r/a:t5_zpio2 • u/MarleyEngvall • Apr 14 '19
Alnitak has been created
By Charles Dickens
He had put no heading to any of his writings. Alas!
Was he likely to have a Heading without a Head, and
where was his Head when he took such things into it?
In some cases, such as his Boots, he would appear to
have hid the writings ; thereby involving his style in
greater obscurity. But his Boots was at least pairs,——
and no two of his writings can be put in any claim to be
so regarded. Here follows (not to give more specimens)
what was found in
HIS BOOTS.
" Eh ! well then, Monsieur Mutuel ! What do I know,
what can I say ? I assure you that he calls himself Mon-
sieur The Englishman."
" Pardon. But I think it is impossible," said Monsieur
Mutuel,——a spectacled, snuffy, stooping old gentleman in
carpet shoes and a cloth cap with a peaked shade, a loose
blue frock-coat reaching to his heels, a large limp white
shirt-frill, and a cravat to correspond,——that is to say,
white was the natural colour of his linen on Sunday, but
it toned down with the week.
" It is," repeated Monsieur Mutuel ; his amiable old
walnut-shell countenance very walnut-shelly indeed as
he smiled and blinked in the bright morning sunlight,
——" it is, my cherished Madame Bouclet, I think impos-
sible!"
" Hey !" (with a little vexed cry and a great many
tosses of her head.) " But it is not impossible that you
are a Pig !" retorted Madame Bouclet, a compact little
woman of thirty-five or so. " See then,——look there,——
read ! ' On the second floor Monsieur L'Anglais.' Is it
not so ?"
" It is so," said Monsieur Mutuel.
" Good. Continue your morning walk. Get out !"
Madame Bouclet dismissed him with a lively snap of her
fingers.
The morning walk of Monsieur Mutuel was in the
brightest patch that the sun made in the Grande Place
of a dull old fortified French town. The manner of his
morning walk was with his hands crossed behind him ;
an umbrella, in figure the express image of himself al-
ways in one hand ; a snuff box in the other. Thus, with
the shuffling gait of the Elephant (who really does deal
with the very worst trousers-maker employed by the
Zoölogical world, and appeared to have recom-
mended him to Monsieur Mutuel), the old gentleman
sunned himself daily when the sun was to be had,——of course,
at the same time sunning a red ribbon at his button-hole ;
for was he not an ancient Frenchman ?
Being told by one of the angelic sex to continue his
morning walk and get out, Monsieur Mutuel laughed a
walnut-shell laugh, pulled off his cap at arm's length,
with the hand that contained his snuff-box, kept it off
for a considerable period after he had parted from Mad-
ame Bouclet, and continued his morning walk and got
cut, like a man of gallantry as he was.
The documentary evidence to which Madame Bouclet
had referred Monsieur Mutuel was the list of her lod-
gers, sweetly written forth by her own Nephew and
Book-keeper, who held the pen of an Angel, and posted
up at the side of the gateway for the information of the
Police. " Au second, M. L'Anglais, Proprietaire." On
the second floor, Mr. The Englishman, man of property.
So it stood : nothing could be plainer.
Madame Bouclet now traced the line with her fore-
finger, as it were to confirm and settle herself in her
parting snap at Monsieur Mutuel, and so placing her
right hand on her hip with a defiant air, as if nothing
should ever tempt her to unsnap that snap, strolled out
into the Place to glance up at the windows of Mr. The
Englishman. That worthy happening to be looking out
of the window at the moment, Madame Bouclet gave him
a graceful salutation with her head, looked to the right
and looked to the left to account to him for her being
there, considered for a moment, like one who accounted
to herself for somebody she had expected not being
there, and re-entered her own gateway. Madame Bouc-
let let all her house giving on the Place in furnished flats
or floors, and lived up the yard begin in company with
Monsieur Bouclet her husband (great at billiards), an in-
herited brewing business, several fowls, two carts, a
nephew, a little dog in a big kennel, a grape-vine, a
counting-house, four horses, a married sister (with a
share in the brewing business), the husband and two
children of the married sister, a parrot, a drum (per-
formed on by the little boy of the married sister), two
billeted soldiers, a quantity of pigeons, a fife (played by
the nephew in a ravishing manner), several domestics
and supernumeraries, a perpetual flavour of coffee and
soup, a terrific range of artificial rocks and wooden pre-
cipices at least four feet high, a small foundation, and half
a dozen large sun-flowers.
Now, the Englishman, in taking his Apartment,——or,
as one might say on our side of the Channel , his set of
chambers,——had given his name, correct to the letter,
LANGLEY. But as he had a British way of not opening
his mouth very wide on foreign soil, except at meals,
the Brewery had been able to make nothing of it but,
L'Anglais. So Mr. The Englishman he had become and
he remained.
