________________________________________________
_ It is an unsettled question with me whether I shall leave Calais
something handsome in my will, or whether I shall leave it my
malediction. I hate it so much, and yet I am always so very glad
to see it, that I am in a state of constant indecision on this
subject. When I first made acquaintance with Calais, it was as a
maundering young wretch in a clammy perspiration and dripping
saline particles, who was conscious of no extremities but the one
great extremity, sea-sickness--who was a mere bilious torso, with a
mislaid headache somewhere in its stomach--who had been put into a
horrible swing in Dover Harbour, and had tumbled giddily out of it
on the French coast, or the Isle of Man, or anywhere. Times have
changed, and now I enter Calais self-reliant and rational. I know
where it is beforehand, I keep a look out for it, I recognise its
landmarks when I see any of them, I am acquainted with its ways,
and I know--and I can bear--its worst behaviour.
Malignant Calais! Low-lying alligator, evading the eyesight and
discouraging hope! Dodging flat streak, now on this bow, now on
that, now anywhere, now everywhere, now nowhere! In vain Cape
Grinez, coming frankly forth into the sea, exhorts the failing to
be stout of heart and stomach: sneaking Calais, prone behind its
bar, invites emetically to despair. Even when it can no longer
quite conceal itself in its muddy dock, it has an evil way of
falling off, has Calais, which is more hopeless than its
invisibility. The pier is all but on the bowsprit, and you think
you are there--roll, roar, wash!--Calais has retired miles inland,
and Dover has burst out to look for it. It has a last dip and
slide in its character, has Calais, to be especially commanded to
the infernal gods. Thrice accursed be that garrison-town, when it
dives under the boat's keel, and comes up a league or two to the
right, with the packet shivering and spluttering and staring about
for it!
Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly
detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed.
It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more
brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and
Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my
much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the
comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I
know it is a good house to stay at, and I don't want the fact
insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. I
know the Warden is a stationary edifice that never rolls or
pitches, and I object to its big outline seeming to insist upon
that circumstance, and, as it were, to come over me with it, when I
am reeling on the deck of the boat. Beshrew the Warden likewise,
for obstructing that corner, and making the wind so angry as it
rushes round. Shall I not know that it blows quite soon enough,
without the officious Warden's interference?
As I wait here on board the night packet, for the South-Eastern
Train to come down with the Mail, Dover appears to me to be
illuminated for some intensely aggravating festivity in my personal
dishonour. All its noises smack of taunting praises of the land,
and dispraises of the gloomy sea, and of me for going on it. The
drums upon the heights have gone to bed, or I know they would
rattle taunts against me for having my unsteady footing on this
slippery deck. The many gas eyes of the Marine Parade twinkle in
an offensive manner, as if with derision. The distant dogs of
Dover bark at me in my misshapen wrappers, as if I were Richard the
Third.
A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty
Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the
heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if
several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented by
circumstances over which they had no control from drinking
peaceably. We, the boat, become violently agitated--rumble, hum,
scream, roar, and establish an immense family washing-day at each
paddle-box. Bright patches break out in the train as the doors of
the post-office vans are opened, and instantly stooping figures
with sacks upon their backs begin to be beheld among the piles,
descending as it would seem in ghostly procession to Davy Jones's
Locker. The passengers come on board; a few shadowy Frenchmen,
with hatboxes shaped like the stoppers of gigantic case-bottles; a
few shadowy Germans in immense fur coats and boots; a few shadowy
Englishmen prepared for the worst and pretending not to expect it.
I cannot disguise from my uncommercial mind the miserable fact that
we are a body of outcasts; that the attendants on us are as scant
in number as may serve to get rid of us with the least possible
delay; that there are no night-loungers interested in us; that the
unwilling lamps shiver and shudder at us; that the sole object is
to commit us to the deep and abandon us. Lo, the two red eyes
glaring in increasing distance, and then the very train itself has
gone to bed before we are off!
What is the moral support derived by some sea-going amateurs from
an umbrella? Why do certain voyagers across the Channel always put
up that article, and hold it up with a grim and fierce tenacity? A
fellow-creature near me--whom I only know to BE a fellow-creature,
because of his umbrella: without which he might be a dark bit of
cliff, pier, or bulkbead--clutches that instrument with a desperate
grasp, that will not relax until he lands at Calais. Is there any
analogy, in certain constitutions, between keeping an umbrella up,
and keeping the spirits up? A hawser thrown on board with a flop
replies 'Stand by!' 'Stand by, below!' 'Half a turn a head!'
