Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (1836) - Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII—OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR
We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a
street, on the character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it; and nothing
so materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the house
doors. The various expressions of the human countenance afford a beautiful
and interesting study; but there is something in the physiognomy of street-door
knockers, almost as characteristic, and nearly as infallible. Whenever we
visit a man for the first time, we contemplate the features of his knocker with
the greatest curiosity, for we well know, that between the man and his knocker,
there will inevitably be a greater or less degree of resemblance and sympathy.
For instance, there is one description of knocker that
used to be common enough, but which is fast passing away—a large round one,
with the jolly face of a convivial lion smiling blandly at you, as you twist the
sides of your hair into a curl or pull up your shirt-collar while you are
waiting for the door to be opened; we never saw that knocker on the door of a
churlish man—so far as our experience is concerned, it invariably bespoke
hospitality and another bottle.
No man ever saw this knocker on the door of a small
attorney or bill-broker; they always patronise the other lion; a heavy
ferocious-looking fellow, with a countenance expressive of savage stupidity—a
sort of grand master among the knockers, and a great favourite with the selfish
and brutal.
Then there is a little pert Egyptian knocker, with a
long thin face, a pinched-up nose, and a very sharp chin; he is most in vogue
with your government-office people, in light drabs and starched cravats; little
spare, priggish men, who are perfectly satisfied with their own opinions, and
consider themselves of paramount importance.
We were greatly troubled a few years ago, by the
innovation of a new kind of knocker, without any face at all, composed of a
wreath depending from a hand or small truncheon. A little trouble and
attention, however, enabled us to overcome this difficulty, and to reconcile the
new system to our favourite theory. You will invariably find this knocker
on the doors of cold and formal people, who always ask you why you don’t
come, and never say do.
Everybody knows the brass knocker is common to suburban
villas, and extensive boarding-schools; and having noticed this genus we have
recapitulated all the most prominent and strongly-defined species.
Some phrenologists affirm, that the agitation of a
man’s brain by different passions, produces corresponding developments in the
form of his skull. Do not let us be understood as pushing our theory to
the full length of asserting, that any alteration in a man’s disposition would
produce a visible effect on the feature of his knocker. Our position
merely is, that in such a case, the magnetism which must exist between a man and
his knocker, would induce the man to remove, and seek some knocker more
congenial to his altered feelings. If you ever find a man changing his
habitation without any reasonable pretext, depend upon it, that, although he may
not be aware of the fact himself, it is because he and his knocker are at
variance. This is a new theory, but we venture to launch it, nevertheless,
as being quite as ingenious and infallible as many thousands of the learned
speculations which are daily broached for public good and private
fortune-making.
Entertaining these feelings on the subject of knockers,
it will be readily imagined with what consternation we viewed the entire removal
of the knocker from the door of the next house to the one we lived in, some time
ago, and the substitution of a bell. This was a calamity we had never
anticipated. The bare idea of anybody being able to exist without a
knocker, appeared so wild and visionary, that it had never for one instant
entered our imagination.
We sauntered moodily from the spot, and bent our steps
towards Eaton-square, then just building. What was our astonishment and
indignation to find that bells were fast becoming the rule, and knockers the
exception! Our theory trembled beneath the shock. We hastened home;
and fancying we foresaw in the swift progress of events, its entire abolition,
resolved from that day forward to vent our speculations on our next-door
neighbours in person. The house adjoining ours on the left hand was
uninhabited, and we had, therefore, plenty of leisure to observe our next-door
neighbours on the other side.
The house without the knocker was in the occupation of a
city clerk, and there was a neatly-written bill in the parlour window intimating
that lodgings for a single gentleman were to be let within.
It was a neat, dull little house, on the shady side of
the way, with new, narrow floorcloth in the passage, and new, narrow
stair-carpets up to the first floor. The paper was new, and the paint was
new, and the furniture was new; and all three, paper, paint, and furniture,
bespoke the limited means of the tenant. There was a little red and black
carpet in the drawing-room, with a border of flooring all the way round; a few
stained chairs and a pembroke table. A pink shell was displayed on each of
the little sideboards, which, with the addition of a tea-tray and caddy, a few
more shells on the mantelpiece, and three peacock’s feathers tastefully
arranged above them, completed the decorative furniture of the apartment.