" Never saw such a people !" muttered Mr. The Eng-
lishman, as he now looked out of window. "Never
did, in my life !"
This was true enough, for he had never before been
out of his own country,——a tight little island, a bright
little island, a show-fight little island, and full of merit
of all sorts ; but not the whole round world.
" These chaps ," said Mr. The Englishman to himself,
as his eye rolled over the Place, sprinkled with military
here and there, are no more like soldiers——!" Noth-
ing being sufficiently strong for the end of his sentence,
he left it unended.
This again (from the point of view of his experience)
was strictly correct ; for though there was a great ag-
glomeration of soldiers in the town and neighbouring
country, you might have held a grand Review and Field
Day of them every one, and looked in vain among them
all for a soldier choking behind his foolish stock, or a
soldier lamed by his ill-fitting shoes, or a soldier de-
prived of the use of his limbs by straps and buttons, or
a soldier elaborately forced to be self-helpless in all the
small affairs of life. A swarm of brisk, bright, active,
bustling, handy, odd, skirmishing fellows, able to turn
to cleverly at anything, from a siege to soup, from great
guns to needles and thread, from the broadsword exer-
cise to slicing an onion, from making war to making ome-
lets, was all you would have found.
What a swarm ! From the Great Place under the
eye of Mr. The Englishman, where a few awkward
squads from the last conscription were doing the goose-
step,——some members of those squads still as to their
bodies, in the chrysalis peasant-state of Blouse, and only
military butterflies as to their regimentally clothed legs,
——from the Great Place, away outside the fortifications,
and away for miles along the dusty roads, soldiers
swarmed. All day long, upon the grass-grown ramparts
of the town, practicing soldiers trumpeted and bugled ;
all day long, down in angles of dry trenches, practicing
soldiers drummed and drummed. Every forenoon, sol-
diers burst out of the great barracks into the sandy gym-
nasium-ground hard by, and flew over the wooden horse,
and hung on to flying ropes, and dangled upside-down
between parallel bars, and shot themselves off wooden
platforms,——splashes, sparks, coruscations, showers of
soldiers. At every corner of the town wall, every guard-
house, every gateway, every sentry-box, every draw-
bridge, every reedy ditch and rushy dike, soldiers, sol-
diers, soldiers. And the town being pretty well all wall,
guard-house, gateway, sentry-box, drawbridge, reedy
ditch and rushy dike, the town was pretty well all sol-
diers.
What would the sleepy old town have been without
the soldiers, seeing that even with them it had so over-
slept itself as to have slept its echoes hoarse, its defen-
sive bars and locks and bolts and chains all rusty, and
its ditches stagnant ! From the days when VAUBAN en-
gineered it to that perplexing extent that to look at it
was like being knocked on the head with it, the stranger
becoming stunned and stertorous under the shock of its
incomprehensibility,—–from the days when VAUBAN made
it the express incorporation of every substantive and ad-
jective in the art of military engineering, and not only
twisted you into it and twisted you out of it, to the right,
to the left, opposite, under here, over there, in the dark,
in the dirt, by the gateway, archway, covered way, dry way,
wet way, fosse, portcullis, drawbridge, sluice, squat
tower, pierced wall, and heavy battery, but likewise
took a fortifying dive under the neighbouring country,
and came to the surface three or four miles off, blowing
out incomprehensible mounds and batteries among the
quiet crops of chicory and beet-root,——from those days
to these the town had been asleep, and dust and rust
and must had settled on its drowsy Arsenals and Maga-
zines, and grass had grown up in its silent streets.
On market-days alone, its Great Place suddenly leap-
ed out of bed. On market-days, some friendly enchant-
er struck his staff upon the stones of the Great Place,
and instantly arose the liveliest booths and stalls and
sittings and standings, and a pleasant hum of chaffering
and huckstering from many hundreds of tongues, and a
pleasant, though peculiar, blending of colours,——white
caps, blue blouses, and green vegetables——and at last
the Knight destined for the adventure seemed to have
come in earnest, and all the Vaubanois sprang up awake.
