THE LAZY TOUR OF
TWO IDLE APPRENTICES
by
Charles Dickens
CHAPTER I
IN THE AUTUMN MONTH OF SEPTEMBER, eighteen hundred
and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear date, two
idle apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer,
and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away
from their employer. They were bound to a highly meri-
torious lady (named Literature), of fair credit and re-
pute, though, it must be acknowledged, not quite so
highly esteemed in the City as she might be. This is the
more remarkable, as there is nothing against the re-
spectable lady in that quarter, but quite the contrary;
her family having rendered eminent service to many
famous citizens of London. It may be sufficient to name
Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard
II., at the time of Wat Tyler’s insurrection, and Sir Rich-
ard Whittington: which latter distinguished man and
magistrate was doubtless indebted to the lady’s family
for the gift of his celebrated cat. There is also strong
reason to suppose that they rang the Highgate bells for
him with their own hands.
The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty
to the mistress from whom they had received many
favours, were actuated by the low idea of making a per-
fectly idle trip, in any direction. They had no intention
of going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see noth-
ing, they wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn
nothing, they wanted to do nothing. They wanted only
to be idle. They took to themselves (after HOGARTH),
the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild;
but there was not a moral pin to choose between them,
and they were both idle in the last degree.
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Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this
difference of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle,
and would take upon himself any amount of pains and
labour to assure himself that he was idle; in short, had
no better idea of idleness than that it was useless indus-
try. Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the
unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-
and-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he
would have preached if he had not been too idle to preach;
a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness.
The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a
few hours of their escape, walking down into the North
of England, that is to say, Thomas was lying in a meadow,
looking at the railway trains as they passed over a dis-
tant viaduct—which was his idea of walking down into
the North; while Francis was walking a mile due South
against time—which was his idea of walking down into
the North. In the meantime the day waned, and the
milestones remained unconquered.
‘Tom,’ said Goodchild, ‘the sun is getting low. Up, and
let us go forward!’
‘Nay,’ quoth Thomas Idle, ‘I have not done with Annie
Laurie yet.’ And he proceeded with that idle but popu-
lar ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young per-
son of that name he would ‘lay him doon and dee’—
equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and die.
‘What an ass that fellow was!’ cried Goodchild, with
the bitter emphasis of contempt.
‘Which fellow?’ asked Thomas Idle.
‘The fellow in your song. Lay him doon and dee! Finely
he’d show off before the girl by doing THAT. A sniveller!
Why couldn’t he get up, and punch somebody’s head!’
‘Whose?’ asked Thomas Idle.
‘Anybody’s. Everybody’s would be better than nobody’s!
If I fell into that state of mind about a girl, do you
think I’d lay me doon and dee? No, sir,’ proceeded
Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scot-
tish accent, ‘I’d get me oop and peetch into somebody.
Wouldn’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with her,’ yawned Tho-
mas Idle. ‘Why should I take the trouble?’
‘It’s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,’ said Goodchild,
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4
shaking his head.
‘It’s trouble enough to fall out of it, once you’re in it,’
retorted Tom. ‘So I keep out of it altogether. It would
be better for you, if you did the same.’
Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody,
and not unfrequently with several objects at once, made
no reply. He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed
by the lower orders ‘a bellowser,’ and then, heaving Mr.
Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh),
urged him northward.
These two had sent their personal baggage on by train:
only retaining each a knapsack. Idle now applied him-
self to constantly regretting the train, to tracking it
through the intricacies of Bradshaw’s Guide, and find-
ing out where it is now—and where now—and where
now—and to asking what was the use of walking, when
you could ride at such a pace as that. Was it to see the
country? If that was the object, look at it out of the
carriage windows. There was a great deal more of it to
be seen there than here. Besides, who wanted to see
the country? Nobody. And again, whoever did walk?
Nobody. Fellows set off to walk, but they never did it.
They came back and said they did, but they didn’t. Then
why should he walk? He wouldn’t walk. He swore it by
this milestone!
It was the fifth from London, so far had they pen-
etrated into the North. Submitting to the powerful chain
of argument, Goodchild proposed a return to the Me-
tropolis, and a falling back upon Euston Square Termi-
nus. Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked
down into the North by the next morning’s express, and
carried their knapsacks in the luggage-van.
It was like all other expresses, as every express is and
must be. It bore through the harvest country a smell
like a large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as
from a huge brazen tea-urn. The greatest power in na-
ture and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous
heights in the sight of people looking up from fields
and roads, as smoothly and unreally as a light minia-
ture plaything. Now, the engine shrieked in hysterics
of such intensity, that it seemed desirable that the men
who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her
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5
hands, and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels
with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so con-
fusing that the train seemed to be flying back into
leagues of darkness. Here, were station after station,
swallowed up by the express without stopping; here,
stations where it fired itself in like a volley of cannon-
balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays,
and three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired
itself off again, bang, bang, bang! At long intervals were
uncomfortable refreshment-rooms, made more uncom-
fortable by the scorn of Beauty towards Beast, the pub-
lic (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in
the story, towards the other Beast), and where sensi-
tive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous sharpness
occasioning indigestion. Here, again, were stations with
nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors
set aloft on great posts, shaving the air. In these fields,
the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the thun-
dering meteor, and didn’t mind; in those, they were all
set scampering together, and a herd of pigs scoured
after them. The pastoral country darkened, became coaly,
became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse,
improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a
wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a
cathedral town, a fortified place, a waste. Now, miser-
able black dwellings, a black canal, and sick black tow-
ers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers
were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars
all a-blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy
rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet building ground
outside the stagnant town, with the larger ring where
the Circus was last week. The temperature changed, the
dialect changed, the people changed, faces got sharper,
manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet
all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uni-
form and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-
collar, delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little
pouch, or read his newspaper.
Carlisle! Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle. It
looked congenially and delightfully idle. Something in
the way of public amusement had happened last month,
and something else was going to happen before Christ-
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6
mas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India
for those who liked it—which Idle and Goodchild did
not. Likewise, by those who liked them, there were im-
pressions to be bought of all the vapid prints, going
and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books. For those
who wanted to put anything in missionary boxes, here
were the boxes. For those who wanted the Reverend Mr.
Podgers (artist’s proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr.
Podgers to any amount. Not less gracious and abun-
dant, Mr. Codgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to
Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth and nail. Here, were guide-
books to the neighbouring antiquities, and eke the Lake
country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many
physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes,
for young ladies to copy, in the exercise of the art of
drawing; here, further, a large impression of MR.
SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even some-
thing gross. The working young men of Carlisle were
drawn up, with their hands in their pockets, across the
pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared (much
to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to
do. The working and growing young women of Carlisle,
from the age of twelve upwards, promenaded the streets
in the cool of the evening, and rallied the said young
men. Sometimes the young men rallied the young
women, as in the case of a group gathered round an
accordion-player, from among whom a young man ad-
vanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared
to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was
there and playful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.
On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and
became (to the two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and
reproachfully busy. There were its cattle market, its sheep
market, and its pig market down by the river, with raw-
boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Low-
land dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out
among the animals, and flavouring the air with fumes
of whiskey. There was its corn market down the main
street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks. There
was its general market in the street too, with heather
brooms on which the purple flower still flourished, and
heather baskets primitive and fresh to behold. With
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7
women trying on clogs and caps at open stalls, and ‘Bible
stalls’ adjoining. With ‘Doctor Mantle’s Dispensary for
the cure of all Human Maladies and no charge for ad-
vice,’ and with Doctor Mantle’s ‘Laboratory of Medical,
Chemical, and Botanical Science’ ¾ both healing insti-
tutions established on one pair of trestles, one board,
and one sun-blind. With the renowned phrenologist from
London, begging to be favoured (at sixpence each) with
the company of clients of both sexes, to whom, on ex-
amination of their heads, he would make revelations
‘enabling him or her to know themselves.’ Through all
these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant
watchfully elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peace-
ful skein. Likewise on the walls were printed hints that
the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a
few fine active young men; and that whereas the stan-
dard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, ‘grow-
ing lads of five feet eleven’ need not absolutely despair
of being accepted.
Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the
buried majesty of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and
Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at eight o’clock one
forenoon, bound for the village of Hesket, Newmarket,
some fourteen miles distant. Goodchild (who had al-
ready begun to doubt whether he was idle: as his way
always is when he has nothing to do) had read of a
certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain, called
Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclu-
sion that it would be the culminating triumph of Idle-
ness to ascend the same. Thomas Idle, dwelling on the
pains inseparable from that achievement, had expressed
the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the
sanity, of the enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his
point, and they rode away.
Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and
twisting to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has
vaunted himself a great deal more than his merits de-
serve; but that is rather the way of the Lake country),
dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant
manner. Good, weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses,
well white-limed, scantily dotting the road. Clean chil-
dren coming out to look, carrying other clean children
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8
as big as themselves. Harvest still lying out and much
rained upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped. Well-
cultivated gardens attached to the cottages, with plenty
of produce forced out of their hard soil. Lonely nooks,
and wild; but people can be born, and married, and
buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be
loved, there as elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild’s
remark.) By-and-by, the village. Black, coarse-stoned,
rough-windowed houses; some with outer staircases, like
Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up
hill and round the corner, by way of street. All the
children running out directly. Women pausing in wash-
ing, to peep from doorways and very little windows.
Such were the observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild,
as their conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker’s.
Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a very ill-tem-
pered state; and rain was beginning.
The village shoemaker declined to have anything to
do with Carrock. No visitors went up Carrock. No visi-
tors came there at all. Aa’ the world ganged awa’ yon.
The driver appealed to the Innkeeper. The Innkeeper
had two men working in the fields, and one of them
should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide. Messrs.
Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the
Innkeeper’s house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake.
The Innkeeper was not idle enough ¾ was not idle at
all, which was a great fault in him ¾ but was a fine
specimen of a north-country man, or any kind of man.
He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame,
an immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a
straight, bright, broad look. He had a drawing-room,
too, upstairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland
Fells. (This was Mr. Francis Goodchild’s opinion, in which
Mr. Thomas Idle did not concur.)
The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and
recrossed by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from
a centre, in a corner, that it looked like a broken star-
fish. The room was comfortably and solidly furnished
with good mahogany and horsehair. It had a snug fire-
side, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking
out upon the wild country behind the house. What it
most developed was, an unexpected taste for little or-
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9
naments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most
surprising number. They were not very various, consist-
ing in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more
or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental
affections from under little cupping glasses; but, Uncle
Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological in-
structions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like
a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile
propagandism. Engravings of Mr. Hunt’s country boy,
before and after his pie, were on the wall, divided by a
highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of which had
all her colours (and more) flying, and was making great
way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady’s
collar. A benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last cen-
tury, with a powdered head, kept guard, in oil and var-
nish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a
table; in appearance between a driving seat and an an-
gular knife-box, but, when opened, a musical instru-
ment of tinkling wires, exactly like David’s harp packed
for travelling. Everything became a nick-nack in this
curious room. The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to
the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand
of his own at the greatest possible distance from the
fireplace, and said: ‘By your leave, not a kettle, but a
bijou.’ The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the cover
on, got upon a little round occasional table in a win-
dow, with a worked top, and announced itself to the
two chairs accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite
conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be chatted
over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting
moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old
village on the Cumberland Fells. The very footstool could
not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa, and there-from
proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and liver-
coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose.
Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel
was the least successful assumption in the collection:
being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent
mistake in sitting down on the part of some corpulent
member of the family.
There were books, too, in this room; books on the
table, books on the chimney-piece, books in an open
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10
press in the corner. Fielding was there, and Smollett
was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dis-
persed volumes; and there were tales of those who go
down to the sea in ships, for windy nights; and there
was really a choice of good books for rainy days or fine.
It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a
lonesome by-place — so very agreeable to find these
evidences of a taste, however homely, that went be-
yond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness of the house
— so fanciful to imagine what a wonder a room must be
to the little children born in the gloomy village — what
grand impressions of it those of them who became wan-
derers over the earth would carry away; and how, at
distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die,
cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known
to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare
old Cumberland — it was such a charmingly lazy pur-
suit to entertain these rambling thoughts over the choice
oatcake and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr.
Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass
that the men in the fields were never heard of more,
how the stalwart landlord replaced them without ex-
planation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the
door, and how everything was arranged without the least
arrangement for climbing to old Carrock’s shoulders, and
standing on his head.
Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle
Apprentices drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close,
drowsy, penetrating rain; got into the landlord’s light
dog-cart, and rattled off through the village for the
foot of Carrock. The journey at the outset was not re-
markable. The Cumberland road went up and down like
all other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from
backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the
Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart
amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of
their race. The approach to the foot of the mountain
resembled the approaches to the feet of most other
mountains all over the world. The cultivation gradually
ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became
gradually rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked
gradually more and more lofty, and more and more diffi-
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11
cult to get up. The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-
house. The landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, as-
suming in an instant the character of the most cheerful
and adventurous of guides, led the way to the ascent.
Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain,
and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very
lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under
the influence of the contentment within and the mois-
ture without. Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did
Despondency now hold her gloomy state. He kept it a
secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum,
when the ascent began, to have been back again at the
inn. The sides of Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the
top of Carrock was hidden in mist. The rain was falling
faster and faster. The knees of Mr. Idle — always weak on
walking excursions — shivered and shook with fear and
damp. The wet was already penetrating through the young
man’s outer coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket, for
which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guin-
eas on leaving town; he had no stimulating refreshment
about him but a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts;
he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody to push him
gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front,
nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the
ascent, the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the
mist, and the unutterable folly of climbing, undriven, up
any steep place in the world, when there is level ground
within reach to walk on instead. Was it for this that
Thomas had left London? London, where there are nice
short walks in level public gardens, with benches of re-
pose set up at convenient distances for weary travellers
— London, where rugged stone is humanely pounded
into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped
into smooth slabs for the pavement! No! it was not for
the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had
left his native city, and travelled to Cumberland. Never
did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had com-
mitted a very grave error in judgment than when he found
himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep
mountain, and knew that the responsibility rested on
his weak shoulders of actually getting to the top of it.
The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild
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12
followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear. From
time to time, the two foremost members of the expedi-
tion changed places in the order of march; but the
rearguard never altered his position. Up the mountain
or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over
the rocks, through the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr.
Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always the
man who had to be looked after and waited for. At first
the ascent was delusively easy, the sides of the moun-
tain sloped gradually, and the material of which they
were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender and
pleasant to walk upon. After a hundred yards or so,
however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disap-
peared, and the rocks began. Not noble, massive rocks,
standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in their
positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to
sit upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered
about anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening
rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small sizes, bruis-
ers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet. When
these impediments were passed, heather and slough
followed. Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly
mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned
round to look at the view below them. The scene of the
moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour
drawing half sponged out. The mist was darkening, the
rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about like
spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped
out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the
lonely farm-house where the dog-cart had been left,
loomed spectral in the grey light like the last human
dwelling at the end of the habitable world. Was this a
sight worth climbing to see? Surely—surely not!
Up again—for the top of Carrock is not reached yet.
The land-lord, just as good-tempered and obliging as
he was at the bottom of the mountain. Mr. Goodchild
brighter in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever;
full of cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and walk-
ing with a springiness of step wonderful to behold. Mr.
Idle, farther and farther in the rear, with the water
squeaking in the toes of his boots, with his two-guinea
shooting-jacket clinging damply to his aching sides, with
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13
his overcoat so full of rain, and standing out so
pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his shoulders
downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a gigan-
tic extinguisher—the despairing spirit within him rep-
resenting but too aptly the candle that had just been
put out. Up and up and up again, till a ridge is reached
and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of Carrock
is darkly and drizzingly near. Is this the top? No, noth-
ing like the top. It is an aggravating peculiarity of all
mountains, that, although they have only one top when
they are seen (as they ought always to be seen) from
below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of false
tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to
go out of his way for the purpose of ascending them.
Carrock is but a trumpery little mountain of fifteen
hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and
even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc. No matter;
Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is
afraid of being left behind by himself, must follow. On
entering the edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and
says he hopes that it will not get any thicker. It is twenty
years since he last ascended Carrock, and it is barely
possible, if the mist increases, that the party may be
lost on the mountain. Goodchild hears this dreadful in-
timation, and is not in the least impressed by it. He
marches for the top that is never to be found, as if he
was the Wandering Jew, bound to go on for ever, in
defiance of everything. The landlord faithfully accom-
panies him. The two, to the dim eye of Idle, far below,
look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly
giants, mounting the steps of some invisible castle to-
gether. Up and up, and then down a little, and then up,
and then along a strip of level ground, and then up
again. The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley,
blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable;
a dreary little cairn of stones appears. The landlord adds
one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as if
he were about to perform an incantation, then drop-
ping the stone on to the top of the heap with the ges-
ture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron
in full bubble. Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it
was his study-table at home; Idle, drenched and pant-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
14
ing, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains
distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round with
all the little curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in
return, a magnificent view of—Nothing!
The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of
the exploring party is a little injured by the nature of
the direct conclusion to which the sight of it points—
the said conclusion being that the mountain mist has
actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared it
would. It now becomes imperatively necessary to settle
the exact situation of the farm- house in the valley at
which the dog-cart has been left, before the travellers
attempt to descend. While the landlord is endeavouring
to make this discovery in his own way, Mr. Goodchild
plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws out a little
red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view of
his companions a neat pocket-compass. The north is
found, the point at which the farm-house is situated is
settled, and the descent begins. After a little downward
walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his fellow-travel-
lers turn aside sharply—tries to follow them—loses them
in the mist—is shouted after, waited for, recovered—
and then finds that a halt has been ordered, partly on
his account, partly for the purpose of again consulting
the compass.
The point in debate is settled as before between
Goodchild and the landlord, and the expedition moves
on, not down the mountain, but marching straight for-
ward round the slope of it. The difficulty of following
this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle. He finds
the hardship of walking at all greatly increased by the
fatigue of moving his feet straight forward along the
side of a slope, when their natural tendency, at every
step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight
down the declivity. Let the reader imagine himself to
be walking along the roof of a barn, instead of up or
down it, and he will have an exact idea of the pedes-
trian difficulty in which the travellers had now involved
themselves. In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the
distance again, was shouted for, waited for, recovered
as before; found Goodchild repeating his observation of
the compass, and remonstrated warmly against the side-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
15
way route that his companions persisted in following.
It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that
when three men want to get to the bottom of a moun-
tain, their business is to walk down it; and he put this
view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with
some irritability. He was answered from the scientific
eminence of the compass on which his companions were
mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere
near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into
which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if
they risked continuing the descent from the place where
they had now halted. Idle received this answer with the
silent respect which was due to the commanders of the
expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or
rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the
assurance which he received on starting again, that the
object of the party was only to gain ‘a certain point,’
and, this haven attained, to continue the descent af-
terwards until the foot of Carrock was reached. Though
quite unexceptionable as an abstract form of expres-
sion, the phrase ‘a certain point’ has the disadvantage
of sounding rather vaguely when it is pronounced on
unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker
than a London fog. Nevertheless, after the compass,
this phrase was all the clue the party had to hold by,
and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully as
he could.
More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all
sorts of points reached except the ‘certain point;’ third
loss of Idle, third shouts for him, third recovery of him,
third consultation of compass. Mr. Goodchild draws it
tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a
stone. Something falls on the turf—it is the glass. Some-
thing else drops immediately after—it is the needle.
The compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost!
It is the practice of the English portion of the human
race to receive all great disasters in dead silence. Mr.
Goodchild restored the useless compass to his pocket
without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked at the landlord,
and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle. There was nothing
for it now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chap-
ter of chances. Accordingly, the lost travelers moved
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
16
forward, still walking round the slope of the mountain,
still desperately resolved to avoid the Black Arches, and
to succeed in reaching the ‘certain point.’
A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a
ravine, at the bottom of which there flowed a muddy
little stream. Here another halt was called, and another
consultation took place. The landlord, still clinging per-
tinaciously to the idea of reaching the ‘point,’ voted for
crossing the ravine, and going on round the slope of
the mountain. Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his
fellow-traveller, took another view of the case, and
backed Mr. Idle’s proposal to descend Carrock at once,
at any hazard — the rather as the running stream was
a sure guide to follow from the mountain to the valley.
Accordingly, the party descended to the rugged and
stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost
ground sadly, and fell far behind his travelling compan-
ions. Not much more than six weeks had elapsed since
he had sprained one of his ankles, and he began to feel
this same ankle getting rather weak when he found
himself among the stones that were strewn about the
running water. Goodchild and the landlord were get-
ting farther and farther ahead of him. He saw them
cross the stream and disappear round a projection on
its banks. He heard them shout the moment after as a
signal that they had halted and were waiting for him.
Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the
stream where they had crossed it, and was within one
step of the opposite bank, when his foot slipped on a
wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outwards, a hot,
rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same mo-
ment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Appren-
tices, crippled in an instant.
The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute
danger. There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was
the mist as thick as ever, there was the landlord as
completely lost as the strangers whom he was conduct-
ing, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild’s
pocket. To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown
ground was plainly impossible; and to get him to walk
with a badly sprained ankle seemed equally out of the
question. However, Goodchild (brought back by his cry
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
17
for help) bandaged the ankle with a pocket- handker-
chief, and assisted by the landlord, raised the crippled
Apprentice to his legs, offered him a shoulder to lean
on, and exhorted him for the sake of the whole party to
try if he could walk. Thomas, assisted by the shoulder
on one side, and a stick on the other, did try, with what
pain and difficulty those only can imagine who have
sprained an ankle and have had to tread on it after-
wards. At a pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a
newly- lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly
ignorant whether they were on the right side of the
mountain or the wrong, and equally uncertain how long
Idle would be able to contend with the pain in his ankle,
before he gave in altogether and fell down again, un-
able to stir another step.
Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Tho-
mas weighed heavily and more heavily on the march of
the expedition, the lost travellers followed the wind-
ings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked
cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the
left. After a little consultation it was resolved to follow
this dim vestige of a road in the hope that it might lead
to some farm or cottage, at which Idle could be left in
safety. It was now getting on towards the afternoon,
and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether
the party, delayed in their progress as they now were,
might not be overtaken by the darkness before the right
route was found, and be condemned to pass the night
on the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them,
in their wet clothes.
The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was
washed out altogether by another little stream, dark,
turbulent, and rapid. The landlord suggested, judging
by the colour of the water, that it must be flowing from
one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock;
and the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a
little while, in the hope of possibly wandering towards
help in that way. After walking forward about two hun-
dred yards, they came upon a mine indeed, but a mine,
exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with
nothing but the wreck of its works and buildings left to
speak for it. Here, there were a few sheep feeding. The
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
18
landlord looked at them earnestly, thought he recognised
the marks on them—then thought he did not—finally
gave up the sheep in despair—and walked on just as
ignorant of the whereabouts of the party as ever.
The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphori-
cally in the dark, had now been continued for three-
quarters of an hour from the time when the crippled
Apprentice had met with his accident. Mr. Idle, with all
the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble
on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that
another ten minutes at most would find him at the end
of his last physical resources. He had just made up his
mind on this point, and was about to communicate the
dismal result of his reflections to his companions, when
the mist suddenly brightened, and begun to lift straight
ahead. In another minute, the landlord, who was in
advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree. Before long,
other trees appeared—then a cottage—then a house
beyond the cottage, and a familiar line of road rising
behind it. Last of all, Carrock itself loomed darkly into
view, far away to the right hand. The party had not
only got down the mountain without knowing how, but
had wandered away from it in the mist, without know-
ing why—away, far down on the very moor by which
they had approached the base of Carrock that morning.
The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier
discovery that the travellers had groped their way,
though by a very roundabout direction, to within a mile
or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house
was situated, restored Mr. Idle’s sinking spirits and re-
animated his failing strength. While the landlord ran
off to get the dog-cart, Thomas was assisted by Goodchild
to the cottage which had been the first building seen
when the darkness brightened, and was propped up
against the garden wall, like an artist’s lay figure wait-
ing to be forwarded, until the dog-cart should arrive
from the farm-house below. In due time—and a very
long time it seemed to Mr. Idle—the rattle of wheels
was heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into
the seat. As the dog-cart was driven back to the inn,
the landlord related an anecdote which he had just heard
at the farm-house, of an unhappy man who had been
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
19
lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock; who
had passed the night there alone; who had been found
the next morning, ‘scared and starved;’ and who never
went out afterwards, except on his way to the grave.
Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and derived at least one
useful impression from it. Bad as the pain in his ankle
was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt grate-
ful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the
wilds of Carrock.
CHAPTER II
THE DOG-CART, WITH MR. THOMAS IDLE and his ankle on
the hanging seat behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the
Innkeeper in front, and the rain in spouts and splashes
everywhere, made the best of its way back to the little
inn; the broken moor country looking like miles upon
miles of Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enor-
mous jorum of antediluvian toast-and-water. The trees
dripped; the eaves of the scattered cottages dripped;
the barren stone walls dividing the land, dripped; the
yelping dogs dripped; carts and waggons under ill- roofed
penthouses, dripped; melancholy cocks and hens perch-
ing on their shafts, or seeking shelter underneath them,
dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle dripped;
the Inn- keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast
curtains of mist and cloud passed before the shadowy
forms of the hills, streamed water as they were drawn
across the landscape. Down such steep pitches that the
mare seemed to be trotting on her head, and up such
steep pitches that she seemed to have a supplementary
leg in her tail, the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to
the village. It was too wet for the women to look out, it
was too wet even for the children to look out; all the
doors and windows were closed, and the only sign of
life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.
Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle’s ankle, and whiskey
without oil to Francis Goodchild’s stomach, produced
an agreeable change in the systems of both; soothing
Mr. Idle’s pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening
Mr. Goodchild’s temper, which was sweet before. Port-
manteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr.
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
20
Goodchild, through having no change of outer garments
but broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnifi-
cent portent in the Innkeeper’s house, a shining fron-
tispiece to the fashions for the month, and a frightful
anomaly in the Cumberland village.
Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the con-
scious Goodchild quenched it as much as possible, in
the shadow of Thomas Idle’s ankle, and in a corner of
the little covered carriage that started with them for
Wigton — a most desirable carriage for any country,
except for its having a flat roof and no sides; which
caused the plumps of rain accumulating on the roof to
play vigorous games of bagatelle into the interior all
the way, and to score immensely. It was comfortable to
see how the people coming back in open carts from
Wigton market made no more of the rain than if it were
sunshine; how the Wigton policeman taking a country
walk of half-a-dozen miles (apparently for pleasure), in
resplendent uniform, accepted saturation as his normal
state; how clerks and schoolmasters in black, loitered
along the road without umbrellas, getting varnished at
every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out to
look after the Cumberland cows, shook the rain from
their eyelashes and laughed it away; and how the rain
continued to fall upon all, as it only does fall in hill
countries.
Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were
smoking with rain all down the street. Mr. Thomas Idle,
melodramatically carried to the inn’s first floor, and laid
upon three chairs (he should have had the sofa, if there
had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the window to
take an observation of Wigton, and report what he saw
to his disabled companion.
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘What do you see from the turret?’
‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and believe
to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes. I
see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained
fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if
they were all in mourning. As every little puff of wind
comes down the street, I see a perfect train of rain let
off along the wooden stalls in the market-place and
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
21
exploded against me. I see a very big gas lamp in the
centre which I know, by a secret instinct, will not be
lighted to-night. I see a pump, with a trivet under-
neath its spout whereon to stand the vessels that are
brought to be filled with water. I see a man come to
pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows,
and he strolls empty away.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘what more do you see from the turret, besides the man
and the pump, and the trivet and the houses all in
mourning and the rain?’
‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘one, two, three, four, five,
linen-drapers’ shops in front of me. I see a linen-draper’s
shop next door to the right — and there are five more
linen-drapers’ shops down the corner to the left. Eleven
homicidal linen-drapers’ shops within a short stone’s
throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest!
Over the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers’
shops appears the wonderful inscription, Bank.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘what more do you see from the turret, besides the eleven
homicidal linen-drapers’ shops, and the wonderful in-
scription, “Bank,”—on the small first-floor, and the man
and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourn-
ing and the rain?’
‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘the depository for Chris-
tian Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I think I
again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily. Her Maj-
esty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colours, I am
sure I see. I see the Illustrated London News of several
years ago, and I see a sweetmeat shop—which the pro-
prietor calls a “Salt Warehouse”—with one small female
child in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivi-
ous of rain. And I see a watchmaker’s with only three
great pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his win-
dow, each in a separate pane.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘what more do you see of Wigton, besides these objects,
and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses
all in mourning and the rain?’
‘I see nothing more,’ said Brother Francis, ‘and there is
nothing more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
22
theatre, which was opened and shut last week (the
manager’s family played all the parts), and the short,
square, chinky omnibus that goes to the railway, and
leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold together
long. O yes! Now, I see two men with their hands in
their pockets and their backs towards me.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘what do you make out from the turret, of the expres-
sion of the two men with their hands in their pockets
and their backs towards you?’
‘They are mysterious men,’ said Brother Francis, ‘with
inscrutable backs. They keep their backs towards me
with persistency. If one turns an inch in any direction,
the other turns an inch in the same direction, and no
more. They turn very stiffly, on a very little pivot, in
the middle of the market-place. Their appearance is
partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a
stable, character. They are looking at nothing — very
hard. Their backs are slouched, and their legs are curved
with much standing about. Their pockets are loose and
dog’s-eared, on account of their hands being always in
them. They stand to be rained upon, without any move-
ment of impatience or dissatisfaction, and they keep so
close together that an elbow of each jostles an elbow of
the other, but they never speak. They spit at times, but
speak not. I see it growing darker and darker, and still
I see them, sole visible population of the place, stand-
ing to be rained upon with their backs towards me, and
looking at nothing very hard.’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘before you draw down the blind of the turret and come
in to have your head scorched by the hot gas, see if you
can, and impart to me, something of the expression of
those two amazing men.’
‘The murky shadows,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘are gath-
ering fast; and the wings of evening, and the wings of
coal, are folding over Wigton. Still, they look at noth-
ing very hard, with their backs towards me. Ah! Now,
they turn, and I see—’
‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle,
‘tell me quickly what you see of the two men of Wigton!’
‘I see,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘that they have no ex-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
23
pression at all. And now the town goes to sleep,
undazzled by the large unlighted lamp in the market-
place; and let no man wake it.’
At the close of the next day’s journey, Mr. Thomas
Idle’s ankle became much swollen and inflamed. There
are reasons which will presently explain themselves for
not publicly indicating the exact direction in which that
journey lay, or the place in which it ended. It was a
long day’s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads,
and a long day’s getting out and going on before the
horses, and fagging up hills, and scouring down hills,
on the part of Mr. Goodchild, who in the fatigues of
such labours congratulated himself on attaining a high
point of idleness. It was at a little town, still in
Cumberland, that they halted for the night — a very
little town, with the purple and brown moor close upon
its one street; a curious little ancient market-cross set
up in the midst of it; and the town itself looking much
as if it were a collection of great stones piled on end by
the Druids long ago, which a few recluse people had
since hollowed out for habitations.
‘Is there a doctor here?’ asked Mr. Goodchild, on his
knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stop-
ping in his examination of Mr. Idle’s ankle, with the aid
of a candle.
‘Ey, my word!’ said the landlady, glancing doubtfully
at the ankle for herself; ‘there’s Doctor Speddie.’
‘Is he a good Doctor?’
‘Ey!’ said the landlady, ‘I ca’ him so. A’ cooms efther
nae doctor that I ken. Mair nor which, a’s just the doc-
tor heer.’
‘Do you think he is at home?’
Her reply was, ‘Gang awa’, Jock, and bring him.’
Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stir-
ring up some bay salt in a basin of water for the laving
of this unfortunate ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself
for the last ten minutes in splashing the carpet, set off
promptly. A very few minutes had elapsed when he
showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door
before him and bursting it open with his head.
‘Gently, Jock, gently,’ said the Doctor as he advanced
with a quiet step. ‘Gentlemen, a good evening. I am
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
24
sorry that my presence is required here. A slight acci-
dent, I hope? A slip and a fall? Yes, yes, yes. Carrock,
indeed? Hah! Does that pain you, sir? No doubt, it does.
It is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that
has been badly strained. Time and rest, sir! They are of-
ten the recipe in greater cases,’ with a slight sigh, ‘and
often the recipe in small. I can send a lotion to relieve
you, but we must leave the cure to time and rest.’
This he said, holding Idle’s foot on his knee between
his two hands, as he sat over against him. He had
touched it tenderly and skilfully in explanation of what
he said, and, when his careful examination was com-
pleted, softly returned it to its former horizontal posi-
tion on a chair.
He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he be-
gan, but afterwards fluently. He was a tall, thin, large-
boned, old gentleman, with an appearance at first sight
of being hard-featured; but, at a second glance, the
mild expression of his face and some particular touches
of sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected
this impression and assigned his long professional rides,
by day and night, in the bleak hill-weather, as the true
cause of that appearance. He stooped very little, though
past seventy and very grey. His dress was more like that
of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain
black suit, and a plain white neck-kerchief tied behind
like a band. His black was the worse for wear, and there
were darns in his coat, and his linen was a little frayed
at the hems and edges. He might have been poor—it
was likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot—or he
might have been a little self-forgetful and eccentric.
Any one could have seen directly, that he had neither
wife nor child at home. He had a scholarly air with him,
and that kind of considerate humanity towards others
which claimed a gentle consideration for himself. Mr.
Goodchild made this study of him while he was examin-
ing the limb, and as he laid it down. Mr. Goodchild wishes
to add that he considers it a very good likeness.
It came out in the course of a little conversation,
that Doctor Speddie was acquainted with some friends
of Thomas Idle’s, and had, when a young man, passed
some years in Thomas Idle’s birthplace on the other side
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
25
of England. Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr.
Goodchild’s apprenticeship, also happened to be well
known to him. The lazy travellers were thus placed on a
more intimate footing with the Doctor than the casual
circumstances of the meeting would of themselves have
established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to go home,
remarking that he would send his assistant with the
lotion, Francis Goodchild said that was unnecessary, for,
by the Doctor’s leave, he would accompany him, and
bring it back. (Having done nothing to fatigue himself
for a full quarter of an hour, Francis began to fear that
he was not in a state of idleness.)
Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition
of Francis Goodchild, ‘as it would give him the pleasure
of enjoying a few more minutes of Mr. Goodchild’s soci-
ety than he could otherwise have hoped for,’ and they
went out together into the village street. The rain had
nearly ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind
from the north-east, and stars were shining from the
peaceful heights beyond them.
Doctor Speddie’s house was the last house in the place.
Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and lonesome. The
wind moaned in a low, dull, shivering manner round
the little garden, like a houseless creature that knew
the winter was coming. It was exceedingly wild and soli-
tary. ‘Roses,’ said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched
some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; ‘but they
get cut to pieces.’
The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried,
and led the way into a low but pretty ample hall with
rooms on either side. The door of one of these stood
open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word of wel-
come to his guest. It, too, was a low room, half surgery
and half parlour, with shelves of books and bottles
against the walls, which were of a very dark hue. There
was a fire in the grate, the night being damp and chill.
Leaning against the chimney-piece looking down into
it, stood the Doctor’s Assistant.
A man of a most remarkable appearance. Much older
than Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least
two-and-fifty; but, that was nothing. What was star-
tling in him was his remarkable paleness. His large black
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
26
eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey
hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his
figure, were at first forgotten in his extraordinary pal-
lor. There was no vestige of colour in the man. When he
turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone
figure had looked round at him.
‘Mr. Lorn,’ said the Doctor. ‘Mr. Goodchild.’
The Assistant, in a distraught way—as if he had for-
gotten something—as if he had forgotten everything,
even to his own name and himself—acknowledged the
visitor’s presence, and stepped further back into the
shadow of the wall behind him. But, he was so pale that
his face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and
really could not be hidden so.
‘Mr. Goodchild’s friend has met with accident, Lorn,’
said Doctor Speddie. ‘We want the lotion for a bad sprain.’
A pause.
‘My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-
night. The lotion for a bad sprain.’
‘Ah! yes! Directly.’
He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take
his white face and his wild eyes to a table in a recess
among the bottles. But, though he stood there, com-
pounding the lotion with his back towards them,
Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his
gaze from the man. When he at length did so, he found
the Doctor observing him, with some trouble in his face.
‘He is absent,’ explained the Doctor, in a low voice. ‘Al-
ways absent. Very absent.’
‘Is he ill?’
‘No, not ill.’
‘Unhappy?’
‘I have my suspicions that he was,’ assented the Doc-
tor, ‘once.’
Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doc-
tor accompanied these words with a benignant and pro-
tecting glance at their subject, in which there was much
of the expression with which an attached father might
have looked at a heavily afflicted son. Yet, that they
were not father and son must have been plain to most
eyes. The Assistant, on the other hand, turning pres-
ently to ask the Doctor some question, looked at him
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
27
with a wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and
sustainment in life.
It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try
to lead the mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-
chair, away from what was before him. Let Mr. Goodchild
do what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes and
thoughts reverted to the Assistant. The Doctor soon
perceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in a
little perplexity, said:
‘Lorn!’
‘My dear Doctor.’
‘Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion? You
will show the best way of applying it, far better than
Mr. Goodchild can.’
‘With pleasure.’
The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow
to the door.
‘Lorn!’ said the Doctor, calling after him.
He returned.
‘Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come
home. Don’t hurry. Excuse my calling you back.’
‘It is not,’ said the Assistant, with his former smile,
‘the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.’
With those words he went away.
‘Mr. Goodchild,’ said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice,
and with his former troubled expression of face, ‘I have
seen that your attention has been concentrated on my
friend.’
‘He fascinates me. I must apologise to you, but he has
quite bewildered and mastered me.’
‘I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,’ said
the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr.
Goodchild’s, ‘become in the course of time very heavy. I
will tell you something. You may make what use you
will of it, under fictitious names. I know I may trust
you. I am the more inclined to confidence to-night,
through having been unexpectedly led back, by the
current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my
early life. Will you please to draw a little nearer?’
Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went
on thus: speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a
voice, that the wind, though it was far from high, occa-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
28
sionally got the better of him.
When this present nineteenth century was younger
by a good many years than it is now, a certain friend of
mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened to arrive in
the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-
week, or, in other words, in the middle of the month of
September. He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated,
open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen, who
possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection,
and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life
making friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go. His
father was a rich manufacturer, and had bought landed
property enough in one of the midland counties to make
all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly
envious of him. Arthur was his only son, possessor in
prospect of the great estate and the great business af-
ter his father’s death; well supplied with money, and
not too rigidly looked after, during his father’s life-
time. Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said that
the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful
days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not dis-
posed to be violently indignant when he found that his
son took after him. This may be true or not. I myself
only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting
on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable
a gentleman as ever I met with.
Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes
to Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his
harebrained way, that he would go to the races. He did
not reach the town till towards the close of the evening,
and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at
the principal hotel. Dinner they were ready enough to
give him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he men-
tioned it. In the race-week at Doncaster, it is no un-
common thing for visitors who have not bespoken apart-
ments, to pass the night in their carriages at the inn
doors. As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have
often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the
doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.
Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s
lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to
secure one) was more than doubtful. He tried the sec-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
29
ond hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior
inns after that; and was met everywhere by the same
form of answer. No accommodation for the night of any
sort was left. All the bright golden sovereigns in his
pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the
race-week.
To a young fellow of Arthur’s temperament, the nov-
elty of being turned away into the street, like a penni-
less vagabond, at every house where he asked for a lodg-
ing, presented itself in the light of a new and highly
amusing piece of experience. He went on, with his car-
pet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of
entertainment for travellers that he could find in
Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the
town. By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded
out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was
getting cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there
was every prospect that it was soon going to rain.
The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on
young Holliday’s good spirits. He began to contemplate
the houseless situation in which he was placed, from
the serious rather than the humorous point of view;
and he looked about him, for another public-house to
inquire at, with something very like downright anxiety
in his mind on the subject of a lodging for the night.
The suburban part of the town towards which he had
now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see
nothing of the houses as he passed them, except that
they got progressively smaller and dirtier, the farther
he went. Down the winding road before him shone the
dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely light
that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all
round him. He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and
then, if it showed him nothing in the shape of an Inn,
to return to the central part of the town and to try if
he could not at least secure a chair to sit down on,
through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.
As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walk-
ing close under it, found that it lighted the entrance to
a narrow court, on the wall of which was painted a long
hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with a lean fore-
finger, to this inscription:—
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30
THE TWO ROBINS.
ARTHUR TURNED INTO THE COURT without hesitation, to
see what The Two Robins could do for him. Four or five
men were standing together round the door of the house
which was at the bottom of the court, facing the en-
trance from the street. The men were all listening to
one other man, better dressed than the rest, who was
telling his audience something, in a low voice, in which
they were apparently very much interested.
On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a
stranger with a knapsack in his hand, who was evi-
dently leaving the house.