This was the room destined for the reception of the
single gentleman during the day, and a little back room on the same floor was
assigned as his sleeping apartment by night.
The bill had not been long in the window, when a stout,
good-humoured looking gentleman, of about five-and-thirty, appeared as a
candidate for the tenancy. Terms were soon arranged, for the bill was
taken down immediately after his first visit. In a day or two the single
gentleman came in, and shortly afterwards his real character came out.
First of all, he displayed a most extraordinary
partiality for sitting up till three or four o’clock in the morning, drinking
whiskey-and-water, and smoking cigars; then he invited friends home, who used to
come at ten o’clock, and begin to get happy about the small hours, when they
evinced their perfect contentment by singing songs with half-a-dozen verses of
two lines each, and a chorus of ten, which chorus used to be shouted forth by
the whole strength of the company, in the most enthusiastic and vociferous
manner, to the great annoyance of the neighbours, and the special discomfort of
another single gentleman overhead.
Now, this was bad enough, occurring as it did three
times a week on the average, but this was not all; for when the company did
go away, instead of walking quietly down the street, as anybody else’s company
would have done, they amused themselves by making alarming and frightful noises,
and counterfeiting the shrieks of females in distress; and one night, a
red-faced gentleman in a white hat knocked in the most urgent manner at the door
of the powdered-headed old gentleman at No. 3, and when the powdered-headed old
gentleman, who thought one of his married daughters must have been taken ill
prematurely, had groped down-stairs, and after a great deal of unbolting and
key-turning, opened the street door, the red-faced man in the white hat said he
hoped he’d excuse his giving him so much trouble, but he’d feel obliged if
he’d favour him with a glass of cold spring water, and the loan of a shilling
for a cab to take him home, on which the old gentleman slammed the door and went
up-stairs, and threw the contents of his water jug out of window—very
straight, only it went over the wrong man; and the whole street was involved in
confusion.
A joke’s a joke; and even practical jests are very
capital in their way, if you can only get the other party to see the fun of
them; but the population of our street were so dull of apprehension, as to be
quite lost to a sense of the drollery of this proceeding: and the consequence
was, that our next-door neighbour was obliged to tell the single gentleman, that
unless he gave up entertaining his friends at home, he really must be compelled
to part with him.
The single gentleman received the remonstrance with
great good-humour, and promised from that time forward, to spend his evenings at
a coffee-house—a determination which afforded general and unmixed
satisfaction.
The next night passed off very well, everybody being
delighted with the change; but on the next, the noises were renewed with greater
spirit than ever. The single gentleman’s friends being unable to see him
in his own house every alternate night, had come to the determination of seeing
him home every night; and what with the discordant greetings of the friends at
parting, and the noise created by the single gentleman in his passage up-stairs,
and his subsequent struggles to get his boots off, the evil was not to be borne.
So, our next-door neighbour gave the single gentleman, who was a very good
lodger in other respects, notice to quit; and the single gentleman went away,
and entertained his friends in other lodgings.
The next applicant for the vacant first floor, was of a
very different character from the troublesome single gentleman who had just
quitted it. He was a tall, thin, young gentleman, with a profusion of
brown hair, reddish whiskers, and very slightly developed moustaches. He
wore a braided surtout, with frogs behind, light grey trousers, and wash-leather
gloves, and had altogether rather a military appearance. So unlike the
roystering single gentleman. Such insinuating manners, and such a
delightful address! So seriously disposed, too! When he first came
to look at the lodgings, he inquired most particularly whether he was sure to be
able to get a seat in the parish church; and when he had agreed to take them, he
requested to have a list of the different local charities, as he intended to
subscribe his mite to the most deserving among them.
Our next-door neighbour was now perfectly happy.
He had got a lodger at last, of just his own way of thinking—a serious,
well-disposed man, who abhorred gaiety, and loved retirement. He took down
the bill with a light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet
Sundays, on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual civilities and Sunday
papers.