'Half a turn a head!' 'Half speed!' 'Half speed!' 'Port!'
'Port!' 'Steady!' 'Steady!' 'Go on!' 'Go on!'
A stout wooden wedge driven in at my right temple and out at my
left, a floating deposit of lukewarm oil in my throat, and a
compression of the bridge of my nose in a blunt pair of pincers,--
these are the personal sensations by which I know we are off, and
by which I shall continue to know it until I am on the soil of
France. My symptoms have scarcely established themselves
comfortably, when two or three skating shadows that have been
trying to walk or stand, get flung together, and other two or three
shadows in tarpaulin slide with them into corners and cover them
up. Then the South Foreland lights begin to hiccup at us in a way
that bodes no good.
It is at about this period that my detestation of Calais knows no
bounds. Inwardly I resolve afresh that I never will forgive that
hated town. I have done so before, many times, but that is past.
Let me register a vow. Implacable animosity to Calais everm- that
was an awkward sea, and the funnel seems of my opinion, for it
gives a complaining roar.
The wind blows stiffly from the Nor-East, the sea runs high, we
ship a deal of water, the night is dark and cold, and the shapeless
passengers lie about in melancholy bundles, as if they were sorted
out for the laundress; but for my own uncommercial part I cannot
pretend that I am much inconvenienced by any of these things. A
general howling, whistling, flopping, gurgling, and scooping, I am
aware of, and a general knocking about of Nature; but the
impressions I receive are very vague. In a sweet faint temper,
something like the smell of damaged oranges, I think I should feel
languidly benevolent if I had time. I have not time, because I am
under a curious compulsion to occupy myself with the Irish
melodies. 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore,' is the
particular melody to which I find myself devoted. I sing it to
myself in the most charming manner and with the greatest
expression. Now and then, I raise my head (I am sitting on the
hardest of wet seats, in the most uncomfortable of wet attitudes,
but I don't mind it,) and notice that I am a whirling shuttlecock
between a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the French coast and
a fiery battledore of a lighthouse on the English coast; but I
don't notice it particularly, except to feel envenomed in my hatred
of Calais. Then I go on again, 'Rich and rare were the ge-ems she-
e-e-e wore, And a bright gold ring on her wa-and she bo-ore, But O
her beauty was fa-a-a-a-r beyond'--I am particularly proud of my
execution here, when I become aware of another awkward shock from
the sea, and another protest from the funnel, and a fellow-creature
at the paddle-box more audibly indisposed than I think he need be--
'Her sparkling gems, or snow-white wand, But O her beauty was fa-a-
a-a-a-r beyond'--another awkward one here, and the fellow-creature
with the umbrella down and picked up--'Her spa-a-rkling ge-ems, or
her Port! port! steady! steady! snow-white fellow-creature at the
paddle-box very selfishly audible, bump, roar, wash, white wand.'
As my execution of the Irish melodies partakes of my imperfect
perceptions of what is going on around me, so what is going on
around me becomes something else than what it is. The stokers open
the furnace doors below, to feed the fires, and I am again on the
box of the old Exeter Telegraph fast coach, and that is the light
of the for ever extinguished coach-lamps, and the gleam on the
hatches and paddle-boxes is THEIR gleam on cottages and haystacks,
and the monotonous noise of the engines is the steady jingle of the
splendid team. Anon, the intermittent funnel roar of protest at
every violent roll, becomes the regular blast of a high pressure
engine, and I recognise the exceedingly explosive steamer in which
I ascended the Mississippi when the American civil war was not, and
when only its causes were. A fragment of mast on which the light
of a lantern falls, an end of rope, and a jerking block or so,
become suggestive of Franconi's Circus at Paris where I shall be
this very night mayhap (for it must be morning now), and they dance
to the self-same time and tune as the trained steed, Black Raven.
What may be the speciality of these waves as they come rushing on,
I cannot desert the pressing demands made upon me by the gems she
wore, to inquire, but they are charged with something about
Robinson Crusoe, and I think it was in Yarmouth Roads that he first
went a seafaring and was near foundering (what a terrific sound
that word had for me when I was a boy!) in his first gale of wind.