‘No,’ said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round
and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking,
bald-headed man, with a dirty white apron on, who
had followed him down the passage. ‘No, Mr. landlord, I
am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don’t mind con-
fessing that I can’t quite stand that.’
It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard
these words, that the stranger had been asked an exor-
bitant price for a bed at The Two Robins; and that he
was unable or unwilling to pay it. The moment his back
was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own
well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry,
for fear any other benighted traveller should slip in
and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord with the
dirty apron and the bald head.
‘If you have got a bed to let,’ he said, ‘and if that
gentleman who has just gone out won’t pay your price
for it, I will.’
The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.
‘Will you, sir?’ he asked, in a meditative, doubtful
way.
‘Name your price,’ said young Holliday, thinking that
the landlord’s hesitation sprang from some boorish dis-
trust of him. ‘Name your price, and I’ll give you the
money at once if you like?’
‘Are you game for five shillings?’ inquired the land-
lord, rubbing his stubbly double chin, and looking up
thoughtfully at the ceiling above him.
Arthur nearly laughed in the man’s face; but think-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
31
ing it prudent to control himself, offered the five shil-
lings as seriously as he could. The sly landlord held out
his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.
‘You’re acting all fair and above-board by me,’ he said:
‘and, before I take your money, I’ll do the same by you.
Look here, this is how it stands. You can have a bed all
to yourself for five shillings; but you can’t have more
than a half-share of the room it stands in. Do you see
what I mean, young gentleman?’
‘Of course I do,’ returned Arthur, a little irritably. ‘You
mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of
the beds is occupied?’
The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double
chin harder than ever. Arthur hesitated, and mechani-
cally moved back a step or two towards the door. The
idea of sleeping in the same room with a total stranger,
did not present an attractive prospect to him. He felt
more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into
his pocket, and to go out into the street once more.
‘Is it yes, or no?’ asked the landlord. ‘Settle it as quick
as you can, because there’s lots of people wanting a bed
at Doncaster tonight, besides you.’
Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain
falling heavily in the street outside. He thought he would
ask a question or two before he rashly decided on leav-
ing the shelter of The Two Robins.
‘What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?’
he inquired. ‘Is he a gentleman? I mean, is he a quiet,
well-behaved person?’
‘The quietest man I ever came across,’ said the land-
lord, rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other.
‘As sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in his
habits. It hasn’t struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and
he’s in his bed already. I don’t know whether that comes
up to your notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way
ahead of mine, I can tell you.’
‘Is he asleep, do you think?’ asked Arthur.
‘I know he’s asleep,’ returned the landlord. ‘And what’s
more, he’s gone off so fast, that I’ll warrant you don’t
wake him. This way, sir,’ said the landlord, speaking
over young Holliday’s shoulder, as if he was addressing
some new guest who was approaching the house.
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32
‘Here you are,’ said Arthur, determined to be before-
hand with the stranger, whoever he might be. ‘I’ll take
the bed.’ And he handed the five shillings to the land-
lord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into
his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle.
‘Come up and see the room,’ said the host of The Two
Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly,
considering how fat he was.
They mounted to the second-floor of the house. The
landlord half opened a door, fronting the landing, then
stopped, and turned round to Arthur.
‘It’s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on
yours,’ he said. ‘You give me five shillings, I give you in
return a clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, before-
hand, that you won’t be interfered with, or annoyed in
any way, by the man who sleeps in the same room as
you.’ Saying those words, he looked hard, for a mo-
ment, in young Holliday’s face, and then led the way
into the room.
It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it
would be. The two beds stood parallel with each other
—a space of about six feet intervening between them.
They were both of the same medium size, and both had
the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if neces-
sary, all round them. The occupied bed was the bed
nearest the window. The curtains were all drawn round
this, except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side
of the bed farthest from the window. Arthur saw the
feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into
a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his
back. He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw
the curtain—stopped half-way, and listened for a mo-
ment—then turned to the landlord.
‘He’s a very quiet sleeper,’ said Arthur.
‘Yes,’ said the landlord, ‘very quiet.’
Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked
in at the man cautiously.
‘How pale he is!’ said Arthur.
‘Yes,’ returned the landlord, ‘pale enough, isn’t he?’
Arthur looked closer at the man. The bedclothes were
drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over
the region of his chest. Surprised and vaguely startled,
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
33
as he noticed this, Arthur stooped down closer over the
stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened breath-
lessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely still
face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round
suddenly on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for
the moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.
‘Come here,’ he whispered, under his breath. ‘Come
here, for God’s sake! The man’s not asleep — he is dead!’
‘You have found that out sooner than I thought you
would,’ said the landlord, composedly. ‘Yes, he’s dead,
sure enough. He died at five o’clock to-day.’
‘How did he die? Who is he?’ asked Arthur, staggered,
for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.
‘As to who is he,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘I know no
more about him than you do. There are his books and
letters and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper
parcel, for the Coroner’s inquest to open to-morrow or
next day. He’s been here a week, paying his way fairly
enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if
he was ailing. My girl brought him up his tea at five to-
day; and as he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a
faint, or a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I
know. We could not bring him to — and I said he was
dead. And the doctor couldn’t bring him to — and the
doctor said he was dead. And there he is. And the
Coroner’s inquest’s coming as soon as it can. And that’s
as much as I know about it.’
Arthur held the candle close to the man’s lips. The
flame still burnt straight up, as steadily as before. There
was a moment of silence; and the rain pattered drearily
through it against the panes of the window.
‘If you haven’t got nothing more to say to me,’ contin-
ued the landlord, ‘I suppose I may go. You don’t expect
your five shillings back, do you? There’s the bed I prom-
ised you, clean and comfortable. There’s the man I war-
ranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.
If you’re frightened to stop alone with him, that’s not
my look out. I’ve kept my part of the bargain, and I
mean to keep the money. I’m not Yorkshire, myself,
young gentleman; but I’ve lived long enough in these
parts to have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn’t won-
der if you found out the way to brighten up yours, next
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34
time you come amongst us.’ With these words, the land-
lord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself
softly, in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.
Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this
time sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at
the trick that had been played on him, and at the inso-
lent manner in which the landlord exulted in it.
‘Don’t laugh,’ he said sharply, ‘till you are quite sure
you have got the laugh against me. You shan’t have the
five shillings for nothing, my man. I’ll keep the bed.’
‘Will you?’ said the landlord. ‘Then I wish you a
goodnight’s rest.’ With that brief farewell, he went out,
and shut the door after him.
A good night’s rest! The words had hardly been spoken,
the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur half-re-
pented the hasty words that had just escaped him. Though
not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting in courage
of the moral as well as the physical sort, the presence of
the dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect on
his mind when he found himself alone in the room—alone,
and bound by his own rash words to stay there till the
next morning. An older man would have thought nothing
of those words, and would have acted, without reference
to them, as his calmer sense suggested. But Arthur was
too young to treat the ridicule, even of his inferiors, with
contempt—too young not to fear the momentary humili-
ation of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he
feared the trial of watching out the long night in the same
chamber with the dead.
‘It is but a few hours,’ he thought to himself, ‘and I
can get away the first thing in the morning.’
He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea
passed through his mind, and the sharp, angular emi-
nence made in the clothes by the dead man’s upturned
feet again caught his eye. He advanced and drew the
curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from look-
ing at the face of the corpse, lest he might unnerve
himself at the outset by fastening some ghastly im-
pression of it on his mind. He drew the curtain very
gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed it. ‘Poor
fellow,’ he said, almost as sadly as if he had known the
man. ‘Ah, poor fellow!’
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35
He went next to the window. The night was black,
and he could see nothing from it. The rain still pattered
heavily against the glass. He inferred, from hearing it,
that the window was at the back of the house; remem-
bering that the front was sheltered from the weather
by the court and the buildings over it.
While he was still standing at the window—for even
the dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it
made; a relief, also, because it moved, and had some
faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and compan-
ionship in it—while he was standing at the window,
and looking vacantly into the black darkness outside,
he heard a distant church-clock strike ten. Only ten!
How was he to pass the time till the house was astir the
next morning?
Under any other circumstances, he would have gone
down to the public-house parlour, would have called for
his grog, and would have laughed and talked with the
company assembled as familiarly as if he had known them
all his life. But the very thought of whiling away the
time in this manner was distasteful to him. The new situ-
ation in which he was placed seemed to have altered him
to himself already. Thus far, his life had been the com-
mon, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous young
man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to face.
He had lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom
he treasured. Till this night, what share he had of the
immortal inheritance that is divided amongst us all, had
laid dormant within him. Till this night, Death and he
had not once met, even in thought.
He took a few turns up and down the room—then
stopped. The noise made by his boots on the poorly
carpeted floor, jarred on his ear. He hesitated a little,
and ended by taking the boots off, and walking back-
wards and forwards noiselessly. All desire to sleep or to
rest had left him. The bare thought of lying down on
the unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on his
mind of a dreadful mimicry of the position of the dead
man. Who was he? What was the story of his past life?
Poor he must have been, or he would not have stopped
at such a place as The Two Robins Inn—and weakened,
probably, by long illness, or he could hardly have died
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
36
in the manner in which the landlord had described.
Poor, ill, lonely,—dead in a strange place; dead, with
nobody but a stranger to pity him. A sad story: truly,
on the mere face of it, a very sad story.
While these thoughts were passing through his mind,
he had stopped insensibly at the window, close to which
stood the foot of the bed with the closed curtains. At
first he looked at it absently; then he became conscious
that his eyes were fixed on it; and then, a perverse
desire took possession of him to do the very thing which
he had resolved not to do, up to this time—to look at
the dead man.
He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but
checked himself in the very act of undrawing them,
turned his back sharply on the bed, and walked to-
wards the chimney-piece, to see what things were placed
on it, and to try if he could keep the dead man out of
his mind in that way.
There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with
some mildewed remains of ink in the bottle. There were
two coarse china ornaments of the commonest kind; and
there was a square of embossed card, dirty and fly-blown,
with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all
sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured inks.
He took the card, and went away, to read it, to the table
on which the candle was placed; sitting down, with his
back resolutely turned to the curtained bed.
He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in
one corner of the card—then turned it round impa-
tiently to look at another. Before he could begin read-
ing the riddles printed here, the sound of the church-
clock stopped him. Eleven. He had got through an hour
of the time, in the room with the dead man.
Once more he looked at the card. It was not easy to
make out the letters printed on it, in consequence of
the dimness of the light which the landlord had left
him—a common tallow candle, furnished with a pair of
heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers. Up to this time, his
mind had been too much occupied to think of the light.
He had left the wick of the candle unsnuffed, till it had
risen higher than the flame, and had burnt into an odd
pent-house shape at the top, from which morsels of the
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
37
charred cotton fell off, from time to time, in little flakes.
He took up the snuffers now, and trimmed the wick.
The light brightened directly, and the room became less
dismal.
Again he turned to the riddles; reading them dog-
gedly and resolutely, now in one corner of the card,
now in another. All his efforts, however, could not fix
his attention on them. He pursued his occupation me-
chanically, deriving no sort of impression from what he
was reading. It was as if a shadow from the curtained
bed had got between his mind and the gaily printed
letters—a shadow that nothing could dispel. At last,
he gave up the struggle, and threw the card from him
impatiently, and took to walking softly up and down
the room again.
The dead man, the dead man, the hidden dead man
on the bed! There was the one persistent idea still haunt-
ing him. Hidden? Was it only the body being there, or
was it the body being there, concealed, that was prey-
ing on his mind? He stopped at the window, with that
doubt in him; once more listening to the pattering rain,
once more looking out into the black darkness.
Still the dead man! The darkness forced his mind back
upon itself, and set his memory at work, reviving, with
a painfully-vivid distinctness the momentary impres-
sion it had received from the first sight of the corpse.
Before long the face seemed to be hovering out in the
middle of the darkness, confronting him through the
window, with the paleness whiter, with the dreadful
dull line of light between the imperfectly-closed eye-
lids broader than he had seen it—with the parted lips
slowly dropping farther and farther away from each
other—with the features growing larger and moving
closer, till they seemed to fill the window and to silence
the rain, and to shut out the night.
The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him
suddenly from the dream of his own distempered fancy.
He recognised it as the voice of the landlord. ‘Shut up
at twelve, Ben,’ he heard it say. ‘I’m off to bed.’
He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his
forehead, reasoned with himself for a little while, and
resolved to shake his mind free of the ghastly counter-
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
38
feit which still clung to it, by forcing himself to con-
front, if it was only for a moment, the solemn reality.
Without allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he
parted the curtains at the foot of the bed, and looked
through.
There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful
mystery of stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow. No
stir, no change there! He only looked at it for a moment
before he closed the curtains again—but that moment
steadied him, calmed him, restored him—mind and
body—to himself.
He returned to his old occupation of walking up and
down the room; persevering in it, this time, till the
clock struck again. Twelve.
As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was suc-
ceeded by the confused noise, down-stairs, of the drink-
ers in the tap-room leaving the house. The next sound,
after an interval of silence, was caused by the barring
of the door, and the closing of the shutters, at the back
of the Inn. Then the silence followed again, and was
disturbed no more.
He was alone now—absolutely, utterly, alone with the
dead man, till the next morning.
The wick of the candle wanted trimming again. He
took up the snuffers—but paused suddenly on the very
point of using them, and looked attentively at the
candle—then back, over his shoulder, at the curtained
bed—then again at the candle. It had been lighted, for
the first time, to show him the way up-stairs, and three
parts of it, at least, were already consumed. In another
hour it would be burnt out. In another hour—unless he
called at once to the man who had shut up the Inn, for
a fresh candle—he would be left in the dark.
Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had
entered his room, his unreasonable dread of encounter-
ing ridicule, and of exposing his courage to suspicion,
had not altogether lost its influence over him, even
yet. He lingered irresolutely by the table, waiting till
he could prevail on himself to open the door, and call,
from the landing, to the man who had shut up the Inn.
In his present hesitating frame of mind, it was a kind of
relief to gain a few moments only by engaging in the
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
39
trifling occupation of snuffing the candle. His hand
trembled a little, and the snuffers were heavy and awk-
ward to use. When he closed them on the wick, he closed
them a hair’s breadth too low. In an instant the candle
was out, and the room was plunged in pitch darkness.
The one impression which the absence of light imme-
diately produced on his mind, was distrust of the cur-
tained bed—distrust which shaped itself into no dis-
tinct idea, but which was powerful enough in its very
vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to make his
heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently. No
sound stirred in the room but the familiar sound of the
rain against the window, louder and sharper now than
he had heard it yet.
Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread pos-
sessed him, and kept him to his chair. He had put his
carpet-bag on the table, when he first entered the room;
and he now took the key from his pocket, reached out
his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in it for his
travelling writing-case, in which he knew that there
was a small store of matches. When he had got one of
the matches, he waited before he struck it on the coarse
wooden table, and listened intently again, without
knowing why. Still there was no sound in the room but
the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain.
He lighted the candle again, without another moment
of delay and, on the instant of its burning up, the first
object in the room that his eyes sought for was the
curtained bed.
Just before the light had been put out, he had looked
in that direction, and had seen no change, no disar-
rangement of any sort, in the folds of the closely-drawn
curtains.
When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging
over the side of it, a long white hand.
It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the
bed, where the curtain at the head and the curtain at
the foot met. Nothing more was visible. The clinging
curtains hid everything but the long white hand.
He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call
out; feeling nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty
he possessed gathered up and lost in the one seeing
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
40
faculty. How long that first panic held him he never
could tell afterwards. It might have been only for a
moment; it might have been for many minutes together.
How he got to the bed—whether he ran to it headlong,
or whether he approached it slowly—how he wrought
himself up to unclose the curtains and look in, he never
has remembered, and never will remember to his dying
day. It is enough that he did go to the bed, and that he
did look inside the curtains.
The man had moved. One of his arms was outside the
clothes; his face was turned a little on the pillow; his
eyelids were wide open. Changed as to position, and as
to one of the features, the face was, otherwise, fear-
fully and wonderfully unaltered. The dead paleness and
the dead quiet were on it still
One glance showed Arthur this—one glance, before
he flew breathlessly to the door, and alarmed the house.
The man whom the landlord called ‘Ben,’ was the
first to appear on the stairs. In three words, Arthur
told him what had happened, and sent him for the
nearest doctor.
I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a
medical friend of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking
care of his patients for him, during his absence in Lon-
don; and I, for the time being, was the nearest doctor.
They had sent for me from the Inn, when the stranger
was taken ill in the afternoon; but I was not at home,
and medical assistance was sought for elsewhere. When
the man from The Two Robins rang the night-bell, I was
just thinking of going to bed. Naturally enough, I did
not believe a word of his story about ‘a dead man who
had come to life again.’ However, I put on my hat, armed
myself with one or two bottles of restorative medicine,
and ran to the Inn, expecting to find nothing more
remarkable, when I got there, than a patient in a fit.
My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the
literal truth was almost, if not quite, equalled by my as-
tonishment at finding myself face to face with Arthur
Holliday as soon as I entered the bedroom. It was no time
then for giving or seeking explanations. We just shook
hands amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but Arthur
out of the room, and hurried to the man on the bed.
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
41
The kitchen fire had not been long out. There was
plenty of hot water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel
to be had. With these, with my medicines, and with
such help as Arthur could render under my direction, I
dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of death. In
less than an hour from the time when I had been called
in, he was alive and talking in the bed on which he had
been laid out to wait for the Coroner’s inquest.
You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter
with him; and I might treat you, in reply, to a long
theory, plentifully sprinkled with, what the children
call, hard words. I prefer telling you that, in this case,
cause and effect could not be satisfactorily joined to-
gether by any theory whatever. There are mysteries in
life, and the condition of it, which human science has
not fathomed yet; and I candidly confess to you, that,
in bringing that man back to existence, I was, morally
speaking, groping haphazard in the dark. I know (from
the testimony of the doctor who attended him in the
afternoon) that the vital machinery, so far as its action
is appreciable by our senses, had, in this case, unques-
tionably stopped; and I am equally certain (seeing that
I recovered him) that the vital principle was not ex-
tinct. When I add, that he had suffered from a long and
complicated illness, and that his whole nervous system
was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know
of the physical condition of my dead-alive patient at
The Two Robins Inn.
When he ‘came to,’ as the phrase goes, he was a star-
tling object to look at, with his colourless face, his
sunken cheeks, his wild black eyes, and his long black
hair. The first question he asked me about himself, when
he could speak, made me suspect that I had been called
in to a man in my own profession. I mentioned to him
my surmise; and he told me that I was right.
He said he had come last from Paris, where he had
been attached to a hospital. That he had lately returned
to England, on his way to Edinburgh, to continue his
studies; that he had been taken ill on the journey; and
that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at
Doncaster. He did not add a word about his name, or
who he was: and, of course, I did not question him on
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42
the subject. All I inquired, when he ceased speaking,
was what branch of the profession he intended to fol-
low.
‘Any branch,’ he said, bitterly, ‘which will put bread
into the mouth of a poor man.’
At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him
in silent curiosity, burst out impetuously in his usual
good-humoured way:—
‘My dear fellow!’ (everybody was ‘my dear fellow’ with
Arthur) ‘now you have come to life again, don’t begin
by being down-hearted about your prospects. I’ll an-
swer for it, I can help you to some capital thing in the
medical line—or, if I can’t, I know my father can.’
The medical student looked at him steadily.
‘Thank you,’ he said, coldly. Then added, ‘May I ask
who your father is?’
‘He’s well enough known all about this part of the
country,’ replied Arthur. ‘He is a great manufacturer,
and his name is Holliday.’
My hand was on the man’s wrist during this brief con-
versation. The instant the name of Holliday was pro-
nounced I felt the pulse under my fingers flutter, stop,
go on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards, for
a minute or two, at the fever rate.
‘How did you come here?’ asked the stranger, quickly,
excitably, passionately almost.
Arthur related briefly what had happened from the
time of his first taking the bed at the inn.
‘I am indebted to Mr. Holliday’s son then for the help
that has saved my life,’ said the medical student, speak-
ing to himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice.
‘Come here!’
He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right
hand.
‘With all my heart,’ said Arthur, taking the hand-cor-
dially. ‘I may confess it now,’ he continued, laughing.
‘Upon my honour, you almost frightened me out of my
wits.’
The stranger did not seem to listen. His wild black
eyes were fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur’s
face, and his long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur’s
hand. Young Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze,
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43
amazed and puzzled by the medical student’s odd lan-
guage and manners. The two faces were close together;
I looked at them; and, to my amazement, I was sud-
denly impressed by the sense of a likeness between
them—not in features, or complexion, but solely in
expression. It must have been a strong likeness, or I
should certainly not have found it out, for I am natu-
rally slow at detecting resemblances between faces.