The serious man arrived, and his luggage was to arrive
from the country next morning. He borrowed a clean shirt, and a
prayer-book, from our next-door neighbour, and retired to rest at an early hour,
requesting that he might be called punctually at ten o’clock next
morning—not before, as he was much fatigued.
He was called, and did not answer: he was called
again, but there was no reply. Our next-door neighbour became alarmed, and
burst the door open. The serious man had left the house mysteriously;
carrying with him the shirt, the prayer-book, a teaspoon, and the bedclothes.
Whether this occurrence, coupled with the irregularities
of his former lodger, gave our next-door neighbour an aversion to single
gentlemen, we know not; we only know that the next bill which made its
appearance in the parlour window intimated generally, that there were furnished
apartments to let on the first floor. The bill was soon removed. The
new lodgers at first attracted our curiosity, and afterwards excited our
interest.
They were a young lad of eighteen or nineteen, and his
mother, a lady of about fifty, or it might be less. The mother wore a
widow’s weeds, and the boy was also clothed in deep mourning. They were
poor—very poor; for their only means of support arose from the pittance the
boy earned, by copying writings, and translating for booksellers.
They had removed from some country place and settled in
London; partly because it afforded better chances of employment for the boy, and
partly, perhaps, with the natural desire to leave a place where they had been in
better circumstances, and where their poverty was known. They were proud
under their reverses, and above revealing their wants and privations to
strangers. How bitter those privations were, and how hard the boy worked
to remove them, no one ever knew but themselves. Night after night, two,
three, four hours after midnight, could we hear the occasional raking up of the
scanty fire, or the hollow and half-stifled cough, which indicated his being
still at work; and day after day, could we see more plainly that nature had set
that unearthly light in his plaintive face, which is the beacon of her worst
disease.
Actuated, we hope, by a higher feeling than mere
curiosity, we contrived to establish, first an acquaintance, and then a close
intimacy, with the poor strangers. Our worst fears were realised; the boy
was sinking fast. Through a part of the winter, and the whole of the
following spring and summer, his labours were unceasingly prolonged: and the
mother attempted to procure needle-work, embroidery—anything for bread.
A few shillings now and then, were all she could earn.
The boy worked steadily on; dying by minutes, but never once giving utterance to
complaint or murmur.
One beautiful autumn evening we went to pay our
customary visit to the invalid. His little remaining strength had been
decreasing rapidly for two or three days preceding, and he was lying on the sofa
at the open window, gazing at the setting sun. His mother had been reading
the Bible to him, for she closed the book as we entered, and advanced to meet
us.
‘I was telling William,’ she said, ‘that we must
manage to take him into the country somewhere, so that he may get quite well.
He is not ill, you know, but he is not very strong, and has exerted himself too
much lately.’ Poor thing! The tears that streamed through her
fingers, as she turned aside, as if to adjust her close widow’s cap, too
plainly showed how fruitless was the attempt to deceive herself.
We sat down by the head of the sofa, but said nothing,
for we saw the breath of life was passing gently but rapidly from the young form
before us. At every respiration, his heart beat more slowly.
The boy placed one hand in ours, grasped his mother’s
arm with the other, drew her hastily towards him, and fervently kissed her
cheek. There was a pause. He sunk back upon his pillow, and looked
long and earnestly in his mother’s face.
‘William, William!’ murmured the mother, after a
long interval, ‘don’t look at me so—speak to me, dear!’
The boy smiled languidly, but an instant afterwards his
features resolved into the same cold, solemn gaze.
‘William, dear William! rouse yourself; don’t look
at me so, love—pray don’t! Oh, my God! what shall I do!’ cried the
widow, clasping her hands in agony—‘my dear boy! he is dying!’ The
boy raised himself by a violent effort, and folded his hands
together—‘Mother! dear, dear mother, bury me in the open fields—anywhere
but in these dreadful streets. I should like to be where you can see my
grave, but not in these close crowded streets; they have killed me; kiss me
again, mother; put your arm round my neck—’
He fell back, and a strange expression stole upon his
features; not of pain or suffering, but an indescribable fixing of every line
and muscle.
The boy was dead.