Sketches by Boz, by Charles Dickens (1836) - Scenes - Chapter 3

CHAPTER III—SHOPS AND THEIR TENANTS

    What inexhaustible food for speculation, do the streets of London afford!  We never were able to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren; we have not the slightest commiseration for the man who can take up his hat and stick, and walk from Covent-garden to St. Paul’s Churchyard, and back into the bargain, without deriving some amusement—we had almost said instruction—from his perambulation.  And yet there are such beings: we meet them every day.  Large black stocks and light waistcoats, jet canes and discontented countenances, are the characteristics of the race; other people brush quickly by you, steadily plodding on to business, or cheerfully running after pleasure.  These men linger listlessly past, looking as happy and animated as a policeman on duty.  Nothing seems to make an impression on their minds: nothing short of being knocked down by a porter, or run over by a cab, will disturb their equanimity.  You will meet them on a fine day in any of the leading thoroughfares: peep through the window of a west-end cigar shop in the evening, if you can manage to get a glimpse between the blue curtains which intercept the vulgar gaze, and you see them in their only enjoyment of existence.  There they are lounging about, on round tubs and pipe boxes, in all the dignity of whiskers, and gilt watch-guards; whispering soft nothings to the young lady in amber, with the large ear-rings, who, as she sits behind the counter in a blaze of adoration and gas-light, is the admiration of all the female servants in the neighbourhood, and the envy of every milliner’s apprentice within two miles round.
    One of our principal amusements is to watch the gradual progress—the rise or fall—of particular shops.  We have formed an intimate acquaintance with several, in different parts of town, and are perfectly acquainted with their whole history.  We could name off-hand, twenty at least, which we are quite sure have paid no taxes for the last six years.  They are never inhabited for more than two months consecutively, and, we verily believe, have witnessed every retail trade in the directory.
    There is one, whose history is a sample of the rest, in whose fate we have taken especial interest, having had the pleasure of knowing it ever since it has been a shop.  It is on the Surrey side of the water—a little distance beyond the Marsh-gate.  It was originally a substantial, good-looking private house enough; the landlord got into difficulties, the house got into Chancery, the tenant went away, and the house went to ruin.  At this period our acquaintance with it commenced; the paint was all worn off; the windows were broken, the area was green with neglect and the overflowings of the water-butt; the butt itself was without a lid, and the street-door was the very picture of misery.  The chief pastime of the children in the vicinity had been to assemble in a body on the steps, and to take it in turn to knock loud double knocks at the door, to the great satisfaction of the neighbours generally, and especially of the nervous old lady next door but one.  Numerous complaints were made, and several small basins of water discharged over the offenders, but without effect.  In this state of things, the marine-store dealer at the corner of the street, in the most obliging manner took the knocker off, and sold it: and the unfortunate house looked more wretched than ever.
    We deserted our friend for a few weeks.  What was our surprise, on our return, to find no trace of its existence!  In its place was a handsome shop, fast approaching to a state of completion, and on the shutters were large bills, informing the public that it would shortly be opened with ‘an extensive stock of linen-drapery and haberdashery.’  It opened in due course; there was the name of the proprietor ‘and Co.’ in gilt letters, almost too dazzling to look at.  Such ribbons and shawls! and two such elegant young men behind the counter, each in a clean collar and white neckcloth, like the lover in a farce.  As to the proprietor, he did nothing but walk up and down the shop, and hand seats to the ladies, and hold important conversations with the handsomest of the young men, who was shrewdly suspected by the neighbours to be the ‘Co.’  We saw all this with sorrow; we felt a fatal presentiment that the shop was doomed—and so it was.  Its decay was slow, but sure.  Tickets gradually appeared in the windows; then rolls of flannel, with labels on them, were stuck outside the door; then a bill was pasted on the street-door, intimating that the first floor was to let unfurnished; then one of the young men disappeared altogether, and the other took to a black neckerchief, and the proprietor took to drinking.  The shop became dirty, broken panes of glass remained unmended, and the stock disappeared piecemeal.  At last the company’s man came to cut off the water, and then the linen-draper cut off himself, leaving the landlord his compliments and the key.