‘You have saved my life,’ said the strange man, still
looking hard in Arthur’s face, still holding tightly by
his hand. ‘If you had been my own brother, you could
not have done more for me than that.’
He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three
words ‘my own brother,’ and a change passed over his
face as he pronounced them, —a change that no lan-
guage of mine is competent to describe.
‘I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,’ said
Arthur. ‘I’ll speak to my father, as soon as I get home.’
‘You seem to be fond and proud of your father,’ said
the medical student. ‘I suppose, in return, he is fond
and proud of you?’
‘Of course, he is!’ answered Arthur, laughing. ‘Is there
anything wonderful in that? Isn’t your father fond—’
The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday’s hand,
and turned his face away.
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Arthur. ‘I hope I have not
unintentionally pained you. I hope you have not lost
your father.’
‘I can’t well lose what I have never had,’ retorted the
medical student, with a harsh, mocking laugh.
‘What you have never had!’
The strange man suddenly caught Arthur’s hand again,
suddenly looked once more hard in his face.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh.
‘You have brought a poor devil back into the world, who
has no business there. Do I astonish you? Well! I have a
fancy of my own for telling you what men in my situa-
tion generally keep a secret. I have no name and no
father. The merciful law of Society tells me I am Nobody’s
Son! Ask your father if he will be my father too, and
help me on in life with the family name.’
Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever. I signed
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44
to him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again
on the man’s wrist. No! In spite of the extraordinary
speech that he had just made, he was not, as I had been
disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-headed. His
pulse, by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow
beat, and his skin was moist and cool. Not a symptom
of fever or agitation about him.
Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned
to me, and began talking of the extraordinary nature of
his case, and asking my advice about the future course
of medical treatment to which he ought to subject him-
self. I said the matter required careful thinking over,
and suggested that I should submit certain prescrip-
tions to him the next morning. He told me to write
them at once, as he would, most likely, be leaving
Doncaster, in the morning, before I was up. It was quite
useless to represent to him the folly and danger of such
a proceeding as this. He heard me politely and patiently,
but held to his resolution, without offering any reasons
or any explanations, and repeated to me, that if I wished
to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must
write it at once. Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the
loan of a travelling writing-case, which, he said, he had
with him; and, bringing it to the bed, shook the note-
paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith in his
usual careless way. With the paper, there fell out on the
counterpane of the bed a small packet of sticking-plas-
ter, and a little water-colour drawing of a landscape.
The medical student took up the drawing and looked
at it. His eye fell on some initials neatly written, in
cypher, in one corner. He started and trembled; his pale
face grew whiter than ever; his wild black eyes turned
on Arthur, and looked through and through him.
‘A pretty drawing,’ he said in a remarkably quiet tone
of voice.
‘Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,’ said Arthur. ‘Oh,
such a pretty girl! I wish it was not a landscape—I wish
it was a portrait of her!’
‘You admire her very much?’
Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand
for answer.
‘Love at first sight!’ he said, putting the drawing away
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45
again. ‘But the course of it doesn’t run smooth. It’s the
old story. She’s monopolised as usual. Trammelled by a
rash engagement to some poor man who is never likely
to get money enough to marry her. It was lucky I heard
of it in time, or I should certainly have risked a decla-
ration when she gave me that drawing. Here, doctor!
Here is pen, ink, and paper all ready for you.’
‘When she gave you that drawing? Gave it. Gave it.’ He
repeated the words slowly to himself, and suddenly
closed his eyes. A momentary distortion passed across
his face, and I saw one of his hands clutch up the bed-
clothes and squeeze them hard. I thought he was going
to be ill again, and begged that there might be no more
talking. He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed them
once more searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and
distinctly, ‘You like her, and she likes you. The poor
man may die out of your way. Who can tell that she
may not give you herself as well as her drawing, after
all?’
Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me,
and said in a whisper, ‘Now for the prescription.’ From
that time, though he spoke to Arthur again, he never
looked at him more.
When I had written the prescription, he examined it,
approved of it, and then astonished us both by abruptly
wishing us good night. I offered to sit up with him, and
he shook his head. Arthur offered to sit up with him,
and he said, shortly, with his face turned away, ‘No.’ I
insisted on having somebody left to watch him. He gave
way when he found I was determined, and said he would
accept the services of the waiter at the Inn.
‘Thank you, both,’ he said, as we rose to go. ‘I have one
last favour to ask—not of you, doctor, for I leave you to
exercise your professional discretion—but of Mr. Holliday.’
His eyes, while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and
never once turned towards Arthur. ‘I beg that Mr. Holliday
will not mention to any one—least of all to his father—
the events that have occurred, and the words that have
passed, in this room. I entreat him to bury me in his
memory, as, but for him, I might have been buried in my
grave. I cannot give my reasons for making this strange
request. I can only implore him to grant it.’
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46
His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his
face on the pillow. Arthur, completely bewildered, gave
the required pledge. I took young Holliday away with
me, immediately afterwards, to the house of my friend;
determining to go back to the Inn, and to see the medi-
cal student again before he had left in the morning.
I returned to the Inn at eight o’clock, purposely ab-
staining from waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the
past night’s excitement on one of my friend’s sofas. A
suspicion had occurred to me as soon as I was alone in
my bedroom, which made me resolve that Holliday and
the stranger whose life he had saved should not meet
again, if I could prevent it. I have already alluded to
certain reports, or scandals, which I knew of, relating to
the early life of Arthur’s father. While I was thinking, in
my bed, of what had passed at the Inn—of the change in
the student’s pulse when he heard the name
of Holliday; of the resemblance of expression that I had
discovered between his face and Arthur’s; of the empha-
sis he had laid on those three words, ‘my own brother;’
and of his incomprehensible acknowledgment of his own
illegitimacy—while I was thinking of these things, the
reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my mind,
and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous
reflections. Something within me whispered, ‘It is best
that those two young men should not meet again.’ I felt
it before I slept; I felt it when I woke; and I went, as I
told you, alone to the Inn the next morning.
I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my name-
less patient again. He had been gone nearly an hour
when I inquired for him.
I HAVE NOW TOLD YOU EVERYTHING that I know for certain,
in relation to the man whom I brought back to life in
the double-bedded room of the Inn at Doncaster. What
I have next to add is matter for inference and surmise,
and is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact.
I have to tell you, first, that the medical student
turned out to be strangely and unaccountably right in
assuming it as more than probable that Arthur Holliday
would marry the young lady who had given him the
water-colour drawing of the landscape. That marriage
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47
took place a little more than a year after the events
occurred which I have just been relating. The young
couple came to live in the neighbourhood in which I
was then established in practice. I was present at the
wedding, and was rather surprised to find that Arthur
was singularly reserved with me, both before and after
his marriage, on the subject of the young lady’s prior
engagement. He only referred to it once, when we were
alone, merely telling me, on that occasion, that his wife
had done all that honour and duty required of her in
the matter, and that the engagement had been broken
off with the full approval of her parents. I never heard
more from him than this. For three years he and his
wife lived together happily. At the expiration of that
time, the symptoms of a serious illness first declared
themselves in Mrs. Arthur Holliday. It turned out to be
a long, lingering, hopeless malady. I attended her
throughout. We had been great friends when she was
well, and we became more attached to each other than
ever when she was ill. I had many long and interesting
conversations with her in the intervals when she suf-
fered least. The result of one of these conversations I
may briefly relate, leaving you to draw any inferences
from it that you please.
The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly be-
fore her death. I called one evening, as usual, and found
her alone, with a look in her eyes which told me that
she had been crying. She only informed me at first,
that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little
and little, she became more communicative, and con-
fessed to me that she had been looking over some old
letters, which had been addressed to her, before she
had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been en-
gaged to be married. I asked her how the engagement
came to be broken off. She replied that it had not been
broken off, but that it had died out in a very mysteri-
ous way. The person to whom she was engaged—her
first love, she called him—was very poor, and there was
no immediate prospect of their being married. He fol-
lowed my profession, and went abroad to study. They
had corresponded regularly, until the time when, as she
believed, he had returned to England. From that period
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48
she heard no more of him. He was of a fretful, sensitive
temperament; and she feared that she might have in-
advertently done or said something that offended him.
However that might be, he had never written to her
again; and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur.
I asked when the first estrangement had begun, and
found that the time at which she ceased to hear any-
thing of her first lover exactly corresponded with the
time at which I had been called in to my mysterious
patient at The Two Robins Inn.
A fortnight after that conversation, she died. In course
of time, Arthur married again. Of late years, he has
lived principally in London, and I have seen little or
nothing of him.
I have many years to pass over before I can approach
to anything like a conclusion of this fragmentary nar-
rative. And even when that later period is reached, the
little that I have to say will not occupy your attention
for more than a few minutes. Between six and seven
years ago, the gentleman to whom I introduced you in
this room, came to me, with good professional recom-
mendations, to fill the position of my assistant. We met,
not like strangers, but like friends—the only differ-
ence between us being, that I was very much surprised
to see him, and that he did not appear to be at all
surprised to see me. If he was my son or my brother, I
believe he could not be fonder of me than he is; but he
has never volunteered any confidences since he has been
here, on the subject of his past life. I saw something
that was familiar to me in his face when we first met;
and yet it was also something that suggested the idea
of change. I had a notion once that my patient at the
Inn might be a natural son of Mr. Holliday’s; I had an-
other idea that he might also have been the man who
was engaged to Arthur’s first wife; and I have a third
idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man
in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose,
on both those doubtful points. His hair is not black,
now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes
that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the
nameless medical student of my young days—very like
him. And, sometimes, when I come home late at night,
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49
and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in coming
to, wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he
raised himself in the bed on that memorable night!
The Doctor paused. Mr. Goodchild, who had been fol-
lowing every word that fell from his lips up to this time,
leaned forward eagerly to ask a question. Before he could
say a word, the latch of the door was raised, without
any warning sound of footsteps in the passage outside.
A long, white, bony hand appeared through the open-
ing, gently pushing the door, which was prevented from
working freely on its hinges by a fold in the carpet
under it.
‘That hand! Look at that hand, Doctor!’ said Mr.
Goodchild, touching him.
At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr.
Goodchild, and whispered to him, significantly:
‘Hush! he has come back.’
CHAPTER III
THE CUMBERLAND D OCTOR’S MENTION of Doncaster Races,
inspired Mr. Francis Goodchild with the idea of going
down to Doncaster to see the races. Doncaster being a
good way off, and quite out of the way of the Idle Ap-
prentices (if anything could be out of their way, who
had no way), it necessarily followed that Francis per-
ceived Doncaster in the race-week to be, of all possible
idleness, the particular idleness that would completely
satisfy him.
Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natu-
ral and voluntary power of his disposition, was not of
this mind; objecting that a man compelled to lie on his
back on a floor, a sofa, a table, a line of chairs, or any-
thing he could get to lie upon, was not in racing condi-
tion, and that he desired nothing better than to lie
where he was, enjoying himself in looking at the flies
on the ceiling. But, Francis Goodchild, who had been
walking round his companion in a circuit of twelve miles
for two days, and had begun to doubt whether it was
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50
reserved for him ever to be idle in his life, not only over-
powered this objection, but even converted Thomas Idle
to a scheme he formed (another idle inspiration), of con-
veying the said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting his
injured leg under a stream of salt-water.
Plunging into this happy conception headforemost,
Mr. Goodchild immediately referred to the county-map,
and ardently discovered that the most delicious piece
of sea-coast to be found within the limits of England,
Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Chan-
nel Islands, all summed up together, was Allonby on
the coast of Cumberland. There was the coast of Scot-
land opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with en-
thusiasm; there was a fine Scottish mountain on that
Scottish coast; there were Scottish lights to be seen
shining across the glorious Channel, and at Allonby it-
self there was every idle luxury (no doubt) that a wa-
tering-place could offer to the heart of idle man. More-
over, said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger on the map,
this exquisite retreat was approached by a coach-road,
from a railway-station called Aspatria—a name, in a
manner, suggestive of the departed glories of Greece,
associated with one of the most engaging and most fa-
mous of Greek women. On this point, Mr. Goodchild con-
tinued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy
and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it
appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that
Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into ‘Spatter.’
After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild said
no more about it.
By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried,
hoisted, pushed, poked, and packed, into and out of
carriages, into and out of beds, into and out of tavern
resting-places, until he was brought at length within
sniff of the sea. And now, behold the apprentices gal-
lantly riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly, bent upon
staying in that peaceful marine valley until the turbu-
lent Doncaster time shall come round upon the wheel,
in its turn among what are in sporting registers called
the ‘Fixtures’ for the month.
‘Do you see Allonby!’ asked Thomas Idle.
‘I don’t see it yet,’ said Francis, looking out of window.
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51
‘It must be there,’ said Thomas Idle.
‘I don’t see it,’ returned Francis.
‘It must be there,’ repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.
‘Lord bless me!’ exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head,
‘I suppose this is it!’
‘A watering-place,’ retorted Thomas Idle, with the par-
donable sharpness of an invalid, ‘can’t be five gentle-
men in straw hats, on a form on one side of a door, and
four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side
of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before
them, and a boy’s legs hanging over a bridge (with a
boy’s body I suppose on the other side of the parapet),
and a donkey running away. What are you talking about?’
‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most comfortable of land-
ladies as she opened one door of the carriage; ‘Allonby,
gentlemen,’ said the most attentive of landlords, as he
opened the other.
Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild,
and descended from the vehicle. Thomas, now just able
to grope his way along, in a doubled-up condition, with
the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of
Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant
Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout,
thick sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews. With this
distinguished naval appearance upon him, Thomas made
a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed stair-
case, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he
slowly deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on ei-
ther hand of him, looking exceedingly grim.
‘Francis,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘what do you think of this
place?’
‘I think,’ returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, ‘it
is everything we expected.’
‘Hah!’ said Thomas Idle.
‘There is the sea,’ cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of
window; ‘and here,’ pointing to the lunch on the table,
‘are shrimps. Let us—’ here Mr. Goodchild looked out of
window, as if in search of something, and looked in
again,—’let us eat ‘em.’
The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr.
Goodchild went out to survey the watering-place. As
Chorus of the Drama, without whom Thomas could make
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52
nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned, to have
the following report screwed out of him.
In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.
‘But,’ Thomas Idle asked, ‘where is it?’
‘It’s what you may call generally up and down the
beach, here and there,’ said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist
of his hand.
‘Proceed,’ said Thomas Idle.
It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examina-
tion, what you might call a primitive place. Large? No, it
was not large. Who ever expected it would be large? Shape?
What a question to ask! No shape. What sort of a street?
Why, no street. Shops? Yes, of course (quite indignant).
How many? Who ever went into a place to count the
shops? Ever so many. Six? Perhaps. A
library? Why, of course (indignant again). Good collec-
tion of books? Most likely—couldn’t say—had seen noth-
ing in it but a pair of scales. Any reading-room? Of course,
there was a reading-room. Where? Where! why, over there.
Where was over there? Why, there! Let Mr. Idle carry his
eye to that bit of waste ground above high-water mark,
where the rank grass and loose stones were most in a
litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick loft,
next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a
ladder outside, to get up by. That was the reading-room,
and if Mr. Idle didn’t like the idea of a weaver’s shuttle
throbbing under a reading-room, that was his look out.
HE was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indig-
nant again), to the company.
‘By-the-by,’ Thomas Idle observed; ‘the company?’
Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice com-
pany. Where were they? Why, there they were. Mr. Idle
could see the tops of their hats, he supposed. What?
Those nine straw hats again, five gentlemen’s and four
ladies’? Yes, to be sure. Mr. Goodchild hoped the com-
pany were not to be expected to wear helmets, to please
Mr. Idle.
Beginning to recover his temper at about this point,
Mr. Goodchild voluntarily reported that if you wanted
to be primitive, you could be primitive here, and that if
you wanted to be idle, you could be idle here. In the
course of some days, he added, that there were three
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53
fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty
of fishermen who never fished. That they got their liv-
ing entirely by looking at the ocean. What nourish-
ment they looked out of it to support their strength,
he couldn’t say; but, he supposed it was some sort of
Iodine. The place was full of their children, who were
always upside down on the public buildings (two small
bridges over the brook), and always hurting themselves
or one another, so that their wailings made more con-
tinual noise in the air than could have been got in a
busy place. The houses people lodged in, were nowhere
in particular, and were in capital accordance with the
beach; being all more or less cracked and damaged as its
shells were, and all empty—as its shells were. Among
them, was an edifice of destitute appearance, with a
number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking desperately
out to Scotland as if for help, which said it was a Bazaar
(and it ought to know), and where you might buy any-
thing you wanted—supposing what you wanted, was a
little camp-stool or a child’s wheelbarrow. The brook
crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea,
and the donkey was always running away, and when he
got into the brook he was pelted out with stones, which
never hit him, and which always hit some of the chil-
dren who were upside down on the public buildings,
and made their lamentations louder. This donkey was
the public excitement of Allonby, and was probably sup-
ported at the public expense.
The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items,
on separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild
severally wound up, by looking out of window, looking
in again, and saying, ‘But there is the sea, and here are
the shrimps—let us eat ‘em.’
There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat
beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches,
changed into long bars of silver and gold in various
states of burnishing, and there were fine views—on fine
days—of the Scottish coast. But, when it rained at
Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, be-
came a kind of place which the donkey seemed to have
found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for
wishing to bolt from. Thomas Idle observed, too, that
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54
Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of disinterestedness,
became every day more ready to walk to Maryport and
back, for letters; and suspicions began to harbour in
the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived him, and
that Maryport was a preferable place.
Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they
had looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, ‘My mind
misgives me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like
the boy in the story-book, to ask it to be idle with you.’
‘Judge, then,’ returned Francis, adopting the style of
the story-book, ‘with what success. I go to a region
which is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of
Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish
of Portsmouth, and I say, “Will you come and be idle
with me?” And it answers, “No; for I am a great deal too
vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal
too muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I
have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron
to hammer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make,
and stone to quarry, and fifty other disagreeable things
to do, and I can’t be idle with you.” Then I go into
jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
pastrycook’s shop at one moment, and next moment in
savage fastnesses of moor and morass, beyond the con-
fines of civilisation, and I say to those murky and black-
dusty streets, “Will you come and be idle with me?” To
which they reply, “No, we can’t, indeed, for we haven’t
the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of your feet
on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in
our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so
much to do for a limited public which never comes to us
to be done for, that we are altogether out of sorts and
can’t enjoy ourselves with any one.” So I go to the Post-
office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the Post-
master, “Will you come and be idle with me?” To which
he rejoins, “No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see,
in such a very little Post-office, and pass my life behind
such a very little shutter, that my hand, when I put it
out, is as the hand of a giant crammed through the
window of a dwarf’s house at a fair, and I am a mere
Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him,
and I can’t get out, and I can’t get in, and I have no
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
55
space to be idle in, even if I would.” So, the boy,’ said
Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, ‘comes back with
the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.’
But it may, not unreasonably, be asked—while Francis
Goodchild was wandering hither and thither, storing
his mind with perpetual observation of men and things,
and sincerely believing himself to be the laziest crea-
ture in existence all the time—how did Thomas Idle,
crippled and confined to the house, contrive to get
through the hours of the day?
Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get
through the hours, but passively allowed the hours to
get through HIM. Where other men in his situation would
have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept
and rested his body. Where other men would have pon-
dered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas
dreamed lazily of his past life. The one solitary thing
he did, which most other people would have done in
his place, was to resolve on making certain alterations
and improvements in his mode of existence, as soon as
the effects of the misfortune that had overtaken him
had all passed away. Remembering that the current of
his life had hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream
of laziness, occasionally troubled on the surface by a
slight passing ripple of industry, his present ideas on
the subject of self-reform, inclined him—not as the
reader may be disposed to imagine, to project schemes
for a new existence of enterprise and exertion—but, on
the contrary, to resolve that he would never, if he could
possibly help it, be active or industrious again, through-
out the whole of his future career.
It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered
towards this peculiar conclusion on distinct and logi-
cally-producible grounds. After reviewing, quite at his
ease, and with many needful intervals of repose, the
generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he ar-
rived at the discovery that all the great disasters which
had tried his patience and equanimity in early life, had
been caused by his having allowed himself to be de-
luded into imitating some pernicious example of activ-
ity and industry that had been set him by others. The
trials to which he here alludes were three in number,
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56
and may be thus reckoned up: First, the disaster of be-
ing an unpopular and a thrashed boy at school; sec-
ondly, the disaster of falling seriously ill; thirdly, the
disaster of becoming acquainted with a great bore.