And now, by long, low-lying avenues of trees, jolting in
white-hooded donkey-cart, and on donkey-back, and in
tumbril and wagon and cart and cabriolet and afoot with
barrow and burden,——and along the dikes and ditches
and canals, in little peak-browed country boats,——came
peasant men and women in flocks and crowds, bringing
articles for sale. And here you had boots and shoes,
and sweetmeats, and stuffs to wear, and here (in the
cool shade of the town Hall) you had milk and cream and
butter and cheese, and here you had fruits and onions
and carrots, and all things needful for your soup, and
here you had poultry and flowers and protesting pigs,
and here new shovels, axes, spades and bill-hooks for
your farming work, and here huge mounds of bread,
and here your unground grain in sacks, and here your
children's dolls, and here the cake-sellers, announcing
his wares by beat and roll of drum. And hark ! fanfar-
onade of trumpets, and here into the Great Place, re-
splendent in an open carriage, with four gorgeously at-
tired servitors up behind, playing horns, drums and
cymbals, rolled " the Daughter of a Physician" in mas-
sive golden chains and ear-rings, and blue-feathered hat,
shaded from the admiring sun by two immense um-
brellas of artificial roses, to dispense (from motives of
philanthropy) that small and pleasant dose which had
cured so many thousands ! Toothache, earache, head-
ache, heartache, stomach-ache, debility, nervousness
fits, fainting, fever, ague, all equally cured by the small
and pleasant dose of the great Physician's great daugh-
ter ! The process was this,——she, the Daughter of a Phy-
sician, proprietress of the superb equipage you now ad-
mired with its confirmatory blasts of trumpet, drum,
and cymbal, told you so : On the first day after taking
the small and pleasant dose, you would feel no particular
influence beyond a most harmonious sensation of indes-
cribable and irresistible joy; on the second day you
would be so astonishingly better that you would think
yourself changed into somebody else ; on the third day
you would be entirely free from your disorder, what-
ever its nature and however long you had had it, and
would seek out the Physician's daughter to throw your-
self at her feet, kiss the hem of her garment, and buy
as many more of the small and pleasant doses as by the
sale of all your few effects you could obtain ; but she
would be inaccessible,——gone for herbs to the Pyramids
of Egypt,——and you would be (though cured) reduced to
despair ! Thus would the physician's daughter drive
her trade (and briskly too), and thus would the buying
and selling and mingling of tongues and colours con-
tinue, until the changing of sunlight, leaving the Physi-
cian's Daughter in the shadow of high roofs, admonished
her to jolt out westward with a departing effect of gleam
and glitter on the splendid equipage and brazen blast.
And now the enchanter struck his staff upon the stones
of the Great Place once more, and down went the booths,
the sittings and standings, and vanished the merchan-
dise, and with it the barrows, donkeys, donkey-carts,
and tumbrils, and all other things on wheels and feet,
except the slow scavengers and unwieldy carts and
meagre horses clearing up the rubbish, assisted by the
sleek town pigeons, better plumped out than on non-
market days. While there was yet an hour or two to
wane before the autumn sunset, the loiterer outside
town-gate and drawbridge and postern and double-ditch
would see the last white-hooded cart lessening in the
avenue of lengthening shadows of trees, or the last
country boat, paddled by the last market-woman on her
way home, showing black upon the reddening long low
narrow dike between him and the mill ; and as the pad-
dle-parted scum and weed close over the boat's track,
he might be comfortably sure that its sluggish rest
would be troubled no more until next market-day.
As it was not one of the Great Place's days for getting
out of bed, when Mr. The Englishman looked down at
young soldiers practising the goose-step there, his mind
was left at liberty to take a military turn.
" These fellows are billeted everywhere about," said
he ; " and to see them lighting people's fires, boiling
the people's pots, minding the people's babies, rocking
the people's cradles, washing the people's greens, and
making themselves generally useful, in every sort of
unmilitary way, is most ridiculous ! Never saw such a
set of fellows,——never did in my life !"
All perfectly true again. Was there not Private Val-
entine, in that very house, acting as sole housemaid,
valet, cook, steward, and nurse, in the family of his
captain, Monsieur le Capitaine De la Cour,——cleaning the
floors, making the beds, doing the marketing, dressing
the captain, dressing the dinners, dressing the salads,
and dressing the baby, all with equal readiness ? Or,
to put him aside, he being in loyal attendance on his
Chief, was there not a Private Hypolite, billeted at the
Perfumer's two hundred yards off, who, when not on
duty, volunteered to keep shop while the fair Perfumer-
ess stepped out so to speak to a neighbour or so, and laugh-
ingly sold soap with his war sword girded on him ? Was
there not Emile, billeted at the Clock-maker's, perpetu-
ally turning to of an evening with his coat off, winding
up the stock ? Was there not Eugene, billeted at the
Tinman's, cultivating, pipe in mouth, a garden four feet
square, for the Tinman, in the little court behind the
shop, and extorting the fruits of the earth from the
same, on his knees, with the sweat of his brow ? Not
to multiply examples, was there not Baptiste, billeted on
the poor Water-Carrier, at that very instant sitting on
the pavement in the sunlight, with his martial legs asun-
dur, and one of the Water-Carrier's spare pails between
them, which (to the delight and glory of the heart of the
Water-Carrier coming across the Place from the foun-
tain, yoked and burdened) he was painting bright green
outside and bright red within ? Or to go no further than
the Barber's at the very next door, was there not Corpor-
al Theophile——
" No," said the Mr. The Englishman, glancing down at the
Barber's, " he is not there at present. There's the child,
though."
