Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/289

Charles Dickens] quest, last autumn, of a nice quiet place within a convenient distance of town, where I could finish an epic poem—or, stay, was it a five act drama?—on which I had been long engaged, and where I could be secure from the annoyance of organ grinders, and of reverend gentlemen leaving little subscription books one day, and calling for them the next—I should like to know what difference there is between them and the people who leave the packets of steel pens, and the patent lamp-globe protector, and Bullinger's History of the Inquisition, under the special patronage of the Archbishop of Tobago, to be continued in monthly parts—together with the people who want your autograph, and others who want money, and things of that kind. I pined for a place where one could be very snug, and where one's friends didn't drop in "just to look you up, old fellow;" and where the post didn't come in too often. So I packed up a bag of needments, and availing myself of a mid-day train, on the Great Domdaniel Railway, alighted haphazard at a station.

It turned out to be Sobbington. I saw at a glance that Sobbington was too fashionable, not to say stuck up, for me. The Waltz from Faust was pianofortetically audible from at least half-a-dozen semi-detached windows; and this, combined with some painful variations on "Take then the Sabre," and a cursory glance into a stationer's shop and fancy warehouse, where two stern mammas, of low church aspect, were purchasing the back numbers of the New Pugwell-square Pulpit, and three young ladies were telegraphically enquiring, behind their parents' backs, of the young person at the counter, whether any letters had been left for them, sufficed to accelerate my departure from Sobbington. The next station on the road, I was told, was Doleful-hill, and then came Deadwood Junction. I thought I would take a little walk, and see what the open and what the covert yielded. I left my bag with a moody porter at the Sobbington station, and trudged along the road which had been indicated to me as leading to Doleful-hill. It happened to be a very splendid afternoon. There were patches of golden and of purple gorse skirting those parts of the road in which the semi-detached villa eruption had not yet broken out; the distant hills were delicately blue, and the mellow sun was distilling his rays into diamonds and rubies on the roof of a wondrous Palace of Glass, which does duty in these parts, as Vesuvius does duty in Naples, as a pervading presence. At Portici, and at Torre del Greco, at Sobbington, or at Doleful-hill, turn whithersoever you will, the Mountain seems close upon you, always.

It is true that I was a little dashed, when I encountered an organ grinder lugubriously winding, "Slap bang, here we are again!" off his brazen reel, and looking anything but a jolly dog. Organ grinding was contrary to the code I had laid down to govern my retirement. But the autumnal sun shone very genially on this child of the Sunny South—who had possibly come from the bleakest part of Piedmont—his smile was of the sunniest, likewise, and there was a roguish twinkle in his black eyes, and, though his cheeks were brown, his teeth were of the whitest. So, as I gave him pence, I determined inwardly, that I would tolerate at least one organ grinder if he came near where I lived. It is true that I had not the remotest idea of where I was going to live.

I walked onwards and onwards, admiring the pied cows in the far off pastures—cows, the white specks on whose hides occurred so artistically, that one might have thought, that the scenic arrangement of the landscape had been entrusted to Mr. Birket Foster.

Anon I saw coming towards me a butcher boy in his cart, drawn by a fast trotting pony. It was a light high spring cart, very natty and shiny, with the names and addresses of the proprietors, Messrs. Hock, butchers to the royal family, West Deadwood—which of the princes or princesses reside at West Deadwood, I wonder?—emblazoned on the panels. The butcher boy shone, too, with a suety sheen. The joints which formed his cargo, were of the hue of which an English girl's cheeks should be: pure red and white. And the good sun, shone upon all. The equipage came rattling along at a high trot, the butcher squaring his arms and whistling—I could see him whistle from afar off. I asked him when he neared me how far it might be to Doleful-hill.

"Good two mile," quoth the butcher boy, pulling up. "Steady, you warmint." This was to the trotting pony. "But," he continued, "you'll have to pass Wretchedville first. Lays in a 'ole a little to the left, arf a mile on."

"Wretchedville," thought I; "what an odd name. What sort of a place is it?" I enquired.