The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an
idle and a popular boy at school, for some happy years.
One Christmas-time, he was stimulated by the evil ex-
ample of a companion, whom he had always trusted
and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a prize
at the ensuing half-yearly examination. He did try, and
he got a prize—how, he did not distinctly know at the
moment, and cannot remember now. No sooner, how-
ever, had the book—Moral Hints to the Young on the
Value of Time—been placed in his hands, than the first
troubles of his life began. The idle boys deserted him,
as a traitor to their cause. The industrious boys avoided
him, as a dangerous interloper; one of their number,
who had always won the prize on previous occasions,
expressing just resentment at the invasion of his privi-
leges by calling Thomas into the play-ground, and then
and there administering to him the first sound and genu-
ine thrashing that he had ever received in his life. Un-
popular from that moment, as a beaten boy, who be-
longed to no side and was rejected by all parties, young
Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as he had previ-
ously lost caste with his schoolfellows. He had forfeited
the comfortable reputation of being the one lazy mem-
ber of the youthful community whom it was quite hope-
less to punish. Never again did he hear the headmaster
say reproachfully to an industrious boy who had com-
mitted a fault, ‘I might have expected this in Thomas
Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir, in you, who know better.’
Never more, after winning that fatal prize, did he es-
cape the retributive imposition, or the avenging birch.
From that time, the masters made him work, and the
boys would not let him play. From that time his social
position steadily declined, and his life at school be-
came a perpetual burden to him.
So, again, with the second disaster. While Thomas was
lazy, he was a model of health. His first attempt at
active exertion and his first suffering from severe ill-
ness are connected together by the intimate relations
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57
of cause and effect. Shortly after leaving school, he
accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his
natural and appropriate character of spectator only. On
the ground it was discovered that the players fell short
of the required number, and facile Thomas was persuaded
to assist in making up the complement. At a certain
appointed time, he was roused from peaceful slumber
in a dry ditch, and placed before three wickets with a
bat in his hand. Opposite to him, behind three more
wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the situ-
ation (as he was informed) of bowler. No words can de-
scribe Mr. Idle’s horror and amazement, when he saw
this young man—on ordinary occasions, the meekest
and mildest of human beings—suddenly contract his
eye-brows, compress his lips, assume the aspect of an
infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run for-
ward, and, without the slightest previous provocation,
hurl a detestably hard ball with all his might straight
at Thomas’s legs. Stimulated to preternatural activity
of body and sharpness of eye by the instinct of self-
preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping deftly aside
at the right moment, and by using his bat (ridiculously
narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to pre-
serve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that
had been made on both, to leave the full force of the
deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of his leg;
and to end the innings, so far as his side was concerned,
by being immediately bowled out. Grateful for his es-
cape, he was about to return to the dry ditch, when he
was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other side
was ‘going in,’ and that he was expected to ‘field.’ His
conception of the whole art and mystery of ‘fielding,’
may be summed up in the three words of serious advice
which he privately administered to himself on that try-
ing occasion—avoid the ball. Fortified by this sound
and salutary principle, he took his own course, imper-
vious alike to ridicule and abuse. Whenever the ball came
near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of the
way immediately. ‘Catch it!’ ‘Stop it!’ ‘Pitch it up!’ were
cries that passed by him like the idle wind that he re-
garded not. He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he
whisked himself away from it on either side. Never once,
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58
through the whole innings did he and the ball come to-
gether on anything approaching to intimate terms. The
unnatural activity of body which was necessarily called
forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Tho-
mas Idle, for the first time in his life, into a perspiration.
The perspiration, in consequence of his want of practice
in the management of that particular result of bodily
activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill suc-
ceeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever. For
the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself con-
fined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and
worn by a long illness, of which his own disastrous mus-
cular exertion had been the sole first cause.
The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to
reproach himself bitterly for the mistake of having at-
tempted to be industrious, was connected with his choice
of a calling in life. Having no interest in the Church, he
appropriately selected the next best profession for a
lazy man in England—the Bar. Although the Benchers
of the Inns of Court have lately abandoned their good
old principles, and oblige their students to make some
show of studying, in Mr. Idle’s time no such innovation
as this existed. Young men who aspired to the honourable
title of barrister were, very properly, not asked to learn
anything of the law, but were merely required to eat a
certain number of dinners at the table of their Hall,
and to pay a certain sum of money; and were called to
the Bar as soon as they could prove that they had suf-
ficiently complied with these extremely sensible regu-
lations. Never did Thomas move more harmoniously in
concert with his elders and betters than when he was
qualifying himself for admission among the barristers
of his native country. Never did he feel more deeply
what real laziness was in all the serene majesty of its
nature, than on the memorable day when he was called
to the Bar, after having carefully abstained from open-
ing his law-books during his period of probation, ex-
cept to fall asleep over them. How he could ever again
have become industrious, even for the shortest period,
after that great reward conferred upon his idleness, quite
passes his comprehension. The kind Benchers did ev-
erything they could to show him the folly of exerting
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59
himself. They wrote out his probationary exercise for
him, and never expected him even to take the trouble
of reading it through when it was written. They invited
him, with seven other choice spirits as lazy as himself,
to come and be called to the Bar, while they were sit-
ting over their wine and fruit after dinner. They put his
oaths of allegiance, and his dreadful official denuncia-
tions of the Pope and the Pretender, so gently into his
mouth, that he hardly knew how the words got there.
They wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table,
and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs
to their bottles, rather than stand up, or adjourn to
hear the exercises read. And when Mr. Idle and the seven
unlabouring neophytes, ranged in order, as a class, with
their backs considerately placed against a screen, had
begun, in rotation, to read the exercises which they
had not written, even then, each Bencher, true to the
great lazy principle of the whole proceeding, stopped
each neophyte before he had stammered through his
first line, and bowed to him, and told him politely that
he was a barrister from that moment. This was all the
ceremony. It was followed by a social supper, and by the
presentation, in accordance with ancient custom, of a
pound of sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, offered in
the way of needful refreshment, by each grateful neo-
phyte to each beneficent Bencher. It may seem incon-
ceivable that Thomas should ever have forgotten the
great do-nothing principle instilled by such a ceremony
as this; but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain de-
signing students of industrious habits found him out,
took advantage of his easy humour, persuaded him that
it was discreditable to be a barrister and to know noth-
ing whatever about the law, and lured him, by the force
of their own evil example, into a conveyancer’s cham-
bers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself
for practice at the Bar. After a fortnight of self-delu-
sion, the curtain fell from his eyes; he resumed his natu-
ral character, and shut up his books. But the retribu-
tion which had hitherto always followed his little ca-
sual errors of industry followed them still. He could get
away from the conveyancer’s chambers, but he could
not get away from one of the pupils, who had taken a
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60
fancy to him,—a tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-work-
ing, disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about
reforming the Law of Real Property, who has been the
scourge of Mr. Idle’s existence ever since the fatal day
when he fell into the mistake of attempting to study
the law. Before that time his friends were all sociable
idlers like himself. Since that time the burden of bear-
ing with a hard-working young man has become part of
his lot in life. Go where he will now, he can never feel
certain that the raw-boned pupil is not affectionately
waiting for him round a corner, to tell him a little more
about the Law of Real Property. Suffer as he may under
the infliction, he can never complain, for he must al-
ways remember, with unavailing regret, that he has his
own thoughtless industry to thank for first exposing
him to the great social calamity of knowing a bore.
These events of his past life, with the significant re-
sults that they brought about, pass drowsily through
Thomas Idle’s memory, while he lies alone on the sofa
at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming away the time which
his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively out of
doors. Remembering the lesson of laziness which his
past disasters teach, and bearing in mind also the fact
that he is crippled in one leg because he exerted him-
self to go up a mountain, when he ought to have known
that his proper course of conduct was to stop at the
bottom of it, he holds now, and will for the future firmly
continue to hold, by his new resolution never to be
industrious again, on any pretence whatever, for the
rest of his life. The physical results of his accident have
been related in a previous chapter. The moral results
now stand on record; and, with the enumeration of these,
that part of the present narrative which is occupied by
the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now perhaps be
considered, in all its aspects, as finished and complete.
‘How do you propose that we get through this present
afternoon and evening?’ demanded Thomas Idle, after
two or three hours of the foregoing reflections at
Allonby.
Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked
in again, and said, as he had so often said before, ‘There
is the sea, and here are the shrimps;—let us eat ‘em’!’
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61
But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act
of bolting: not with the irresolution of his previous ef-
forts which had been wanting in sustained force of char-
acter, but with real vigour of purpose: shaking the dust
off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby, and tearing away
from it, as if he had nobly made up his mind that he
never would be taken alive. At sight of this inspiring
spectacle, which was visible from his sofa, Thomas Idle
stretched his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.
‘Francis Goodchild,’ he then said, turning to his compan-
ion with a solemn air, ‘this is a delightful little Inn, excel-
lently kept by the most comfortable of landladies and the
most attentive of landlords, but—the donkey’s right!’
The words, ‘There is the sea, and here are the—’ again
trembled on the lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied how-
ever by any sound.
‘Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,’ said Thomas
Idle, ‘pay the bill, and order a fly out, with instructions
to the driver to follow the donkey!’
Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement
to disclose the real state of his feelings, and who had
been pining beneath his weary secret, now burst into
tears, and confessed that he thought another day in
the place would be the death of him.
So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until
the night was far advanced. Whether he was recaptured
by the town-council, or is bolting at this hour through
the United Kingdom, they know not. They hope he may
be still bolting; if so, their best wishes are with him.
It entered Mr. Idle’s head, on the borders of
Cumberland, that there could be no idler place to stay
at, except by snatches of a few minutes each, than a
railway station. ‘An intermediate station on a line—a
junction—anything of that sort,’ Thomas suggested. Mr.
Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric, and they
journeyed on and on, until they came to such a station
where there was an Inn.
‘Here,’ said Thomas, ‘we may be luxuriously lazy; other
people will travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh
at their folly.’
It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors
before mentioned shaved the air very often, and where
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62
the sharp electric-telegraph bell was in a very restless
condition. All manner of cross-lines of rails came zig-
zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and, a
little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-
box was constantly going through the motions of draw-
ing immense quantities of beer at a public-house bar.
In one direction, confused perspectives of embankments
and arches were to be seen from the platform; in the
other, the rails soon disentangled themselves into two
tracks and shot away under a bridge, and curved round
a corner. Sidings were there, in which empty luggage-
vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other
as if they couldn’t agree; and warehouses were there, in
which great quantities of goods seemed to have taken
the veil (of the consistency of tarpaulin), and to have
retired from the world without any hope of getting back
to it. Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the hun-
gry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and
water were ready, and of good quality, for they were
dangerous to play tricks with; the other, for the hungry
and thirsty human Locomotives, who might take what
they could get, and whose chief consolation was pro-
vided in the form of three terrific urns or vases of white
metal, containing nothing, each forming a breastwork
for a defiant and apparently much-injured woman.
Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr.
Francis Goodchild resolved to enjoy it. But, its contrasts
were very violent, and there was also an infection in it.
First, as to its contrasts. They were only two, but they
were Lethargy and Madness. The Station was either to-
tally unconscious, or wildly raving. By day, in its un-
conscious state, it looked as if no life could come to
it,—as if it were all rust, dust, and ashes—as if the last
train for ever, had gone without issuing any Return-
Tickets—as if the last Engine had uttered its last shriek
and burst. One awkward shave of the air from the wooden
razor, and everything changed. Tight office-doors flew
open, panels yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps
and wrappers broke out of brick walls, money chinked,
conveyances oppressed by nightmares of luggage came
careering into the yard, porters started up from secret
places, ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell,
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63
who lived in a little tray on stilts by himself, flew into
a man’s hand and clamoured violently. The pointsman
aloft in the signal-box made the motions of drawing,
with some difficulty, hogsheads of beer. Down Train!
More bear! Up Train! More beer. Cross junction Train!
More beer! Cattle Train! More beer. Goods Train! Sim-
mering, whistling, trembling, rumbling, thundering.
Trains on the whole confusion of intersecting rails, cross-
ing one another, bumping one another, hissing one an-
other, backing to go forward, tearing into distance to
come close. People frantic. Exiles seeking restoration to
their native carriages, and banished to remoter climes.
More beer and more bell. Then, in a minute, the Station
relapsed into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train,
the last to depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the
long nose of his oil-can with a dirty pocket-handker-
chief.
By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was
not so much as visible. Something in the air, like an
enterprising chemist’s established in business on one of
the boughs of Jack’s beanstalk, was all that could be
discerned of it under the stars. In a moment it would
break out, a constellation of gas. In another moment,
twenty rival chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came
into existence. Then, the Furies would be seen, waving
their lurid torches up and down the confused perspec-
tives of embankments and arches—would be heard, too,
wailing and shrieking. Then, the Station would be full
of palpitating trains, as in the day; with the heighten-
ing difference that they were not so clearly seen as in
the day, whereas the Station walls, starting forward
under the gas, like a hippopotamus’s eyes, dazzled the
human locomotives with the sauce-bottle, the cheap
music, the bedstead, the distorted range of buildings
where the patent safes are made, the gentleman in the
rain with the registered umbrella, the lady returning
from the ball with the registered respirator, and all their
other embellishments. And now, the human locomo-
tives, creased as to their countenances and purblind as
to their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, addressing
themselves to the mysterious urns and the much-in-
jured women; while the iron locomotives, dripping fire
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64
and water, shed their steam about plentifully, making
the dull oxen in their cages, with heads depressed, and
foam hanging from their mouths as their red looks
glanced fearfully at the surrounding terrors, seem as
though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters
and were hung with icicles. Through the same steam
would be caught glimpses of their fellow-travellers, the
sheep, getting their white kid faces together, away from
the bars, and stuffing the interstices with trembling
wool. Also, down among the wheels, of the man with
the sledge-hammer, ringing the axles of the fast night-
train; against whom the oxen have a misgiving that he
is the man with the pole-axe who is to come by-and-by,
and so the nearest of them try to get back, and get a
purchase for a thrust at him through the bars. Sud-
denly, the bell would ring, the steam would stop with
one hiss and a yell, the chemists on the beanstalks would
be busy, the avenging Furies would bestir themselves,
the fast night-train would melt from eye and ear, the
other trains going their ways more slowly would be heard
faintly rattling in the distance like old-fashioned watches
running down, the sauce-bottle and cheap music re-
tired from view, even the bedstead went to bed, and
there was no such visible thing as the Station to vex
the cool wind in its blowing, or perhaps the autumn
lightning, as it found out the iron rails.
The infection of the Station was this:- When it was in
its raving state, the Apprentices found it impossible to
be there, without labouring under the delusion that
they were in a hurry. To Mr. Goodchild, whose ideas of
idleness were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hal-
lucination, and accordingly that gentleman went
through great exertions in yielding to it, and running
up and down the platform, jostling everybody, under
the impression that he had a highly important mission
somewhere, and had not a moment to lose. But, to Tho-
mas Idle, this contagion was so very unacceptable an
incident of the situation, that he struck on the fourth
day, and requested to be moved.
‘This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,’ said
Thomas, ‘of having something to do. Remove me, Francis.’
‘Where would you like to go next?’ was the question
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65
of the ever-engaging Goodchild.
‘I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster,
established in a fine old house: an Inn where they give
you Bride-cake every day after dinner,’ said Thomas Idle.
‘Let us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of being mar-
ried, or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma.’
Mr. Goodchild, with a lover’s sigh, assented. They de-
parted from the Station in a violent hurry (for which,
it is unnecessary to observe, there was not the least
occasion), and were delivered at the fine old house at
Lancaster, on the same night.
It is Mr. Goodchild’s opinion, that if a visitor on his
arrival at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole
which would push the opposite side of the street some
yards farther off, it would be better for all parties. Pro-
testing against being required to live in a trench, and
obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can
possibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window,
which is a shop-window to look at, but not a shop-
window in respect of its offering nothing for sale and
declining to give any account whatever of itself, Mr.
Goodchild concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place. A
place dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a
place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place of
lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly
fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown
so dark with time that it seems to have got something
of a retrospective mirror-quality into itself, and to show
the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through all its
polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long
ago under old Lancaster merchants. And Mr. Goodchild
adds that the stones of Lancaster do sometimes whis-
per, even yet, of rich men passed away—upon whose
great prosperity some of these old doorways frowned
sullen in the brightest weather—that their slave-gain
turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard’s money turned
to leaves, and that no good ever came of it, even unto
the third and fourth generations, until it was wasted
and gone.
It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday proces-
sion of the Lancaster elders to Church—all in black,
and looking fearfully like a funeral without the Body—
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66
under the escort of Three Beadles.
‘Think,’ said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window,
admiring, ‘of being taken to the sacred edifice by three
Beadles! I have, in my early time, been taken out of it
by one Beadle; but, to be taken into it by three, O Tho-
mas, is a distinction I shall never enjoy!’
CHAPTER IV
WHEN MR. GOODCHILD HAD LOOKED OUT of the Lancaster
Inn window for two hours on end, with great persever-
ance, he begun to entertain a misgiving that he was
growing industrious. He therefore set himself next, to
explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills
in the neighbourhood.
He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell
Thomas Idle what he had seen. Thomas, on his back
reading, listened with great composure, and asked him
whether he really had gone up those hills, and both-
ered himself with those views, and walked all those
miles?
‘Because I want to know,’ added Thomas, ‘what you
would say of it, if you were obliged to do it?’
‘It would be different, then,’ said Francis. ‘It would be
work, then; now, it’s play.’
‘Play!’ replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the re-
ply. ‘Play! Here is a man goes systematically tearing him-
self to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant
course of training, as if he were always under articles to
fight a match for the champion’s belt, and he calls it
Play! Play!’ exclaimed Thomas Idle, scornfully contem-
plating his one boot in the air. ‘You can’t play. You don’t
know what it is. You make work of everything.’
The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.
‘So you do,’ said Thomas. ‘I mean it. To me you are an
absolutely terrible fellow. You do nothing like another
man. Where another fellow would fall into a footbath
of action or emotion, you fall into a mine. Where any
other fellow would be a painted butterfly, you are a
fiery dragon. Where another man would stake a six-
pence, you stake your existence. If you were to go up in
a balloon, you would make for Heaven; and if you were
The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices – Dickens
67
to dive into the depths of the earth, nothing short of
the other place would content you. What a fellow you
are, Francis!’ The cheerful Goodchild laughed.
‘It’s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don’t feel
it to be serious,’ said Idle. ‘A man who can do nothing
by halves appears to me to be a fearful man.’
‘Tom, Tom,’ returned Goodchild, ‘if I can do nothing by
halves, and be nothing by halves, it’s pretty clear that
you must take me as a whole, and make the best of me.’
With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild
clapped Mr. Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and
they sat down to dinner.
‘By-the-by,’ said Goodchild, ‘I have been over a lunatic
asylum too, since I have been out.’
‘He has been,’ exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his
eyes, ‘over a lunatic asylum! Not content with being as
great an Ass as Captain Barclay in the pedestrian way, he
makes a Lunacy Commissioner of himself—for nothing!’
‘An immense place,’ said Goodchild, ‘admirable offices,
very good arrangements, very good attendants; alto-
gether a remarkable place.’
‘And what did you see there?’ asked Mr. Idle, adapting
Hamlet’s advice to the occasion, and assuming the vir-
tue of interest, though he had it not.
‘The usual thing,’ said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh.
‘Long groves of blighted men-and-women-trees; inter-
minable avenues of hopeless faces; numbers, without
the slightest power of really combining for any earthly
purpose; a society of human creatures who have noth-
ing in common but that they have all lost the power of
being humanly social with one another.’
‘Take a glass of wine with me,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘and
let us be social.’
‘In one gallery, Tom,’ pursued Francis Goodchild, ‘which
looked to me about the length of the Long Walk at
Windsor, more or less—’
‘Probably less,’ observed Thomas Idle.