Still, through all this, I must ask her (who WAS she I wonder!) for
the fiftieth time, and without ever stopping, Does she not fear to
stray, So lone and lovely through this bleak way, And are Erin's
sons so good or so cold, As not to be tempted by more fellow-
creatures at the paddle-box or gold? Sir Knight I feel not the
least alarm, No son of Erin will offer me harm, For though they
love fellow-creature with umbrella down again and golden store, Sir
Knight they what a tremendous one love honour and virtue more: For
though they love Stewards with a bull's eye bright, they'll trouble
you for your ticket, sir-rough passage to-night!
I freely admit it to be a miserable piece of human weakness and
inconsistency, but I no sooner become conscious of those last words
from the steward than I begin to soften towards Calais. Whereas I
have been vindictively wishing that those Calais burghers who came
out of their town by a short cut into the History of England, with
those fatal ropes round their necks by which they have since been
towed into so many cartoons, had all been hanged on the spot, I now
begin to regard them as highly respectable and virtuous tradesmen.
Looking about me, I see the light of Cape Grinez well astern of the
boat on the davits to leeward, and the light of Calais Harbour
undeniably at its old tricks, but still ahead and shining.
Sentiments of forgiveness of Calais, not to say of attachment to
Calais, begin to expand my bosom. I have weak notions that I will
stay there a day or two on my way back. A faded and recumbent
stranger pausing in a profound reverie over the rim of a basin,
asks me what kind of place Calais is? I tell him (Heaven forgive
me!) a very agreeable place indeed--rather hilly than otherwise.
So strangely goes the time, and on the whole so quickly--though
still I seem to have been on board a week--that I am bumped,
rolled, gurgled, washed and pitched into Calais Harbour before her
maiden smile has finally lighted her through the Green Isle, When
blest for ever is she who relied, On entering Calais at the top of
the tide. For we have not to land to-night down among those slimy
timbers--covered with green hair as if it were the mermaids'
favourite combing-place--where one crawls to the surface of the
jetty, like a stranded shrimp, but we go steaming up the harbour to
the Railway Station Quay. And as we go, the sea washes in and out
among piles and planks, with dead heavy beats and in quite a
furious manner (whereof we are proud), and the lamps shake in the
wind, and the bells of Calais striking One seem to send their
vibrations struggling against troubled air, as we have come
struggling against troubled water. And now, in the sudden relief
and wiping of faces, everybody on board seems to have had a
prodigious double-tooth out, and to be this very instant free of
the Dentist's hands. And now we all know for the first time how
wet and cold we are, and how salt we are; and now I love Calais
with my heart of hearts!
'Hotel Dessin!' (but in this one case it is not a vocal cry; it is
but a bright lustre in the eyes of the cheery representative of
that best of inns). 'Hotel Meurice!' 'Hotel de France!' 'Hotel
de Calais!' 'The Royal Hotel, Sir, Angaishe ouse!' 'You going to
Parry, Sir?' 'Your baggage, registair froo, Sir?' Bless ye, my
Touters, bless ye, my commissionaires, bless ye, my hungry-eyed
mysteries in caps of a military form, who are always here, day or
night, fair weather or foul, seeking inscrutable jobs which I never
see you get! Bless ye, my Custom House officers in green and grey;
permit me to grasp the welcome hands that descend into my
travelling-bag, one on each side, and meet at the bottom to give my
change of linen a peculiar shake up, as if it were a measure of
chaff or grain! I have nothing to declare, Monsieur le Douanier,
except that when I cease to breathe, Calais will be found written
on my heart. No article liable to local duty have I with me,
Monsieur l'Officier de l'Octroi, unless the overflowing of a breast
devoted to your charming town should be in that wise chargeable.
Ah! see at the gangway by the twinkling lantern, my dearest brother
and friend, he once of the Passport Office, he who collects the
names! May he be for ever changeless in his buttoned black
surtout, with his note-book in his hand, and his tall black hat,
surmounting his round, smiling, patient face! Let us embrace, my
dearest brother. I am yours a tout jamais--for the whole of ever.