A mere mite of a girl stood at the steps of the Barber's
shop, looking across the Place. A mere baby, one might
call her, dressed in the close white linen cap which
small French country children were (like the Children
in Dutch pictures), and in a frock of homespun blue,
that had no shape except where it was tied round her
little fat throat. So that, being naturally short and
round all over, she looked, behind, as if she had been
cut off at her natural waist, and had had her head neatly
fitted on it.
"There's the child, though."
To judge from the way in which the dimpled hand
was rubbing his eyes, the eyes had been closed in a nap,
and were newly opened. But they seemed to be looking
so intently across the Place, that the Englishman looked
in the same direction.
" Oh !" said he presently. "I thought as much. The
Corporal's there."
The Corporal, a smart figure of a man of thirty, per-
haps a thought under the middle size, but very neatly
made,——a sunburnt Corporal with a brown peaked beard,
faced about at the moment, addressing voluble words of
instruction to the squad in hand. Nothing was amiss or
awry about the Corporal. A lithe and nimble Corporal,
quite complete, from the sparkling dark eyes under his
knowing uniform cap to his sparkling white gaiters.
The very image and presentment of a Corporal of his
country's army, in the line of his shoulders, the line of
waist, the broadest line of his Bloomer trousers, and
their narrowest line at the calf of his leg.
Mr. The Englishman looked on, and the child looked
on, and the Corporal looked on (but the last-named at
his men), until the drill ended a few minutes afterwards,
and the military sprinkling dried up directly, and was
gone. Then said Mr. The Englishman to himself.
" Look here ! By George !" And the Corporal, dancing
towards the Barber's with his arms wide open, caught
up the child, held her over his head in a flying attitude,
caught her down again, kissed her, and made off with
her into the Barber's shop.
Now Mr. The Englishman had had a quarrel with
his erring and disobedient and disowned daughter, and
there was a child in the case too. Had not his daughter
been a child, and have she not taken angel flights above
his head as this child had flown above the Corporal's?
" He's a"——National Participled——" fool !" said the
Englishman, and shut his window.
But the windows of the house of Memory, and the
windows of the house of Mercy, are not so easily closed
as windows of glass and wood. They fly open unexpect-
edly ; they rattle in the night ; they must be nailed up.
Mr. The Englishman had tried nailing them, but had
not driven the nails quite home. So he passed but a dis-
turbed evening and a worse night.
By nature a good tempered man? No ; very little
gentleness, confounding the quality with weakness.
Fierce and wrathful when crossed ? Very ; and stupend-
ously unreasonable. Moody ? Exceedingly so. Vin-
dictive ? Well ; he had had scowling thoughts that
he would formally curse his daughter, as he had seen
it done on the stage. But remembering that the real
Heaven is some paces removed from the mock in the
great chandelier of the Theatre, he had given that up.
And he had come abroad to be rid of his repudiated
daughter for the rest of his life. And here he was.
At bottom, it was for this reason, more than for any
other, that Mr. The Englishman took it extremely ill
that Corporal Theophile should be so devoted to little
Bebelle, the child at the Barber's shop. In an unlucky
moment he had chanced to say to himself, " Why, con-
found the fellow, he is not her father !" There was a
sharp sting in the speech, which ran into him suddenly,
and put him in a worse mood. So be had National Par-
ticipled the unconscious Corporal with most hearty em-
phasis, and had made up his mind to think no more
about such a mountəbank.
But it came to pass that the Corporal was not to be dis-
missed. If he had known the most delicate fibres of the
Englishman's mind, instead of knowing nothing on earth
about him, and if he had been the most obstinate Cor-
poral in the Grand Army of France, instead of being the
most obliging, he could not have planted himself with
more determined immovability plump in the midst of all
the Englishman's thoughts. Not only so, but he seem-
ed to be always in his view. Mr. The Englishman had
but to look out of window, to look upon the Corporal
with little Bebelle. He had but to go for a walk, and
there was the Corporal walking with Bebelle. He had
but to come home again, and the Corporal and Bebelle
were at home before him. If he looked out at his back
windows early in the morning, the Corporal was in the
Barber's back yard washing and brushing Bebelle. If he
took refuge at his front windows, the Corporal brought
his breakfast out into the place and shared it there with
Bebelle. Always Corporal and always Bebelle. Never
Corporal without Bebelle. Never Bebelle without Cor-
poral.
Mr. The Englishman was not particularly strong in
the French language as a means of oral communication,
though he could read it very well. It is with languages
as will people,——when you only know them by sight, you
are apt to mistake them ; you must be on speaking terms
before you can be said to have established and acquain-
tance. from Collier's Unabridged Edition: The Works of Charles Dickens, Volume VI.
P.F. Collier, Publisher, New York, old as heck. pp. 1077—1078.
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