‘In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients
(for they were all out), there was a poor little dark-
chinned, meagre man, with a perplexed brow and a pen-
sive face, stooping low over the matting on the floor,
and picking out with his thumb and forefinger the course
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68
of its fibres. The afternoon sun was slanting in at the large
end-window, and there were cross patches of light and
shade all down the vista, made by the unseen windows
and the open doors of the little sleeping-cells on either
side. In about the centre of the perspective, under an arch,
regardless of the pleasant weather, regardless of the soli-
tude, regardless of approaching footsteps, was the poor
little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring over the mat-
ting. “What are you doing there?” said my conductor, when
we came to him. He looked up, and pointed to the mat-
ting. “I wouldn’t do that, I think,” said my conductor,
kindly; “if I were you, I would go and read, or I would lie
down if I felt tired; but I wouldn’t do that.” The patient
considered a moment, and vacantly answered, “No, sir, I
won’t; I’ll—I’ll go and read,” and so he lamely shuffled
away into one of the little rooms. I turned my head before
we had gone many paces. He had already come out again,
and was again poring over the matting, and tracking out
its fibres with his thumb and forefinger. I stopped to look
at him, and it came into my mind, that probably the course
of those fibres as they plaited in and out, over and under,
was the only course of things in the whole wide world that
it was left to him to understand—that his darkening in-
tellect had narrowed down to the small cleft of light which
showed him, “This piece was twisted this way, went in
here, passed under, came out there, was carried on away
here to the right where I now put my finger on it, and in
this progress of events, the thing was made and came to
be here.” Then, I wondered whether he looked into the
matting, next, to see if it could show him anything of the
process through which he came to be there, so strangely
poring over it. Then, I thought how all of us, GOD help us!
in our different ways are poring over our bits of matting,
blindly enough, and what confusions and mysteries we
make in the pattern. I had a sadder fellow-feeling with
the little dark-chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I
came away.’
Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards,
and bride-cake, Mr. Goodchild followed in the same di-
rection. The bride-cake was as bilious and indigestible
as if a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner it completed
was an admirable performance.
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69
The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint
description, teeming with old carvings, and beams, and
panels, and having an excellent old staircase, with a
gallery or upper staircase, cut off from it by a curious
fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras Mahogany
wood. It was, and is, and will be, for many a long year
to come, a remarkably picturesque house; and a certain
grave mystery lurking in the depth of the old mahogany
panels, as if they were so many deep pools of dark wa-
ter—such, indeed, as they had been much among when
they were trees—gave it a very mysterious character
after nightfall.
When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at
the door, and stepped into the sombre, handsome old
hall, they had been received by half-a-dozen noiseless
old men in black, all dressed exactly alike, who glided
up the stairs with the obliging landlord and waiter—
but without appearing to get into their way, or to mind
whether they did or no—and who had filed off to the
right and left on the old staircase, as the guests en-
tered their sitting-room. It was then broad, bright day.
But, Mr. Goodchild had said, when their door was shut,
‘Who on earth are those old men?’ And afterwards, both
on going out and coming in, he had noticed that there
were no old men to be seen.
Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men,
reappeared since. The two friends had passed a night in
the house, but had seen nothing more of the old men.
Mr. Goodchild, in rambling about it, had looked along
passages, and glanced in at doorways, but had encoun-
tered no old men; neither did it appear that any old
men were, by any member of the establishment, missed
or expected.
Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their
attention. It was, that the door of their sitting-room
was never left untouched for a quarter of an hour. It
was opened with hesitation, opened with confidence,
opened a little way, opened a good way,—always
clapped-to again without a word of explanation. They
were reading, they were writing, they were eating, they
were drinking, they were talking, they were dozing;
the door was always opened at an unexpected moment,
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70
and they looked towards it, and it was clapped-to again,
and nobody was to be seen. When this had happened
fifty times or so, Mr. Goodchild had said to his compan-
ion, jestingly: ‘I begin to think, Tom, there was some-
thing wrong with those six old men.’
Night had come again, and they had been writing for
two or three hours: writing, in short, a portion of the
lazy notes from which these lazy sheets are taken. They
had left off writing, and glasses were on the table be-
tween them. The house was closed and quiet. Around
the head of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa, hov-
ered light wreaths of fragrant smoke. The temples of
Francis Goodchild, as he leaned back in his chair, with
his two hands clasped behind his head, and his legs
crossed, were similarly decorated.
They had been discussing several idle subjects of specu-
lation, not omitting the strange old men, and were still
so occupied, when Mr. Goodchild abruptly changed his
attitude to wind up his watch. They were just becoming
drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such
slight check. Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the
moment, paused and said, ‘How goes it?’
‘One,’ said Goodchild.
As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were
promptly executed (truly, all orders were so, in that
excellent hotel), the door opened, and One old man
stood there.
He did not come in, but stood with the door in his
hand.
‘One of the six, Tom, at last!’ said Mr. Goodchild, in a
surprised whisper.—’Sir, your pleasure?’
‘Sir, your pleasure?’ said the One old man.
‘I didn’t ring.’
‘The bell did,’ said the One old man.
He said bell, in a deep, strong way, that would have
expressed the church Bell.
‘I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yester-
day?’ said Goodchild.
‘I cannot undertake to say for certain,’ was the grim
reply of the One old man.
‘I think you saw me? Did you not?’
‘Saw you?’ said the old man. ‘O yes, I saw you. But, I
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71
see many who never see me.’
A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man. A cadaverous
old man of measured speech. An old man who seemed
as unable to wink, as if his eyelids had been nailed to
his forehead. An old man whose eyes—two spots of
fire—had no more motion than if they had been con-
nected with the back of his skull by screws driven
through it, and rivetted and bolted outside, among his
grey hair.
The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild’s sen-
sations, that he shivered. He remarked lightly, and half
apologetically, ‘I think somebody is walking over my
grave.’
‘No,’ said the weird old man, ‘there is no one there.’
Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his
head enwreathed in smoke.
‘No one there?’ said Goodchild.
‘There is no one at your grave, I assure you,’ said the
old man.
He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat
down. He did not bend himself to sit, as other people
do, but seemed to sink bolt upright, as if in water, until
the chair stopped him.
‘My friend, Mr. Idle,’ said Goodchild, extremely anx-
ious to introduce a third person into the conversation.
‘I am,’ said the old man, without looking at him, ‘at
Mr. Idle’s service.’
‘If you are an old inhabitant of this place,’ Francis
Goodchild resumed.
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were
in doubt upon, this morning. They hang condemned
criminals at the Castle, I believe?’
‘I believe so,’ said the old man.
‘Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect?’
‘Your face is turned,’ replied the old man, ‘to the Castle
wall. When you are tied up, you see its stones expand-
ing and contracting violently, and a similar expansion
and contraction seem to take place in your own head
and breast. Then, there is a rush of fire and an earth-
quake, and the Castle springs into the air, and you tumble
down a precipice.’
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72
His cravat appeared to trouble him. He put his hand
to his throat, and moved his neck from side to side. He
was an old man of a swollen character of face, and his
nose was immoveably hitched up on one side, as if by a
little hook inserted in that nostril. Mr. Goodchild felt
exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the night
was hot, and not cold.
‘A strong description, sir,’ he observed.
‘A strong sensation,’ the old man rejoined.
Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but
Thomas lay on his back with his face attentively turned
towards the One old man, and made no sign. At this
time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw threads of fire
stretch from the old man’s eyes to his own, and there
attach themselves. (Mr. Goodchild writes the present
account of his experience, and, with the utmost solem-
nity, protests that he had the strongest sensation upon
him of being forced to look at the old man along those
two fiery films, from that moment.)
‘I must tell it to you,’ said the old man, with a ghastly
and a stony stare.
‘What?’ asked Francis Goodchild.
‘You know where it took place. Yonder!’
Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room
below, or to any room in that old house, or to a room in
some other old house in that old town, Mr. Goodchild
was not, nor is, nor ever can be, sure. He was confused
by the circumstance that the right forefinger of the
One old man seemed to dip itself in one of the threads
of fire, light itself, and make a fiery start in the air, as
it pointed somewhere. Having pointed somewhere, it
went out.
‘You know she was a Bride,’ said the old man.
‘I know they still send up Bride-cake,’ Mr. Goodchild
faltered. ‘This is a very oppressive air.’
‘She was a Bride,’ said the old man. ‘She was a fair,
flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl, who had no character,
no purpose. A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless noth-
ing. Not like her mother. No, no. It was her father whose
character she reflected.
‘Her mother had taken care to secure everything to
herself, for her own life, when the father of this girl (a
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73
child at that time) died—of sheer helplessness; no other
disorder—and then He renewed the acquaintance that
had once subsisted between the mother and Him. He
had been put aside for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed
man (or nonentity) with Money. He could overlook that
for Money. He wanted compensation in Money.
‘So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother,
made love to her again, danced attendance on her, and
submitted himself to her whims. She wreaked upon him
every whim she had, or could invent. He bore it. And
the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation in
Money, and the more he was resolved to have it.
‘But, lo! Before he got it, she cheated him. In one of
her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed again.
She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a cry,
stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours, and died.
And he had got no compensation from her in Money,
yet. Blight and Murrain on her! Not a penny.
‘He had hated her throughout that second pursuit,
and had longed for retaliation on her. He now counter-
feited her signature to an instrument, leaving all she
had to leave, to her daughter—ten years old then—to
whom the property passed absolutely, and appointing
himself the daughter’s Guardian. When He slid it under
the pillow of the bed on which she lay, He bent down in
the deaf ear of Death, and whispered: “Mistress Pride, I
have determined a long time that, dead or alive, you
must make me compensation in Money.’
‘So, now there were only two left. Which two were,
He, and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daugh-
ter, who afterwards became the Bride.
‘He put her to school. In a secret, dark, oppressive,
ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and
unscrupulous woman. “My worthy lady,” he said, “here
is a mind to be formed; will you help me to form it?”
She accepted the trust. For which she, too, wanted com-
pensation in Money, and had it.
‘The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the
conviction, that there was no escape from him. She was
taught, from the first, to regard him as her future hus-
band—the man who must marry her—the destiny that
overshadowed her—the appointed certainty that could
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74
never be evaded. The poor fool was soft white wax in
their hands, and took the impression that they put upon
her. It hardened with time. It became a part of herself.
Inseparable from herself, and only to be torn away from
her, by tearing life away from her.
‘Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its
gloomy garden. He was jealous of the very light and air
getting to her, and they kept her close. He stopped the
wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the
strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the
house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed
fruit-trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-
run its green and yellow walks. He surrounded her with
images of sorrow and desolation. He caused her to be
filled with fears of the place and of the stories that
were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them,
to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in
the dark. When her mind was most depressed and full-
est of terrors, then, he would come out of one of the
hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and present
himself as her sole resource.
‘Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodi-
ment her life presented to her of power to coerce and
power to relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the
ascendency over her weakness was secured. She was
twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he
brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-wit-
ted, frightened, and submissive Bride of three weeks.
‘He had dismissed the governess by that time—what
he had left to do, he could best do alone—and they
came back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long
preparation. She turned to him upon the threshold, as
the rain was dripping from the porch, and said:
‘“O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!”
‘“Well!” he answered. “And if it were?”
‘“O sir!” she returned to him, “look kindly on me, and
be merciful to me! I beg your pardon. I will do anything
you wish, if you will only forgive me!”
‘That had become the poor fool’s constant song: “I
beg your pardon,” and “Forgive me!”
‘She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but con-
tempt for her. But, she had long been in the way, and
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75
he had long been weary, and the work was near its end,
and had to be worked out.
‘“You fool,” he said. “Go up the stairs!”
‘She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, “I will do any-
thing you wish!” When he came into the Bride’s Cham-
ber, having been a little retarded by the heavy fasten-
ings of the great door (for they were alone in the house,
and he had arranged that the people who attended on
them should come and go in the day), he found her
withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there standing
pressed against the paneling as if she would have shrunk
through it: her flaxen hair all wild about her face, and
her large eyes staring at him in vague terror.
‘“What are you afraid of? Come and sit down by me.”
‘“I will do anything you wish. I beg your pardon, sir.
Forgive me!” Her monotonous tune as usual.
‘“Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-
morrow, in your own hand. You may as well be seen by
others, busily engaged upon it. When you have written
it all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any two
people there may be about the house, and sign your
name to it before them. Then, put it in your bosom to
keep it safe, and when I sit here again to-morrow night,
give it to me.”
‘“I will do it all, with the greatest care. I will do any-
thing you wish.”
‘“Don’t shake and tremble, then.”
‘“I will try my utmost not to do it—if you will only
forgive me!”
‘Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she
had been told. He often passed in and out of the room,
to observe her, and always saw her slowly and labori-
ously writing: repeating to herself the words she cop-
ied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without car-
ing or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she
did her task. He saw her follow the directions she had
received, in all particulars; and at night, when they
were alone again in the same Bride’s Chamber, and he
drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached
him from her distant seat, took the paper from her bo-
som, and gave it into his hand.
‘It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of
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76
her death. He put her before him, face to face, that he
might look at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many
plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that?
‘There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white
dress, and they made her face look whiter and her eyes
look larger as she nodded her head. There were spots of
ink upon the hand with which she stood before him,
nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts.
‘He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more
closely and steadily, in the face. “Now, die! I have done
with you.”
‘She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.
‘“I am not going to kill you. I will not endanger my
life for yours. Die!”
‘He sat before her in the gloomy Bride’s Chamber, day
after day, night after night, looking the word at her
when he did not utter it. As often as her large unmean-
ing eyes were raised from the hands in which she rocked
her head, to the stern figure, sitting with crossed arms
and knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in it, “Die!”
When she dropped asleep in exhaustion, she was called
back to shuddering consciousness, by the whisper, “Die!”
When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned,
she was answered “Die!” When she had out-watched and
out-suffered the long night, and the rising sun flamed
into the sombre room, she heard it hailed with, “An-
other day and not dead?—Die!”
‘Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all man-
kind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any
respite, it came to this—that either he must die, or
she. He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength
against her feebleness. Hours upon hours he held her
by the arm when her arm was black where he held it,
and bade her Die!
‘It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise.
He computed the time to be half-past four; but, his
forgotten watch had run down, and he could not be
sure. She had broken away from him in the night, with
loud and sudden cries—the first of that kind to which
she had given vent—and he had had to put his hands
over her mouth. Since then, she had been quiet in the
corner of the paneling where she had sunk down; and
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77
he had left her, and had gone back with his folded arms
and his knitted forehead to his chair.
‘Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in
the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself
along the floor towards him—a white wreck of hair,
and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irreso-
lute and bending hand.
‘“O, forgive me! I will do anything. O, sir, pray tell me
I may live!”
‘“Die!”
‘“Are you so resolved? Is there no hope for me?”
‘“Die!”
‘Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and
fear; wonder and fear changed to reproach; reproach to
blank nothing. It was done. He was not at first so sure
it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging
jewels in her hair—he saw the diamond, emerald, and
ruby, glittering among it in little points, as he stood
looking down at her—when he lifted her and laid her
on her bed.
‘She was soon laid in the ground. And now they were
all gone, and he had compensated himself well.
‘He had a mind to travel. Not that he meant to waste
his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his
Money dearly (liked nothing else, indeed), but, that he
had grown tired of the desolate house and wished to
turn his back upon it and have done with it. But, the
house was worth Money, and Money must not be thrown
away. He determined to sell it before he went. That it
might look the less wretched and bring a better price,
he hired some labourers to work in the overgrown gar-
den; to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped
in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear
the walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.
‘He worked, himself, along with them. He worked later
than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left work-
ing alone, with his bill-hook in his hand. One autumn
evening, when the Bride was five weeks dead.
‘“It grows too dark to work longer,” he said to him-
self, “I must give over for the night.”
‘He detested the house, and was loath to enter it. He
looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb,
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78
and felt that it was an accursed house. Near to the porch,
and near to where he stood, was a tree whose branches
waved before the old bay-window of the Bride’s Cham-
ber, where it had been done. The tree swung suddenly,
and made him start. It swung again, although the night
was still. Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the
branches.
‘It was the figure of a young man. The face looked
down, as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed;
the figure rapidly descended, and slid upon its feet be-
fore him. A slender youth of about her age, with long
light brown hair.
‘“What thief are you?” he said, seizing the youth by
the collar.
‘The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a
blow with his arm across the face and throat. They closed,
but the young man got from him and stepped back,
crying, with great eagerness and horror, “Don’t touch
me! I would as lieve be touched by the Devil!”
‘He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking
at the young man. For, the young man’s look was the
counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected
ever to see that again.
‘“I am no thief. Even if I were, I would not have a coin
of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies. You mur-
derer!”
‘“What!”
‘“I climbed it,” said the young man, pointing up into
the tree, “for the first time, nigh four years ago. I climbed
it, to look at her. I saw her. I spoke to her. I have climbed
it, many a time, to watch and listen for her. I was a boy,
hidden among its leaves, when from that bay-window
she gave me this!”
‘He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourn-
ing ribbon.
‘“Her life,” said the young man, “was a life of mourn-
ing. She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that
she was dead to every one but you. If I had been older,
if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from
you. But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed
the tree, and what could I do then to break it!”
‘In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing
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79
and crying: weakly at first, then passionately.
‘“Murderer! I climbed the tree on the night when you
brought her back. I heard her, from the tree, speak of
the Death-watch at the door. I was three times in the
tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing her.
I saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon her bed. I have
watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of
your guilt. The manner of it, is a mystery to me yet,
but I will pursue you until you have rendered up your
life to the hangman. You shall never, until then, be rid
of me. I loved her! I can know no relenting towards
you. Murderer, I loved her!”
‘The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered
away in his descent from the tree. He moved towards
the gate. He had to pass - Him—to get to it. There was
breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the
youth’s abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature
of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear,
had verge enough to keep itself at a distance in. He (by
which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot,
since he had stood still to look at the boy. He faced
round, now, to follow him with his eyes. As the back of
the bare light-brown head was turned to him, he saw a
red curve stretch from his hand to it. He knew, before
he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted—I say,
had alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear
perception the thing was done before he did it. It cleft
the head, and it remained there, and the boy lay on his
face.
‘He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the
tree. As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked
at turning up all the ground near the tree, and hacking
and hewing at the neighbouring bushes and under-
growth. When the labourers came, there was nothing
suspicious, and nothing suspected.
‘But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precau-
tions, and destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had
so long concerted, and so successfully worked out. He
had got rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune
without endangering his life; but now, for a death by
which he had gained nothing, he had evermore to live
with a rope around his neck.
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80
‘Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom
and horror, which he could not endure. Being afraid to
sell it or to quit it, lest discovery should be made, he
was forced to live in it. He hired two old people, man
and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in it, and dreaded
it. His great difficulty, for a long time, was the garden.
Whether he should keep it trim, whether he should suf-
fer it to fall into its former state of neglect, what would
be the least likely way of attracting attention to it?
‘He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in
his evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving-
man to help him; but, of never letting him work there
alone. And he made himself an arbour over against the
tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe.
‘As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his
mind perceived dangers that were always changing. In
the leafy time, he perceived that the upper boughs were
growing into the form of the young man—that they
made the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch
swinging in the wind. In the time of the falling leaves,
he perceived that they came down from the tree, form-
ing tell-tale letters on the path, or that they had a
tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard mound
above the grave. In the winter, when the tree was bare,
he perceived that the boughs swung at him the ghost
of the blow the young man had given, and that they
threatened him openly. In the spring, when the sap
was mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, were the
dried-up particles of blood mounting with it: to make
out more obviously this year than last, the leaf-screened
figure of the young man, swinging in the wind?
‘However, he turned his Money over and over, and still
over. He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and
most secret trades that yielded great returns. In ten
years, he had turned his Money over, so many times,
that the traders and shippers who had dealings with
him, absolutely did not lie—for once—when they de-
clared that he had increased his fortune, Twelve Hun-
dred Per Cent.
‘He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when
people could be lost easily. He had heard who the youth
was, from hearing of the search that was made after
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81
him; but, it died away, and the youth was forgotten.
‘The annual round of changes in the tree had been
repeated ten times since the night of the burial at its
foot, when there was a great thunder-storm over this
place. It broke at midnight, and roared until morning.
The first intelligence he heard from his old serving-man
that morning, was, that the tree had been struck by
Lightning.
‘It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising
manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one
resting against the house, and one against a portion of
the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a
gap. The fissure went down the tree to a little above
the earth, and there stopped. There was great curiosity
to see the tree, and, with most of his former fears re-
vived, he sat in his arbour—grown quite an old man—
watching the people who came to see it.
‘They quickly began to come, in such dangerous num-
bers, that he closed his garden-gate and refused to ad-
mit any more. But, there were certain men of science
who travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and,
in an evil hour, he let them in!—Blight and Murrain on
them, let them in!
‘They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and
closely examine it, and the earth about it. Never, while
he lived! They offered money for it. They! Men of sci-
ence, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a
scratch of his pen! He showed them the garden-gate
again, and locked and barred it.