    The next occupant was a fancy stationer.  The shop was more modestly painted than before, still it was neat; but somehow we always thought, as we passed, that it looked like a poor and struggling concern.  We wished the man well, but we trembled for his success.  He was a widower evidently, and had employment elsewhere, for he passed us every morning on his road to the city.  The business was carried on by his eldest daughter.  Poor girl! she needed no assistance.  We occasionally caught a glimpse of two or three children, in mourning like herself, as they sat in the little parlour behind the shop; and we never passed at night without seeing the eldest girl at work, either for them, or in making some elegant little trifle for sale.  We often thought, as her pale face looked more sad and pensive in the dim candle-light, that if those thoughtless females who interfere with the miserable market of poor creatures such as these, knew but one-half of the misery they suffer, and the bitter privations they endure, in their honourable attempts to earn a scanty subsistence, they would, perhaps, resign even opportunities for the gratification of vanity, and an immodest love of self-display, rather than drive them to a last dreadful resource, which it would shock the delicate feelings of these charitable ladies to hear named.
    But we are forgetting the shop.  Well, we continued to watch it, and every day showed too clearly the increasing poverty of its inmates.  The children were clean, it is true, but their clothes were threadbare and shabby; no tenant had been procured for the upper part of the house, from the letting of which, a portion of the means of paying the rent was to have been derived, and a slow, wasting consumption prevented the eldest girl from continuing her exertions.  Quarter-day arrived.  The landlord had suffered from the extravagance of his last tenant, and he had no compassion for the struggles of his successor; he put in an execution.  As we passed one morning, the broker’s men were removing the little furniture there was in the house, and a newly-posted bill informed us it was again ‘To Let.’  What became of the last tenant we never could learn; we believe the girl is past all suffering, and beyond all sorrow.  God help her!  We hope she is.
    We were somewhat curious to ascertain what would be the next stage—for that the place had no chance of succeeding now, was perfectly clear.  The bill was soon taken down, and some alterations were being made in the interior of the shop.  We were in a fever of expectation; we exhausted conjecture—we imagined all possible trades, none of which were perfectly reconcilable with our idea of the gradual decay of the tenement.  It opened, and we wondered why we had not guessed at the real state of the case before.  The shop—not a large one at the best of times—had been converted into two: one was a bonnet-shape maker’s, the other was opened by a tobacconist, who also dealt in walking-sticks and Sunday newspapers; the two were separated by a thin partition, covered with tawdry striped paper.
    The tobacconist remained in possession longer than any tenant within our recollection.  He was a red-faced, impudent, good-for-nothing dog, evidently accustomed to take things as they came, and to make the best of a bad job.  He sold as many cigars as he could, and smoked the rest.  He occupied the shop as long as he could make peace with the landlord, and when he could no longer live in quiet, he very coolly locked the door, and bolted himself.  From this period, the two little dens have undergone innumerable changes.  The tobacconist was succeeded by a theatrical hair-dresser, who ornamented the window with a great variety of ‘characters,’ and terrific combats.  The bonnet-shape maker gave place to a greengrocer, and the histrionic barber was succeeded, in his turn, by a tailor.  So numerous have been the changes, that we have of late done little more than mark the peculiar but certain indications of a house being poorly inhabited.  It has been progressing by almost imperceptible degrees.  The occupiers of the shops have gradually given up room after room, until they have only reserved the little parlour for themselves.  First there appeared a brass plate on the private door, with ‘Ladies’ School’ legibly engraved thereon; shortly afterwards we observed a second brass plate, then a bell, and then another bell.
    When we paused in front of our old friend, and observed these signs of poverty, which are not to be mistaken, we thought as we turned away, that the house had attained its lowest pitch of degradation.  We were wrong.  When we last passed it, a ‘dairy’ was established in the area, and a party of melancholy-looking fowls were amusing themselves by running in at the front door, and out at the back one.