The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0063/00633.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 23KB | 349 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00633}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Anthology Of Shorter Works
(A) Plated Article}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{plate
how
upon
blue
dodo
little
says
clay
called
town}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Anthology Of Shorter Works
Book:        (A) Plated Article
Author:      Dickens, Charles

(A) Plated Article

     Putting up for the night in one of the chiefest towns of Staffordshire,
I find it to be by no means a lively town.  In fact it is as dull and dead
a town as any one could desire not to see.  It seems as if its whole
population might be imprisoned in its Railway Station.  The Refreshment-room
at the Station is a vortex of dissipation compared with the extinct town-inn,
the Dodo, in the dull High Street.

     Why High Street?  Why not rather Low Street, Flat Street, Low-Spirited
Street, Used-up Street?  Where are the people who belong to the High Street?
Can they all be dispersed over the face of the country, seeking the
unfortunate Strolling Manager who decamped from the mouldy little Theatre
last week, in the beginning of his season (as his play-bills testify),
repentantly resolved to bring him back, and feed him and be entertained?  Or,
can they all be gathered to their fathers in the two old churchyards near to
the High Street - retirement into which churchyards appears to be a mere
ceremony, there is so very little life outside their confines, and such small
discernible difference between being buried alive in the town, and buried
dead in the town tombs?  Over the way, opposite to the staring blank bow
windows of the Dodo, are a little iron-monger's shop, a little tailor's shop
(with a picture of the Fashions in a small window and a bandy-legged baby on
the pavement staring at it) - a watchmaker's shop, where all the clocks and
watches must be stopped, I am sure, for they could never have the courage to
go, with the town in general, and the Dodo in particular, looking at them.
Shade of Miss Linwood, erst of Leicester Square, London, thou art welcome
here, and thy retreat is fitly chosen!  I myself was one of the last visitors
to that awful storehouse of thy life's work, where an anchorite old man and
woman took my shilling with a solemn wonder, and conducting me to a gloomy
sepulchre of needlework dropping to pieces with dust and age and shrouded in
twilight at high noon, and left me there, chilled, frightened, and alone.
And now, in ghostly letters on all the dead walls of this dead town, I read
thy honoured name, and find that thy Last Supper, worked in Berlin Wool,
invites inspection as a powerful excitement.

     Where are the people who are bidden with so much cry to this feast of
little wool?  Where are they?  Who are they?  They are not the bandy-legged
baby studying the fashions in the tailor's window.  They are not the two
earthy ploughmen lounging outside the saddler's shop, in the stiff square
where the Town Hall stands, like a brick and mortar private on parade.  They
are not the landlady of the Dodo in the empty bar, whose eye had trouble in
it, and no welcome, when I asked for dinner.  They are not the turnkeys of
the Town Jail, looking out of the gateway in their uniforms, as if they had
locked up all the balance (as my American friends would say) of the
inhabitants, and could now rest a little.  They are not the two dusty millers
in the white mill down by the river, where the great water-wheel goes heavily
round and round, like the monotonous days and nights in this forgotten place.
Then who are they, for there is no one else?  No; this deponent maketh oath
and saith that there is no one else, save and except the waiter at the Dodo,
now laying the cloth.  I have paced the streets, and stared at the houses,
and am come back to the blank bow window of the Dodo; and the town clock
strikes seven, and the reluctant echoes seem to cry, "Don't wake us!" and the
bandy-legged baby has gone home to bed.

     If the Dodo were only a gregarious bird - if it had only some confused
idea of making a comfortable nest - I could hope to get through the hours
between this and bed-time, without being consumed by devouring melancholy.
But, the Dodo's habits are all wrong.  It provides me with a trackless desert
of sitting-room, with a chair for every day in the year, a table for every
month, and a waste of sideboard where a lonely china vase pines in a corner
for its mate long departed, and will never make a match with the candlestick
in the opposite corner if it lives till Doomsday.  The Dodo has nothing in
the larder.  Even now, I behold the boots returning with my sole in a piece
of paper; and with that portion of my dinner, the Boots, perceiving me at the
blank bow window, slaps his leg as he comes across the road, pretending it
is something else.  The Dodo excludes the outer air.  When I mount up to my
bed-room, a smell of closeness and flue gets lazily up my nose like sleepy
snuff.  The loose little bits of carpet writhe under my tread, and take wormy
shapes.  I don't know the ridiculous man in the looking-glass, beyond having
met him once or twice in a dish cover - and I can never shave him to-morrow
morning!  The Dodo is narrow-minded as to towels; expects me to wash on a
freemason's apron without the trimming: when I ask for soap, gives me a
stony-hearted something white, with no more lather in it than the Elgin
marbles.  The Dodo has seen better days, and possesses interminable stables
at the back - silent, grass-grown, broken-windowed, horseless.

     This mournful bird can fry a sole, however, which is much.  Can cook a
steak, too, which is more.  I wonder where it gets it Sherry!  If I were to
send my pint of wine to some famous chemist to be analyzed, what would it
turn out to be made of?  It tastes of pepper, sugar, bitter almonds, vinegar,
warm knives, any flat drink, and a little brandy.  Would it unman a Spanish
exile by reminding him of his native land at all?  I think not.  If there
really be any townspeople out of the churchyards, and if a caravan of them
ever do dine, with a bottle of wine per man, in this desert of the Dodo, it
must make good for the doctor next day!

     Where was the waiter born?  How did he come here?  Has he any hope of
getting away from here?  Does he ever receive a letter, or take a ride upon
the railway, or see anything but the Dodo?  Perhaps he has seen the Berlin
Wool.  He appears to have a silent sorrow on him, and it may be that.  He
clears the table; draws the dingy curtains of the great bow window, which so
unwillingly consent to meet, that they must be pinned together; leaves me by
the fire with my pint decanter, and a little thin funnel-shaped wine-glass,
and a plate of pale biscuits - in themselves engendering desperation.

     No book, no newspaper!  I left the Arabian Nights in the railway
carriage, and have nothing to read but Bradshaw, and "that way madness lies."
Remembering what prisoners and shipwrecked mariners have done to exercise
their minds in solitude, I repeat the multiplication table, the pence table,
and the shilling table; which are all the tables I happen to know.  What if
I write something?  The Dodo keeps no pens but steel pens; and those I always
stick through the paper, and can turn to no other account.

     What am I to do?  Even if I could have the bandy-legged baby knocked up
and brought here, I could offer him nothing but sherry, and that would be the
death of him.  He would never hold up his head again if he touched it.  I
can't go to bed, because I have conceived a mortal hatred for my bedroom; and
I can't go away, because there is no train for my place of destination until
morning.  To burn the biscuits will be but a fleeting joy; still it is a
temporary relief, and here they go on the fire!  Shall I break the plate?
First let me look at the back, and see who made it.  Copeland.

     Copeland!  Stop a moment.  Was it yesterday I visited Copeland's works,
and saw them making plates?  In the confusion of travelling about, it might
be yesterday or it might be yesterday month;