‘But they were bent on doing what they wanted to
do, and they bribed the old serving-man—a thankless
wretch who regularly complained when he received his
wages, of being underpaid—and they stole into the gar-
den by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels,
and fell to at the tree. He was lying in a turret-room on
the other side of the house (the Bride’s Chamber had
been unoccupied ever since), but he soon dreamed of
picks and shovels, and got up.
‘He came to an upper window on that side, whence he
could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth
in a heap which he had himself disturbed and put back,
when it was last turned to the air. It was found! They
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82
had that minute lighted on it. They were all bending
over it. One of them said, “The skull is fractured;” and
another, “See here the bones;” and another, “See here
the clothes;” and then the first struck in again, and
said, “A rusty bill-hook!”
‘He became sensible, next day, that he was already
put under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere
without being followed. Before a week was out, he was
taken and laid in hold. The circumstances were gradu-
ally pieced together against him, with a desperate ma-
lignity, and an appalling ingenuity. But, see the justice
of men, and how it was extended to him! He was fur-
ther accused of having poisoned that girl in the Bride’s
Chamber. He, who had carefully and expressly avoided
imperilling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen
her die of her own incapacity!
‘There was doubt for which of the two murders he
should be first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and
he was found Guilty, and cast for death. Bloodthirsty
wretches! They would have made him Guilty of any-
thing, so set they were upon having his life.
‘His money could do nothing to save him, and he was
hanged. I am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle
with my face to the wall, a hundred years ago!’
At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to
rise and cry out. But, the two fiery lines extending
from the old man’s eyes to his own, kept him down, and
he could not utter a sound. His sense of hearing, how-
ever, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two.
No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he
saw before him Two old men!
Two.
The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films
of fire: each, exactly like the other: each, addressing
him at precisely one and the same instant: each, gnash-
ing the same teeth in the same head, with the same
twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused
expression around it. Two old men. Differing in noth-
ing, equally distinct to the sight, the copy no fainter
than the original, the second as real as the first.
‘At what time,’ said the Two old men, ‘did you arrive at
the door below?’
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83
‘At Six.’
‘And there were Six old men upon the stairs!’
Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his
brow, or tried to do it, the Two old men proceeded in
one voice, and in the singular number:
‘I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skel-
eton put together and re-hung on an iron hook, when
it began to be whispered that the Bride’s Chamber was
haunted. It was haunted, and I was there.
‘WE were there. She and I were there. I, in the chair
upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing it-
self towards me on the floor. But, I was the speaker no
more, and the one word that she said to me from mid-
night until dawn was, ‘Live!’
‘The youth was there, likewise. In the tree outside the
window. Coming and going in the moonlight, as the
tree bent and gave. He has, ever since, been there, peep-
ing in at me in my torment; revealing to me by snatches,
in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes
and goes, bare-headed—a bill-hook, standing edgewise
in his hair.
‘In the Bride’s Chamber, every night from midnight
until dawn—one month in the year excepted, as I am
going to tell you—he hides in the tree, and she comes
towards me on the floor; always approaching; never
coming nearer; always visible as if by moon-light,
whether the moon shines or no; always saying, from
mid-night until dawn, her one word, “Live!”
‘But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this
life—this present month of thirty days—the Bride’s
Chamber is empty and quiet. Not so my old dungeon.
Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten
years. Both are fitfully haunted then. At One in the
morning. I am what you saw me when the clock struck
that hour—One old man. At Two in the morning, I am
Two old men. At Three, I am Three. By Twelve at noon,
I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent.
of old gain. Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times
my old power of suffering and agony. From that hour
until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and
fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the execu-
tioner. At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned
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84
off, swing invisible outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve
faces to the wall!
‘When the Bride’s Chamber was first haunted, it was
known to me that this punishment would never cease,
until I could make its nature, and my story, known to
two living men together. I waited for the coming of two
living men together into the Bride’s Chamber, years upon
years. It was infused into my knowledge (of the means
I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes
open, could be in the Bride’s Chamber at One in the
morning, they would see me sitting in my chair.
‘At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually
troubled, brought two men to try the adventure. I was
scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I come
there as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when
I heard them ascending the stairs. Next, I saw them
enter. One of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the
prime of life, some five and forty years of age; the other,
a dozen years younger. They brought provisions with
them in a basket, and bottles. A young woman accom-
panied them, with wood and coals for the lighting of
the fire. When she had lighted it, the bold, gay, active
man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room,
to see her safely down the staircase, and came back
laughing.
‘He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out
the contents of the basket on the table before the fire—
little recking of me, in my appointed station on the
hearth, close to him—and filled the glasses, and ate
and drank. His companion did the same, and was as
cheerful and confident as he: though he was the leader.
When they had supped, they laid pistols on the table,
turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of
foreign make.
‘They had travelled together, and had been much to-
gether, and had an abundance of subjects in common.
In the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger
man made a reference to the leader’s being always ready
for any adventure; that one, or any other. He replied in
these words:
‘“Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I
am afraid of myself.”
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85
‘His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked
him, in what sense? How?
‘“Why, thus,” he returned. “Here is a Ghost to be dis-
proved. Well! I cannot answer for what my fancy might
do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might
play with me if they had me to themselves. But, in
company with another man, and especially with Dick, I
would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever
of in the universe.”
‘“I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so
much importance to-night,” said the other.
‘“Of so much,” rejoined the leader, more seriously than
he had spoken yet, “that I would, for the reason I have
given, on no account have undertaken to pass the night
here alone.”
‘It was within a few minutes of One. The head of the
younger man had drooped when he made his last re-
mark, and it drooped lower now.
‘“Keep awake, Dick!” said the leader, gaily. “The small
hours are the worst.”
‘He tried, but his head drooped again.
‘“Dick!” urged the leader. “Keep awake!”
‘“I can’t,” he indistinctly muttered. “I don’t know what
strange influence is stealing over me. I can’t.”
‘His companion looked at him with a sudden horror,
and I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it
was on the stroke of One, and I felt that the second
watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon
me that I must send him to sleep.
‘“Get up and walk, Dick!” cried the leader. “Try!”
‘It was in vain to go behind the slumber’s chair and
shake him. One o’clock sounded, and I was present to
the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.
‘To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, with-
out hope of benefit. To him alone, I was an awful phan-
tom making a quite useless confession. I foresee it will
ever be the same. The two living men together will never
come to release me. When I appear, the senses of one of
the two will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor
hear me; my communication will ever be made to a soli-
tary listener, and will ever be unserviceable. Woe! Woe!
Woe!’
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86
As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their
hands, it shot into Mr. Goodchild’s mind that he was in
the terrible situation of being virtually alone with the
spectre, and that Mr. Idle’s immoveability was explained
by his having been charmed asleep at One o’clock. In
the terror of this sudden discovery which produced an
indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free
from the four fiery threads, that he snapped them, af-
ter he had pulled them out to a great width. Being
then out of bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa
and rushed down-stairs with him.
‘What are you about, Francis?’ demanded Mr. Idle. ‘My
bedroom is not down here. What the deuce are you car-
rying me at all for? I can walk with a stick now. I don’t
want to be carried. Put me down.’
Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked
about him wildly.
‘What are you doing? Idiotically plunging at your own
sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?’
asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state.
‘The One old man!’ cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,—
’and the Two old men!’
Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than ‘The One old
woman, I think you mean,’ as he began hobbling his
way back up the staircase, with the assistance of its
broad balustrade.
‘I assure you, Tom,’ began Mr. Goodchild, attending at
his side, ‘that since you fell asleep—’
‘Come, I like that!’ said Thomas Idle, ‘I haven’t closed
an eye!’
With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the
disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is
the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this decla-
ration. The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr.
Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to re-
pudiate it with honourable resentment. The settlement
of the question of The One old man and The Two old
men was thus presently complicated, and soon made
quite impracticable. Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake,
and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and
thought about in the day. Mr. Goodchild said how could
that be, when he hadn’t been asleep, and what right
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87
could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been asleep? Mr.
Idle said he had never been asleep, and never did go to
sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a general rule, was
always asleep. They consequently parted for the rest of
the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled. Mr.
Goodchild’s last words were, that he had had, in that
real and tangible old sitting-room of that real and tan-
gible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its exist-
ence?), every sensation and experience, the present
record of which is now within a line or two of comple-
tion; and that he would write it out and print it every
word. Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked—and
he did like, and has now done it.
CHAPTER V
TWO OF THE MANY PASSENGERS by a certain late Sunday
evening train, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild,
yielded up their tickets at a little rotten platform (con-
verted into artificial touchwood by smoke and ashes),
deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire. A mys-
terious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday
night, dashed through in the train to the music of the
whirling wheels, the panting of the engine, and the
part-singing of hundreds of third-class excursionists,
whose vocal efforts ‘bobbed arayound’ from sacred to
profane, from hymns, to our transatlantic sisters the
Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way. There
seemed to have been some large vocal gathering near to
every lonely station on the line. No town was visible,
no village was visible, no light was visible; but, a multi-
tude got out singing, and a multitude got in singing,
and the second multitude took up the hymns, and
adopted our transatlantic sisters, and sang of their own
egregious wickedness, and of their bobbing arayound,
and of how the ship it was ready and the wind it was
fair, and they were bayound for the sea, Mairy Anne,
until they in their turn became a getting-out multi-
tude, and were replaced by another getting-in multi-
tude, who did the same. And at every station, the get-
ting-in multitude, with an artistic reference to the com-
pleteness of their chorus, incessantly cried, as with one
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88
voice while scuffling into the carriages, ‘We mun aa’
gang toogither!’
The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the
lonely places were left and the great towns were neared,
and the way had lain as silently as a train’s way ever
can, over the vague black streets of the great gulfs of
towns, and among their branchless woods of vague black
chimneys. These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as
though they had one and all been on fire and were just
put out—a dreary and quenched panorama, many miles
long.
Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which en-
terprising and important commercial centre it may be
observed with delicacy, that you must either like it very
much or not at all. Next day, the first of the Race-Week,
they took train to Doncaster.
And instantly the character, both of travellers and of
luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than
race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth.
The talk was all of horses and ‘John Scott.’ Guards whis-
pered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses
and John Scott. Men in cut-away coats and speckled
cravats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large
bones of their legs developed under tight trousers, so
that they should look as much as possible like horses’
legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations,
speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott.
The young clergyman in the black strait-waistcoat, who
occupied the middle seat of the carriage, expounded in
his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Rev-
erend Mrs. Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-
seat, a few passages of rumour relative to ‘Oartheth, my
love, and Mithter John Eth- cott.’ A bandy vagabond,
with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian stable-
suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the plat-
forms with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais
burgher of the ancient period much degenerated, was
courted by the best society, by reason of what he had
to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, concerning
‘t’harses and Joon Scott.’ The engine-driver himself, as
he applied one eye to his large stationary double-eye-
glass on the engine, seemed to keep the other open,
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89
sideways, upon horses and John Scott.
Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the
crowd off; temporary wooden avenues of ingress and
egress, to help the crowd on. Forty extra porters sent
down for this present blessed Race-Week, and all of them
making up their betting-books in the lamp-room or
somewhere else, and none of them to come and touch
the luggage. Travellers disgorged into an open space, a
howling wilderness of idle men. All work but race-work
at a stand-still; all men at a stand-still. ‘Ey my word!
Deant ask noon o’ us to help wi’ t’luggage. Bock your
opinion loike a mon. Coom! Dang it, coom, t’harses and
Joon Scott!’ In the midst of the idle men, all the fly
horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adja-
cent, rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying—
apparently the result of their hearing of nothing but
their own order and John Scott.
Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-
Week. Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up
the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each evening, for the
Race-Week. Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond
the bridge, for the Race-Week. Grand Exhibition of Az-
tec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horri-
fied cheap, for the Race-Week. Lodgings, grand and not
grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds
to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!
Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle
and Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had se-
cured beforehand, and Mr. Goodchild looked down from
the window into the surging street.
‘By Heaven, Tom!’ cried he, after contemplating it, ‘I
am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad
people under the charge of a body of designing keepers!’
All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never di-
vested himself of this idea. Every day he looked out of
window, with something of the dread of Lemuel Gulliver
looking down at men after he returned home from the
horse-country; and every day he saw the Lunatics, horse-
mad, betting-mad, drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the
designing Keepers always after them. The idea pervaded,
like the second colour in shot-silk, the whole of Mr.
Goodchild’s impressions. They were much as follows:
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90
Monday, mid-day. Races not to begin until to-mor-
row, but all the mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pave-
ments of the one main street of pretty and pleasant
Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly crowding the
outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting
loudly after all passing vehicles. Frightened lunatic
horses occasionally running away, with infinite clatter.
All degrees of men, from peers to paupers, betting in-
cessantly. Keepers very watchful, and taking all good
chances. An awful family likeness among the Keepers,
to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell. With some knowledge of
expression and some acquaintance with heads (thus
writes Mr. Goodchild), I never have seen anywhere, so
many repetitions of one class of countenance and one
character of head (both evil) as in this street at this
time. Cunning, covetousness, secrecy, cold calculation,
hard callousness and dire insensibility, are the uniform
Keeper characteristics. Mr. Palmer passes me five times
in five minutes, and, so I go down the street, the back
of Mr. Thurtell’s skull is always going on before me.
Monday evening. Town lighted up; more Lunatics out
than ever; a complete choke and stoppage of the thor-
oughfare outside the Betting Rooms. Keepers, having
dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at
the moneyed Lunatics. Some Keepers flushed with drink,
and some not, but all close and calculating. A vague echo-
ing roar of ‘t’harses’ and ‘t’races’ always rising in the air,
until midnight, at about which period it dies away in
occasional drunken songs and straggling yells. But, all
night, some unmannerly drinking-house in the
neighbourhood opens its mouth at intervals and spits
out a man too drunk to be retained: who thereupon makes
what uproarious protest may be left in him, and either
falls asleep where he tumbles, or is carried off in custody.
Tuesday morning, at daybreak. A sudden rising, as it
were out of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who
sell ‘correct cards of the races.’ They may have been
coiled in corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, hav-
ing all passed the night under the same set of circum-
stances, may all want to circulate their blood at the
same time; but, however that may be, they spring into
existence all at once and together, as though a new
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91
Cadmus had sown a race-horse’s teeth. There is nobody
up, to buy the cards; but, the cards are madly cried.
There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly
quarrel and fight. Conspicuous among these hyaenas,
as breakfast-time discloses, is a fearful creature in the
general semblance of a man: shaken off his next-to-no
legs by drink and devilry, bare-headed and bare-footed,
with a great shock of hair like a horrible broom, and
nothing on him but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink
glazed-calico coat—made on him—so very tight that it
is as evident that he could never take it off, as that he
never does. This hideous apparition, inconceivably
drunk, has a terrible power of making a gong-like imi-
tation of the braying of an ass: which feat requires that
he should lay his right jaw in his begrimed right paw,
double himself up, and shake his bray out of himself,
with much staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much
twirling of his horrible broom, as if it were a mop. From
the present minute, when he comes in sight holding up
his cards to the windows, and hoarsely proposing pur-
chase to My Lord, Your Excellency, Colonel, the Noble
Captain, and Your Honourable Worship—from the
present minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished,
at all hours of the morning, evening, day, and night,
shall the town reverberate, at capricious intervals, to
the brays of this frightful animal the Gong-donkey.
No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount
of vehicles: though there is a good sprinkling, too: from
farmers’ carts and gigs, to carriages with post-horses
and to fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the road from
York, and passing on straight through the main street
to the Course. A walk in the wrong direction may be a
better thing for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course,
so he walks in the wrong direction. Everybody gone to
the races. Only children in the street. Grand Alliance
Circus deserted; not one Star-Rider left; omnibus which
forms the Pay-Place, having on separate panels Pay here
for the Boxes, Pay here for the Pit, Pay here for the
Gallery, hove down in a corner and locked up; nobody
near the tent but the man on his knees on the grass,
who is making the paper balloons for the Star young
gentlemen to jump through to-night. A pleasant road,
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92
pleasantly wooded. No labourers working in the fields;
all gone ‘t’races.’ The few late wenders of their way ‘t’races,’
who are yet left driving on the road, stare in amaze-
ment at the recluse who is not going ‘t’races.’ Roadside
innkeeper has gone ‘t’races.’ Turnpike-man has gone
‘t’races.’ His thrifty wife, washing clothes at the toll-
house door, is going ‘t’races’ to-morrow. Perhaps there
may be no one left to take the toll to-morrow; who
knows? Though assuredly that would be neither turn-
pike-like nor Yorkshire-like. The very wind and dust
seem to be hurrying ‘t’races,’ as they briskly pass the
only wayfarer on the road. In the distance, the Railway
Engine, waiting at the town-end, shrieks despairingly.
Nothing but the difficulty of getting off the Line, re-
strains that Engine from going ‘t’races,’ too, it is very
clear.
At night, more Lunatics out than last night—and more
Keepers. The latter very active at the Betting Rooms,
the street in front of which is now impassable. Mr. Palmer
as before. Mr. Thurtell as before. Roar and uproar as
before. Gradual subsidence as before. Unmannerly drink-
ing-house expectorates as before. Drunken negro-melo-
dists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the night.
On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St.
Leger, it becomes apparent that there has been a great
influx since yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers.
The families of the tradesmen over the way are no longer
within human ken; their places know them no more;
ten, fifteen, and twenty guinea-lodgers fill them. At
the pastry-cook’s second-floor window, a Keeper is brush-
ing Mr. Thurtell’s hair—thinking it his own. In the wax-
chandler’s attic, another Keeper is putting on Mr. Palmer’s
braces. In the gunsmith’s nursery, a Lunatic is shaving
himself. In the serious stationer’s best sitting-room,
three Lunatics are taking a combination-breakfast, prais-
ing the (cook’s) devil, and drinking neat brandy in an
atmosphere of last midnight’s cigars. No family sanctu-
ary is free from our Angelic messengers—we put up at
the Angel—who in the guise of extra waiters for the
grand Race-Week, rattle in and out of the most secret
chambers of everybody’s house, with dishes and tin cov-
ers, decanters, soda-water bottles, and glasses. An hour
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later. Down the street and up the street, as far as eyes
can see and a good deal farther, there is a dense crowd;
outside the Betting Rooms it is like a great struggle at
a theatre door—in the days of theatres; or at the vesti-
bule of the Spurgeon temple—in the days of Spurgeon.
An hour later. Fusing into this crowd, and somehow
getting through it, are all kinds of conveyances, and all
kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick-makers and
brick-makeresses jolting up and down on planks; drags,
with the needful grooms behind, sitting cross-armed in
the needful manner, and slanting themselves backward
from the soles of their boots at the needful angle;
postboys, in the shining hats and smart jackets of the
olden time, when stokers were not; beautiful Yorkshire
horses, gallantly driven by their own breeders and mas-
ters. Under every pole, and every shaft, and every horse,
and every wheel as it would seem, the Gong-donkey—
metallically braying, when not struggling for life, or
whipped out of the way.
By one o’clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets,
and there is no one left in them but Francis Goodchild.
Francis Goodchild will not be left in them long; for, he
too is on his way, ‘t’races.’
A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds ‘t’races’
to be, when he has left fair Doncaster behind him, and
comes out on the free course, with its agreeable pros-
pect, its quaint Red House oddly changing and turning
as Francis turns, its green grass, and fresh heath. A free
course and an easy one, where Francis can roll smoothly
where he will, and can choose between the start, or the
coming-in, or the turn behind the brow of the hill, or
any out-of-the-way point where he lists to see the throb-
bing horses straining every nerve, and making the sym-
pathetic earth throb as they come by. Francis much de-
lights to be, not in the Grand Stand, but where he can
see it, rising against the sky with its vast tiers of little
white dots of faces, and its last high rows and corners
of people, looking like pins stuck into an enormous pin-
cushion—not quite so symmetrically as his orderly eye
could wish, when people change or go away. When the
race is nearly run out, it is as good as the race to him to
see the flutter among the pins, and the change in them
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from dark to light, as hats are taken off and waved. Not
less full of interest, the loud anticipation of the winner’s
name, the swelling, and the final, roar; then, the quick
dropping of all the pins out of their places, the revela-
tion of the shape of the bare pincushion, and the clos-
ing-in of the whole host of Lunatics and Keepers, in the
rear of the three horses with bright-coloured riders, who
have not yet quite subdued their gallop though the
contest is over.
Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means
free from lunacy himself at ‘t’races,’ though not of the
prevalent kind. He is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen
into a dreadful state concerning a pair of little lilac
gloves and a little bonnet that he saw there. Mr. Idle
asserts, that he did afterwards repeat at the Angel, with
an appearance of being lunatically seized, some rhap-
sody to the following effect: ‘O little lilac gloves! And O
winning little bonnet, making in conjunction with her
golden hair quite a Glory in the sunlight round the
pretty head, why anything in the world but you and
me! Why may not this day’s running-of horses, to all
the rest: of precious sands of life to me—be prolonged
through an everlasting autumn-sunshine, without a
sunset! Slave of the Lamp, or Ring, strike me yonder
gallant equestrian Clerk of the Course, in the scarlet
coat, motionless on the green grass for ages! Friendly
Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times ten thousands years,
keep Blink-Bonny jibbing at the post, and let us have
no start! Arab drums, powerful of old to summon Genii
in the desert, sound of yourselves and raise a troop for
me in the desert of my heart, which shall so enchant
this dusty barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate,
resembling the Collector’s door-plate at a turnpike), that
I, within it, loving the little lilac gloves, the winning
little bonnet, and the dear unknown-wearer with the
golden hair, may wait by her side for ever, to see a Great
St. Leger that shall never be run!’
Thursday morning. After a tremendous night of crowd-
ing, shouting, drinking-house expectoration, Gong-don-
key, and correct cards. Symptoms of yesterday’s gains
in the way of drink, and of yesterday’s losses in the way
of money, abundant. Money-losses very great. As usual,
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nobody seems to have won; but, large losses and many
losers are unquestionable facts. Both Lunatics and Keep-
ers, in general very low. Several of both kinds look in at
the chemist’s while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase
there, to be ‘picked up.’ One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed,
faded, and disordered, enters hurriedly and cries sav-
agely, ‘Hond us a gloss of sal volatile in wather, or soom
dommed thing o’ thot sart!’ Faces at the Betting Rooms
very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable. Keep-
ers likewise given this morning to standing about soli-
tary, with their hands in their pockets, looking down at
their boots as they fit them into cracks of the pave-
ment, and then looking up whistling and walking away.
Grand Alliance Circus out, in procession; buxom lady-
member of Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit,
fresher to look at, even in her paint under the day sky,
than the cheeks of Lunatics or Keepers. Spanish Cava-
lier appears to have lost yesterday, and jingles his bossed
bridle with disgust, as if he were paying. Reaction also
apparent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain pick-
pockets come out handcuffed together, with that pecu-
liar walk which is never seen under any other circum-
stances—a walk expressive of going to jail, game, but
still of jails being in bad taste and arbitrary, and how
would you like it if it was you instead of me, as it ought
to be! Mid-day. Town filled as yesterday, but not so full;
and emptied as yesterday, but not so empty. In the
evening, Angel ordinary where every Lunatic and Keeper
has his modest daily meal of turtle, venison, and wine,
not so crowded as yesterday, and not so noisy.
At night, the theatre. More abstracted faces in it than
one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces wearing
an expression which strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of
the boys at school who were ‘going up next,’ with their
arithmetic or mathematics. These boys are, no doubt,
going up to-morrow with their sums and figures. Mr.
Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P. Mr. Thurtell
and Mr. Palmer in the boxes P. S. The firm of Thurtell,
Palmer, and Thurtell, in the boxes Centre. A most odi-
ous tendency observable in these distinguished gentle-
men to put vile constructions on sufficiently innocent
phrases in the play, and then to applaud them in a
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Satyr-like manner. Behind Mr. Goodchild, with a party
of other Lunatics and one Keeper, the express incarna-
tion of the thing called a ‘gent.’ A gentleman born; a
gent manufactured. A something with a scarf round its
neck, and a slipshod speech issuing from behind the
scarf; more depraved, more foolish, more ignorant, more
unable to believe in any noble or good thing of any
kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman. The thing is but a
boy in years, and is addled with drink. To do its com-
pany justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as it
drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and
inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it
into the pit. Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr.
Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether that
is a wholesome Art, which sets women apart on a high
floor before such a thing as this, though as good as its
own sisters, or its own mother - whom Heaven forgive
for bringing it into the world! But, the consideration
that a low nature must make a low world of its own to
live in, whatever the real materials, or it could no more
exist than any of us could without the sense of touch,
brings Mr. Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the
thing soon drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and
slobbers itself asleep.
Friday Morning. Early fights. Gong-donkey, and cor-
rect cards. Again, a great set towards the races, though
not so great a set as on Wednesday. Much packing going
on too, upstairs at the gun-smith’s, the wax-chandler’s,
and the serious stationer’s; for there will be a heavy
drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by the after-
noon train. The course as pretty as ever; the great pin-
cushion as like a pincushion, but not nearly so full of
pins; whole rows of pins wanting. On the great event of
the day, both Lunatics and Keepers become inspired
with rage; and there is a violent scuffling, and a rush-
ing at the losing jockey, and an emergence of the said
jockey from a swaying and menacing crowd, protected
by friends, and looking the worse for wear; which is a
rough proceeding, though animating to see from a pleas-
ant distance. After the great event, rills begin to flow
from the pincushion towards the railroad; the rills swell
into rivers; the rivers soon unite into a lake. The lake
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floats Mr. Goodchild into Doncaster, past the Itinerant
personage in black, by the way-side telling him from
the vantage ground of a legibly printed placard on a
pole that for all these things the Lord will bring him to
judgment. No turtle and venison ordinary this evening;
that is all over. No Betting at the rooms; nothing there
but the plants in pots, which have, all the week, been
stood about the entry to give it an innocent appear-
ance, and which have sorely sickened by this time.
Saturday. Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what
were those dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway
in the night? Mr. Goodchild answers, Nightmare. Mr. Idle
repels the calumny, and calls the waiter. The Angel is
very sorry—had intended to explain; but you see, gentle-
men, there was a gentleman dined down-stairs with two
more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would
drink a deal of wine, and in the night he ‘took the hor-
rors,’ and got up; and as his friends could do nothing
with him he laid himself down and groaned at Mr. Idle’s
door. ‘And he did groan there,’ Mr. Idle says; ‘and you will
please to imagine me inside, “taking the horrors” too!’
So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its
great sporting anniversary, offers probably a general
representation of the social condition of the town, in
the past as well as in the present time. The sole local
phenomenon of the current year, which may be consid-
ered as entirely unprecedented in its way, and which
certainly claims, on that account, some slight share of
notice, consists in the actual existence of one remark-
able individual, who is sojourning in Doncaster, and who,
neither directly nor indirectly, has anything at all to
do, in any capacity whatever, with the racing amuse-
ments of the week. Ranging throughout the entire crowd
that fills the town, and including the inhabitants as
well as the visitors, nobody is to be found altogether
disconnected with the business of the day, excepting
this one unparalleled man. He does not bet on the races,
like the sporting men. He does not assist the races, like
the jockeys, starters, judges, and grooms. He does not
look on at the races, like Mr. Goodchild and his fellow-
spectators. He does not profit by the races, like the
hotel-keepers and the tradespeople. He does not minis-
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98
ter to the necessities of the races, like the booth-keep-
ers, the postilions, the waiters, and the hawkers of Lists.
He does not assist the attractions of the races, like the
actors at the theatre, the riders at the circus, or the
posturers at the Poses Plastiques. Absolutely and liter-
ally, he is the only individual in Doncaster who stands
by the brink of the full-flowing race-stream, and is not
swept away by it in common with all the rest of his
species. Who is this modern hermit, this recluse of the
St. Leger-week, this inscrutably ungregarious being, who
lives apart from the amusements and activities of his
fellow-creatures? Surely, there is little difficulty in guess-
ing that clearest and easiest of all riddles. Who could he
be, but Mr. Thomas Idle?
Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster,
just as he would have suffered himself to be taken to
any other place in the habitable globe which would
guarantee him the temporary possession of a comfort-
able sofa to rest his ankle on. Once established at the
hotel, with his leg on one cushion and his back against
another, he formally declined taking the slightest in-
terest in any circumstance whatever connected with the
races, or with the people who were assembled to see
them. Francis Goodchild, anxious that the hours should
pass by his crippled travelling-companion as lightly as
possible, suggested that his sofa should be moved to
the window, and that he should amuse himself by look-
ing out at the moving panorama of humanity, which
the view from it of the principal street presented. Tho-
mas, however, steadily declined profiting by the sug-
gestion.
‘The farther I am from the window,’ he said, ‘the bet-
ter, Brother Francis, I shall be pleased. I have nothing
in common with the one prevalent idea of all those
people who are passing in the street. Why should I care
to look at them?’
‘I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent
idea of a great many of them, either,’ answered Goodchild,
thinking of the sporting gentlemen whom he had met
in the course of his wanderings about Doncaster. ‘But,
surely, among all the people who are walking by the
house, at this very moment, you may find—’
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99
‘Not one living creature,’ interposed Thomas, ‘who is
not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and
who is not, in a greater or less degree, an admirer of
them. Now, I hold opinions in reference to these par-
ticular members of the quadruped creation, which may
lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of
being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised
or savage, over the whole surface of the earth. Taking
the horse as an animal in the abstract, Francis, I cor-
dially despise him from every point of view.’
‘Thomas,’ said Goodchild, ‘confinement to the house
has begun to affect your biliary secretions. I shall go to
the chemist’s and get you some physic.’
‘I object,’ continued Thomas, quietly possessing him-
self of his friend’s hat, which stood on a table near
him,—’I object, first, to the personal appearance of the
horse. I protest against the conventional idea of beauty,
as attached to that animal. I think his nose too long,
his forehead too low, and his legs (except in the case of
the cart-horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with
the size of his body. Again, considering how big an ani-
mal he is, I object to the contemptible delicacy of his
constitution. Is he not the sickliest creature in creation?
Does any child catch cold as easily as a horse? Does he
not sprain his fetlock, for all his appearance of superior
strength, as easily as I sprained my ankle! Furthermore,
to take him from another point of view, what a helpless
wretch he is! No fine lady requires more constant wait-
ing-on than a horse. Other animals can make their own
toilette: he must have a groom. You will tell me that
this is because we want to make his coat artificially
glossy. Glossy! Come home with me, and see my cat,—
my clever cat, who can groom herself! Look at your own
dog! see how the intelligent creature curry-combs him-
self with his own honest teeth! Then, again, what a
fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous fool! He will
start at a piece of white paper in the road as if it was a
lion. His one idea, when he hears a noise that he is not
accustomed to, is to run away from it. What do you say
to those two common instances of the sense and cour-
age of this absurdly overpraised animal? I might multi-
ply them to two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind
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100
and waste my breath, which I never do. I prefer coming
at once to my last charge against the horse, which is
the most serious of all, because it affects his moral char-
acter. I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant to
man, of slyness and treachery. I brand him publicly, no
matter how mild he may look about the eyes, or how
sleek he may be about the coat, as a systematic be-
trayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the confi-
dence reposed in him. What do you mean by laughing
and shaking your head at me?’
‘Oh, Thomas, Thomas!’ said Goodchild. ‘You had better
give me my hat; you had better let me get you that
physic.’
‘I will let you get anything you like, including a com-
posing draught for yourself,’ said Thomas, irritably al-
luding to his fellow-apprentice’s inexhaustible activity,
‘if you will only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and
hear me out. I say again the horse is a betrayer of the
confidence reposed in him; and that opinion, let me
add, is drawn from my own personal experience, and is
not based on any fanciful theory whatever. You shall
have two instances, two overwhelming instances. Let
me start the first of these by asking, what is the distin-
guishing quality which the Shetland Pony has arrogated
to himself, and is still perpetually trumpeting through
the world by means of popular report and books on
Natural History? I see the answer in your face: it is the
quality of being Sure-Footed. He professes to have other
virtues, such as hardiness and strength, which you may
discover on trial; but the one thing which he insists on
your believing, when you get on his back, is that he
may be safely depended on not to tumble down with
you. Very good. Some years ago, I was in Shetland with
a party of friends. They insisted on taking me with them
to the top of a precipice that overhung the sea. It was a
great distance off, but they all determined to walk to it
except me. I was wiser then than I was with you at
Carrock, and I determined to be carried to the preci-
pice. There was no carriage-road in the island, and no-
body offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the im-
perfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a
sedan-chair, which is naturally what I should have liked
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101
best. A Shetland pony was produced instead. I remem-
bered my Natural History, I recalled popular report, and
I got on the little beast’s back, as any other man would
have done in my position, placing implicit confidence
in the sureness of his feet. And how did he repay that
confidence? Brother Francis, carry your mind on from
morning to noon. Picture to yourself a howling wilder-
ness of grass and bog, bounded by low stony hills. Pick
out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and
sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back,
and heels in the air, plunging headforemost into a black
patch of water and mud. Place just behind me the legs,
the body, and the head of a sure-footed Shetland pony,
all stretched flat on the ground, and you will have pro-
duced an accurate representation of a very lamentable
fact. And the moral device, Francis, of this picture will
be to testify that when gentlemen put confidence in
the legs of Shetland ponies, they will find to their cost
that they are leaning on nothing but broken reeds. There
is my first instance—and what have you got to say to
that?’
‘Nothing, but that I want my hat,’ answered Goodchild,
starting up and walking restlessly about the room.
‘You shall have it in a minute,’ rejoined Thomas. ‘My
second instance’—(Goodchild groaned, and sat down
again)—’My second instance is more appropriate to the
present time and place, for it refers to a race-horse. Two
years ago an excellent friend of mine, who was desirous
of prevailing on me to take regular exercise, and who
was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my
legs to expect no very active compliance with his wishes
on their part, offered to make me a present of one of
his horses. Hearing that the animal in question had
started in life on the turf, I declined accepting the gift
with many thanks; adding, by way of explanation, that
I looked on a race-horse as a kind of embodied hurri-
cane, upon which no sane man of my character and
habits could be expected to seat himself. My friend re-
plied that, however appropriate my metaphor might be
as applied to race-horses in general, it was singularly
unsuitable as applied to the particular horse which he
proposed to give me. From a foal upwards this remark-
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102
able animal had been the idlest and most sluggish of
his race. Whatever capacities for speed he might pos-
sess he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount
of training had ever brought them out. He had been
found hopelessly slow as a racer, and hopelessly lazy as
a hunter, and was fit for nothing but a quiet, easy life
of it with an old gentleman or an invalid. When I heard
this account of the horse, I don’t mind confessing that
my heart warmed to him. Visions of Thomas Idle am-
bling serenely on the back of a steed as lazy as himself,
presenting to a restless world the soothing and com-
posite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too
peaceable in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attrac-
tively before my eyes. I went to look at the horse in the
stable. Nice fellow! he was fast asleep with a kitten on
his back. I saw him taken out for an airing by the groom.
If he had had trousers on his legs I should not have
known them from my own, so deliberately were they
lifted up, so gently were they put down, so slowly did
they get over the ground. From that moment I grate-
fully accepted my friend’s offer. I went home; the horse
followed me—by a slow train. Oh, Francis, how devoutly
I believed in that horse I how carefully I looked after
all his little comforts! I had never gone the length of
hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to
the expense of hiring one to wait upon him. If I thought
a little of myself when I bought the softest saddle that
could be had for money, I thought also of my horse.
When the man at the shop afterwards offered me spurs
and a whip, I turned from him with horror. When I
sallied out for my first ride, I went purposely unarmed
with the means of hurrying my steed. He proceeded at
his own pace every step of the way; and when he
stopped, at last, and blew out both his sides with a
heavy sigh, and turned his sleepy head and looked be-
hind him, I took him home again, as I might take home
an artless child who said to me, “If you please, sir, I am
tired.” For a week this complete harmony between me
and my horse lasted undisturbed. At the end of that
time, when he had made quite sure of my friendly con-
fidence in his laziness, when he had thoroughly ac-
quainted himself with all the little weaknesses of my
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103
seat (and their name is Legion), the smouldering treach-
ery and ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in
an instant. Without the slightest provocation from me,
with nothing passing him at the time but a pony-chaise
driven by an old lady, he started in one instant from a
state of sluggish depression to a state of frantic high
spirits. He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he pranced, he
capered fearfully. I sat on him as long as I could, and
when I could sit no longer, I fell off. No, Francis! this is
not a circumstance to be laughed at, but to be wept
over. What would be said of a Man who had requited my
kindness in that way? Range over all the rest of the
animal creation, and where will you find me an instance
of treachery so black as this? The cow that kicks down
the milking-pail may have some reason for it; she may
think herself taxed too heavily to contribute to the
dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread.
The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the ex-
cuse of being hungry at the time, to say nothing of the
further justification of being a total stranger to me.
The very flea who surprises me in my sleep may defend
his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my
turn, am always ready to murder him when I am awake.
I defy the whole body of Natural Historians to move me,
logically, off the ground that I have taken in regard to
the horse. Receive back your hat, Brother Francis, and
go to the chemist’s, if you please; for I have now done.
Ask me to take anything you like, except an interest in
the Doncaster races. Ask me to look at anything you
like, except an assemblage of people all animated by
feelings of a friendly and admiring nature towards the
horse. You are a remarkably well-informed man, and
you have heard of hermits. Look upon me as a member
of that ancient fraternity, and you will sensibly add to
the many obligations which Thomas Idle is proud to
owe to Francis Goodchild.’
Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, dis-
putatious Thomas waved one hand languidly, laid his
head back on the sofa-pillow, and calmly closed his eyes.
At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling
companion boldly from the impregnable fortress of com-
mon sense. But Thomas, though tamed in body by dras-
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104
tic discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable as
ever on the subject of his favourite delusion.
The view from the window after Saturday’s breakfast
is altogether changed. The tradesmen’s families have all
come back again. The serious stationer’s young woman
of all work is shaking a duster out of the window of the
combination breakfast-room; a child is playing with a
doll, where Mr. Thurtell’s hair was brushed; a sanitary
scrubbing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer’s
braces were put on. No signs of the Races are in the
streets, but the tramps and the tumble-down-carts and
trucks laden with drinking-forms and tables and rem-
nants of booths, that are making their way out of the
town as fast as they can. The Angel, which has been
cleared for action all the week, already begins restoring
every neat and comfortable article of furniture to its
own neat and comfortable place. The Angel’s daughters
(pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never saw,
nor more quietly expert in their business, nor more su-
perior to the common vice of being above it), have a
little time to rest, and to air their cheerful faces among
the flowers in the yard. It is market-day. The market
looks unusually natural, comfortable, and wholesome;
the market-people too. The town seems quite restored,
when, hark! a metallic bray—The Gong-donkey!
The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest,
but is here, under the window. How much more incon-
ceivably drunk now, how much more begrimed of paw,
how much more tight of calico hide, how much more
stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his
horrible broom to his tender toes, who shall say! He
cannot even shake the bray out of himself now, with-
out laying his cheek so near to the mud of the street,
that he pitches over after delivering it. Now, prone in
the mud, and now backing himself up against shop-
windows, the owners of which come out in terror to
remove him; now, in the drinking-shop, and now in the
tobacconist’s, where he goes to buy tobacco, and makes
his way into the parlour, and where he gets a cigar,
which in half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; now danc-
ing, now dozing, now cursing, and now complimenting
My Lord, the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your
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105
Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up his heels,
occasionally braying, until suddenly, he beholds the dear-
est friend he has in the world coming down the street.
The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world,
is a sort of Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such
small pieces that it looks as if it were made of blacking
bottles turned inside out and cobbled together. The
dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk too)
advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh,
in a series of humorous springs and stops, wagging his
head as he comes. The Gong-donkey regarding him with
attention and with the warmest affection, suddenly
perceives that he is the greatest enemy he has in the
world, and hits him hard in the countenance. The as-
tonished Jackall closes with the Donkey, and they roll
over and over in the mud, pummelling one another. A
Police Inspector, supernaturally endowed with patience,
who has long been looking on from the Guildhall-steps,
says, to a myrmidon, ‘Lock ‘em up! Bring ‘em in!’
Appropriate finish to the Grand Race-Week. The Gong-
donkey, captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo,
where they cannot do better than keep him until next
Race-Week. The Jackall is wanted too, and is much looked
for, over the way and up and down. But, having had the
good fortune to be undermost at the time of the cap-
ture, he has vanished into air.
On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and
looks at the Course. It is quite deserted; heaps of bro-
ken crockery and bottles are raised to its memory; and
correct cards and other fragments of paper are blowing
about it, as the regulation little paper-books, carried
by the French soldiers in their breasts, were seen, soon
after the battle was fought, blowing idly about the plains
of Waterloo.
Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the
idle winds, and where will the last of them be one day
lost and forgotten? An idle question, and an idle
thought; and with it Mr. Idle fitly makes his bow, and
Mr. Goodchild his, and thus ends the Lazy Tour of Two
Idle Apprentices.
The End