Calais up and doing at the railway station, and Calais down and
dreaming in its bed; Calais with something of 'an ancient and fish-
like smell' about it, and Calais blown and sea-washed pure; Calais
represented at the Buffet by savoury roast fowls, hot coffee,
cognac, and Bordeaux; and Calais represented everywhere by flitting
persons with a monomania for changing money--though I never shall
be able to understand in my present state of existence how they
live by it, but I suppose I should, if I understood the currency
question--Calais en gros, and Calais en detail, forgive one who has
deeply wronged you.--I was not fully aware of it on the other side,
but I meant Dover.
Ding, ding! To the carriages, gentlemen the travellers. Ascend
then, gentlemen the travellers, for Hazebroucke, Lille, Douai,
Bruxelles, Arras, Amiens, and Paris! I, humble representative of
the uncommercial interest, ascend with the rest. The train is
light to-night, and I share my compartment with but two fellow-
travellers; one, a compatriot in an obsolete cravat, who thinks it
a quite unaccountable thing that they don't keep 'London time' on a
French railway, and who is made angry by my modestly suggesting the
possibility of Paris time being more in their way; the other, a
young priest, with a very small bird in a very small cage, who
feeds the small bird with a quill, and then puts him up in the
network above his head, where he advances twittering, to his front
wires, and seems to address me in an electioneering manner. The
compatriot (who crossed in the boat, and whom I judge to be some
person of distinction, as he was shut up, like a stately species of
rabbit, in a private hutch on deck) and the young priest (who
joined us at Calais) are soon asleep, and then the bird and I have
it all to ourselves.
A stormy night still; a night that sweeps the wires of the electric
telegraph with a wild and fitful hand; a night so very stormy, with
the added storm of the train-progress through it, that when the
Guard comes clambering round to mark the tickets while we are at
full speed (a really horrible performance in an express train,
though he holds on to the open window by his elbows in the most
deliberate manner), he stands in such a whirlwind that I grip him
fast by the collar, and feel it next to manslaughter to let him go.
Still, when he is gone, the small, small bird remains at his front
wires feebly twittering to me--twittering and twittering, until,
leaning back in my place and looking at him in drowsy fascination,
I find that he seems to jog my memory as we rush along.
Uncommercial travels (thus the small, small bird) have lain in
their idle thriftless way through all this range of swamp and dyke,
as through many other odd places; and about here, as you very well
know, are the queer old stone farm-houses, approached by
drawbridges, and the windmills that you get at by boats. Here, are
the lands where the women hoe and dig, paddling canoe-wise from
field to field, and here are the cabarets and other peasant-houses
where the stone dove-cotes in the littered yards are as strong as
warders' towers in old castles. Here, are the long monotonous
miles of canal, with the great Dutch-built barges garishly painted,
and the towing girls, sometimes harnessed by the forehead,
sometimes by the girdle and the shoulders, not a pleasant sight to
see. Scattered through this country are mighty works of VAUBAN,
whom you know about, and regiments of such corporals as you heard
of once upon a time, and many a blue-eyed Bebelle. Through these
flat districts, in the shining summer days, walk those long,
grotesque files of young novices in enormous shovel-hats, whom you
remember blackening the ground checkered by the avenues of leafy
trees. And now that Hazebroucke slumbers certain kilometres ahead,
recall the summer evening when your dusty feet strolling up from
the station tended hap-hazard to a Fair there, where the oldest
inhabitants were circling round and round a barrel-organ on hobby-
horses, with the greatest gravity, and where the principal show in
the Fair was a Religious Richardson's--literally, on its own
announcement in great letters, THEATRE RELIGIEUX. In which
improving Temple, the dramatic representation was of 'all the
interesting events in the life of our Lord, from the Manger to the
Tomb;' the principal female character, without any reservation or
exception, being at the moment of your arrival, engaged in trimming
the external Moderators (as it was growing dusk), while the next
principal female character took the money, and the Young Saint John
disported himself upside down on the platform.
Looking up at this point to confirm the small, small bird in every
particular he has mentioned, I find he has ceased to twitter, and
has put his head under his wing. Therefore, in my different way I
follow the good example. _
Read next: CHAPTER XIX - SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF MORTALITY
Read previous: CHAPTER XVII - THE ITALIAN PRISONER
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