘of training scarlet runners across in the season, – making a arbour of it, – and sometimes